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RFC on dash-separated titles for sports events

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

I have been brought here from WP:RFCL to close this confusing mess of a discussion and so here I am.

The first thing I will do is try to determine what the point of this RfC was. It appeared to have been started after a discussion on a tennis tournament's talk page resulted in a consensus to sentence case subparts of a tennis tournament, which has resulted in an interested party coming here to harmonize the practices of capitalization after dashes with respect to a broader range of sporting events, as the closure of that move resulted in inconsistencies. This appears to have rapidly spiralled into a debate on whether or not dashes should be used at all in article titles on sport events. This has confused the RfC immensely as it has now become a debate on two separate issues instead of one. First, should dashes be used in article titles, and second, if we are allowing dashes, what is the correct capitalization of the text after them? I will try to evaluate both of these issues separately.

The dash debate

In terms of the "allowing dashes" issue, I will categorize participants into "pro-dash" and "anti-dash" as "Option E" is ambiguous in this RfC. Note that "pro-dash" does not mean forcing dashes on sports event articles, but refers to being in favour of allowing dashes in some way.
The main arguments of the anti-dashers are that dashes read unnaturally and inconsistent with other article titles in different subjects. Editors believe that non-dash options are generally superior to dashes in every case where a dash may be used in a sporting event title. Some editors have raised a number of arguments based on WP:Article titles as well as claiming WP:CONLEVEL doesn't allow for projects to create rules against sitewide guidelines. This seems questionable, since the point of this RfC is to discuss possible changes to the WP:Article titles policy. If the usage of dashes in article titles went against WP:Article titles, the appropriate place to discuss exemptions would be WT:Article titles, which is where we are now.
The main arguments of the "pro-dashers" are numerous. The first main argument is the belief that we should follow the titling convention of reliable sources. This is a very compelling argument given Wikipedia's emphasis on sourcing, but others have brought up that the locus of this discussion is relating to subevents of larger sporting events and often these subevents do not necessarily have reliable sources that agree on titles. Dicklyon says deep in this discussion (in relation to all of the issues here) that "since sources don't use titles resembling these at all, and refer to them in a wide variety of ways", "follow the sources" is a misguided ideal. That being said, there seemed to be at least some agreement on this arcane point and "follow the sources" is something that has consensus in cases where sources agree on something.
The second argument from the "pro-dashers" is that there are a bunch of articles with very lengthy titles where removing the dash would cause them to become incomprehensible. The anti-dashers have proposed alternate titles for the specific examples given by Sod25k, but have not addressed how the proposed rule of removing dashing would be generally implemented in those cases. This, in my opinion, is an important point that should be addressed before any broader rule change occurs.
The third argument is that this would be hell to deal with in templates. "Natural wording" will result in more inconsistency given that "main event" dashed with the "sub event" is a significant format. Cinderella157 has created a section specifically for the template issues which can be summed up as "While I am not familiar with the language or syntax of templates, this is potentially an opportunity to improve the flexibility of the templates." I don't really see the appeal of this refutation as it didn't address how this potentially massive issue will be resolved and just proposed other people doing more work to fix the template issues.
The fourth argument is one that inconsistency is fine and that they'd like to leave it up to WikiProjects, and that creating a firm rule is busywork for the sake of busywork. This is embodied in Thryduulf saying "I still fail to see any benefit from imposing a single rule for all occasions". This is an interesting argument, although not as compelling as the template/lengthy titles argument.
Based on the arguments made here, I will close by saying that dashes should be allowed for the future, based mainly on the fact there may be major practical issues to implementing a ban on dashes in sports event article titles that weren't addressed here by the anti-dashers. This was one of the most commonly cited beliefs among the pro-dashers and was not effectively refuted.

The capitalization debate

The capitalization debate is more painful to resolve as unlike the dashing debate its scope is unclear. It appears to me that option C would only be applicable to tennis, option B has an unclear breadth, and option A may be applicable to all sporting events. However, during the actual RfC itself, assumptions were made from those opposed to capitalization requirements that this would be widely applicable to all sporting events. The "background" section provides Luge as an example and the original question is vague as to whether this is a "tennis-only" RfC or not.
To try to resolve this, I will first say that there is no consensus for all sporting events. The RfC is sufficiently unclear that I don't see any consensus to mandate capitalization standards on all sporting events, and many !votes in favour of mandating a capitalization style appear to assume this will be a tennis specific rule. Likewise, many !votes oppose standardized requirements across all sporting events as a rule. If there is another RfC on this, it should be specifically focused only on capitalization and clearly delineate its applicability.
Secondly, I will say there is a consensus to let the editors in the tennis topic area decide the capitalization issue themselves, although it's unclear what that decision will be. The RfC's structure presupposes that it's OK to make guidelines for specific topic areas and appears to be focused on whether or not to harmonize tennis articles with an alleged broader consensus. Many !votes on the capitalization issue deal with a purely tennis perspective. Many "Option E" !voters also based their !votes on allowing for individual WikiProjects to make decisions on these issues, or generally believe these issues should be decided on a case by case basis. Only a few !voters seem to believe that the capitalization (or anti-dashing) rules proposed should be broadly applicable to all sporting events.

Conclusion

To re-iterate, there is no consensus to ban dashes in sports event titles, there is no consensus on capitalization for sporting events in general, and there is a rough consensus that specific capitalization rules for the tennis project are permissible at this time, although it's unclear what those rules should be due to this RfC getting sidetracked by the dashing debate. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 22:57, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

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What is the most appropriate title style or pattern for articles with dash-separated two-part sports event titles such as 2014 US Open – Men's Singles? Dicklyon (talk) 05:20, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Background

Many two-part article titles, with parts separated by a spaced en dash, have title-case or sentence-case capitalization after the dash. In a sentence context, MOS:SENTENCECAPS suggests to not cap after a dash, but there's no guidance in a title context, where the usage is more like illustrated in MOS:LISTDASH, where again there's no capping after the dash. This RFC is to look at these and decide what to do about the style variations, particularly in the context of sporting events for now, since that's what most of them are (find more context re other areas, and discussion of capping in tennis titles, in a talk section further up this page).

Some titles are not capped after dash, consistent with MOS:CAPS:

• Racquetball at the 2009 World Games – women's singles

But many have title-case or sentence-case subtitles after dash. Most sports mostly follow this sentence-case subtitle pattern:

• 2017 FIL European Luge Championships – Women's singles

Tennis articles usually have title case, with capped Singles and Doubles, in tennis-only events:

• 2014 President's Cup (tennis) – Men's Singles

but not in Olympic and similar International games contexts:

• Tennis at the 2011 Games of the Small States of Europe – Men's singles

The reasons for the capitalization variations don't seem to have much to do with WP's style guidance, and even the dashed two-part construct seems an unusual pattern per all the advice at WP:AT. Dicklyon (talk) 05:20, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Options

Possible resolutions to choose from, support, oppose, or comment on:

• A. No unnecessary caps after dash, as suggested in MOS:DASH; " – men's singles".
• B. Just extend the downcasing (title-case down to sentence case) for tennis (and a few in table tennis and other random places), per the recent consensus at Talk:The Championships, Wimbledon#Requested move 2 November 2021; i.e. to " – Men's singles".
• C. Treat things like "Men's Singles" as proper names when in a tennis tournament context as is done by many tennis sources, but not otherwise (i.e. do nothing, more or less).
• D. Remove the dash and use the form usually found in sentences (e.g. books): "French Open women's doubles".
• E. Other -- please specify

Dicklyon (talk) 05:20, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Discussion, comments, !votes

• D or A (as nom) – Personally, I think the dashed two-part structure confuses the issues, and we might as well drop the dash (most sources don't use it when discussing these events); either way, drop the caps, since sources mostly use lowercase "women's doubles", etc. Dicklyon (talk) 05:23, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

• D (or A E): See below for detail of my changed !vote largely per nom. WP house style is to not cap after a dash, semi-colon or colon unless "necessary" per MOS:SENTENCECAPS. The examples provided appear to be contrary to this. These options simply clarify the matter. To effect, they are using title case when WP article titles should be using sentence case. Option D avoids a dash, is natural and no less concise. Cinderella157 (talk) 09:50, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

• PS: Another reason for "D" (or A) relates to naturalness per WP:CRITERIA. "Naturalness" should require minimal changes to capitalisation in prose. WP linking does not differentiate on first letter capitalisation. Any capitalisation that follows in a title (from the first) should follow naturally. The status quo (lots of variations listed above) doesn't. See WP:TITLEFORMAT and particularly use sentence case. As this discussion has progressed, I am seeing (claimed) project and article level decisions to over-ride the broader level community consensus at WP:AT, WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS (including MOS:SENTENCECAPS). Most of the examples of usage I am seeing here to justify capping, are where we would "expect" to see title case. How a particular convening organisation would cap a term is largely irrelevant because of the internally perceived "importance" and emphasis consequently assigned by capitalisation (per WP:SSF). WP (per P&G) relies on how same is capped in independent sources. Assertions that such terms are "proper names" doesn't fly unless they are substantiated against objective criteria and evidence (per P&G cited - not "it is clearly a proper noun [because I say so]"). The broad community consensus is to use sentence case for article titles and headings (unless otherwise necessary). Capitalisation is important. WP has and can change how capitalisation is implemented in the RW. This is orthographic citogenesis. WPs mission is defined by policy wrt WP:RS, WP:VER and WP:NPOV - which align with other previously cited P&G. It is akin to Star Trek's prime directive. What I can see is at least one particular editor changing "natural" capitalisation in text to conform to a title case styling that is quite contrary to P&G and the broader community consensus. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:03, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
• PPS: Regardless of whether the dash indicates a subtitle or not, comments are consistently referring to disambiguation and the dash as being a disambiguation delimiter. Policy (WP:AT) is quite explicit on the subject: Commas and parentheses (round brackets) are the only characters that can be used without restriction to separate a disambiguating term in an article title. Colons can be used in the limited cases of subtitles of some creative works and lists split over several pages. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:38, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
• PPPS: From the comments below, what appears after a dash is seen both as a disambiguation and a subtitle. For an example, in "2021 Wimbledon Championships - Men's Singles", the general perception here is that "Mens Singles" is disambiguating "2021 Wimbledon Championships". This appears to be just plain wrong, since the subject of an article is not the disambiguating term. It is the article subject which gets disambiguated. The article's actual subject is the men's singles title at the 2021 Wimbledon Championship - ie, if anything it should be: "Men's Singles - 2021 Wimbledon Championship". The dash, in creating a subtitle type disambiguation, is creating a subsidiary article relationship. This is quite explicitly contrary to policy (see WP:AT at WP:TITLEFORMAT: Do not create subsidiary articles).

I would also observe that the actual article titles pluralise "Championships" this would also appear contrary to WP:TITLEFORMAT: Use the singular form.

A much more natural title would be: "2012 Wimbledon men's singles". We might use the more precise title "2012 Wimbledon Championship men's singles" but WP:PRECISION deals with actual need due to real conflict in article titles rather than a perceived or hypothetical need for precision. While the shorter title might just possibly refer to a group of single men sometime in 2012, somewhere in Wimbledon, I could say with some certainty that we are never going to have such an article but, if we ever did, we can deal with that then. WP is not a crystal ball. A natural title may not work well for all existing articles (per some examples given below) but this would assume that aren't better ways to form the title. Cinderella157 (talk) 04:53, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• Changed !vote I change my !Vote from a second preference of "A", since "A" or any dashed title form that uses the dash as a subtitle/disamiguation delimiter is clearly contrary to policy at WP:AT at multiple levels. My second preference is now "E", where this would only be some other alternative that is consistent with P&G. I am not seeing that any such specific proposal has been made. Cinderella157 (talk) 05:38, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
• WP:TSC (at WP:AT) gives technical reason for not using (or at least avoiding) a dashed construction. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:53, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• E (or C)- Do Nothing. There is no issue here. As has been longstanding consensus for 20,000 articles just in tennis alone. Places like Wimbledon, Australian Open, US Open all use the caps as a proper name as you would La Brea Tar Pits. We have some google searches. And when it's used in context of the event title you have: such as at ESPN or IBM stat tracker where everything is capitalized. Places like the Australian Open draw sheet or the US Open draw are the things that influenced the longstanding consensus. Other examples within the sport such as Australia's Sky Sports, 2016 SBNation chart. There is a reason it has been done this way for a decade or more. Many important tennis sources capitalize certain titles as if they are proper names... You will often see Australian Open - Women's Singles spelled out just that way... even with the hyphen. It was discussed in other locations that if this is done bit by bit, project by project, this change will be a lot easier to do. That really seems unfair to me. There is nothing broken with this that we need to change countless thousands of article titles. Fyunck(click) (talk) 10:07, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

  It's hard to see why you linked those example sources. The only place where "men's singles" is used in sentence context, the SBNATION page, has it lowercase. The others only use such terms in title-case contexts. Please review WP:TITLEFORMAT ("words are not capitalized unless they would be so in running text"), WP:NCCAPS ("leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper name that would always occur capitalized, even mid-sentence"), and MOS:CAPS ("only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia") to understand why those do not support a proper-name interpretation here. And yes, some sources do use the spaced hyphen as a separator, but WP would never do that, per MOS:DASH. Dicklyon (talk) 21:50, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

• D and/or any valid E option. Natural (e.g. "2045 Australian Open mixed doubles"), parenthetical (e.g. "2045 Australian Open (mixed doubles)"), comma (e.g. "2045 Australian Open, mixed doubles"), or descriptive (e.g. "Mixed doubles at the 2045 Australian Open") disambiguation seem to be the only formats consistent with MOS and existing article naming guidelines, specifically WP:TITLEFORMAT (i.e. use sentence case), WP:TSC (i.e. dashes require redirects, so why use them unnecessarily) and WP:QUALIFIER; dashes are not, title-case is not. For clarity, I do not consider "doing nothing" a valid option. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 11:03, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

• To add/clarify, this should not be a one size fits all approach (and nor is the implication of D to just "remove the dash and caps" without any additional thought) and so almost all of the problems highlighted so far are a non-issue; i.e. we use a disambiguation option consistent with MOS. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 15:38, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• Note: my !vote above has been clarified and expanded. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 12:22, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• Comment/E - I feel like Option D is trying to circumvent WP:COMMONNAME. Whilst sentence structure might call things a certain way, these are titles for the events. You could say, for instance, the 2015 IBSF World Snooker Championship – Men's would be referred to as 2015 Men's IBSF World Snooker Championship in prose, but more likely it's going to be called the "men's event at the 2015 IBSF World Snooker Championship". I'd suggest that unless the actual name specifically has a dash in it, it should probably be a disambig (such as 2015 IBSF World Snooker Championship (Men's) or 2015 IBSF World Snooker Championship (men's event). There are certainly some cases where you'd want a dash, as it's part of the name of the subject, I'm not sure this should be made uniform. However, what is after the dash should only be capitalised if it is a proper noun. The tennis examples above would be fine, for example: 2014 President's Cup (men's singles), unless there's another event that that had that name that also had a men's singles. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 11:27, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

  @Lee Vilenski: I don't understand what you're saying about "circumvent COMMONNAME". You seem to acknowledge that the dash is not part of the COMMONNAME. Are you supporting option D (more or less), or opposing it? Seems like you're supporting finding good alternatives to the dash and caps, which goes beyond my D proposal, but is also going to be more work, harder to semi-automate. Are you arguing for moving to the parenthetical form instead? Anyone else want to comment on that? Dicklyon (talk) 17:45, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

  Oppose D. I'd be much more willing to see things done via disambiguation. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:58, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

• B or A - I probably lean slightly towards making the second part of the name be subject to the naming conventions in its own rights, thus capitalising "Men's singles" rather than all-sentence-case "men's singles". That's not a strong preference though, so A is also OK. Obviously oppose C, which runs counter to MOS:CAPS, and not too keen on D - I think the dash is useful in making clear that this is a two-part title with the name of the event on the tournament and the individual event on the right - but if my !vote is needed for a consensus for D, then happy to support that over the "status quo".  — Amakuru (talk) 11:35, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• E: And my specification here is "do nothing." (This, mind, should've been one of the explicit options listed.) Any change is going to inevitably mean that there'll be a heavy push to rename thousands of fifty-seven thousand articles, and links to them broken in the process. No one has articulated any benefit to making any change (other than the eternally implied "conformity for the sake of conformity," because, well, hrm, reasons), never mind one strong enough to counteract the disruption. Ravenswing 12:49, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• Comment – I don't think it's appropriate for the RFC author to be moving pages to his desired option while the RFC is ongoing [1]. Sod25k (talk) 13:09, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• A or B; strongly oppose D – Removing the dash (option D) while working ok for some simple titles would render many others nonsensical and/or more convoluted:

• Shooting at the 1952 Summer Olympics men's 100 meter running deer, single and double shot
• Volleyball at the 2012 Summer Olympics women's tournament South American qualification

This query shows many long titles that would be mangled by such a change. The dashes are there for a reason, and cannot be indiscriminately removed. Downcasing after the dash (option A or B) on the other hand would alleviate the MOS:CAPS concerns without impacting on the titles' meanings/comprehensibilities, and would require the fewest changes to affected templates, so seems to be the optimal approach. No preference between A and B. Sod25k (talk) 13:44, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

• The Shooting at the 1952 Summer Olympics – Men's 100 meter running deer, single and double shot article title seems needlessly long - was there other amounts of running dear events? Why not Shooting at the 1952 Summer Olympics (men's 100 meter running deer)? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:40, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

• No idea if a shorter title is possible. Those are just random examples I picked of titles that would be degraded if a naïve "remove dash" approach was taken. Sod25k (talk) 21:59, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Some of these article titles are horrific. Taking your example, "Volleyball at the 2012 Summer Olympics – Women's tournament South American qualification" – this makes no sense as it is missing critical punctuation (at least one comma); "South American qualification for the women's volleyball tournament at the 2012 Summer Olympics" would make more sense. Likewise "Shooting (running deer) at the 1952 Summer Olympics" would be better as there was only one running deer event. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 12:34, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Agree that those event names are word salad. If they are the official titles of these obscure events (unclear), then they might still be the best option. My point was that the situation would only be worsened by simply removing the dashes. Sod25k (talk) 16:01, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Sod25k, if we remove all of the unnecessary over-precision (the word salad) you can arrive at something like "Men's running deer (1952 Olympics)" or "Men's running deer,1952 Olympics". Furthermore, these options are easily parsed. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:28, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• B or E (do nothing): There are a bunch of reasons D doesn't work, including the three already pointed out by Lee Vilenski, Amakuru, and Sod25k above. Option A doesn't make it clear that the second part is a sub-title. You also generally wouldn't see the second part all lowercase unless it was followed by a noun (e.g. "men's singles event"), which would unnecessarily make the title longer. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 14:41, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• Not D as I agree with the arguments/examples by users above (of which there have been many already). Ambivalent on the others, but agree that making the case consistent is sensible. Joseph2302 (talk) 14:45, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• A seems like the best option here. --Jayron32 15:30, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• E (do nothing) - per Ravenswing. Nothing is broken; there is no need to "fix" or "standardize" such a massive number of articles just for the sake of forcing conformity and standardization and I reject all other options. The examples provided by the OP all fall under their own Wikiprojects and can be competently handled by their own wikiprojects. I also strongly agree that "Do nothing" should have been an explicit option and OP should be TROUTed for not including it. -"Ghost of Dan Gurney" 17:37, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• Whichever option gets a consensus here, it should apply to all sports unless there's a clear consensus that this should not apply to a specific sport. Assuming that to be the case, then I would prefer B over A per Amakuru and Sportsfan77777, I would also be fine with C if this would resolve the inconsistency, as long as it's Not D per Sod25k and Lee Vilenski. If however this is going to be applied unevenly, then we should go with E (do nothing) right now and let each sport come up with its own guidelines. Do the capital letters really matter that much that we have to dedicate an entire RFC to resolving this? Iffy★Chat -- 17:56, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• E - do nothing - It's not shown that this is an issue. If anything needs to be done then then leave it to individual projects to sort at the wikiproject level. GraemeLeggett (talk) 18:30, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• E - (with case consistency) From a template perspective, beyond the 57K of pages there are quite a number of templates that rely on the "EVENT" being separate and first - then the "sub-event" after the dash. Maybe another 1K of templates? - Mjquinn_id (talk) 19:01, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

  @Mjquinn_id: It's unclear to me what "with case consistency" means exactly. Sod25k (talk) 20:09, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: – To the "do nothing" voters, the issue is that this discussion closed with a consensus "firmly grounded in policy" for "– Men's/Women's singles" for 50 tennis articles, leaving an as yet unresolved dissimilitude between them and all other (non-MSE) tennis event articles. Sod25k (talk) 20:04, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

  It is not grounded in "policy" at all. MOS is not Policy, and there is disagreement on whether MOS applies anyways against sourcing. That tiny little move is an anomaly with all other articles. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:18, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

  I simply quoted the closing admin. The "anomoly" needs to be resolved one way or the other so we have consistency across the board for all tennis articles at least, as the infobox templates require a single capitalization style. Sod25k (talk) 20:27, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

  Sounds like an issue confined to and should be solved at the Tennis wikiproject and should have no bearing on others. -"Ghost of Dan Gurney" 20:23, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

  I don't necessarily disagree. I didn't start this RFC. Sod25k (talk) 20:27, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

  I understand, it was the closer who was incorrect. It is not a policy issue. Some say it is a guideline issue and others do not. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:53, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

  This is the closer's statement, "After much-extended time for discussion, there is a clear consensus to move to Men's/Women's titles. Consensus to move to lowercase singles/doubles is narrower, but there is a consensus and it is firmly grounded in policy." Primergrey (talk) 22:33, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

