User talk:MuffledThud/Archives/September 2009

Hey

Don't worry, I'm not going to punish you :P, because honestly it's great to have you back :) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:30, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Why thank you. :-) It's nice to be back. MuffledThud (talk) 20:31, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Discussion?

Can you please link to the discussion you cited for undoing the Consumer Watchdog move? user:J aka justen (talk) 12:31, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I was referring to WP:Articles for deletion/Consumer Watchdog (Botswana). Both organizations are notable, so disambiguation is needed for the title "Consumer Watchdog". Thanks, MuffledThud (talk) 12:35, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Our naming conventions prescribe that the organization with the stronger common usage claim to the name should be located at Consumer Watchdog, and wp:csb doesn't override that. Likewise, there was nothing at the AfD that advocated Consumer Watchdog being a dab, so I'm not sure what you're referring to there. As I mentioned at User:Orangemike's talk page, I will propose a discussion on the move shortly. user:J aka justen (talk) 12:47, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Nearly forgot - we also discussed the article here, now archived here. MuffledThud (talk) 13:42, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Am I overlooking something there about naming? user:J aka justen (talk) 13:48, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

My guess is that you're overlooking nothing on the strict letter, but something of the spirit, of what we discussed before and what's articulated so far in WP:CSB. I can't speak for CSB, but the former may be my fault for not conveying thoughts into words well enough: I'm not exactly a gifted writer.

What I'm trying to say is this: neither organization can be regarded as so overwhelmingly notable that the majority of WP readers would regard either as common usage. Anecdotally, I hadn't heard of either group before I spotted the speedy on the original Botswanan article, but that proves little for our purposes here. As you rightly pointed out on Orangemike's talk page, at the moment a Google News search returns 7390 hits for the US group, and 2430 hits for the Botswanan group. This demonstrates pretty conclusively to me that neither organization is notable enough to be regarded as common usage, but both are notable enough for inclusion in WP. Therefore we should disambiguate between the two, and expand both. MuffledThud (talk) 16:41, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Interesting. I would normally expect a three to one ratio to be demonstrative of the fact that one is in common usage, but I should add that I used the most conservative search terms I could think of for the group based in the United States compared to the broadest ones I could fashion for the group based in Gaborone. I suspect the actual ratio would be considerably more lopsided given a fairer contest (so to speak), as, for example, the organization in the United States has been a significant voice in the ongoing healthcare debate there for several years now, among a number of other topics. user:J aka justen (talk) 16:48, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

The ratio alone is not all that's under consideration: we wouldn't consider 6 pages to 2 to be demonstrative of anything. Add to that the fact that there is far less online news coming from Africa: 2340 seems incredibly high to me for a small Botswanan group. In the UK, there's even less news coverage of the US group: 374. In India, 92, etc., though the ratio is the same. We can't use a simple ratio here. MuffledThud (talk) 17:33, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

(←) To expound on that, Google is by no means a scientific way to judge common usage, but it can help give somewhat objective figures:

• Based on city of headquarters: 14,900 for the organization based in Santa Monica, 898 for the organization based in Gaborone.

• As a side note, the organization located in California appears to have a very substantial connection with the state it is based in, California: 67,400.

• Based on president, executive director, or lead officer: 17,400 for the organization led by Jamie Court, 319 for the organization led by Kate Harriman. user:J aka justen (talk) 17:11, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Botswana is a small country, and the US is a huge one. In Botswana, you don't need to mention Gaborone: it's taken for granted that an organization of any importance will be based there, hence there's usually no need to mention it. In the US this is not the case: there are hundreds of towns and cities capable of supporting an important organization. MuffledThud (talk) 17:33, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Systemic bias notwithstanding, it appears clear that one of these organizations can reasonably claim "common usage" of the name. That argument kept the Botswana article from being deleted despite the lack of reliable (secondary) sources, but it really is a stretch to say the naming conventions, too, should be ignored in some attempt to favour the organization based in Botswana. user:J aka justen (talk) 17:11, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

There are now plenty of reliable secondary sources. The Botswanan group is far more notable to a Southern African. Where's the boundary for claiming greater notability, and what are the precise criteria? It's a fuzzy boundary, with fuzzy criteria. In the absence of overwhelming evidence, we can consider neither group common usage outside of the United States, apart from academics and politicians outside the US with a particular interest in these aspects of US policy. MuffledThud (talk) 17:33, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Huh? The group's location doesn't matter. We can tell, based on the above, that in the English language, the notability is anywhere from fifteen to one and higher in favour of the group in the United States. It's the top hit for the term on Google, the organization based in Botswana isn't even in the first several pages. There's no "absence of overwhelming evidence." user:J aka justen (talk) 17:38, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I respectfully disagree. A higher number of Google News hits is useful supporting evidence, but not conclusive. Quoting WP:PRIMARYTOPIC:

Tools that may help determine a primary topic, but are not determining factors, include:

* Incoming wikilinks from Special:WhatLinksHere

* Wikipedia article traffic statistics

* Google web, news, scholar, or book searches MuffledThud (talk) 17:50, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, they help. But there has to be a compelling case to just through any objective data out the window. Search results are at least fifteen-to-one. Wikipedia traffic is two-to-one. News archive results are more than twenty-to-one. By any objective statistic I can find, one has a claim to common usage while the other simply does not. user:J aka justen (talk) 18:04, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Please provide links for the results you're quoting there: I don't get those results, but perhaps I'm not checking for them correctly. Also, calling data inconclusive isn't throwing it out the window. Quoting from WP:PRIMARYTOPIC again:

If there is extended discussion about which article truly is the primary topic, that may be a sign that there is in fact no primary topic, and that the disambiguation page should be located at the plain title with no "(disambiguation)".

It doesn't look as if you and I are going to agree on this, and I suggest we take the debate to a wider audience to try to get some advice and consensus on what to do here. MuffledThud (talk) 18:42, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Child bone fracture

Sorry when I reverted with rollback by accident. I was on my way to undoing my own edit when you fixed it yourself. Please don't think I actually wanted to revert. Thanks.--LAAFan^sign _review 16:22, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

No worries! Thanks for posting here so quickly. MuffledThud (talk) 16:23, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

CSD tagging

Hi, nice call on Yelad nivek, I liked the way you went back and upgraded it to G10 after the author escalated it. PS welcome back. ϢereSpielChequers 20:55, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! MuffledThud (talk) 21:28, 30 September 2009 (UTC)