  Although guidelines are not policy, an argument that consensus-based guidelines should be followed in a given case is an argument that is firmly grounded in policy. BD2412 T 22:44, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah, I stand by "conformity for the sake of conformity." Potentially changing over tens of thousands of articles and who knows how many broken links because tennis infobox templates don't like the current capitalization style is the next thing to dementia. I suppose no one considered changing the damn templates? Ravenswing 21:12, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

No, the RFC author's motives for the larger move request are separate and covered in #Background. The tennis issue I raised because the conflicting capitalization styles for tennis articles in light of the recent consensus needs to be addressed, and could be by this discussion if a non-"do nothing" choice is decided upon. If no broader consensus is reached here, a tennis-specific discussion will have to be started. Sod25k (talk) 21:59, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Fair enough. I did read Background, and while Dicklyon sets forth some of the variations that have been seen, he's left out the critical question: why is this something we need to "fix?" What is the actual problem here? Ravenswing 22:10, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Two things. Tennis Project did address this years ago and decided enough sources used "Australian Open - Men's Doubles" so consensus was to use that form throughout. Hence all the articles are done that way except for the few that Dicklyon is changing even today. That said, Dicklyon is a good editor and a fair editor. He did try to form a fair RFC and listened to my concerns. But he is biased on this issue because it is his pet peeve... his own words in one recent discussion: "over-capitalization is a pet peeve of mine. It's broken and ought to be fixed." The fact that in forming this RFC it was discussed to specifically do it one Wikipedia area at a time to more easily weave through the process really bothered me. Sort of a divide and conquer feeling I got. I said this is a solution in search of a problem that could affect 10s of thousands of articles. That was before this RFC was plopped here, yet here it is. If this is iffy with some aspects of our MOS guideline (which is in the eye of the beholder imho), and there are 10s of thousands of articles throughout Wikpedia that use this style, then perhaps it's MOS that needs looking at? MOS does change to conform to large scale usage. It's done so many times. That's why it's a guideline not a policy. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:44, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

• E - Don't change anything. It ain't broke, so don't fix it. GoodDay (talk) 02:35, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

  But it's pretty clearly broke, with rampant yet inconsistent over-capitalization in tennis articles among others. Dicklyon (talk) 02:43, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

  Perhaps, it would've been better (though taken longer) to have opened up an RFC for particular events. What's being covered here, just the Olympics? GoodDay (talk) 02:49, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

  The Olympics have less over-capitalization than the other tennis article titles. So it's more about the extra-overcapitalization of tennis titles, if we're not going to go the whole way like A or D. Dicklyon (talk) 02:55, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

  Bringing consistency to hundreds of article titles, can be difficult. I'll accept the results of this RFC, whatever it turns out to be. GoodDay (talk) 03:11, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

• D as first choice, since the dash really serves no function here (a comma will do, in any case where two parts of the title need to be separated), otherwise option A as second choice. There is nothing magically special about tennis, and a wikiproject is not in a position to make up its own pseudo-rules against site-wide guidelines (the very reason we have WP:CONLEVEL policy is to prevent that).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:06, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
• D, or failing that, A. Tony (talk) 01:34, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
• E —use the same titling convention as the actual event itself. Caps, no caps, dash, no dash. Whatever. Montanabw^(talk) 18:50, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

  I haven't seen much evidence that these actual events (if that's what they are) have titling conventions; we're titling articles on subevents typically. If you look at any of the articles linked as examples and look for sources, you don't see anything like a complete title for the subevent, typically. Or look at the various sources that Fyunck linked that influenced the convention adopted by the tennis project: titles of stat trackers and draw sheets are not titles of events; and they are typically only found in title context, as opposed to what our title policy says to look to, which is use in sentences (some do use colon instead of dash, which would have been a more typical "subtitle" style, but there's no standard). As I showed, you can find things in sentences like "U.S. Open men's singles" at usopen.org, and similarly uses in sentences in many sources, not typically fully disambiguated with year and subevent; these are where we should look in formulating title conventions consistent with policy. But thanks for your idea. Dicklyon (talk) 19:43, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

  I would say you are correct that there is no titling convention, whether it's the event itself or the press or books. You can research and find Australian Open Men's Singles, US Open men's singles, Wimbledon Ladies Doubles, French Open Mixed doubles and you can also find verbatim: Australian Open - Women's Singles, Wimbledon - mixed doubles, US Open - Men's singles. I'm not sure I've seen colons used. At Tennis Project we knew there were many incarnations. We decided years ago to go with the form Australian Open - Men's Singles... even with Wimbledon that uses Gentlemen and Ladies instead of Men and Women. We went against the actual naming at Wimbledon. It kept things neat and tidy and has worked just fine. Until now suddenly. Now to some it seems to be infringing on the rights of other articles. Same type of thing with the name "Championship" or "Championships." Sources are all over the place in newspapers so we went with "Championships" for all events. Choices were made on the questions and we made a decision and moved on to more pressing issues of bias in bios, no sources in bios, incorrect data in charts... things that really matter to readers. This RFC is a solution to something that isn't a problem. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:24, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

  Your ESPN link shows with colon in title "2021 Australian Open Bracket: Men's Singles". Of course, we wouldn't interpret "Bracket" as part of a proper name there either. Dicklyon (talk) 01:45, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

  I've been looking at the project talk archives for something on past discussions or decisions about this, but didn't find much yet. The 2009 question at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tennis/Archive_5#Capitalization, from a "Featured List" review, went unanswered; it led to some downcasing in a template, and in a few titles like List of Wimbledon Gentlemen's Singles champions, but not much else. What other relevant history is out there? Dicklyon (talk) 02:04, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

  As for what matters to readers, I think adding meaningless caps here and there (as you did here for example) is not doing anyone a favor. Those of us who fix such things would be happy to fix if you'll just not fight it. Dicklyon (talk) 02:29, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

  I just fixed about 750 like that one. I don't expect any pushback. Dicklyon (talk) 06:00, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

  I did that because I was told and shown that that was the way we did things. Most opening lines to our biggest tournaments were shown to be in error in what we told our readers. Some complained they didn't even know what sport was being talked about. So I fixed the ones that were a problem into semi-clones of what had been done before for years. You may not like it, but I was doing my best to listen to those readers who wanted the best information, for the sight-challenged to be able to see the text and tables, for our readers to know the sport and the event, and working with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red making sure our female player articles are on equal par with the men's articles. Those were primo important to Tennis Project. Sorry but your pet peeve of making sure we go by your book and make it "Women's singles" rather than "Women's Singles" seems crazy to me. There are some reasonable reasons for whatever format gets used, but no reasonable reason why we are here to begin with when there are so many more important matters that make a real difference to our readers. You changing 100s of those sentences as we speak and changing titles from "US Open - Singles" to "US Open - singles" even during this RFC is not doing anyone a favor either. We see what's important for the good of our readers, and by extension Wikipedia, very differently. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:51, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

  Fyunck, I don't mean to be critical, as I know your heart is in the right place in wanting to do your best to improve WP. And I'm sorry I moved that one article while the RFC is open. But for the case corrections in the text of articles, there's no issue, I think. Over two-thirds of respondents here want to see a case fix in titles, since things like "women's singles" are not proper nouns. The issue is just what convention or pattern to use to fix it. There's no such issue in the 750 places I fixed in article text. The "reasonable reason why we are here to begin with" is to discuss what's the best fix for a widespread deviation from "normal". And you keep telling me about the past, what was decided or what you were told or how we do things, but you never find me a pointer that I can use to understand that past, so I find myself a bit frustrated in not being able to understand who decided what when. Dicklyon (talk) 06:32, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

  Actually 8 out of 18 want no change at all if you are counting. And where we differ is that I look at the term as a proper name and gave sources that show as much. You use the term fix and I don't think it's broken. I don't save records of every discussion so you can find things as well as I can. What bothers me is where we are usually looking for felonies and misdemeanors to actually fix, this at best is a parking ticket if we look at things from your perspective. I don't see the same things as you do in this instance. Just because it's not "normal" doesn't mean it needs fixing... just look at the outside world in that respect. If it changes it changes, but I think it's a mistake. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:11, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

  I only see 4 clearly on the do-nothing side: (Fyunck, Ravenswing, GhostOfDanGurney, GoodDay). I'm not counting Sportsfan7777 nor Montanabw, who are somewhat amenable to some fixes or not. And there are 12 (Dicklyon, Cinderella157, Amakuru, Sod25, Joseph2302, Jayron32, SMcCandlish, Iffy, Lee Vilenski, Wjemather, Tony1, Kaffe42) in favor of some degree of case fixing; one could quibble about me putting Iffy there, but he seemed to be in favor of resolving the case inconsistencies. So it appears to be 2/3 to 3/4 or more in favor of some kind of fix here. We'll probably need to have a "runoff" between A (the most supported, with 9, Dicklyon, Cinderella157, Amakuru, Sod25, Joseph2302, Jayron32, SMcCandlish, Tony1, Kaffe42) and B to try to find consensus. And yes, I know, it's not a vote, and if we could get better guidance about the use of dash-separated two-part titles in general that could help decide which option is more aligned with P&G. Dicklyon (talk) 17:34, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

• A makes the most sense to me. Strongly oppose D for the same reasons other voters have already stated. Kaffe42 (talk) 15:46, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
• D, as a natural disambiguation, otherwise B, as a the dash reads as a separation between a title and a subtitle, making the section after the dash a separate sentences and thus a capital is required. (Summoned by bot) BilledMammal (talk) 02:42, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

• That is not how dashes function (see also MOS:DASH). In addition, these are not subtitles but if they were, colons would be the usual means of separation. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 10:25, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

• E, leave it be. It's just not that critical. Let the individual projects make a rule for their project, if they want to. Otherwise let the article creator decide. If you had to have a rule, B seems best per User:BilledMammal directly above. Opposed to D, which is fine for sentences but for my part doesn't make the clearest possible title. Herostratus (talk) 06:09, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Per WP:LOCALCONCENSUS (policy), individual wikiprojects and article creators may not make up their own rules. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 10:25, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
• E is a strong first preference, even after reading everything in this discussion I still fail to see any benefit from imposing a single rule for all occasions. If there absolutely must be a single rule, then B is likely to be the most natural. strongly oppose D for the reasons explained clearly and concisely by others above. Thryduulf (talk) 15:24, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

  I have read the new arguments made since I left my comment above, and none of them have convinced me - my view that doing nothing is the best option stands - there is simply no benefit to the project or its readers from imposing any standard rule. I also remain of the opinion that option D would be harmful to readers' experiences. Thryduulf (talk) 15:53, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• E. Follow the sources. Follow the quality, reliably published, reputable secondary sources. If these don’t exist, then the page should not exist as it’s own article. Consistency is important, but locally, across similar articles. Consistency in English does not exist across the entire language. Wikipedia must follow the sources, not lead the language. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:11, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

  You may be right that these subevents are not independently notable; they certainly don't have much representation in sources. But following sources in the way suggested by MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS is what I'm suggesting here in options A and B and D: the titles are descriptive and shouldn't be dress up like proper names. Dicklyon (talk) 05:11, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

  If A, B and D are supported by "follow the sources" then great, but do not elevate MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS above "follow the sources", and always flag the possibility of "few sources" as an indicator for considering merging to a parent article, where the dashed title of the dubious article may become a table column title. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:55, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• Either A or B - For me I feel like these are probably the best options as by going D, titles of pages wouldn't be as clear cut as they are currently are right now. For C why we do need a capital letter after the dash. Like for me I would prefer to either go with the one capital (that being the Men's or Women's) or not have any at all. HawkAussie (talk) 03:30, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Some clarifications

• The distinction between "policy" and "guideline" is the last resort of over-capitalizers, but it doesn't get anywhere, since WP:TITLEFORMAT is policy, and says "Titles are written in sentence case. The initial letter of a title is almost always capitalized by default; otherwise, words are not capitalized unless they would be so in running text."
• It's not just tennis that does the title-case "Men's Singles" and such. Also table tennis and bowls often, but not consistently, do this (e.g. 1965 World Table Tennis Championships – Men's Singles, 2000 World Outdoor Bowls Championship – Women's Singles.
• According to this query, the number of titles with title-case "Men's Singles", "Women's Doubles" etc. is about 4088 (there might be a few more with Pairs, Triples, Fours, etc., and Boy, Girls, Ladies, etc., from bowls or other sports). The total number of titles with spaced en dashes is more than 10X more, but there are not other big clusters of title-case capping like this. Entertainment titles such as Satellite Award for Best Actress – Musical or Comedy are one identifiable cluster, but much smaller (many entertainment awards don't used the dashed format, which might be a better approach to fixing there than here).
• The idea of each sport making its own title/style guidelines is a non-starter. That's what go us here, and is why we have something to fix, with tennis deciding that "enough sources" cap these things; and it's why leaving it to Wikiproject Tennis is not a good idea, besides the fact that the problem is not confined to there at this point.
• The double (title-case) capping is in the minority, in every source area I've looked (see discussion in previous section up-page where I showed that even official sites like usopen.org don't do that). It just leaves the reader wondering why they're suddenly seeing title-case where WP normally uses sentence case. So option C or "do nothing" doesn't move the encyclopedia in a forward direction, but backward.
• As for "Do the capital letters really matter that much that we have to dedicate an entire RFC to resolving this?", well yes, an RFC is by design supposed to be about a narrow question, and yes, when editors resist improvements motivated by policies and guidelines, that matters enough to justify discussion. A "whole RFC" even. And it should go without saying that those who don't much care need not participate.
• I probably provided too many options, such that none will achieve consensus. Certainly "do nothing" will not. Dicklyon (talk) 00:29, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

• Hrm. Well. I'm not quite sure from where you get the notion of each sport (or, come to that, any project typically using dashes in titles) making its own style being a "non-starter," why this is something that needs to be "fixed," what makes this by definition an "improvement," or how this shapes the direction of the encyclopedia one way or another ... serious hyperbole if I've ever seen it. You have articulated the case for none of this. So I will ask again: what is the benefit to the encyclopedia for one option to be chosen over another? Ravenswing 01:50, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

The benefit is for capitalization on WP to mean something to the reader. Dicklyon (talk) 02:45, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

That rather sounds like "The benefit is that neither I nor those who think like me will be irked at seeing an orthographical construction we don't like." I'm pretty particular myself over what I believe to be proper grammar and spelling, but I don't fall down the rabbit hole of presuming that what suits my linguistic amour propre is universally shared or a self-evident virtue. In any event, thank you for your candor. Ravenswing 03:48, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

It's nothing personal to me, just trying to go by the spirit of MOS:CAPS mainly. Dicklyon (talk) 04:55, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

It's bizarre that someone would be accused of being "irked at seeing an orthographical construction we don't like" or that "what suits my linguistic amour propre is universally shared or a self-evident virtue", when they are simply trying to bring a certain group of articles into line with a Wikipedia-wide style guideline. Primergrey (talk) 04:20, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Not that bizarre – people grasp for straws. And you haven't registered your own opinion above, have you? Dicklyon (talk) 04:43, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Far from it, when they cannot articulate a credible, tangible benefit for a proposal. See, what irks ME is creating rules for the sake of creating rules -- we already have a vast amount of that on Wikipedia -- especially when doing so produces no benefits and will require a hefty amount of work and disruption. Ravenswing 09:30, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

That you can see no benefit and jump from that to accusing someone of "creating rules for the sake of creating rules" is just a bad look. You asked Dicklyon to tell you the benefit of this proposal, then took his answer and completely disregarded it. That's pretty much the definition of bad-faith negotiating. Primergrey (talk) 09:51, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Ravenswing, I'll assume you just didn't understand my too-short answer. WP decided many years ago that capitalization should mean that something is a proper noun (or proper name; don't ask me what's the difference, as that's for others to argue), and that excess capitalization besides that and starts of sentences (and starts of titles and headings) should be avoided. Besides avoiding the dilution of what capital letters are meant to mean, using "sentence capitalization" in preference to "title capitalization" style for article titles allows for article titles to be linked in sentences, without excess capitalization (this kind of linking is a benefit to both editors and readers). In the tennis project, we had a few hundred sentences (that I fixed yesterday) that said somebody "won the Men's Singles tennis title" (and such). I doubt that anyone would argue that "Men's Singles" is a proper name in that context, and nobody has commented on or reverted any of those fixes. Titles should be the same way, so I could write in an article that somebody "won the 2021 US Open men's singles tennis title"; if I use the current title and say he "won the 2021 US Open – Men's Singles tennis title", that defeats the usual scheme, putting both excess capitalization and excess punctuation in the sentence. If usopen.org can title an article "Take Two: Predicting Djokovic vs. Medvedev in the US Open men's singles final", it would seem natural for us to use the pattern I proposed in D. Nobody is proposing new rules here, just trying to move the articles to titles consistent with longstanding guidelines. It's broken; let's fix it. Dicklyon (talk) 23:10, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Ravenswing, pls see the PS I added to my initial comment, since it touches on "why". This RfC is not about creating new "rules", it is about bringing articles into line with long-standing "rules" (eg WP:AT) because certain articles/editors have either been ignorant of the rules or have chosen to ignore them for their own preference. In editing on WP, there is an implied social contract to abide by WP's P&G. Cinderella157 (talk) 01:00, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I had forgotten, or not noticed, that you'd already made the WP:NATURALNESS point above, so my extended explanation seems a bit redundant. Dicklyon (talk) 23:21, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Background to forming this RfC An RM was opened at The Championships, Wimbledon to address inconsistent titles in some of the earliest events, with an initial proposal: 1903 Wimbledon Championships – Ladies' Singles → 1903 Wimbledon Championships – Women's Singles (typical). The close ultimately determined: 1903 Wimbledon Championships – Ladies' Singles → 1903 Wimbledon Championships – Women's singles (typical). The discussion did identify MOS:SENTENCECAPS as an issue but the closer made no specific comment WRT to this. A discussion was commenced at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tennis concerning various title formatting issues, including the use of a dash delimiter and capitalisation, both generally and more specifically after a dash. A discussion was also held here, with a question as to what, if any guidance existed WRT capping in a dashed title. Looking at the discussions, the matter of dashed titles appears to be most prevalent in sports article. I am not certain, but within sports, my understanding would be that tennis is the most prevalent for that style (by article count)? More certainly, it is the more prevelent WRT the issue of capping after the dash. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:21, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

What next?

The responses above show a clear super-majority in favor of some kind of case fixing (options A, B, and D), and a small minority in favor of doing nothing (C or E), so we should focus next on what's the best path forward. A number of editors favor the "natural" dashless form (D), while a similar number find that to be the worst approach (due mostly to the fact that it would be very hard to get right in general, for such a large and diverse set of pages, and wouldn't be compatible with a bunch of existing nav templates). So it seems to me that we need to choose between A and B. About half of respondents supported A, and nearly as many B (with different orders of preference). Personally, I prefer A, though I know B will be a lot less work.

The question really goes back to where I started in a section above: what is the intended function of the dashed two-part titles, and how should they be styled? It seems the main interpretation (at least in sporting events) is as a "subtitle", and some see that as justification for starting over "sentence case" after the dash; other point out that titles should be rendered as they would be in running text, and it would be unusual to see such capitalization (or dash) in running text.

Note that in lawn bowls the convention used on most is to treat the subevent as parenthetical disambiguation, as in Bowls England National Championships (Men's Fours), but still over-capitalized. It might be more logical as Men's four (Bowls England National Championships). Others, in the context of broader games, use the dash form, with various case variations, e.g. Lawn bowls at the 2010 Commonwealth Games – Women's triples. Several respondents mentioned parenthetical disambiguation as a possible improvement, so I'd like to see if there's more support for that, too.

So, I solicit here further comments that would help us converge on a consensus of the best way to move forward, particularly A vs B, but still open to alternatives. Dicklyon (talk) 20:03, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

• As usual, Dicklyon is trying to misrepresent the situation. I see 8 out of 20 votes (40%) for E, i.e. some variant of "do nothing". That's hardly a small minority in a poll with five options. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 07:27, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Several of the E votes are certainly not "do nothing". Anyway, consensus is not a vote, and so there would have to be compelling reasons to go against MOS and "do nothing" when there are no technical reasons for not removing either capitalisation or dashes – especially when it comes to providing guidance for future articles. Avoiding work is not a compelling reason. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 08:47, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
  • The clear "do nothings" I see are 5: Fyunck, Ravenswing, GhostOfDanGurney, GoodDay, GraemeLeggett. Sportsfan77777, I think you indicated that B might be OK. The "do nothing" case was C, though some also used E. Who else did I missed who wants to do nothing? And I see 13 that seem to be in favor of some degree of downcasing (Dicklyon, Cinderella157, Amakuru, Sod25, Joseph2302, Jayron32, SMcCandlish, Iffy, Lee Vilenski, Wjemather, Tony1, Kaffe42, BilledMammal) even without counting your B in there. I think 13 of 21 is a pretty clear super-majority for doing some kind of fix. Montanabw's comment is uninterpretable in this discussion, and Sportsfan77777 is too ambiguous to count either way; and Mjquinn id's "do nothing, with case consistency" is uninterpretable; but I counted them in the 21 total, so 13/21 is a lower bound on the fraction in favor of some form of case fixing/consistency. Dicklyon (talk) 18:15, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
    • Dicklyon, you're trying to tell me that I don't understand my own vote??????????? What is wrong with you? Sportsfan77777 (talk) 07:07, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

      I think I was saying that "B or E (do nothing)" is not clearly either a "do nothing" or "fix the over-capping" vote. Since you clearly understand your own intention, maybe you can explain it to us. Are you saying you're now opposed to B? Or that it's your second choice? Or what? Dicklyon (talk) 07:17, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

      I voted B or E equally. Per Iffy, I'm also against trying to standardize across different sports. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 07:36, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

    • Montanabw's vote is for what we already do, so that counts as "do nothing". Iffy explicitly states "do nothing" in their vote. You can't just not count votes because they disagree with you. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 07:36, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
    • Plus, now, there is also a new "do nothing" vote from Herostratus, so that brings the count to at least nine. None of the other options are clearly favored above that. You can't just group all the other votes as "any change is better than no change". Not all of them were explicit about that. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 07:36, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
• Wait until the RFC ends, and then have this discussion. It is not WP:SNOWING against C, D, and E yet - I'm not even sure whether a closer would find there to be a consensus against C, D, and E if the RFC was closed today. BilledMammal (talk) 11:07, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

  RFCs don't usually "end" except by going stale and expiring. I'm trying to keep the discussing going toward seeking a consensus. Dicklyon (talk) 18:15, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

• Without even considering the strength of arguments, 60% to do something (v "E" that has become a surrogate "do nothing") meets one definition of a supermajority. While it may not be (quite) snowing against "E" (do nothing at all), it is not an unreasonable question. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:41, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

  Considering strength of arguments is the big issue with this; 40% !voting for "E", if the closer thinks they have the better arguments, is sufficient to close the RFC in that direction. The other issue is that you assume every editor who did not !vote "E" supports doing anything over doing nothing. BilledMammal (talk) 12:07, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

  But E is not a thing; it's a collection of incompatible different ideas, most of which are not "do nothing". And the arguments are pretty much counter to sources and guidelines, so no closer is going to latch onto one of those and supervote it into a consensus. Dicklyon (talk) 18:15, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

  Also note that "do nothing" really does mean C: "Treat things like 'Men's Singles' as proper names when in a tennis tournament context, but not otherwise" (i.e. not in an Olypmics context). I tried to make it clear that "do nothing" is this absurd, yet I understand there are always a few editors afraid of changing things for the better. Dicklyon (talk) 20:11, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

  That is your opinion that things will change for the better. Some are afraid that things are changing for the worse. And E is a thing as much as some of the other votes are rather vague. You are also assuming that someone who votes for A will want B rather than E. That is not clear at all. I still think strength of argument is against changing countless thousands of articles for such a trivial matter, but that's not for me to determine. It's not close to snow and it's not a super-majority. Those terms are extremely biased in your conclusions and I'm actually shocked and disappointed you would use them to "poison the well." Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:10, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

  I'm trying not to make assumptions, but to invite discussion. I don't know what "want B rather than E" means, since E isn't a defined thing. Dicklyon (talk) 07:15, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

  Dicklyon, C is not "do nothing". C is have all sports follow the proper name convention. Not all sports do that right now. You biased the discussion against "do nothing" by not including it as an option to begin with, and yet it still seems to be the most favored option. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 07:12, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

  Who are you counting that I missed, as favoring "do nothing", and how does that differ from "C", which is to leave things inconsistent as they are even within tennis? Dicklyon (talk) 07:21, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

  It's pretty darned consistent in tennis articles. Sure there are some older ones and some newer ones and ones you changed, but that's because we didn't go on a crusade to fix them. When we notice a difference in an article we tend to fix it. We have plenty of old style performance charts too, but they are a minority and get fixed bit by bit. There seemed to be no issues among any tennis editors about a problem. You saw it and decided it must be broken and have demanded it changed. That's your right to do here but don't make it seem like we've had any issues with the styling... we haven't. We didn't need thousands and thousands of articles changed. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:32, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

• Conceptually, I think this is a misleading way to frame the decision-making process. As an analogy, suppose we were trying to decide as a group what kind of pizza to order. 3 people want plain, 3 want meat-lovers, 3 want vegetarian, and 3 want Hawaiian. I claim there is a clear super-majority (9 to 3) in favour of having some kind of toppings, and a small minority in favour of no toppings. Therefore, we should move forward by focusing the discussion on choosing between meat, veggie, or Hawaaian. Is that a reasonable argument? It seems to me that, in this hypothetical, we have four options which are equally favoured, and one is just being brushed to the side based on some sleight of hand accounting. (After all, the same argument could just as well be used to push out the veggie option, since there's a clear supermajority against having vegetables on the pizza, and so on.) Colin M (talk) 18:54, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

  I was about to post the same type of thing... Thanks. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:48, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

• The analogy is fine, if you are starting from a premise that everybody wants to eat takeaway and everybody wants to eat some type of pizza. However, isn't "do nothing" more like "I don't want to eat" or "I don't want takeaway (I'd rather eat in)"? And, aren't the dashed options like pizzas (while what comes after the dash is a topping) and the undashed option is another alternative, say Chinese? Cinderella157 (talk) 23:56, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

  No, that analogy doesn't work because in your scenario those who want to eat something and those who don't want to eat anything can both be satisfied at the same time (some people eat, some people don't eat), whereas with the article titles "do something" and "do nothing" are mutually exclusive options. Thryduulf (talk) 00:45, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

  Actually, it does per I don't want takeaway (I'd rather eat in). Cinderella157 (talk) 00:56, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Template Issues

Yes, there will be an issue with templates. I have a look at a couple of examples. Templates would be of two general types. For a particular event (year) they create links to the titles played for. For a particular title they create links to other titles played during a particular event. The latter are effectively sub-pages of an event page. In either case, the templates assume a particular article title format in order to generate the links. The templates will fail if there is no target article having the "assumed" article title format. However, this issue is easily remedied by ensuring there are redirects from the "assumed" article title format to the "actual" article title. I believe this already occurred for Wimbledon tennis championships that used "ladies" and "gentlemen" instead of "men's" and "women's" for titles. It is a simple solution to what might otherwise be perceived as a near insurmountable problem. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 10:59, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

So we will also have to create more redirects in order to facilitate this massive change. Another thing for the closer to consider. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:10, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

In the first instance, one simply leaves the old target as a redirect, rather than deleting it. My primary observation is that the matter of templates is not insurmountable by any means. And of course, the templates can be modified to accept the new pattern (per DL below). Cinderella157 (talk) 23:43, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

The templates can also be modified to use the new patterns where needed. Currently have the over-capitalization assumption built in, but that's not hard to fix. Dicklyon (talk) 18:15, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Good grief, In other words they can be mass-modified to handle either under-capitalization or over-capitalization. Fyunck(click) (talk) 04:53, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

There are not many templates to modify; it's not a "mass" operation. Dicklyon (talk) 07:17, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I have only looked at a couple of tennis templates but would make these observations. These are not "smart" templates that rely on recognising a dashed construction to generate an infobox - they simply assume such a construction and capitalisation. Consequently, any change whatsoever to "any" part of a "standard" title format will require a revision of such templates at the template level. They lack flexibility. While I am not familiar with the language or syntax of templates, this is potentially an opportunity to improve the flexibility of the templates. The issue is not a matter of parsing that is reliant on a dashed construction. Secondly, these templates are not the ducks nuts. Specifically, they create red-links for titles played for that don't appear to exist - such as invitation or masters titles. The templates are not being applied to "acknowledge" para titles being played for. However, this is not a deficiency in the templates per se but in how they are being applied. Any change can be seen as an opportunity for improvement and an opportunity to make such templates more resilient. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:36, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Current state as of December 20, and moving forward

I'm creating a new subsection here so that stuff not relating to templates can move forward, and the conversation regarding templates can continue in that section. Herostratus (talk) 07:57, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

So let's see, counting heads as of this date, we have, as a first choice:

• D, 7
• A, 3
• B, 3
• Do nothing, 6
• other E, 3 (each different)

Lot of editors gave a second choice, and these are:

• A, 5
• B, 3
• C, 1
• Do nothing, 1
• Other E, 1

And, five editors opposing D.

C got no traction, and there were three E votes that weren't "do nothing" were for one-vote proposals: 1 for parents, 1 for following sources, 1 unclear. Let's promote those editors' second choices (or drop them if there wasn't one)

Since D has 7 first choices (and no second), but five explicit opposes... I can't see D as going forward since it has essentially a "net vote" of 2. Five editors really don't want D, and I think it would be pretty divisive to go forward with that. (The D voters will object to that, but what can you do? Ignore the editors who specifically called out D to say they hate it?) So, also discarding D and promoting those editors second choices, we get:

First choice:

• A, 7
• B, 4
• Do nothing, 6

Second choice:

• A, 2
• B, 2
• Do nothing, 1

I can see a couple of ways to cut this cake, assuming you're even still on board with me here:

1) Combine A + B into "Do Something", giving "Do Something" 11+4 vs "Do Nothing" 6+1. Counting just first choices gives 65% to "Do Something", which with 17 people involved, I suppose that could count as a win, barely. Then, "A" having 7+2 vs "B" having 4+2, well, "A" is 7-4 among first choices (which are what mainly count), which is 64%... which 64% of 11 people doesn't mean much I'd say. Others may think it does. In this way you could either anoint "A" the winner, or run another RfC, "A" vs "B".

2) Drop B since it's the weakest of the three. Promoting "B" voters second choices (if any) adds one to "A" and one to "Do Nothing", giving First choice:

• A, 8
• Do nothing, 7

Second choices are no longer in play. 8-7 is a tie.

None of this considers strength of arguments, but what can I say? Nobody has a killer argument that I see. C'mon, it's a matter of opinion basically. If your argument is that good, it'll probably convince other people and you'll win the headcount anyway. If you're not changing people's minds, either your argument is maybe not as strong at you think, or else it really is a matter of opinion and arguments don't much matter.

So, these multi-choice RfC usually don't end with a clear "winner" and aren't so much intended to as to just generally be discussions, and also to narrow the field. I suppose the next step would be to have a new, binary, RfC, which will I guess could take the form of "A" vs "Do Nothing" (I reccomend this as simpler). (The annoying is that if "A" has 13 votes and "Do Nothing" has 10 votes, "Do Nothing" wins, since no consensus == no change. Oh well.)

or you could have something like:

• A: Do Something
  • A1: "men's singles" format
  • A2: "Men's singles" format
• B: Do nothing

If "A" is a clear win, then you see if "A1" is clear win over "A2" or vice versa; if so, Bob's your uncle, if not you're screwed, and I have no idea what you'd do. Herostratus (talk) 07:57, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Comments on "Current state as of December 20, and moving forward"

First off, as you note, consensus is not built on headcount (or single transferrable vote) but on strength of argument; you also acknowledge that you are completely disregarding this in your unhelpful attempt to steer this discussion – plus we have Dicklyon's steering above. Second, many of the !votes above (including your own) directly contradict policy and existing guidelines, so very little weight can be given to them. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 10:35, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Also there's no indication of who was counted in each group there, so it's hard to check the interpretation. My impression is that the "do something" vs "do nothing" question is pretty much decided, and it's really just the second question that needs to be settled to move forward. Since I would expect most of the "do nothing" people to prefer the "do less" alternative, that's back to B being the output for all practical purposes, and maybe going to an RM discussion would be a way to test that. But other analyses may see it differently. The fact that Fyunck is re-canvassing at tennis project suggests that he too thinks "do nothing" has lost. Dicklyon (talk) 18:15, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Considering only the votes and not rationales or strength, scoring each option as 1 for a first preference, 0.5 for a second preference and -1 for an oppose I find the options have the following vote counts (all working is shown at the end):

• A: 4
• B: 3.5
• C: -0.5
• D: -3
• E ("case consistency"): 1
• E (follow the sources): 1
• Do nothing: 5

Considering only first preference supports and counting "follow the sources" as effectively "do nothing": Do something totals: 13, Do nothing: 7

Factoring in opposition and implied opposition (those who supported only "do nothing" can be implied to oppose doing something): Do something: 10, Do nothing 6

Considering only numbers that's a weak to very weak consensus to do something, but that could easily change to a clear consensus either way or no consensus when arguments are considered. If we assume, for now, that there is a consensus to do something we would need to look at what particular something has consensus, and that is clearly not C or D. "Case consistency" could be taken as a support of any of the "do something" options and we've already dealt with "follow the sources" so we're left with just A and B.

On the face of it there is no clear preference between them, especially if Sod25k's preferences are equal (see below) which would put them exactly equal. However, of those who expressed a first preference for an option that has been dismissed (C, D, E or do nothing) and a second preference for A or B, 4 went for A and 1 B, suggesting that A edges ahead. However A got 2 explicit opposes while B only got 1 which suggests B edges ahead. As 1 of the explicit opposition votes for A and the only one for B was from the same person we can infer they opposed both equally and the other opposition to A was from someone supporting B that also suggests B is the least opposed.

So if I were closing this now based solely on the numbers, I would say there is a weak consensus to do something, a clear consensus against option D (especially as almost all the "strong" votes are in opposition to it), a weak consensus against option C and no consensus between options A and B and so would recommend a follow-up discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 19:44, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

My working for the above comment. Thryduulf (talk) 19:44, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
1st preference: A: 3 - Sod25k, Jayron32, Kaffe42, B: 3 - Amakuru, Sportsfan77777, Iffy, C: 0 D: 6 - Dicklyon, Cinderella157, wiemather, SMcCandlish, Tony1, BilledMammal E ("case consistency"): 1 - Mjquinn_id E (follow the sources): 1 - Montanabw Do nothing: 6 - Fyunck, Ravenswing, GhostOfDanGurney, GraemeLegget, GoodDay, Thryduulf 2nd preference: A: 6 - Dicklyon, Cinderella157, Amakuru, Iffy, SMcCandlish, Tony1, B: 3 - Sod25k, BilledMammal, Thryduulf C: 1 - Fyunck D: 0 E (parenthesis): 1 - wiemather Do nothing: 1 - Sportsfan77777 Oppose: A: 2 - Sportsfan77777, GhostOfDanGurney B: 1 - GhostOfDanGurney C: 1 - GhostOfDanGurney D: 9 - Lee Bilrndki, Sod25k, Joseph2302, Sportsfan77777, GhostOfDanGurney, Iffy, Mjquinn_id (implied), Kaffe42, Thryduulf E: 0 Do nothing: 1 - Joseph2302 (implied) Notes: Sod25k's preferences for A and B may be equal Iffy opposes applying any of A-D "unevenly" and thinks doing nothing is preferable to that. Mjquinn_id has not explained what "case consistency" means but the comment implies keeping a dash and thus opposition to option D}}. Thryduulf (talk) 19:44, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't steer conversations. That's what you all do, and you're just projecting. And anyone thinking the matter is clear is guilty of partisan self-dealing or unsubtle thinking.

You'll note that I offered two ways of counting. #1 leads to "A" (not my preferred outcome) and #2 leads to "Do Nothing" (my preferred outcome). (Both lead to second, binary RfC IMO; and there are other ways of counting of course.). That is, as I said, "if you're still on board". You could be not on board with complicated manipulation of data and be ike "D has plurality, discounting negative votes which I do, so D" or whatever.

Absent new votes coming in, don't argue with me, don't argue with each other. We're all arguing for the closer. Name-calling won't help you there I bet. I proffered some raw data and a couple different ways one might consider it leading to different outcomes. The closer will decide how or if she uses the data and what, if any, advice she wants to take. (I do apologize for not including names as I usually do, I was rushed. Thank you User:Thryduulf for correcting this (but I'm not included (I was 1st=Do Nothing, 2nd=B, and opposed to D))).

It's not a headcount, but it is basically a matter of opinion, and if you don't want to count heads, then it has to be "no change" since opinions can't really have strength of argument. Herostratus (talk) 22:31, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Herostratus my apologies for missing you (not sure how that happened) but that pushes the headcount closer towards no consensus between "do something" and "do nothing" (if you accept that as a valid binary, and @Colin M makes a good point regarding that), strengthens the opposition to D and makes the lack of consensus between A and B even clear imo. Thryduulf (talk) 22:44, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Sure, User:Thryduulf, no problem. As I said before, multi-option RfC seldom come to a consensus, they serve more to whittle down the options. Whether that should be "A vs B" or "A vs Do Nothing" I'll leave to closer. Herostratus (talk) 01:01, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

More creative counting. Good one. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 23:53, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

What's that supposed to mean? Herostratus (talk) 01:01, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

There is no value in such an invented vote counting methodology with arbitrarily assigned values, selective negative counting (i.e. ignoring obvious opposition to the "do nothing" option), overlooking and misinterpreting !votes, etc. Why not assign zero to all !votes that disregard MOS, and minus one for "do nothing" to all non-"do nothing" !votes – the result would be very different. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 10:56, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Defining the issues

Defining the issues As with many RfCs, the issues become clearer as the discussion unfolds. As I see matters, there are now two clear issues:

1. Whether it is reasonable/permitted to use a dash as a subtitle/disambiguation delimiter; and,
2. Assuming it is, how should the phrase following such a dash be capitalised (and why)? For simplicity, the options can be summarised as: "men's singles", "Men's singles" or "Men's Singles"

Cinderella157 (talk) 06:14, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

I think it's a little hazier than that. It's not always totally arbitrary in dash usage. If everywhere you looked it said "Campo Brazillia - Crocodile Especial" then that it what it should be at Wikipedia also. Now if some sources capitalize everything and some do not, it's up to the project to decide what works best. Same with the dash. If a dash is never ever used and the second part of the title is never ever capitalized, again that's much easier. It's when we have a mix of usage in the title (as we have in the RFC) where decisions have been made. But when decisions have been made, and it's been done to thousands of articles, then you don't move it to a different form because it's a pet peeve. There's no good reason to do it. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:01, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Actually Fyunck, it really is that clear and that simple. Perhaps you might re-read my !vote. By policy at WP:AT, the dash, as a disambiguation delimiter is expressly not to be used. The dash disambiguation/subtitle construction is contrary to WP:AT on several levels. Any issue of capitalisation after such a construction is consequently mute (yes, I mean mute - as in silenced). Cinderella157 (talk) 10:15, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Actually, it is not, and it's a sticking point. You said "as a disambiguation delimiter." That's not what this is. The dash is actually part of the title in sources. Certainly not all sources, but some sources. And also... if Women's Singles is often capitalized in tennis title sources, and Wimbledon is often capitalized in tennis sources, why would you uncapitalize one of those terms? I also went to WP:AT and searched the terms you used... dash, disambiguation, delimiter. I am missing your argument's location. If you start saying everything is a disambiguation delimiter, instead of "2021 Australian Open" we'll have to start using Australian Open (2021) and George Washington (farewell address). There are certainly good reasons for different points of view but this is not black and white by any stretch. Fyunck(click) (talk) 10:53, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Unfortunately, you are misinterpreting what the sources are doing. They are following their own manual of style. The dash is (in general) not part of the title, it is merely the chosen means of separation used by the source in accordance with their MoS. Similarly, many sources commonly use title case; we do not. We have our own manual of style, which states that we use sentence-case and also guides against the use of dashes for this purpose. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 11:04, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Fyunck(click), a delimiter is a sequence of one or more characters for specifying the boundary between separate, independent regions in plain text, mathematical expressions or other data streams. In this case, I am referring to a dash, which is separating a title from a subtitle or the "main" part of the title from its disambiguation. Your comment per: If you start saying everything is a disambiguation delimiter, instead of "2021 Australian Open" we'll have to start using Australian Open (2021) and George Washington (farewell address). It makes no sense to me since it appears to not understand what a delimiter is. To me, it seems to be a red-herring argument. If you were to read my !vote (in full), I have already directly quoted the particular text that is an explicate statement not to use a dash as a disambiguation delimiter. It is at WP:QUALIFIER (in WP:AT): Commas and parentheses (round brackets) are the only characters that can be used without restriction to separate a disambiguating term in an article title. Colons can be used in the limited cases of subtitles of some creative works and lists split over several pages. I have also identified at my !vote, other "levels" at which the dash construction is contrary to P&G, particularly at WP:AT. A significant number of editors have specifically identified that the dash is separating terms in a title with the function of providing disambiguation. The subtitle perception of the construction is also dealt with by the afore quote. A colon (and only a colon) is permitted in the subtitles of some creative works. We are not dealing with a creative work here and a dash is not a colon! Per WP:COMMONNAME at WP:AT: In Wikipedia, an article title is a natural-language word or expression that indicates the subject of the article. A dashed construction is not a ""natural expression" Consequently, we don't rely on "titles" and headings in sources using such a construction to determine a WP article title. The weight of P&G (particularly WP:AT - a policy) would determine that the dashed construction, the subject of this discussion, is not to be used on a number of levels. To argue otherwise would appear to me to be pettifogging. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:35, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

We are running into the same thing here. Why isn't the title at "George Washington's farewell address"? Per your arguments it should be and that is the situation here. As for the dash it's in sources even in sentences and I didn't see that talked about at WP:AT. But this is what's fun about Wikipedia, and yes I still have fun. Often things follow MOS to the letter, sometimes MOS gets shoved aside by consensus or no consensus or local consensus, and sometimes MOS gets changed because many don't like a certain rule (or the rule is too vague). Sometimes you go with 99% of English sources, and sometimes what 99% of English sources say gets banned here. That's Wikipedia. It's complex, but as long as we always keep in mind our readers' best interest, things usually work out ok. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:45, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Fyunck(click), WP:AT both permits and even tends to prefer natural phrases for article titles and disambiguation (see WP:CRITERIA and WP:QUALIFIER). Your examples of "George Washington (farewell address)" and "Australian Open (2021)", would unnecessarily and unreasonably impose a constructed or artificial "qualification" over a perfectly natural construction that should be and is preferred. This sort of argument is therefore a red-herring. Furthermore, in the phrase "George Washington's Farewell Address", the attributive phrase "George Washington's" modifies the subject "Farewell Address". The subject of the article is then, the "Farewell Address". Placing the "farewell address" in parenthesis changes the subject and is wrong. Headings and the like are not natural language. They often drop "parts of speech" for brevity, such as preceding articles. I am not saying the dashed construction isn't used at all in sentences but I'm not seeing evidence presented that it is at all a WP:COMMONNAME - ie that it is commonly used that way in sentences in sources. WP:AT is not the MOS. It is not a guideline, it is a policy. From the passage I quoted for you, the policy lists the "only characters" that can be used as disambiguation delimiters. Consequently, an argument that says "Oh but it didn't specifically say I couldn't use a dash", would be just plain pettifogging. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:01, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Obviously I'm not doing a good job of explaining because you keep missing my point. That's on me but I don't have a better way to say it. That or we have a different definition of "disambiguation delimiters" (which also is not on the WP:AT page) vs a proper name. Since I can't explain better and what you are saying keeps missing my point I guess we might as well move along because we have a communication snafu. Cheers. Fyunck(click) (talk) 10:33, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

This particular thread is about disambiguation. If you don't understand the term "delimiter", despite my previous explanation, it is largely immaterial. The purpose of the dash within the context of this thread (and this RfC) is to provide disambiguation. If it wasn't, I'm sure you would have said so by now. Disambiguation also appears to be the whole basis of your comments in this thread? WP:AT (per the passage already quoted), specifically says that there are are only certain characters that can be used to separate a disambiguator within an article title. A dash is not one of these. How then, is the statement quoted in any way unclear in respect to a dash being not permitted to separate a disambiguating term in an article title? Cinderella157 (talk) 14:14, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Let's come at it from a different angle then so I can better understand. Let's fictitiously say we have the official "Nova Scotia Zoo – Botanical Garden." That's what they use and that's what most sources also use. New York Times writes articles that say there is a fire at the Nova Scotia Zoo – Botanical Garden, and Quebec Daily News says the CEO of Nova Scotia Zoo – Botanical Garden was fired yesterday. You seem to be telling me that even though you can use Nova Scotia Zoo – Botanical Garden in prose, as a title at Wikipedia it must be "Nova Scotia Zoo Botanical Garden" or perhaps "Nova Scotia Zoo, Botanical Garden"? We can't use "Nova Scotia Zoo – Botanical Garden" as the title here? That seems to be what you are saying to me and I want to understand you as it pertains to "Wimbledon – Womens Singles", "Wimbledon, Womens Singles", or "Wimbledon Womens Singles". Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:41, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Obviously, Fyunck, your desire for "Men's Singles" to be a proper name has nothing sensible behind it. Unlike Washington's Farewell Address, which is a composition title, well known as such for well over a hundred years even if not original written by that exact title. Dicklyon (talk) 15:44, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Actually that's a different story and it has much sensibility behind it. It's quite similar no matter how much you don't want it to be. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:41, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

The problem with fictional hypotheticals is just that. At WP:AT: In Wikipedia, an article title is a natural-language word or expression that indicates the subject of the article ... that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable English-language sources). If you are trying to say that the dashed construction is commonly used in prose (natural language) in a substantial majority of independent reliable sources, then show the evidence. Most often, you are seeing things like: "Highlights of Wimbledon Championships men's singles final". As to what WP:AT says on using a dash as a disamiguation separating character, I think it is self-evident. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:09, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

But you didn't answer my question. You simply added another question. In that hypothetical what would we use as an article title? It is also very often seen as 2019 Wimbledon Men's Singles event. No type of source dominates but you will see Wimbledon – Men's Singles, though certainly not as frequently as without the dash. Fyunck(click) (talk) 04:41, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Firstly, your fictional hypothetical is very unlikely to the point of being improbable. Secondly, your example is not a disambiguation/subtitle construction, which is the subject of this RfC. Consequently, it is not being ruled against by WP:AT at WP:TITLEFORMAT (that limits disambiguation delimiting characters). It should still be avoided per WP:TSC at WP:AT. It also creats an issue with readability in prose, given the grammatical function of a spaced dash. Similar to a colon or semi-colon, it begins a new independent clause that could be a grammatically separate sentence. This is contrary to the fictitious name where it is intended to join. For this reason, I would find it unlikely that your news sources in the fictitious example would not use an alternative (such as "and"). Consequently, we would not likely be the seeing the fictitious "official" name as the WP:COMMONNAME in independent reliable sources.

To the issue at hand and particularly for tennis. You have not provide evidence of actual usage of the dashed construction in prose. However, you acknowledge that it is not the "most"WP:COMMONNAME and that the undashed construction is more common: It is also very often seen as 2019 Wimbledon Men's Singles event. I have looked quite hard to find evidence of the dashed construction in prose. I'm not finding anything; though, I am seeing it in headings and tables etc. Even then, I'm not seeing it consistently capitalised either in full or in part.

I do think we are now back at the start of this thread. The spaced dash construction used in many sports articles as a subtitle/disambiguation is quite contrary to WP:AT at a number of places. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:51, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Herostratus, given that you have stated: Nobody has a killer argument that I see. Have you seen my revised !vote and the reasons I have given overall? Cinderella157 (talk) 09:59, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi User:Cinderella157. Yes, I have now, and thank you for digging up the "Do not create subsidiary articles" bit. And I mean those are all good points, and yes I see how as a matter of the written policy you're correct. So alright, yes, "matter of opinion" isn't entirely accurate, and strength-of-argument, in the sense of "how well do the various arguments adhere to policy" could be play. I stand corrected.

Your point remain unconvincing to me because I don't care about the letter of rules details so much, and this isn't really an "Azerbaijan/Transport" or "Azerbaijan (transport)" type situation in my opinion. Olympic-type sports events are just different, is all. "2017 FIL European Luge Championships women's singles" is just too run-on for my taste, "2017 FIL European Luge Championships – Women's singles" (or "woman's singles" or "Woman's Singles", whatever) is an aid to the reader in helping to separate out and hilite an important second part of the title. I don't think that WP:AT is intended for or helpful to be completely controlling at this level of detail. "Do not create subsidiary articles" is generally true and useful advice, but not here. And I don't think "Well, X would be better for the reader, but if you did thru the rules and follow the exact letter of them, we have to do Y" is a good approach.

However, yes one could take the stance "WP:AT as a policy must not and cannot be violated except in extreme and important cases", and "It's clear that 'Do not use titles suggesting that one article forms part of another... it should be named independently' is part of WP:AT. If the closer feels honor-bound to support the letter of policies (she might), then that might be a winning argument for her, and fine. Herostratus (talk) 14:06, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Herostratus, you omit to address that WP:QUALIFIER (in WP:AT) lists the "only characters" that are permitted as disambiguation delimiters? It's not a headcount, but it is basically a matter of opinion, and if you don't want to count heads, then it has to be "no change" since opinions can't really have strength of argument. [per yourself herein] Except it isn't? Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 03:26, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Well... User:Cinderella157, I don't worry about stuff like that too much. There're a lot of rules here. Some of them are put in by a couple-few people, and some of them are put in by people who like to micromangage stuff, and a fair number contradict each other, and a fair number aren't followed generallt. I try to ignore at least one rule before breakfast, it keeps me young. After all the rules were made for the readers, not the readers for the rules. So, whatever is best for the reader. This is hard to know, but my considered opinion is that the abscence of a dash (or other mechanism, but the dash seems best to me) makes the title just a tiny bit more difficult to suss the title in a half second or so. For my part, I don't much care about the capitaliztion of the the second part of the title. Title case (Men's singles) seems best, but it's hard to know. Herostratus (talk) 15:32, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Is the spaced dashed creating a subtitle/disambiguation?

Is the spaced dashed creating a subtitle/disambiguation? To my observation of the discussion herein, it is. It has specifically been referred to as such. With the exception of perhaps Fyunck, it has been at least tacitly acknowledged as such. In templates, it is being used as such. However, I am now specifically asking this question. This relates to matters of policy at WP:AT. For details, see my !vote (second down - please read in full) and the discussion immediately above (#Defining the issues). If it is not creating a subtitle/disambiguation, then what is the function of the dash? Cinderella157 (talk) 12:09, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Comments

• This is an invalid question. Subtitles and disambiguations are not the same thing and should not be conflated, nor should subtitles be conflated with sub-articles. Thryduulf (talk) 12:14, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  If it is not creating a subtitle/disambiguation, then what is the function of the dash? That is the substantive question. Cinderella157 (talk) 13:01, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  There are tennis sources that use the dash in the way our articles do. My argument has not been otherwise. We (or I should say others) simply made the determination years ago to go with that particular sourced styling. I'm sure no one looked at all the data to search every style out there, but there are many. We went with it, no one objected, and now every article follows the same style... thousands and thousands of them. Suddenly we have to change all of them because one editor didn't like it and brought up an RFC? No one had complained for a decade and that's my biggest problem here. It's not like there was heaps of infighting and edit wars trying to switch from one style to another. All was calm and long-term stable, and it isn't broken. Fyunck(click) (talk) 03:51, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Actually, Fyunck(click), your characterisation is quite inaccurate. This all started with an RfC initiated by Sod25 at Talk:The Championships, Wimbledon because of inconsistencies in titling. It was that RfC that bought "issues" to the attention of the broader community and in the first instance, an issue of capitalisation. It also created a precedent to change the capitalisation. The proponent of this RfC Dicklyon then discussed the matter with the tennis project and, both you, Sod25 and others were instrumental in bringing this RfC here. Your characterisation of this being because "one editor didn't like it" is quite inaccurate and may be considered an "aspersion". Unintenionally, things may have been done in a way that did not invite scrutiny by the broader community but it has happened now. Such decisions should then be able to withstand the scrutiny of the broader community or be bought into line with the consensus of the broader community. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:44, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I think it is pretty accurate but you are correct in who brought it up. That RFC was made by Sod25 only to change a few articles that retained the word Gentlemen's and Ladies' so that it conformed to all the thousands of other articles. In the RFC Sod25 started, he specifically asked not to move to a different case or remove the dash. It was a truly massive RFC of what.... six? Two wanted things moved only and four wanted less capitalization but not necessarily moved from Gentlemen's and Ladies'. I'm not sure why you feel Sod and I were instrumental to bringing this RFC here. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:45, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

At the Tennis project, Sod states: now that there is precedent to change the capitalization, I will support your RFC. And you state: I would not single out sports articles by any stretch. The latter widens the scope and determines a central venue. You certainly played a role (ie were instrumental) in bringing the RfC here. Cinderella157 (talk) 01:18, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

• It's clear to me that sports event articles are in their own special category where sub-article titling should be (and by a broad, longstanding consensus has been) permitted, regardless of what is currently written in the general policy pages. "Men's Singles" in "2021 French Open – Men's Singles" isn't acting as a disambiguator, as the event is part of the "2021 French Open" rather than being a separate concept with the same name. If anything, "2021 French Open" could be viewed as disambiguating "Men's Singles", yielding "Men's Singles (2021 French Open)" or "Men's Singles (tennis, 2021 French Open)" as the policy based format. However, these events are never referenced independently of the tournaments - in prose it's always "the men's singles championship at the French Open", or "the 100 meter sprint at the 2020 Olympics", so disambiguating in this way isn't appropriate (and the thousands of disambiguations of e.g. Singles would make many disambiguation pages unnavigable). The "at the" construction then seems appealing, but produces nonsensical titles for events at multi-sport competitions, e.g. "Men's singles at the tennis at the 2020 Summer Olympics" for "Tennis at the 2020 Summer Olympics". The dashes are in my opinion then the only viable option (and can't be simply removed as the examples in my vote rationale demonstrate), leaving the question to be just one of which capitalization style is preferable (i.e. options A-C). Sod25k (talk) 13:39, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• Men's singles tennis at the 2012 Summer Olympics would be perfectly acceptable. The English language works perfectly well, and there is nothing special about sports that justifies having titles that are non-compliant with MOS with respect to case, punctuation and disambiguation. Please also read my comment in response to your !vote above with regards to nonsensical titles that exist due to current practices. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 14:52, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• That construction does seem to work ok grammar-wise even with long multi-sport competition event names, but it's also more difficult to parse. I wouldn't oppose a change to it, but I still lean towards the dashes for readability reasons and because it would be less work to change just the capitalization of the current titles. Sod25k (talk) 16:01, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• I'm also not sure I've seen the "Men's singles tennis at the 2012 Summer Olympics" format used elsewhere? I'm not the greatest sports fan, but from a quick google it seems that when both parts are needed for context that the event comes first, and yes the dash does make it easier to parse. There is no single rule that can work for every title of every topic in the encyclopaedia so we shouldn't try to shoehorn things. Thryduulf (talk) 16:46, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• Alexander Zverev won the gold medal in men's singles tennis at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. It wasn't hard to find a few. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:22, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

• There is no requirement to "have seen (a format) elsewhere". Can people please read the guideline here? _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 16:52, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• If there is no requirement for a title format to be used elsewhere, why are arguments for article titles rejected because there is no evidence of them being used elsewhere? You can't have it both ways. Thryduulf (talk) 17:09, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• There is a difference between there being an official and/or common name, and not. These articles fall under the "not". Seriously, please read the guideline. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 17:58, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Re "why are arguments for article titles rejected because there is no evidence of them being used elsewhere", Thryduulf, can you say who has rejected what titles on that basis? Dicklyon (talk) 04:15, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

There are very many examples of you and others doing exactly this, most recently that I was involved in was the RM of New York Subway, where nearly every single one of your arguments was based on what sources use. Thryduulf (talk) 01:22, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

No title was "rejected because there is no evidence of them being used elsewhere" in that discussion. It was certainly acknowledged, by me and others, that the capped "Subway" is used in lots of places; it was objected to because our our style is to cap only if caps are used consistently in sources, while in this case that caps were in an actual minority. You have misunderstood and/or misrepresented the position that you adopt as strawman to object to. Don't do that. Dicklyon (talk) 05:08, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

• Per Sod25k, it seems that "sports event articles are in their own special category where sub-article titling should be (and by a broad, longstanding consensus has been) permitted". This discussion has brought out a strong polarization over whether this should be accepted or fixed (with strong feelings for and against option D, essentially). This question deserves its own in-depth discussion, with options on alternatives, treatment as disambiguation, subtitles, sub-topics, or whatever, and corresponding punctuation and capitalization style guidance. I expect most of the "sports" editors would be against changes in the basic format, just because it's such a widespread thing. So I propose we get back to what to do about the overcapitalization of "Singles" and "Doubles" and such that leave tennis (and table tennis) articles in a state inconsistent internally, inconsistent with other sports, and inconsistent with policy and guidelines. It looks to me like there's support to at least implement option B, even though it's not many people's favorite, so I'll go ahead with some multi-RMs about that when I get time (I'm still pretty busy on the big changes to capitalization of "Province" and "District" for Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand, with provinces about finished and districts still to go, and have had good community help and support on that; hope to see similar here, to at least patch up the most painful inconsistencies). Dicklyon (talk) 16:23, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  I see nothing even remotely close to support for B. It's more support for E. It's all over the place and piece by piece is not the way to go when thousands of articles are in the mix. It's pretty much no consensus to do anything and moving things to some undercapitalization variety isn't what this discussion points to. Fyunck(click) (talk) 21:32, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  I agree with Fyunck - if all you are doing is counting votes then the absolute most you can say is that there is consensus to have a separate discussion about whether A or B should be the option taken forwards. It is not a vote though and reading the arguments the only things that are unarguable are that C and D do not have consensus (there might even be a consensus against D). I'm not neutral here, but I could see someone who is saying either there is a consensus for doing nothing or no consensus to do anything - and in practical terms there is little difference between them. There is very definitely no way this discussion can be used to support an RM. Thryduulf (talk) 01:20, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

  There's also clearly not a consensus for E, since it's not a thing, but rather a catch-all category of ideas that can't really be applied, like "follow the sources" (since sources don't use titles resembling these at all, and refer to them in a wide variety of ways). The only clear consensus is "not C", that is, don't just pretend it's OK as is. Dicklyon (talk) 16:14, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  I don't see that at all... You added the E and people have gone for it because they don't like the other choices. Your logic also shows the clear consensus is "Not A", "Not B", and "Not D". One thing for sure is there is no consensus here. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:05, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  I offered C for those wanting to leave it in the currently broken state, and E for other ideas; there were quite a few other ideas, but none actionable. What's actionable is "not C", that is, fix at least the worst of the over-capitalization. Dicklyon (talk) 22:03, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  "broken state" is your own opinion that you keep inserting. For many it's not broken. Sure it could change, but that doesn't mean it's broken. Wikipedia makes changes all the time for reasons other than being broken. Right now there's no consensus for anything. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:27, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

  "Broken" is just my shortcut for the inconsistencies, with guidelines, with other sports, and within tennis (mostly). These are what most agree should be fixed. Dicklyon (talk) 06:11, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

  Fyunck(click), if this RFC closes as no consensus for sports articles generally, an RM for tennis articles specifically will immediately be started, which is very likely to pass given the policy/guideline-based rationale for the recent Wimbledon close. All that arguing for "do nothing" achieves then is making the non-inclusion of non-tennis articles in that RM more likely, thereby making the situation more "unfair" by your own standards. Sod25k (talk) 07:47, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

  I can only do what I think is right. If by doing that, Wikipedia winds up treating tennis articles unfairly to every other article, then so be it. There's no way of knowing what will pass and what won't around here. I've been here so long and seen so many moves go against or for MOS, nothing surprises me anymore. And if things get moved then that's the way it is and I move on like I always do. But I won't change my values on what I feel is correct just because the outcome might not be what I like. If you feel you have to single out tennis articles only I will let other projects know that they will be next and to join in if they like. But you also have to do what you think is right. All is cool. Cheers. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:16, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

  Fyunck(click), you have already done that for this RfC, using language that might be construed as canvassing. I would hope that you are more circumspect in the future. There is an inconsistency with tennis articles as a result of the recent RfC. If no resolution comes from this one to address that, there will need to be a tennis specific RfC to address that. Cinderella157 (talk) 09:35, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

  @Cinderella157: No chance of that and I absolutely blast your use of the term canvassing. You are wrong and you should say you're wrong. I said from the very start, before this was even an rfc, that if it could very well affect multiple projects now or in the future they should absolutely know about it. I didn't care which way they swung, just that they should know. If it gets done as piecemeal specifically to avoid others knowing about it until their project comes under the same scrutiny, then that is wrong. I will let projects know about an rfc... not individuals, not those who I know how they feel. I am really offended by your wording... and it takes a lot. Fyunck(click) (talk) 10:43, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

  Fyunck(click), no chance of what? It is perfectly acceptable to make notifications to projects in neutral terms. On 13 December, you made many notifications to projects in much the same format (for example). It is the neutrality of same that may be construed as canvassing- even if unintended. I have suggested you be more circumspect in the future. I will not redact that. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:27, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Where are we now, 31 December 2021

Background

• The premise of the RfC is capping after a dash in a dashed constructed title.
• There is now (following a recent RfC) an inconsistency in capping of tennis related articles using a dashed constriction.
• The discussion at the tennis project "insisted" that the matter be considered "site wide"
• Other policy issues have become evident in the course of the RfC.

Where are we now

• There is (and was probably never going to be) a clear outcome. It was not a binary decision in the first instance. The duty of the closer is therefore to guide and narrow further discussion and ultimately further RfCs. The various sections after the #Discussion, comments, !votes section are fairly clearly indicating this.

• There are P&G that directly go to the matters under discussion - WP:AT (multiple places), WP:NCCAPS, MOS:CAPS (including MOS:SENTENCECAPS), WP:IAR, WP:CONLEVEL

• It's not a headcount, but it is basically a matter of opinion, and if you don't want to count heads, then it has to be "no change" since opinions can't really have strength of argument. While most of the !votes are substantially just opinion, there are some that are based in P&G.

• After some discussion (above), it is confirmed that the dashed constructions being used are not WP:COMMONNAME. Though they may appear as headings in tables, they are not appearing in prose. Similarly, "mens' singles" (etc) may be capped in headings etc but is not consistently capped in prose.

• At this point, there are 25 !votes. Considering the primary !votes

• 6 are for either A or B
• none are for C
• 6 are for D
• 2 are "not D". Another 4 editors are expressly opposed to D.
• 7 are for E and state that this is to do nothing.
• 4 are for E and are to do something.

• Of those that would E-do nothing: 3 are saying that the matter should be determined at a project level (one that also !voted "not D" is also saying this); 1 is saying there should be no single rule; 1 has explicitly mentioned making the RfC on an event-by-event basis; 1 would say it's too hard and without benefit; 1 is basically saying there is no problem, let it be (with particular reference to tennis); and 1 is saying not to force conformity.

• The last of these is somewhat ironic, since the dashed construction has been applied across articles precisely for the sake of consistency.

• Of those that are E-do something: 2 are to "follow the sources"; 1 would prefer parenthetic disambiguation over the dash; and, 1 is saying to use consistent case but does not opine what this would be or why.

• While following the sources is always good advice, the discussion above is indicating that there is not a clear WP:COMMONNAME. However (also from the discussion above), we are not seeing dashed constructions in prose. What we do see, with some regularity is something like "Wimbledon mens' singles" in prose. It was observed that some articles differentiated by gender probably don't have sufficient coverage in sources to warrant their own articles.

• Of the 6 editors expressly opposed to D, they would all cite (directly or indirectly) examples of awkward long and unnecessarily over-precise titles. At least one example has been described herein as a word salad. Regardless of whichever titling option is applied, such titles should be improved.

• Such ungainly article titles appear to be prevalent in certain projects. Consequently, there would appear to be a good rationale for resolving the issues herein at project level rather than centrally (as in this RfC).

• It would be wrong to oppose D on the assumption that it would be applied blindly and result in the same "word salad".

• There are 6 !votes of D

• Arguably, D is most consistent with P&G.

• An example such as "2012 Wimbledon men's singles" can be easily parsed and applied to a template. Such a format can be consistently applied over similar events - eg "2012 French Open men's singles". An argument that it can't be applied consistently or parsed for usage in templates lacks validity.

• It has been argued that the six emphatic !votes against D effectively cancel out the 6 !votes in support of D.

• This ignores the strength of argument. The support for D is strongly and explicitly grounded in P&G. The opposition to D is largely based on ungainly titles that should be fixed in any case.

• There is no support for C.

• C is effectively the status quo. To effect, it applies title case to that which appears after the dash.

• Evidence of usage in prose is that things like "Wimbledon mens' singles" more often appear just like that. There is no evidence support for the proposition that "Mens' Singles" is consistently capped in sources and is therefore a proper noun phrase as determined by criteria at MOS:CAPS.

• There is no support for the status quo.

• This is straight up false. All of the votes for E that are "to do nothing" are "to maintain the status quo". By your own count, it's the most favored option. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 03:26, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

• Arguably, a close that simply determines "no consensus" here would therefore be wrong without indicating some way forward.

• There are 6 !votes for either A or B.

• Previous attempts to analyse the !votes would tend to reduce the outcome to a choice between A or B that would need to be resolved by further RfC. Such analyses have relied on considering second choices.

• Option A is for no assumed capitalisation after a dash (ie sentence case is applied across the article title and capitalisation is only applied to words that would normally be capitalised in prose). This option is consistent with P&G in respect to the issue of capitalisation.

• Option B would assume that what occurs after the dash is capitalised as if it were the start of a new sentence. This is specifically contrary to MOS:SENTENCECAPS. Those that "opine" support for B do not acknowledge the contradiction. The preference appears to be largely on aesthetics.

• Only one editor has acknowledged inherant P&G issues with the dashed format and would WP:IAR but acknowledge this is a personal opinion to prefer the dashed construction. The P&G issues with the dashed construction were only identified late in the discussion. Only 2 !votes have been added since the issue was identified.

Where to from here

1. As previously identified, the status quo (option C) is untenable as an outcome from this RfC. However, there is no clear alternative outcome from this particular RfC. The closer will consequently need to guide the direction forward.

• And as stated above, option E votes for "do nothing" are the status quo, not option C. Originally, none of the options were to "do nothing". Stop trying to manipulate the outcome. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 03:32, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

2. Do we proceed forward with a new RfC trying to reach a central decision on the issue of capitalisation in a dashed construction - this being the initial premise of this RfC.

• It would appear that the issues across projects are not all equal (particularly with some of the titles that were identified in opposition to option D).

• Previous analysis would suggest moving forward centrally on the basis of a choice between A and B. The analysis did not consider weight. It primarily counted !votes.

3. Do we cease trying to resolve this centrally (ie revert to a more project specific approach).

• One editor appears to be strongly opposed to this.

• A number of editors that would "E-do nothing" would specifically leave it to be determined at project level. Whether they intended this particular course is moot. However, there is some specific support for such a course.

• Issues affecting different projects are not all equal. Proceeding on a project-by-project basis is more suited to dealing with varying issues.

• If there is no outcome here, an RfC at the tennis project has already been foreshadowed. This is because of an inconsistency in capitalisation that has been created by this recent RfC.

4. Given the number of articles that appear to use the dashed construction and that such a construction appears quite contrary to P&G, can we simply ignore that?

• Should we proceed with an RfC to resolve the matter - ie a proposal to amend WP:AT to be permissive of such a structure. This may require amendment at several points or one proposal that would make it permitted for sports type articles and similar - ie an event with multiple awards or titles being competed for.

• An outcome that specifically opposed such a proposition would render any further discussion about how to capitalise after the dash redundant.

Cinderella157 (talk) 06:13, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi, Dicklyon, Cinderella157, Fyunck(click), Wjemather, Lee Vilenski, Amakuru, Ravenswing, Sod25k, Sportsfan77777, Joseph2302, Jayron32, GhostOfDanGurney, Iffy, GraemeLeggett, Mjquinn_id, GoodDay, SMcCandlish, Tony1, Montanabw, Kaffe42, BilledMammal, Herostratus, Thryduulf, SmokeyJoe, HawkAussie - you have contributed to this RfC by offering a !vote in the initial section. You may be interested in contributing to further discussion immediately below. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 02:03, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Please see this section (above) for an assessment/summary. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:33, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Comments on where are we now, 31 December 2021

• The piece by piece method is what I would strongly object to. That had been mentioned in prior discussions as a way to avoid letting other projects know about huge changes until it was too late for many projects to stand up to change. Sure I would leave things be as no big deal, it isn't broken and there are actual important things that we should be putting effort into instead of changing countless thousands of article titles and the infoboxes that will need new coding and LUA-written navigation bars/templates also. If there was new strong consensus to change from longstanding consensus, then that would be that. I let most sports/entertainment projects know about this rfc not knowing any of their preferences, and they were all over the map here. Actually most prodigious Tennis Project editors did not voice an opinion one way or the other, even though the project was informed. I don't see this as against P&G as they allow flexibility in these matters as some have pointed out. This looks like a no-consensus to me but I'm not sure what the way forward is... a bit tired from the holidays to think properly. Happy New Years everyone and drive safely this New Years Eve night. Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:11, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

  I don't know what piece-by-piece method you're talking about. I propose to fix about 5000 titles per option B, or 50,000 per option A or D. Either way, that's a bigger chunk than I've ever seen fixed before. Are you saying we need to go even bigger, and that if we do maybe we can find enough opposition and so do nothing instead? Dicklyon (talk) 20:04, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Fyunck(click), this RfC has been conducted centrally and broadly notified. If a close here would recommend further action on a project-wise basis, then the existing notifications stand to inform on this. Your concerns about a piece-by-piece approach have been addressed both now and into the future for any outcome of this RfC. Tennis is broken as a result of the recent RfC. The way things stand here, with no support for C, I can't see tennis not changing and all the things you mention are going to need to be done when it does. Avoiding work is not a compelling reason. I don't see anybody actually saying P&G "allow flexibility in these matters". One can WP:IAR but not on the basis of "I don't like it" or "I like this better". There needs to be good objective reasons. Policy tends to be quite firm and WP:AT is a policy. You might see WP:PG and WP:IARMEANS. If the dashed construction is such a good idea, one should be able to convince others to change the policy to permit it. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:25, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I didnt say this wasn't done broadly. It has been. But piece by piece is unfair to all projects that this could affect. Policy does not preclude the dash, but to be honest I'm not sold the dash needs to be there even if it can be sourced, but there are plenty of things I will argue against my own feelings if I feel it's not in the best interest of or helpful to Wikipedia readers. I see this as frivolous. Tennis is not broken and Wikipedia is full of different opinions. We really disagree on that term. I simply see no consensus to change here. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:48, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm too old & too confused, as to what direction this RFC has taken. All I ask is that we use english in the titles. GoodDay (talk) 02:10, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

LOL... post of the day! Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:08, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

This is straight up false. All of the votes for E that are "to do nothing" are "to maintain the status quo". By your own count, it's the most favored option. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 03:26, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Ya mean my IQ is higher, then I'm aware of? sounds good. GoodDay (talk) 05:28, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Just noting to anyone reading this that Cinderella157 moved one of my comments to make it look like I was disagreeing with GoodDay, when I was in fact criticizing Cinderella157's distorted summary above. I moved my comment back to the correct place, and put a strikethrough where Cinderella157 moved my comment. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 07:36, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Sportsfan77777, you edited my assessment (above). There were actually two other edits that followed. I moved your comment to the comment section with a first level dot point with the edit summary Pls put comments in comments section. I believe that to be reasonably consistent with policy on the matter though I acknowledge that I might have done that better. If GoodDay misunderstood the "result", I took steps at their TP to remedy this. You reverted my move with the comment please don't edit others' comments, Cinderella157. Yes, I have removed your edits to my comment/assessment (above) with the edit summary Please don't edit others' comments, User:Sportsfan77777. I actually moved your edit to the correct place with the dot point in place so that it was a first level comment. This has all started with you editing another's comments. I welcome your comments but I would expect you treat others with the same courtesy that you would expect. To not do so is hypocrisy. Please fix this. Your comments are welcome (but in the right place), even if I disagree with them. Then, with the consent of GoodDay and Fyunck(click) (who have contributed to this thread), I would be happy to strike this whole section. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:00, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Strike or hat it. GoodDay (talk) 18:37, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

• I don't have time now to go into detail, but Cinderalla157's summary does not match my reading of the situation, nor my understanding of the meaning of the comments people were leaving. The best thing I think a neutral closer can do is completely ignore it. The votes to do nothing are very clearly saying that the status quo is preferable to any of the options given in this RfC, they should not be dismissed because Cinderella dislikes the status quo. Thryduulf (talk) 10:42, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  I think I'm OK with the status quo for now, except for tennis, where we should apply option B to bring them into consistency with themselves and with other sports. Tennis is the only project that thinks "Men's Singles" is a proper name when applied to tennis-only competitions. Doing nothing there is option C, which is clearly absurd. If there are few such over-capitalizations left in other sports, of source we should find and fix those, too; I've been doing that (found and fixed some in bowls and table tennis and badminton without any objections). Editors who are asking to be "fair" across all sports will hopefully see the way to do so via option B. Later we can discuss bigger questions like whether these subevents are even notable, or should be merged into their parent articles. Dicklyon (talk) 19:51, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Left to fix

These patterns, with years prefixed to them, about 5000 articles with the opercapped "Singles" and "Doubles". I think they're pretty much all tennis, but haven't verified that carefully. The ones with "Singles" or "Doubles" immediately after the dash, without "Men's" or "Women's" or whatever, can be left as-is. I'll make a filtered list of article titles and ask for a bot to move them after we establish consensus. Dicklyon (talk) 20:18, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

List of articles, with year prefixes removed

* ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament – Wheelchair Doubles * ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament – Wheelchair Singles * AIG Japan Open Tennis Championships – Men's Doubles * AIG Japan Open Tennis Championships – Men's Singles * AIG Japan Open Tennis Championships – Women's Doubles * AIG Japan Open Tennis Championships – Women's Singles * ASB Classic – Men's Doubles * ASB Classic – Men's Singles * ASB Classic – Women's Doubles * ASB Classic – Women's Singles * ATP Challenger China International – Nanchang – Doubles * ATP Challenger China International – Nanchang – Singles * ATP China International Tennis Challenge – Anning – Doubles * ATP China International Tennis Challenge – Anning – Singles * Aberto da República – Men's Doubles * Aberto da República – Men's Singles * Aberto da República – Women's Doubles * Aberto da República – Women's Singles * Abierto Mexicano Pegaso – Men's Doubles * Abierto Mexicano Pegaso – Men's Singles * Abierto Mexicano Pegaso – Women's Doubles * Abierto Mexicano Pegaso – Women's Singles * Abierto Mexicano Telcel – Men's Doubles * Abierto Mexicano Telcel – Men's Singles * Abierto Mexicano Telcel – Women's Doubles * Abierto Mexicano Telcel – Women's Singles * Abierto Mexicano Telefonica Movistar – Men's Doubles * Abierto Mexicano Telefonica Movistar – Men's Singles * Abierto Mexicano Telefonica Movistar – Women's Doubles * Abierto Mexicano Telefonica Movistar – Women's Singles * Abierto Mexicano de Tenis Telefonica Movistar – Women's Doubles * Abierto Mexicano de Tenis Telefonica Movistar – Women's Singles * Adelaide International 1 – Men's Doubles * Adelaide International 1 – Men's Singles * Adelaide International 1 – Women's Doubles * Adelaide International 1 – Women's Singles * Adelaide International – Men's Doubles * Adelaide International – Men's Singles * Adelaide International – Women's Doubles * Adelaide International – Women's Singles * Adidas International – Men's Doubles * Adidas International – Men's Singles * Adidas International – Women's Doubles * Adidas International – Women's Singles * Advantage Cars Prague Open – Men's Doubles * Advantage Cars Prague Open – Men's Singles * Advantage Cars Prague Open – Women's Doubles * Advantage Cars Prague Open – Women's Singles * Aegon GB Pro-Series Bath – Men's Doubles * Aegon GB Pro-Series Bath – Men's Singles * Aegon GB Pro-Series Bath – Women's Doubles * Aegon GB Pro-Series Bath – Women's Singles * Aegon Ilkley Trophy – Men's Doubles * Aegon Ilkley Trophy – Men's Singles * Aegon Ilkley Trophy – Women's Doubles * Aegon Ilkley Trophy – Women's Singles * Aegon International Eastbourne – Men's Doubles * Aegon International Eastbourne – Men's Singles * Aegon International Eastbourne – Women's Doubles * Aegon International Eastbourne – Women's Singles * Aegon International – Men's Doubles * Aegon International – Men's Singles * Aegon International – Women's Doubles * Aegon International – Women's Singles * Aegon Pro-Series Loughborough – Men's Doubles * Aegon Pro-Series Loughborough – Men's Singles * Aegon Pro-Series Loughborough – Women's Doubles * Aegon Pro-Series Loughborough – Women's Singles * Aegon Surbiton Trophy – Men's Doubles * Aegon Surbiton Trophy – Men's Singles * Aegon Surbiton Trophy – Women's Doubles * Aegon Surbiton Trophy – Women's Singles * Aegon Trophy – Men's Doubles * Aegon Trophy – Men's Singles * Aegon Trophy – Women's Doubles * Aegon Trophy – Women's Singles * American Express – TED Open – Doubles * American Express – TED Open – Singles * Anning Open – Men's Doubles * Anning Open – Men's Singles * Anning Open – Women's Doubles * Anning Open – Women's Singles * Antonio Savoldi–Marco Cò – Trofeo Dimmidisì – Doubles * Antonio Savoldi–Marco Cò – Trofeo Dimmidisì – Singles * Apia International Sydney – Men's Doubles * Apia International Sydney – Men's Singles * Apia International Sydney – Women's Doubles * Apia International Sydney – Women's Singles * Aspria Tennis Cup – Trofeo CDI – Doubles * Aspria Tennis Cup – Trofeo CDI – Singles * Astana Open – Men's Doubles * Astana Open – Men's Singles * Astana Open – Women's Doubles * Astana Open – Women's Singles * Australasian Championships – Men's Doubles * Australasian Championships – Men's Singles * Australasian Championships – Mixed Doubles * Australasian Championships – Women's Doubles * Australasian Championships – Women's Singles * Australian Championships – Men's Doubles * Australian Championships – Men's Singles * Australian Championships – Mixed Doubles * Australian Championships – Women's Doubles * Australian Championships – Women's Singles * Australian Open (December) – Men's Doubles * Australian Open (December) – Men's Singles * Australian Open (December) – Women's Doubles * Australian Open (December) – Women's Singles * Australian Open (January) – Men's Doubles * Australian Open (January) – Men's Singles * Australian Open (January) – Women's Doubles * Australian Open (January) – Women's Singles * Australian Open – Boys' Doubles * Australian Open – Boys' Singles * Australian Open – Girls' Doubles * Australian Open – Girls' Singles * Australian Open – Men's Doubles * Australian Open – Men's Legends' Doubles * Australian Open – Men's Singles * Australian Open – Mixed Doubles * Australian Open – Wheelchair Men's Doubles * Australian Open – Wheelchair Men's Singles * Australian Open – Wheelchair Quad Doubles * Australian Open – Wheelchair Quad Singles * Australian Open – Wheelchair Women's Doubles * Australian Open – Wheelchair Women's Singles * Australian Open – Women's Doubles * Australian Open – Women's Legends Doubles * Australian Open – Women's Legends' Doubles * Australian Open – Women's Singles * BNP Paribas Open – Men's Doubles * BNP Paribas Open – Men's Singles * BNP Paribas Open – Women's Doubles * BNP Paribas Open – Women's Singles * Badminton Asia Junior Championships – Boys' Doubles * Badminton Asia Junior Championships – Boys' Singles * Badminton Asia Junior Championships – Girls' Doubles * Badminton Asia Junior Championships – Girls' Singles * Beijing International Challenger – Men's Doubles * Beijing International Challenger – Men's Singles * Beijing International Challenger – Women's Doubles * Beijing International Challenger – Women's Singles * Belgrade Challenger – Men's Doubles * Belgrade Challenger – Men's Singles * Belgrade Challenger – Women's Doubles * Belgrade Challenger – Women's Singles * Bendigo International – Men's Doubles * Bendigo International – Men's Singles * Bendigo International – Women's Singles * Benson & Hedges Centennial Open – Men's Singles * Brasil Open – Men's Doubles * Brasil Open – Men's Singles * Brisbane International – Men's Doubles * Brisbane International – Men's Singles * Brisbane International – Women's Doubles * Brisbane International – Women's Singles * British Hard Court Championships – Men's Singles * Burnie International – Men's Doubles * Burnie International – Men's Singles * Burnie International – Women's Doubles * Burnie International – Women's Singles * Camparini Gioielli Cup – Trofeo Pompea – Doubles * Camparini Gioielli Cup – Trofeo Pompea – Singles * Canadian Open – Men's Doubles * Canadian Open – Men's Singles * Canadian Open – Women's Doubles * Canadian Open – Women's Singles * Canberra Tennis International – Men's Doubles * Canberra Tennis International – Men's Singles * Canberra Tennis International – Women's Doubles * Canberra Tennis International – Women's Singles * Challenger Banque Nationale de Gatineau – Men's Doubles * Challenger Banque Nationale de Gatineau – Men's Singles * Challenger Banque Nationale de Gatineau – Women's Doubles * Challenger Banque Nationale de Gatineau – Women's Singles * Challenger Banque Nationale de Granby – Men's Doubles * Challenger Banque Nationale de Granby – Men's Singles * Challenger Banque Nationale de Granby – Women's Doubles * Challenger Banque Nationale de Granby – Women's Singles * China Open – Men's Doubles * China Open – Men's Singles * China Open – Mixed Doubles * China Open – Women's Doubles * China Open – Women's Singles * Cincinnati Open – Men's Singles * Citi Open – Men's Doubles * Citi Open – Men's Singles * Citi Open – Women's Doubles * Citi Open – Women's Singles * Città di Vercelli – Trofeo Multimed – Doubles * Città di Vercelli – Trofeo Multimed – Singles * City of Playford Tennis International II – Men's Doubles * City of Playford Tennis International II – Men's Singles * City of Playford Tennis International II – Women's Doubles * City of Playford Tennis International II – Women's Singles * City of Playford Tennis International – Men's Doubles * City of Playford Tennis International – Men's Singles * Claro Open Medellín – Men's Doubles * Claro Open Medellín – Men's Singles * Columbus Challenger – Men's Doubles * Columbus Challenger – Men's Singles * Columbus Challenger – Women's Doubles * Columbus Challenger – Women's Singles * Compaq Grand Slam Cup – Men's Singles * Compaq Grand Slam Cup – Women's Singles * Concurso Internacional de Tenis – San Sebastián – Doubles * Concurso Internacional de Tenis – San Sebastián – Singles * Concurso Internacional de Tenis – Vigo – Doubles * Concurso Internacional de Tenis – Vigo – Singles * Darwin Tennis International – Women's Doubles * Darwin Tennis International – Women's Singles * Delhi Open – Men's Doubles * Delhi Open – Men's Singles * Delhi Open – Women's Doubles * Delhi Open – Women's Singles * Dubai Tennis Championships – Men's Doubles * Dubai Tennis Championships – Men's Singles * Dubai Tennis Championships – Women's Doubles * Dubai Tennis Championships – Women's Singles * Dunlop World Challenge – Men's Doubles * Dunlop World Challenge – Men's Singles * Dunlop World Challenge – Women's Doubles * Dunlop World Challenge – Women's Singles * ECM Prague Open – Men's Doubles * ECM Prague Open – Men's Singles * ECM Prague Open – Women's Doubles * ECM Prague Open – Women's Singles * Eastbourne International – Men's Doubles * Eastbourne International – Men's Singles * Eastbourne International – Women's Doubles * Eastbourne International – Women's Singles * Emilia-Romagna Open – Men's Doubles * Emilia-Romagna Open – Men's Singles * Emilia-Romagna Open – Women's Doubles * Emilia-Romagna Open – Women's Singles * Ericsson Open – Men's Doubles * Ericsson Open – Men's Singles * Ericsson Open – Women's Doubles * Ericsson Open – Women's Singles * Estoril Open – Men's Doubles * Estoril Open – Men's Singles * Estoril Open – Women's Doubles * Estoril Open – Women's Singles * Fergana Challenger – Men's Doubles * Fergana Challenger – Men's Singles * Fergana Challenger – Women's Doubles * Fergana Challenger – Women's Singles * Fifth Third Bank Tennis Championships – Men's Doubles * Fifth Third Bank Tennis Championships – Men's Singles * Fifth Third Bank Tennis Championships – Women's Doubles * Fifth Third Bank Tennis Championships – Women's Singles * French Championships – Men's Doubles * French Championships – Men's Singles * French Championships – Seniors Over 40 Singles * French Championships – Women's Doubles * French Championships – Women's Singles * French Covered Court Championships – Men's Singles * French Open – Boys' Doubles * French Open – Boys' Singles * French Open – Girls' Doubles * French Open – Girls' Singles * French Open – Legends Over 45 Doubles * French Open – Legends Under 45 Doubles * French Open – Men's Doubles * French Open – Men's Singles * French Open – Mixed Doubles * French Open – Wheelchair Men's Doubles * French Open – Wheelchair Men's Singles * French Open – Wheelchair Quad Doubles * French Open – Wheelchair Quad Singles * French Open – Wheelchair Women's Doubles * French Open – Wheelchair Women's Singles * French Open – Women's Doubles * French Open – Women's Legends Doubles * French Open – Women's Singles * Fuzion 100 Ilkley Trophy – Men's Doubles * Fuzion 100 Ilkley Trophy – Men's Singles * Fuzion 100 Ilkley Trophy – Women's Doubles * Fuzion 100 Ilkley Trophy – Women's Singles * Fuzion 100 Surbiton Trophy – Men's Doubles * Fuzion 100 Surbiton Trophy – Men's Singles * Fuzion 100 Surbiton Trophy – Women's Doubles * Fuzion 100 Surbiton Trophy – Women's Singles * Hamburg European Open – Men's Doubles * Hamburg European Open – Men's Singles * Hamburg European Open – Women's Doubles * Hamburg European Open – Women's Singles * Heineken Trophy – Men's Doubles * Heineken Trophy – Men's Singles * Heineken Trophy – Women's Doubles * Heineken Trophy – Women's Singles * Holden NSW Open – Men's Doubles * Holden NSW Open – Men's Singles * Hua Hin Championships – Men's Doubles * Hua Hin Championships – Men's Singles * Hua Hin Championships – Women's Doubles * Hua Hin Championships – Women's Singles * Hungarian International Tennis Championships – Men's Singles * I.ČLTK Prague Open – Men's Doubles * I.ČLTK Prague Open – Men's Singles * ITF Women's Circuit – Baotou – Doubles * ITF Women's Circuit – Baotou – Singles * ITF Women's Circuit – Hong Kong – Doubles * ITF Women's Circuit – Hong Kong – Singles * ITF Women's Circuit – Sanya – Doubles * ITF Women's Circuit – Sanya – Singles * ITF Women's Circuit – Shenzhen Longhua – Doubles * ITF Women's Circuit – Shenzhen Longhua – Singles * ITF Women's Circuit – Shenzhen – Doubles * ITF Women's Circuit – Shenzhen – Singles * ITF Women's Circuit – Suzhou – Doubles * ITF Women's Circuit – Suzhou – Singles * ITF Women's Circuit – Wenshan – Doubles * ITF Women's Circuit – Wenshan – Singles * ITF Women's Circuit – Wuhan – Doubles * ITF Women's Circuit – Wuhan – Singles * ITF Women's Circuit – Xi'an – Doubles * ITF Women's Circuit – Xi'an – Singles * ITF Women's Circuit – Xuzhou – Doubles * ITF Women's Circuit – Xuzhou – Singles * ITF Women's Circuit – Yakima – Doubles * ITF Women's Circuit – Yakima – Singles * ITF Women's World Tennis Tour – Bellinzona – Doubles * ITF Women's World Tennis Tour – Bellinzona – Singles * Idea Prokom Open – Men's Doubles * Idea Prokom Open – Men's Singles * Idea Prokom Open – Women's Doubles * Idea Prokom Open – Women's Singles * Ilkley Trophy – Men's Doubles * Ilkley Trophy – Men's Singles * Ilkley Trophy – Women's Doubles * Ilkley Trophy – Women's Singles * Indian Wells Masters – Men's Doubles * Indian Wells Masters – Men's Singles * Indian Wells Masters – Women's Doubles * Indian Wells Masters – Women's Singles * Internationaux du Doubs – Open de Franche-Comté – Doubles * Internationaux du Doubs – Open de Franche-Comté – Singles * Internazionali di Tennis del Friuli Venezia Giulia – Men's Doubles * Internazionali di Tennis del Friuli Venezia Giulia – Men's Singles * Internazionali di Tennis di Manerbio – Trofeo Dimmidisì – Doubles * Internazionali di Tennis di Manerbio – Trofeo Dimmidisì – Singles * Italian Open – Men's Doubles * Italian Open – Men's Singles * Italian Open – Women's Doubles * Italian Open – Women's Singles * Japan Open Tennis Championships – Men's Doubles * Japan Open Tennis Championships – Men's Singles * Japan Open Tennis Championships – Women's Doubles * Japan Open Tennis Championships – Women's Singles * Jin'an Open – Women's Doubles * Jin'an Open – Women's Singles * Jinan International Open – Men's Doubles * Jinan International Open – Men's Singles * Jinan International Open – Women's Doubles * Jinan International Open – Women's Singles * Kazan Summer Cup – Men's Doubles * Kazan Summer Cup – Men's Singles * Kazan Summer Cup – Women's Doubles * Kazan Summer Cup – Women's Singles * Keio Challenger – Men's Doubles * Keio Challenger – Men's Singles * Kentucky Bank Tennis Championships – Men's Doubles * Kentucky Bank Tennis Championships – Men's Singles * Kentucky Bank Tennis Championships – Women's Doubles * Kentucky Bank Tennis Championships – Women's Singles * Kremlin Cup – Men's Doubles * Kremlin Cup – Men's Singles * Kremlin Cup – Women's Doubles * Kremlin Cup – Women's Singles * Kroger St. Jude International – Men's Doubles * Kroger St. Jude International – Men's Singles * Kroger St. Jude International – Women's Doubles * Kroger St. Jude International – Women's Singles * Kunming Open – Men's Doubles * Kunming Open – Men's Singles * Kunming Open – Women's Doubles * Kunming Open – Women's Singles * Launceston International – Men's Doubles * Launceston International – Men's Singles * Launceston Tennis International – Men's Doubles * Launceston Tennis International – Men's Singles * Launceston Tennis International – Women's Doubles * Launceston Tennis International – Women's Singles * Lecoq Seoul Open – Men's Doubles * Lecoq Seoul Open – Men's Singles * Lecoq Seoul Open – Women's Doubles * Lecoq Seoul Open – Women's Singles * Lipton Championships – Men's Doubles * Lipton Championships – Men's Singles * Lipton Championships – Women's Doubles * Lipton Championships – Women's Singles * Lipton International Players Championships – Men's Doubles * Lipton International Players Championships – Men's Singles * Lipton International Players Championships – Women's Doubles * Lipton International Players Championships – Women's Singles * Lisboa Belém Open – Men's Doubles * Lisboa Belém Open – Men's Singles * Liuzhou International Challenger – Men's Doubles * Liuzhou International Challenger – Men's Singles * Liuzhou International Challenger – Women's Doubles * Liuzhou International Challenger – Women's Singles * Liuzhou Open – Men's Doubles * Liuzhou Open – Men's Singles * Liuzhou Open – Women's Doubles * Liuzhou Open – Women's Singles * Manta Open – Trofeo Ricardo Delgado Aray – Doubles * Manta Open – Trofeo Ricardo Delgado Aray – Singles * MasterCard Tennis Cup – Men's Doubles * MasterCard Tennis Cup – Men's Singles * MasterCard Tennis Cup – Women's Doubles * MasterCard Tennis Cup – Women's Singles * McDonald's Burnie International – Men's Doubles * McDonald's Burnie International – Men's Singles * McDonald's Burnie International – Women's Doubles * McDonald's Burnie International – Women's Singles * Medibank International Sydney – Men's Doubles * Medibank International Sydney – Men's Singles * Medibank International Sydney – Women's Doubles * Medibank International Sydney – Women's Singles * Medibank International – Men's Doubles * Medibank International – Men's Singles * Medibank International – Women's Doubles * Medibank International – Women's Singles * Melbourne Summer Set 1 – Men's Doubles * Melbourne Summer Set 1 – Men's Singles * Melbourne Summer Set 1 – Women's Singles * Miami Open – Men's Doubles * Miami Open – Men's Singles * Miami Open – Women's Doubles * Miami Open – Women's Singles * Morelos Open – Men's Doubles * Morelos Open – Men's Singles * Morocco Tennis Tour – Casablanca II – Doubles * Morocco Tennis Tour – Casablanca II – Singles * Morocco Tennis Tour – Casablanca – Doubles * Morocco Tennis Tour – Casablanca – Singles * Morocco Tennis Tour – Kenitra – Doubles * Morocco Tennis Tour – Kenitra – Singles * Morocco Tennis Tour – Marrakech – Doubles * Morocco Tennis Tour – Marrakech – Singles * Morocco Tennis Tour – Meknes – Doubles * Morocco Tennis Tour – Meknes – Singles * Morocco Tennis Tour – Mohammedia – Doubles * Morocco Tennis Tour – Mohammedia – Singles * Morocco Tennis Tour – Rabat – Doubles * Morocco Tennis Tour – Rabat – Singles * Morocco Tennis Tour – Tanger – Doubles * Morocco Tennis Tour – Tanger – Singles * Mubadala World Tennis Championship – Men's Singles * Murray Trophy – Glasgow – Doubles * Murray Trophy – Glasgow – Singles * Mutua Madrid Open – Men's Doubles * Mutua Madrid Open – Men's Singles * Mutua Madrid Open – Women's Doubles * Mutua Madrid Open – Women's Singles * Mutua Madrileña Madrid Open – Men's Doubles * Mutua Madrileña Madrid Open – Men's Singles * Mutua Madrileña Madrid Open – Women's Doubles * Mutua Madrileña Madrid Open – Women's Singles * NASDAQ-100 Open – Men's Doubles * NASDAQ-100 Open – Men's Singles * NASDAQ-100 Open – Women's Doubles * NASDAQ-100 Open – Women's Singles * National Bank Open – Men's Doubles * National Bank Open – Men's Singles * National Bank Open – Women's Doubles * National Bank Open – Women's Singles * Nature's Way Sydney Tennis International – Men's Doubles * Nature's Way Sydney Tennis International – Men's Singles * Nature's Way Sydney Tennis International – Women's Doubles * Nature's Way Sydney Tennis International – Women's Singles * New South Wales Open – Men's Doubles * New South Wales Open – Men's Singles * New South Wales Open – Women's Doubles * New South Wales Open – Women's Singles * New Zealand Open – Men's Singles * Ningbo Challenger – Men's Doubles * Ningbo Challenger – Men's Singles * Ningbo Challenger – Women's Doubles * Ningbo Challenger – Women's Singles * Nokia Open – Men's Doubles * Nokia Open – Men's Singles * Nokia Open – Women's Doubles * Nokia Open – Women's Singles * Nottingham Challenge – Men's Doubles * Nottingham Challenge – Men's Singles * Nottingham Challenge – Women's Doubles * Nottingham Challenge – Women's Singles * Nottingham Open – Men's Doubles * Nottingham Open – Men's Singles * Nottingham Open – Women's Doubles * Nottingham Open – Women's Singles * Nottingham Trophy – Men's Doubles * Nottingham Trophy – Men's Singles * Nottingham Trophy – Women's Doubles * Nottingham Trophy – Women's Singles * ONGC–GAIL Delhi Open – Men's Doubles * ONGC–GAIL Delhi Open – Men's Singles * ONGC–GAIL Delhi Open – Women's Doubles * ONGC–GAIL Delhi Open – Women's Singles * OTB International Open – Men's Doubles * OTB International Open – Men's Singles * OTB Open – Men's Doubles * OTB Open – Men's Singles * OTB Open – Women's Doubles * OTB Open – Women's Singles * OTB Schenectady Open – Men's Doubles * OTB Schenectady Open – Men's Singles * Odlum Brown Vancouver Open – Men's Doubles * Odlum Brown Vancouver Open – Men's Singles * Odlum Brown Vancouver Open – Women's Doubles * Odlum Brown Vancouver Open – Women's Singles * Open Barletta – Città della Disfida – Doubles * Open Barletta – Città della Disfida – Singles * Open Castilla y León – Men's Doubles * Open Castilla y León – Men's Singles * Open Costa Adeje – Isla de Tenerife – Doubles * Open Costa Adeje – Isla de Tenerife – Singles * Open Diputación Ciudad de Pozoblanco – Men's Doubles * Open Diputación Ciudad de Pozoblanco – Men's Singles * Open Diputación Ciudad de Pozoblanco – Women's Doubles * Open Diputación Ciudad de Pozoblanco – Women's Singles * Open Seguros Bolívar – Men's Doubles * Open Seguros Bolívar – Men's Singles * Open Seguros Bolívar – Women's Doubles * Open Seguros Bolívar – Women's Singles * Oracle Challenger Series – Chicago – Men's Doubles * Oracle Challenger Series – Chicago – Men's Singles * Oracle Challenger Series – Chicago – Women's Doubles * Oracle Challenger Series – Chicago – Women's Singles * Oracle Challenger Series – Houston – Men's Doubles * Oracle Challenger Series – Houston – Men's Singles * Oracle Challenger Series – Houston – Women's Doubles * Oracle Challenger Series – Houston – Women's Singles * Oracle Challenger Series – Indian Wells – Men's Doubles * Oracle Challenger Series – Indian Wells – Men's Singles * Oracle Challenger Series – Indian Wells – Women's Doubles * Oracle Challenger Series – Indian Wells – Women's Singles * Oracle Challenger Series – New Haven – Men's Doubles * Oracle Challenger Series – New Haven – Men's Singles * Oracle Challenger Series – New Haven – Women's Doubles * Oracle Challenger Series – New Haven – Women's Singles * Oracle Challenger Series – Newport Beach – Men's Doubles * Oracle Challenger Series – Newport Beach – Men's Singles * Oracle Challenger Series – Newport Beach – Women's Doubles * Oracle Challenger Series – Newport Beach – Women's Singles * Ordina Open – Men's Doubles * Ordina Open – Men's Singles * Ordina Open – Women's Doubles * Ordina Open – Women's Singles * Pacific Life Open – Men's Doubles * Pacific Life Open – Men's Singles * Pacific Life Open – Women's Doubles * Pacific Life Open – Women's Singles * Peters International – Men's Doubles * Peters International – Men's Singles * Peters International – Women's Doubles * Peters International – Women's Singles * Peters NSW Open – Men's Singles * Peters NSW Open – Women's Doubles * Peters NSW Open – Women's Singles * Pilot Pen International – Men's Doubles * Pilot Pen International – Men's Singles * Pilot Pen International – Women's Doubles * Pilot Pen International – Women's Singles * Pilot Pen Tennis – Men's Doubles * Pilot Pen Tennis – Men's Singles * Pilot Pen Tennis – Women's Doubles * Pilot Pen Tennis – Women's Singles * Pingshan Open – Men's Doubles * Pingshan Open – Men's Singles * Pingshan Open – Women's Doubles * Pingshan Open – Women's Singles * Player's Canadian Open – Men's Singles * Player's Canadian Open – Women's Doubles * Player's Canadian Open – Women's Singles * Portugal Open – Men's Doubles * Portugal Open – Men's Singles * Portugal Open – Women's Doubles * Portugal Open – Women's Singles * President's Cup (tennis) – Men's Doubles * President's Cup (tennis) – Men's Singles * President's Cup (tennis) – Women's Doubles * President's Cup (tennis) – Women's Singles * President's Cup – Men's Doubles * President's Cup – Men's Singles * President's Cup – Women's Doubles * President's Cup – Women's Singles * Queen's Club Championships – Men's Doubles * Queen's Club Championships – Men's Singles * Queen's Club Championships – Wheelchair Doubles * Queen's Club Championships – Wheelchair Singles * Racquetball World Championships – Men's Doubles * Racquetball World Championships – Men's Singles * Racquetball World Championships – Women's Doubles * Racquetball World Championships – Women's Singles * Ricoh Open – Men's Doubles * Ricoh Open – Men's Singles * Ricoh Open – Women's Doubles * Ricoh Open – Women's Singles * Rio Open – Men's Doubles * Rio Open – Men's Singles * Rio Open – Women's Doubles * Rio Open – Women's Singles * Ritro Slovak Open – Men's Doubles * Ritro Slovak Open – Men's Singles * Ritro Slovak Open – Women's Doubles * Ritro Slovak Open – Women's Singles * Rogers Cup – Men's Doubles * Rogers Cup – Men's Singles * Rogers Cup – Women's Doubles * Rogers Cup – Women's Singles * Rogers Masters – Men's Doubles * Rosmalen Grass Court Championships – Men's Doubles * Rosmalen Grass Court Championships – Men's Singles * Rosmalen Grass Court Championships – Women's Doubles * Rosmalen Grass Court Championships – Women's Singles * Samsung Securities Cup – Men's Doubles * Samsung Securities Cup – Men's Singles * Samsung Securities Cup – Women's Doubles * Samsung Securities Cup – Women's Singles * Seguros Bolívar Open Bogotá – Men's Doubles * Seguros Bolívar Open Bogotá – Men's Singles * Seguros Bolívar Open Bogotá – Women's Singles * Seguros Bolívar Open Medellín – Men's Doubles * Seguros Bolívar Open Medellín – Men's Singles * Seguros Bolívar Open Medellín – Women's Doubles * Seguros Bolívar Open Medellín – Women's Singles * Serbia Open – Men's Doubles * Serbia Open – Men's Singles * Serbia Open – Women's Doubles * Serbia Open – Women's Singles * Shenzhen Longhua Open – Men's Doubles * Shenzhen Longhua Open – Men's Singles * Shenzhen Longhua Open – Women's Doubles * Shenzhen Longhua Open – Women's Singles * Slovak Open – Men's Doubles * Slovak Open – Men's Singles * Slovak Open – Women's Doubles * Slovak Open – Women's Singles * Sony Ericsson Open – Boys' Singles * Sony Ericsson Open – Girls' Singles * Sony Ericsson Open – Men's Doubles * Sony Ericsson Open – Men's Singles * Sony Ericsson Open – Women's Doubles * Sony Ericsson Open – Women's Singles * Sony Open Tennis – Men's Doubles * Sony Open Tennis – Men's Singles * Sony Open Tennis – Women's Doubles * Sony Open Tennis – Women's Singles * South American Open – Men's Singles * South Australian Tennis Championships – Men's Singles * Soweto Open – Men's Doubles * Soweto Open – Men's Singles * Soweto Open – Women's Doubles * Soweto Open – Women's Singles * Stockholm Open – Men's Doubles * Stockholm Open – Men's Singles * Stockton Challenger – Men's Doubles * Stockton Challenger – Men's Singles * Stockton Challenger – Women's Doubles * Stockton Challenger – Women's Singles * Strabag Prague Open – Men's Doubles * Strabag Prague Open – Men's Singles * Strabag Prague Open – Women's Doubles * Strabag Prague Open – Women's Singles * Suntory Japan Open Tennis Championships – Men's Doubles * Suntory Japan Open Tennis Championships – Men's Singles * Suntory Japan Open Tennis Championships – Women's Doubles * Suntory Japan Open Tennis Championships – Women's Singles * Surbiton Trophy – Men's Doubles * Surbiton Trophy – Men's Singles * Surbiton Trophy – Women's Doubles * Surbiton Trophy – Women's Singles * Swedish Open – Men's Doubles * Swedish Open – Men's Singles * Swedish Open – Women's Doubles * Swedish Open – Women's Singles * Sydney International – Men's Doubles * Sydney International – Men's Singles * Sydney International – Women's Doubles * Sydney International – Women's Singles * São Paulo Challenger de Tênis – Men's Doubles * São Paulo Challenger de Tênis – Men's Singles * São Paulo Challenger de Tênis – Women's Doubles * São Paulo Challenger de Tênis – Women's Singles * TEAN International – Men's Doubles * TEAN International – Men's Singles * TEAN International – Women's Doubles * TEAN International – Women's Singles * Tampere Open – Men's Doubles * Tampere Open – Men's Singles * Tampere Open – Women's Doubles * Tampere Open – Women's Singles * Tennis Championships of Maui – Men's Doubles * Tennis Championships of Maui – Men's Singles * Tennis Championships of Maui – Women's Doubles * Tennis Championships of Maui – Women's Singles * Tianjin Health Industry Park – Men's Singles * Topshelf Open – Men's Doubles * Topshelf Open – Men's Singles * Topshelf Open – Women's Doubles * Topshelf Open – Women's Singles * Traralgon International – Men's Doubles * Traralgon International – Men's Singles * Traralgon International – Women's Doubles * Traralgon International – Women's Singles * U.S. Clay Court Championships – Men's Doubles * U.S. Clay Court Championships – Men's Singles * U.S. Clay Court Championships – Women's Doubles * U.S. Clay Court Championships – Women's Singles * U.S. National Championships – Men's Doubles * U.S. National Championships – Men's Singles * U.S. National Championships – Women's Doubles * U.S. National Championships – Women's Singles * U.S. National Indoor Tennis Championships – Men's Doubles * U.S. National Indoor Tennis Championships – Men's Singles * U.S. National Indoor Tennis Championships – Women's Doubles * U.S. National Indoor Tennis Championships – Women's Singles * U.S. Professional Indoor – Men's Singles * UNICEF Open – Men's Doubles * UNICEF Open – Men's Singles * UNICEF Open – Women's Doubles * UNICEF Open – Women's Singles * US Open – Boys' Doubles * US Open – Boys' Singles * US Open – Girls' Doubles * US Open – Girls' Singles * US Open – Men's Doubles * US Open – Men's Singles * US Open – Mixed Doubles * US Open – Wheelchair Men's Doubles * US Open – Wheelchair Men's Singles * US Open – Wheelchair Quad Doubles * US Open – Wheelchair Quad Singles * US Open – Wheelchair Women's Doubles * US Open – Wheelchair Women's Singles * US Open – Women's Doubles * US Open – Women's Singles * Uruguay Open – Men's Doubles * Uruguay Open – Men's Singles * Uruguay Open – Women's Doubles * Uruguay Open – Women's Singles * Volvo Open – Men's Doubles * Volvo Open – Men's Singles * Volvo Open – Women's Doubles * Volvo Open – Women's Singles * Western & Southern Open – Men's Doubles * Western & Southern Open – Men's Singles * Western & Southern Open – Women's Doubles * Western & Southern Open – Women's Singles * Wheelchair Doubles Masters – Men's Doubles * Wheelchair Doubles Masters – Quad Doubles * Wheelchair Doubles Masters – Women's Doubles * Wheelchair Tennis Masters – Men's Singles * Wheelchair Tennis Masters – Quad Singles * Wheelchair Tennis Masters – Women's Singles * Wimbledon Championships – Boys' Doubles * Wimbledon Championships – Boys' Singles * Wimbledon Championships – Gentlemen's Invitation Doubles * Wimbledon Championships – Girls' Doubles * Wimbledon Championships – Girls' Singles * Wimbledon Championships – Ladies' Invitation Doubles * Wimbledon Championships – Men's Doubles * Wimbledon Championships – Men's Singles * Wimbledon Championships – Mixed Doubles * Wimbledon Championships – Senior Gentlemen's Invitation Doubles * Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair Men's Doubles * Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair Men's Singles * Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair Quad Doubles * Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair Quad Singles * Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair Women's Doubles * Wimbledon Championships – Wheelchair Women's Singles * Wimbledon Championships – Women's Doubles * Wimbledon Championships – Women's Singles * Winnipeg National Bank Challenger – Men's Doubles * Winnipeg National Bank Challenger – Men's Singles * Winnipeg National Bank Challenger – Women's Doubles * Winnipeg National Bank Challenger – Women's Singles * World Hard Court Championships – Men's Doubles * World Hard Court Championships – Men's Singles * World Hard Court Championships – Mixed Doubles * World Hard Court Championships – Women's Doubles * World Hard Court Championships – Women's Singles * Zagreb Open – Men's Doubles * Zagreb Open – Men's Singles * Zagreb Open – Women's Doubles * Zagreb Open – Women's Singles * Zhuhai Open – Men's Doubles * Zhuhai Open – Men's Singles * Zhuhai Open – Women's Doubles * Zhuhai Open – Women's Singles * du Maurier Open – Men's Doubles * du Maurier Open – Men's Singles * du Maurier Open – Women's Doubles * du Maurier Open – Women's Singles

5000 must be really low. Just Wimbledon has 140 years of events so probably 800 needless changes for just one tournament. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:38, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

834 for Wimbledon to be exact. "Needless" is just your opinion. If we want to cure the tennis inconsistency, these need to be fixed. It's not that hard. Dicklyon (talk) 22:08, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

That these "need to be fixed" is just your opinion. That's no more or less correct than Fyunck's opinion. Thryduulf (talk) 22:53, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

And who knows how many LUA written modules such as Template:Infobox tennis tournament event will have sudden problems crop up. And I have no idea about all the individual templates on each and every player article. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:14, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Post-close

@Chess: Thanks for closing this complicated mess. But I have to ask why you say "there is a consensus to let the editors in the tennis topic area decide the capitalization issue themselves". It seemed to me that a majority of respondents had good policy and guideline based reasons to want to fix the over-capitalization that appears on some (but not all) of the tennis pages. Where are you seeing a consensus to let that project keep it this messy way that they claim is based on a compromise with the multi-sport project? Dicklyon (talk) 23:38, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

@Dicklyon: The consensus wasn't to enforce any particular capitalization standard for the tennis topic area, but that editors are free to decide what capitalization standard is applicable to the tennis topic area. It's more or less an invitation to start a new RfC on capitalization after dashes in the tennis area; not an endorsement of what may or may not be the current standard in that area. I apologize if that wasn't clear. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 00:18, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Chess: this RfC was never about creating new rules but a ruling on the application of existing "rules" in a particular circumstance. There was never any particular proposal on the table for a change to WP:AT. The possibility of a change to that policy was only raised three days ago. This RfC started with the good faith assumption that the dash was a permitted construction. The issue of permissibility was only identified quite late and WP:AT is quite prescriptive in this regard. Do not use titles suggesting that one article forms part of another: even if an article is considered subsidiary to another ... and Commas and parentheses (round brackets) are the only characters that can be used without restriction to separate a disambiguating term in an article title. Colons can be used in the limited cases of subtitles of some creative works and lists split over several pages. The close states that dashes should be allowed for the future, but it also states there is no consensus to ban dashes in sports event titles. Where does the close stand in regard to this inconsistency with WP:AT? Can (or should) we consider a proposal that would make the dashed construction for sports event titles acceptable within WP:AT or is the close saying we should just ignore this. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 02:40, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

WT:Article titles is pretty much the same consensus level as WP:Article titles. If a proposal here that gained consensus was found to contradict WP:Article titles, the new proposal here should hold. It doesn't make sense to distinguish between interpretation and policy. All that being said, the "inconsistency" that was raised wasn't really agreed upon to be an inconsistency. There was much debate over whether a dash constituted a "disambiguating term" or created a "subsidiary article" or didn't do anything that was banned by policy, or even claiming that the usage of the dash was an exemption that existed. Which is part of why the close was phrased the way that it was. The status quo is currently allowing dashes in these titles, and since there wasn't a consensus to ban them/interpret the policy as banning them they are allowed.

That being said, if you want to create an RfC to address that perceived inconsistency (such as by banning/explicitly allowing dashes in sports event titles) then go ahead. This RfC was a WP:TRAINWRECK and a far more focused RfC might gain an actual consensus. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 04:19, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

In reference to the quote in the close: "While I am not familiar with the language or syntax of templates, this is potentially an opportunity to improve the flexibility of the templates." and the conclusion drawn by the close: I don't really see the appeal of this refutation as it didn't address how this potentially massive issue will be resolved and just proposed other people doing more work to fix the template issues. I proposed a solution that did not require a change to templates and did not advocate for a change that would necessitate a change to templates. The quote was in the context of existing problems with the templates - if that course was chosen. If the close has a valid conclusion to make in regard to the template issue, it should be able to be made without misrepresenting what I have said. If the close has an invalid conclusion on the matter, it should definitely not be made by misrepresenting what I have said. Either way, the misrepresentation is the issue and misrepresentation is a matter of WP:CIVILITY. Cinderella157 (talk) 09:08, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Transgender people and COMMONNAME

Can we update the page, specifically WP:COMMONNAME to reflect the guidelines in WP:GENDERID and MOS:GENDERID? At the moment, the COMMONNAME section doesn't explicitly say what to do in cases where the common name isn't what the person's own name was and thus leaves a lot of room for ambiguity. For example, in cases where the majority of sources report a person's name to be X and use the name X for them, though noting they were transgender and called themselves Y, COMMONNAME has been used to argue for continuing to call them X. Since COMMONNAME is a policy, unlike the gender related style guides, it's been argued it overrides considerations of their gender identity. While there are many references to checking the applicable guidelines in specific cases, I think that an explicit reference to cases of trans people and the appropriate guides would help Wikipedia. TheTranarchist (talk) 16:08, 9 February 2022 (UTC)TheTranarchist

I don't see the need for this. When trans people change their name, WP:NAMECHANGES (part of the COMMONNAME policy) applies just as it would to any other name change. Also, BLP would also apply for living trans people. Iffy★Chat -- 16:29, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

The page already says "inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources." and "When there are multiple names for a subject, all of which are fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others. (bold mine) Policy already establishes several broad exceptions for not strictly obeying the "use the most common name available in reliable sources" guidance. Deadnaming a transgendered person who has changed their name to match their gender is "inaccurate", and it's perfectly allowable by policy to use the accurate name. I'm not sure we need more than that. --Jayron32 16:51, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you both for the clarification! I thought so as well, the only reason I thought some specificity might be good for this was if you take a look at Talk:Gregory Hemingway COMMONNAME is used as justification for not following style guides, despite the relevant sections. Hopefully this should clear things up over there! In addition, what do you think about adding links to WP:GENDERID in the infobox "Topic-specific naming conventions for article titles" section "People"? TheTranarchist (talk) 18:40, 9 February 2022 (UTC)TheTranarchist (talk) 18:20, 9 February 2022 (UTC)TheTranarchist

Discussion at Template talk:Subcat guideline § Naming convention

 You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Subcat guideline § Naming convention. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:18, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Query

I recently discovered the article Raleigh murders. I am not sure this is an appropriate title given that many murders have happened in that city and the sources are not referring to these killings under this naming convention consistently. Not really sure what the topic should be called.4meter4 (talk) 01:55, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

1996 Raleigh murders would be fine. 162 etc. (talk) 05:06, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Should natural disambiguation be more natural than parenthetical disambiguation?

Should we, in deciding whether to use a natural disambiguation, give extra weight to how natural the consequent names are (per WP:CRITERIA)? Should we give extra weight to official names? As written, the guideline is quite clear for common nouns where two options are similar, but my take of WP:NATDAB and WP:COMMONNAME is that we should only use names that are more natural, and are at least in common use, giving a preference to the nat dabs only as the deciding factor if they are more natural than the disambiguated commonest name.

I ask because there is current discussion on whether to apply official names to a number of New Zealand places as natural disambiguation (Talk:Cam_River_(Canterbury)#Requested_move_22_March_2022), but many of these official names are particularly rare in use, and result in substantially less natural titles. The implication of the RM is that the official name carries its own weight beyond its popular usage or naturalness. — HTGS (talk) 05:37, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Generically speaking, I'd expect a natural dab to be somewhat-to-pretty common, which conceivably might not always be the case for an official name. It's subjective, and best left to discussion for a given area's subject matter experts.—Bagumba (talk) 09:13, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

NATURAL

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

There is a proposal at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#How common to be sufficiently common for natural disambiguation? to reword WP:NATURAL to make it more restrictive. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:03, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move: Schutzstaffel → SS

There is a requested move for Schutzstaffel that has prompted debate over several aspects of this policy, including common names and precision. As a result, y'all may be interested in weighing in. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 02:50, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

US or U.S.?

Wikipedia has over 1,300 articles with titles beginning "U.S.", including, e.g., U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School, U.S. government response to the September 11 attacks, U.S. kill or capture strategy in Iraq, U.S. senator bibliography (congressional memoirs), and U.S. space exploration history on U.S. stamps (though more than half of all "U.S." titles are highway routes), and about 300 articles with titles beginning "US", including, e.g., US General Accounting Office Building, US Breastfeeding Report Card 2014, US military watches, US public opinion on the North American Free Trade Agreement, US state laws and policies for ICT accessibility. We should have consistency, but what should be the standard, and should things like names of military units or route numbers be treated differently from generic examinations of the country's policies and activities? BD2412 T 22:09, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Aren't a lot of these done by sourcing? In tennis the organization is quite specific that it's always US Open while in golf it's always U.S. Open. We would need to be careful not to infringe on sourcing on some articles. When it is U.S. govt specific articles it looks like its usually U.S. (U.S. Air Force), and when it's general (US public opinion) it usually US. However the article "US General Accounting Office Building" you listed officially goes by U.S. so that should change if we keep the same general format. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:28, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Chicago Manual of Syle shifted significantly toward US in its 2014 edition; but we still need to observe the titles of institutions that haven't yet updated. Tony (talk) 00:26, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Many of these are topics, not institutions, though. I pointed out several of each kind to highlight this. BD2412 T 02:07, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Personally, the highway articles should be moved to ditch the periods as we have the inconsistency of "U.S. Route 1" and "US 1"; periods in the full name but not in the abbreviation. I've said before that we should follow CMOS on that and ditch the periods from the highway names. Imzadi 1979 → 02:35, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. CMOS has been showing a disturbing pattern in recent years of following trends in British English which make no sense because they appear to be attributable to the UK's gross underfunding and incompetent mismanagement of its schools. We have a lot of British expats here in California who fled to America to teach in schools that still value good writing. I read Chaucer during my senior year of high school with a Cambridge alumnus. And to be clear, I am thoroughly familiar with the differences between American and British English because I have made a point of reading UK newspapers and magazines regularly for over 20 years (it helps that California libraries carry so many of them because we have so many expats).

The better solution is to standardize all article titles about American subjects on the most common usage in formal written English, U.S. That is unlikely to change any time soon. The two most common legal citation guides, the Bluebook and ALWD, both prefer U.S. and have always done so for many years. Every decent law school in the United States pounds one or the other of those citation guides into graduates. And the prominence of lawyers in American public life ensures that the vast majority of American government agencies, Fortune 500 corporations, and top-tier universities are managed by people who learned to write U.S. with the periods and they expect everyone who reports to them to write that way. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:25, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Just wondering, do these same rigid manuals like Bluebook and ALWD, the Fortune 500 and top-tier universities also use U.K. along with U.S.? AP style uses both US and U.S. depending on if it's a title. Wikipedia tends to go by common style guides such as CMOS or APMOS rather than law school etiquette. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:11, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

I have no idea what ALWD does, but the twenty-first edition of the Bluebook (2020) continues to prescribe the use of both U.K. and U.S. (in the table of abbreviations for Geographic Terms at page 318).

Actually, WP generally follows domestic legal citation practice on law-related topics. Most of the WP articles that use U.S. in the article title have a legal dimension one way or another (for example, highways are normally defined by statutes enacted by state governments). Furthermore, the most prestigious American newspapers (including the New York Times and the Washington Post) continue to use U.S. because they recognize that it's much easier on the eyes.

There are only three states that have foolishly followed the British trend of omitting periods in abbreviations in legal citations: Michigan, New York, and Oregon. The overwhelming majority of states rejected that trend as extremely unwise. --Coolcaesar (talk) 04:26, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. CMOS has been showing a disturbing pattern in recent years of following trends in British English which make no sense because they appear to be attributable to the UK's gross underfunding and incompetent mismanagement of its schools. We have a lot of British expats here in California who fled to America to teach in schools that still value good writing. Nice to see that American arrogance and sense of superiority is alive and kicking! Well done for reminding us! Just to be clear, just because you write things in a certain way does not make it correct. Nor does it make everyone who does not do it that way wrong or incompetent. There is absolutely no need to insult another country because you can't cope with stylistic differences. -- Necrothesp (talk) 22:35, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Attempting a priori standardization of U.S. or US is doomed to failure. We have redirects for a reason. We cannot dictate to our readers or our sources which is "correct" in every usage and even if we pick one for the sake of consistency neither the sources nor or our readers are consistent. It is neither useful nor necessary to have this discussion. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 13:32, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

• US is much preferable—less fussy, more readable. But many US institutions still use the dots in their name, so that needs to be followed. Tony (talk) 05:38, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
  • We also have a lot of inconsistency for articles that are not the names of institutions. BD2412 T 01:11, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
• IMO whenever I see US Something my immediate thought is "that wasn't written by an American". We generally use the periods in the abbreviation, especially when it's being used as an adjective. I do think we can standardize it but it should follow majority usage within the USA. Red Slash 21:32, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

RfC 2 on the use of dash-separated titles for sports events

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

TLDR: No change; dash-separated titles permitted, no consensus on format.

This discussion references and basically reiterates Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 60#RFC on dash-separated titles for sports events, that was just closed this January. (I'm taking the liberty of adding a "2" to this one; please don't give your RfC the exact same name as another RfC you're going to be referring to, it causes all sorts of confusion.) Unlike what the opener here writes, that was not actually closed with "reached "no consensus" on any matters", it seems to have been closed with dashes should be allowed but no consensus on format. If someone disagrees, we can ask User:Chess, the closer, to confirm, but that's what the bold letters say pretty clearly to me. Now, consensus can change but rarely over only three months. But, in any case, here we are.

Question 1: permitting dash-separated titles for sports events: I count 8 "agree/support" and "6 "disagree/oppose". Now arguments are more important than counting, but the main arguments for seem to be that dashes are a clearer or perfectly natural way of writing article titles, the arguments against are that they're unnatural, and not how sources refer to these topics, and the status quo suffices. Those seem to balance out, honestly; I don't see many or even any citations of sources either way, just assertions. Without evidence all these seem to be just a matter of personal taste. And we'd need a fairly clear consensus "against" to overturn the clear decision of the former RfC. So, again, or still, as per the last RFC, dash-separated titles for sports events are permitted.

Fewer participated in Question 2: ordering in a dash-separated title for sports events. Again, there aren't a lot of evidence based arguments, just "it's natural" for Option 1, vs "we should be flexible" for Option 3, with a balanced number of people supporting each. Cinderella157 made a long argument for option 2, but it doesn't look as if anyone else was convinced, and I'm not sure I understood it myself. Also two people interjected that it's not at all clear that 1 and 2 should be the only options. So consensus against mandating option 2, but a split decision between option 1 and being flexible, and almost as many saying these shouldn't be the only options, so a clear no consensus on format.

Finally, fewest of all participated in Question 3: amending WP:AT, two against, one for. I'm going to read this as against making any additions for dash-separated sports titles, not "let's make this decision but not tell anyone about it", which would be perverse. While Cinderella157 believes dashes would otherwise be forbidden under WP:QUALIFIER, others don't, because it's not clear that this is an example of disambiguation, and WP:TSC, for example, specifically allows dashes in titles in certain cases. No consensus to amend.

In other words: basically what the same titled RfC three months ago decided. Anyone who wants to reopen this question in only another three months ... maybe don't? --GRuban (talk) 01:58, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

---

This is a proposal to explicitly permit the use of dash-separated titles for sports events, where such a construction is presently inconsistent with WP:AT. Cinderella157 (talk) 09:41, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Background

The previous RFC on dash-separated titles for sports events was initiated to address matters of capitalisation in such article titles. Dash-separated article titles are extensively used for recurrent sporting tournaments, such as the Olympic games or annual events, where there are multiple events being played for. They are used for an article on a particular event being played for in a particular tournament's year - eg 2014 US Open – Men's Singles. That article is about the "men's singles" event being played for at the 2014 US Open. The article title has been described as being a "title – subtitle" construction. This construction distinguishes different events played for within a particular tournament's year. It also distinguishes the same event being played for across different tournament years. The dashed construction inherently has a disambiguation function. The "title – subtitle" also creates a sub-article relationship.

Well through the course of the earlier RfC, it was identified that dash-separated titles for sports events are explicitly inconsistent with prescriptive advice at WP:AT.

• At WP:QUALIFIER: Commas and parentheses (round brackets) are the only characters that can be used without restriction to separate a disambiguating term in an article title. Colons can be used in the limited cases of subtitles of some creative works and lists split over several pages.
• At WP:TITLEFORMAT: Do not create subsidiary articles: Do not use titles suggesting that one article forms part of another: even if an article is considered subsidiary to another (as where summary style is used), it should be named independently.

Furthermore, at WP:TSC, we are advised to avoid the use of the dash in article titles. This is because of the need to create a redirect from the title that would use the hyphen in place of the dash. This is because keyboards do not provide accessibility to the dash characters.

The former RfC reached "no consensus" on any matters.

Outline of RfC

The RfC is presented as three questions. Please indicate your !vote for each question in the section following each section. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:54, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Rather than amend individual sections of WP:AT, the ultimate intention is to add a section to WP:AT that explicitly permits dash-separated titles for sports events. While the second and third questions might assume prior support, support is not presumed. To be clear, support for an outcome at one question cannot reasonably be construed or inferred to be support for an outcome at another question. Participants are therefore encouraged to respond to all of the questions (even though they might disagree with the first question) without fear that their views might be misconstrued. Cinderella157 (talk) 09:41, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

General comments

Hi, Dicklyon, Cinderella157, Fyunck(click), Wjemather, Lee Vilenski, Amakuru, Ravenswing, Sod25k, Sportsfan77777, Joseph2302, Jayron32, GhostOfDanGurney, Iffy, GraemeLeggett, Mjquinn_id, GoodDay, SMcCandlish, Tony1, Montanabw, Kaffe42, BilledMammal, Herostratus, Thryduulf, SmokeyJoe, HawkAussie - you have contributed to the previous RfC and may wish to comment here. Cinderella157 (talk) 09:44, 19 January 2022 (UTC) Sod25m per new name. Cinderella157 (talk) 01:51, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedian Hyphen Luddite. Always avoid dashes. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:25, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi SmokeyJoe, you would then disagree with question 1. Might you please place that there? Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 10:49, 19 January 2022 (UTC) P.S. Do you have an opinion on the other two questions if the consensus was to support dashes? Cinderella157 (talk) 10:51, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

No. Let me think about it. SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:43, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• Abstain from all further discussion on the matter. This does not appear to be an issue relevant to Wikipedia:WikiProject Motorsport, the wikiproject from which I was canvassed here via this edit which I later found to be a copy/paste job. I emphasize my opinion that this is not an issue pertaining to this wikiproject, contrary to the canvass attempt stating otherwise. As the discussion I participated in is closed, I cannot strike my !vote, otherwise, I would. -"Ghost of Dan Gurney" 21:02, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm gonna need some article examples, for me to fully understand what's being proposed. GoodDay (talk) 17:31, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

GoodDay, All sorts of sports articles that use the format: 2014 US Open – Men's Singles. See also examples in the previous RfC (above) eg - Tennis at the 2011 Games of the Small States of Europe – Men's singles, 2015 IBSF World Snooker Championship – Men's and Shooting at the 1952 Summer Olympics – Men's 100 meter running deer, single and double shot. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:09, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Question 1: permitting dash-separated titles for sports events

Should two part dash-separated titles be explicitly permitted for sports event articles?

This question goes to specifically to acknowledging dash-separated titles for sports events as an exception to WP:QUALIFIER. The question does not assume an order of the two parts about the dash. This is addressed in the next question.

Please respond: Agree to explicitly support or Disagree to explicitly not support.

Discussion, comments, !votes

Comment: If two part dash-separated titles for sports event articles are such a good idea (as suggested in the previous RfC), there should be no issue with agreeing with the proposition. The dash construction distinguishes different events played for within a particular tournament's year. It also distinguishes the same event being played for across different tournament years. One might argue that this does not constitute disambiguation and does not create a conflict with WP:QUALIFIER. To my mind, that would be splitting hairs. If it is such a good idea, then it would be much better to simply resolve the matter by agreement with the question posed (or not). Cinderella157 (talk) 13:51, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

From the discussion in the previous RfC (above) it became reasonably clear that the dashed construction is not a WP:COMMONNAME. It is not a construction found in the natural language of running text in sources, though it may be found be found in headings such as tables and in web pages. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:20, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• Agree. Dash-separated titles should be permitted but not required. Thryduulf (talk) 15:34, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Strongly disagree. Sporting events are not a special case that require a specific exclusion from standard policy; also WP:CREEP. If anything dashes should be more strongly discouraged than they are, and used only as a last resort when plain English and all else fails. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 16:11, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Agree - agree with Thryduulf as permitted but not required. It seems arbitrary that it should or shouldn't be allowed. A little flexibility is a good thing so as not to look like a cookie cutter. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:43, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. Do not do anything that encourages dashes beyond following their use in the sources. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:59, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Support as it's a perfectly natural way of writing the article titles, and clarifying the different events in a tournament. Putting () like a disambiguator would be wrong in my opinion. Joseph2302 (talk) 14:29, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Disagree – The dashed titles (for sports events at least) are generally sub-articles, specializing the main title to a subset of the competitions, which are explicitly not a good thing in titles. We should find a better way; per my comment at the bottom, it appears to me that the sub-events are not independently notable in most cases, so it would seem better to just merge up to the main article. It would not be too big to include men's singles, mixed doubles, etc. all in the one tournament article. Dicklyon (talk) 06:04, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose - these are unnatural constructions that don't appear in written prose. Is there any sourcing that uses this format? GraemeLeggett (talk) 10:39, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi GraemeLeggett, there was quite a discussion about this in the previous RfC. The bottom line is that there was no evidence of sources using the format in prose (for at least one instance, see [search on]: You have not provide evidence of actual usage of the dashed construction in prose. and associated discussion). Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 11:43, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

• Agree – I don't see anything wrong with permitting dashes in titles as it seems to me the most natural way to title these sports events articles. Adamtt9 (talk) 19:47, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. There's nothing special about the topics, we already have WP:COMMADIS telling us what to do here, and the dash constructions are unnatural (e.g. not how sources generally refer to these topics). The weird dash business is also causing follow-on disputation, such as whether (and what) to capitalize after the dash. Just get rid of the dashes, and it all evaporates.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:10, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  It all evaporates? Really? So instead of arguing about should it be "2014 US Open - Men's Singles" or "2014 US Open – Men's singles" instead it would simply be "2014 US Open Men's Singles"? Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:41, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  Of course not, and please do not engage in silly reductio ad absurdum fallacies like this. See WP:COMMADIS: it would obviously be "2014 US Open, men's singles" (given that this is not a proper name, so there is no reason to over-capitalize, and we have a policy to use sentence case in article titles). "US Open" is the proper name here. See also MOS:SPORTCAPS which further addresses this.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:43, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

  Hang on, what? So now you're proposing removing the dash and replacing it with a comma? That's dreadful, and has all the supposed drawbacks of a dash while also being less legible. I had assumed that if the dash is removed, you simply have a common phrase 2014 US Open men's singles, which might be OK but would not be my preferred option. A comma is right out, though.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:00, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

• Agree . I think last RfC that was linked here is sufficient to cover this.Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 17:10, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
• Disagree I had expected there to be strong support for the proposition, with good reasons being offered as to why we should agree to the proposition. This certainly hasn't happened and any support is largely a matter of opinion. Do we need this dashed construction. The answer is no. The existing accepted ways of dealing with and distinguishing similar and related articles are quite adequate and sufficient for the task. As SMcC observes, the dash construction is not "natural" language and it is not how sources generally refer to the subjects in running text. The only thing going for them is that they are a consistent for. But this is not unique to a construction that uses a dash. As a technical matter, we are advised at WP:TSC to avoid the use of dashes in article titles because they require a redirect from the hyphen form. At least one editor in the previous RfC implied that we should avoid an overhead of redirects. I have left my comment late because I wanted to see if there were actually any good reasons for and against. Perhaps the strongest argument against the construction is that it has led to the proliferation of articles forks (sub articles) where it is very questionable that they meet WP:GNG. If anything, they are news but WP is NOTNEWS. If written as a summary of the key points (which is what WP requires), they are not so large to justify splitting out a separate article but they are filled with pretty much EVERYTHING despite WP:NOTEVERYTHING. Cinderella157 (talk) 09:11, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
• Agree - as per the status quo, which was reiterated and confirmed in the previous RFC, dashes in these tennis events are absolutely fine and aid legibility and WP:RECOGNIZE for readers. There is nothing in WP:AT which forbids their use.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:01, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
• 'Agree I think it's clearer. DGG ( talk ) 16:42, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
• Agree – clearer. Tony (talk) 05:36, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Question 2: ordering in a dash-separated title for sports events

This question is contingent on a consensus supporting question 1. The present usage of dash-separated title for sports events is in the form of "Title - subtitle" (eg 2014 US Open – Men's Singles). This creates an inconsistency with WP:TITLEFORMAT. The options proposed are:

Option 1. That dash-separated titles for sports events shall be in the form of the example 2014 US Open – Men's Singles. This is an explicit exception to the inconsistency with WP:TITLEFORMAT (ie it permits what can be considered a sub-article relationship).

Option 2. That dash-separated titles for sports events shall be in the form of the example Men's Singles – 2014 US Open. This is explicitly complies with WP:TITLEFORMAT. It does not imply a subarticle relationship.

Option 3. That either format in option 1 or option 2 be permitted. This is an explicity permits an exception to WP:TITLEFORMAT but does not prescribe the format to be used.

Discussion, comments, !votes

• Option 2 doesn't make any sense. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 11:36, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Sportsfan77777, if you think that Men's Singles – 2014 US Open as a title makes no sense, then don't !vote for it. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:37, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Sure you didn't intend to capitalize Singles here. Same as you'd do with brackets, Men's singles (2014 US Open). Dicklyon (talk) 17:10, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

I did actually, but not because I agree with the capitalisation in either case (options 1 or 2). Option 2 is a transposition of the terms about the dash as compared with option 1, where option 1 is presently the usual format. If I had changed the capitalisation upon the transposition, it might have implied that option 2 was more than a simple transposition. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:16, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

• Why do you think Option 2 doesn't imply a subarticle relationship, but Option 1 does? Sportsfan77777 (talk) 11:36, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Sportsfan77777, if the men's singles played at the 2014 US Open is the primary topic then placing "men's singles" first makes it clear that the men's singles event is the primary topic, while the "title-subtitle" construction is inherently an article-subarticle relationship. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:40, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• The dash in Option 1 doesn't necessarily imply a subarticle relationship. Some people (e.g. who only care about the Men's Singles) will treat the draw article as the main article and neglect the article on the tournament itself. The dash structure is meant to highlight which draw the article covers. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 11:36, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Sportsfan77777, You can argue against whether or not there is an inconsistency with WP:TITLEFORMAT or you could !vote to support one of the options (option 1 I take it), which will ultimately go to resolve the matter of order. If the dashed construction is such a good idea (as you argue), it will get strong support. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:46, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• my only suggestion was to use brackets, rather than dashes. Any reason why this wasn't included? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 12:04, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Lee Vilenski, per the outline of the RfC, this question is contingent on support for the dashed construction and how things would then be ordered about the dash. Brackets would not be applied with the dash as well. If you don't want brackets instead of a dash, then you would disagree with Question 1. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:19, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Comment: One could argue that the "title-subtitle" presently used in the two part dashed constructions do not create an "article-subarticle" relationship. To my mind, that would be splitting hairs. If the "title-subtitle" construction is such a good idea, it would be ultimately be much better to reach an agreement (option 1) that it is a good idea (or not - in which case, there are two alternatives presented). Cinderella157 (talk) 14:15, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• Option 3. What makes sense for one event might not make sense for other events. Flexibility is needed to allow for the fact that the real world is messy and inconsistent. Thryduulf (talk) 15:35, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 - allow both although I can't for the life of me figure who would ever use "Men's Singles – 2014 US Open." That seems to defy logic and would be against all sourcing. You can find "2014 US Open Men's Singles", "2014 US Open – Men's Singles", "2014 US Open men's singles", "2014 US Open – Men's singles" , and various incarnations of those. But not some awkward thing with Men's Singles first. However if some weird tournament does do it that way it should certainly be permitted here. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:53, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1, other than I oppose using dashes here at all.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:11, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1 seems most appropriate for Question 2 in my opinion, though I am also open to the possibility of option 3. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 17:10, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2 For the example title, 2014 US Open – Men's Singles, the subject of the article is the men's singles event (that was played at the 2014 US Open). As a clear principle, the title of an article should clearly indicate the primary subject of the article. Gramatically, it should be the subject of a naming phrase. In more naturally constructed phrases, potential names for this sample event are: "Men's singles at the 2014 US Open" or "2014 US Open men's singles". In both cases, "men's singles" is grammatically the subject. Using parentheses, or a comma in a title, such as Turkey (bird) or Boston, Massachusetts creates a parenthetic phrase. Note that the comma is not closed in the example but would be in running text with either another comma or a full-stop if it were at the end of a sentence. A parenthetic phrase, while it adds additional information, can be omitted and still be grammatically correct. It might even be redundant (as in the case of Boston), depending on the context. In each case, the "subject" precedes the parenthetic phrase. A dash also creates a parenthetic phrase by what follows. So, in the example 2014 US Open – Men's Singles, the grammatical subject being represented is the "2014 US Open" but the primary topic of the article is the "men's singles". The dash, as used in option 1 creates a mismatch between the primary topic of the article and the grammatical subject in the article title. The reverse form represented by option 2 (eg "Men's singles - 2014 US Open") does not suffer the same inconsistency. The form of option 1 also has issues with searching and indexing on the primary topic of the article (eg "men's singles) since searching and indexing is done from the head of a text string and the form of option 1 places the primary topic (the key term) at the end of the text string. Compare this with searching or indexing for Little Rock in Arkansas based on a title of "Arkensas, Little Rock" v Little Rock, Arkansas. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:21, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 per Thryduulf. We should not prescribe anything one way or the other, although for tennis events in particular, option 1 is certainly the status quo and should be stuck with. Those titles are not disambiguated, but simply reflect common parlance and recognizability - the event first, then the subevent.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:05, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
• Option 1 is natural. People are usualy looking for a particular year's event. the worst choice is 3, to have it inconsistent, which helps nobody. DGG ( talk ) 16:44, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Question 3: amending WP:AT

This question and subsequent questions are contingent on outcomes at Q1 and Q2.

That WP:AT be amended by way of a separate section to recognise that dash-separated title for sports events are an acknowledged exception to what is otherwise written at WP:AT.

Discussion, comments, !votes

Comment: Assuming there is support at least for Q1, the proposition is to create a separate section to record that the dash separated construction is permitted for sports articles. Individual parts of WP:AT could be amended but this would require a consensus on the specific amendments to be made at several places. IMHO, it would be easier to construct a separate section permitting the dashed construction in sports articles notwithstanding anything else written at WP:AT. The benefit of such a section is that it would clearly record that the dashed construction is permitted. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:57, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• Comment – not clear how to agree or disagree, but if we "recognise that dash-separated title for sports events are an acknowledged exception", let's not do that in a way the suggests we think it's a good idea. Recognizing and acknowledging might be OK, but we don't want to suggest that the pattern is anything more than an exception to normal guidelines. Dicklyon (talk) 06:10, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

  Some of the reasoning behind proposing a separate section acknowledging dashes for sport articles was not to change the existing policy. You would note that I used the phrase "an acknowledged exception" in phrasing the proposition. Cinderella157 (talk) 06:49, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is fallaciously assuming its premise is true and begging the question being addressed in part 1 of this RfC.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:12, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  SMcCandlish, not quite. The question does not presume the outcomes of Q 1 but it does "beg the question". It does so explicitly, since I phrased the RfC accordingly. If Q1 flies, how are we going to deal with it. The subsequent questions naturally follow - thay do not presume the outcome of Q1 but do assume that it is possible. The subsequent questions then circumvent some of the RfCs that might follow. Your comment at Q1 indicates you are opposed to multiple RfCs about the same issue. In framing the RfC, it is clearly stated that support for a subsequent proposition does not imply support for an earlier proposition. Your response here is exactly that which I tried to circumvent by phrasing the RfC as I did. If there is support for Q1, how do we best deal with it without having multiple RfCs? Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 10:43, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  Still oppose. This is too trivial a sideline to be changing the site-wide title policy about it. This does not rise to policy level, at all.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:39, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. Per my comments under Q1, sports articles are not special cases that justify amendments/additions to the guideline in order to validate bad practice. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 11:25, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  Wjemather, I respect your opposition to Q1. The question here is how we would deal with the issue if Q1 did actually fly (despite your objections to Q1). I would only ask that you think past those objections and how we might deal with that eventuality (given your comment here does not imply support for Q1). Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 13:31, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  We do nothing, because nothing needs to be done. Per WP:CREEP; this would be a solution looking for a problem. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 13:35, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

  If Q3 were proposed in isolation, it might be a "solution looking for a problem". But it is not in isolation. One could say that ignoring it is like sticking ones head in the sand. It is a real possibility to be addressed? Cinderella157 (talk) 14:55, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

• Support If Q1 does gain a consensus, we are going to be faced with how to record it. The first possibility is to amend the sections at WP:AT in a way that makes the dashed construction permissible/acknowledges it for sports articles. I see this as problematic in respect to gaining agreement as to how each section might be amended in a way that reflects that this is a particular exception and not one to be more broadly construed (though some have suggested that perhaps it should be (that in itself is an indication that such an approach will be problematic). A second option is not to amend WP:AT to reflect the result of the RfC. Q1 relates to a narrowly defined but significant number of articles. My experience is that in such cases, an exception to P&G (to such an extent) will raise its head again. The resolution is to point to the RfC but this relies on the collective memory and the ability to identify where this occurred and then trace back through archives to identify the particular RfC. I don't think that this is a particularly good solution and we have already seen (in related discussions) some failings that relate to this approach. The preposition of Q3 therefore seems to me to be the better of the available options, in that it clearly records the exception to the other advice at WP:AT in a way that is less problematic than the alternative of trying to amend different sections of wp:AT. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:50, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
• Absolutely no need for this. The current setup for tennis is not a contradiction to WP:AT, so no change is necessary.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:06, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

• Comment - Thanks to @Cinderella157: for setting up this RFC, I guess there are still some unanswered questions, but at first glance it looks like it may be grounded in some misrepresentations of what was said and decided in the previous RFC. In particular, the assertion that the dashed format is a form of disambiguation rather than a natural title in its own right was refuted at that RFC, and the RFC was closed as allowing dashed titles in these articles. To highlight why I wouldn't see it as a disambiguator, I don't think there's any scenario in which we would title our article Men's singles (2014 US Open), as this misrepresents the importance of the year and event name to the subject under discussion. The title lacks any context if you don't include the event that it's part of. I'm also unclear why flipping the order of the two terms, but retaining the dash (option 2) is marked as not an exception, while option 1 is marked as an exception. Anyway, the bottom line is I'm quite happy with the status quo on how these articles are titled, and as established at recent RMs, except that I don't want to see undue capitalisation in the titles, thus either 2014 US Open – Men's singles or 2014 US Open – men's singles is my preferred format. So I'll place my !votes here in any way consistent with that result. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 10:18, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi Amakuru, there are three separate questions and the "Background" would provide the background to these. The dash construction distinguishes different events played for within a particular tournament's year. It also distinguishes the same event being played for across different tournament years. It inherently has a disambiguation function. The ordering issue is at WP:TITLEFORMAT, which says not to create or imply sub-articles. Hence, the "title-subtitle" construction is contrary to that part of the policy. Since you support the dash construction, you would agree with question 1. Since you are happy with either order, you would support option 3. You have not voiced an opinion to the third question. There were a couple of other issues that were raised in the previous RfC (including over-capitalisation, long titles and notability). These are fairly peculiar to the dashed construction and might be addressed if there were a section in WP:AT specifically related the dashed construction. The problem is that too many questions at once can wreck an RfC, so I am taking a smaller step to see where this goes. On that basis, you might consider supporting question 3. Could you please add your preferences to each of the three sections. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 10:46, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

P.S. Amakuru, the previous RfC was closed with "no consensus" on all points and consequently, it did not change the status quo. However, the RfC was not closed as allowing dashed titles in these articles. In the #Post close section, the closer made specific comments that go to that matter, and ultimately, the framing of this RfC. There has been no misrepresentation. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:39, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

That is incorrect. There was no consensus on the capitalisation questions, but regarding dashes the RFC closed as "dashes should be allowed", which was in any case the status quo prior to this. It certainly did not conclude, as you are suggesting, that the dash is there as a disambiguator. That was refuted, as indeed myself and Sportsfan are refuting it now, and the closer explicitly did not endorse that view. This RFC is therefore misprepresenting the status quo.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:45, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Amakuru, please read the close and post close again. I specifically clarified the matter of the apparent ambiguity with the closer. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:12, 19 January 2022 (UTC) PS If the dash construction is such a good idea, then it will have no problem flying. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:14, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't think the dash "inherently has a disambiguation function". In fact, I don't think it serves a disambiguation function at all. If it did, the parent article would be a disambiguation page, but it's not --- it's an actual article. Sportsfan77777 (talk) 11:37, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Sportsfan77777, The dash construction distinguishes different events played for within a particular tournament's year. It also distinguishes the same event being played for across different tournament years. You may disagree that this inherently serves as a form of disambiguation but I can't see how. Not every case has to have a disambiguation page as a parent article (eg primary topics don't and cases with two alternatives use a hatnote from the primary topic. In cases using dashes, the templates serve to navigate in the same way as a disambiguation page. If the dashes are such a good construction using the "title-subtitle" format, then the natural outcome of this RfC will be to support this through the question rather than arguing about semantics and interpretations. You will note that the RfC is actually premised on an outcome to support such a construction. Cinderella157 (talk) 12:09, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Given that 2014 U.S. Open (golf) exists I'd say drop the dash business and go 2014 US Open Men's singles etc as the obvious solution. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GraemeLeggett (talk • contribs) 11:26, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

You didn't mean to capitalize Men's there, did you? Dicklyon (talk) 17:06, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

• I don't disagree with this, although I don't want to proscribe the option of amending the AT more generally to be less prescriptive about the whole matter. Thryduulf (talk) 15:37, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi Thryduulf, I'm not quite certain what you mean so I will take a stab. You don't want to amend what is already written at WP:AT in a way that would make what is already there less prescriptive? The proposition of question 3 is not to change any of what is already written but to add a section to WP:AT that would permit dash separated titles for sports articles notwithstanding anything else written at WP:AT. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:21, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

I want WP:AT to permit dashed titles where appropriate. I would prefer that this happen by way of an amendment to the existing text to make it less prescriptive. I don't object to adding an addendum for sports articles as you propose but that is imo a less good option. Thryduulf (talk) 01:49, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• Comment – I appreciate this attempt to help figure out how we should interpret and regard these dash-separated titles that I started the inquiry about, a while back now. They are clearly "sub-articles", which WP:AT says we should not do. But we do, to the tune of about 50,000 or more titles. I'd rather "acknowledge" than explicitly "permit", so if I answer the questions separately it might look contradictory. But there are other possibilities. Why do we even consider a "men's singles" sub-event to be notable? There is very little in the way of sourcing on any of these, other than a stats site or perhaps a news mention sometimes. Why not merge all those sub-events back into the main event articles? I know, the reason is that it would be an unreasonable amount of work. And there are other situations to consider besides tennis tournaments. Anyway, I might attempt separate answers above, but I think the main problem is that we have tens of thousand of articles on topics that are not notable. Sorry, tennis fans, that's how I see it. Dicklyon (talk) 01:58, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

So Men's Singles at the Australian Open isn't notable? Sorry but Unbelievable! Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:49, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Some of the big ones may very well be independently notable. But not the many thousands. If the pattern was to cover the Australian Open in one place, that wouldn't hurt, but if you wanted to break out narrower articles on the notable subevents, that would be OK. And Men's singles at the 2022 Australian Open would be a good title for that. And Men's singles at the Australian Open if you wanted an article that spans the years. These would be normal titles on notable topics; what we're talking about now are thousands of odd titles on topics many of which have no significant coverage in sources. Dicklyon (talk) 17:05, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Balderdash. They are extremely important in every tennis event. They include draws, qualifying, withdrawals, seeding, etc... With so many disciplines in tennis it would overwhelm a yearly tennis article. Our Olympic articles handle things the same way. The titles aren't odd at all. Event and then discipline within the event is the most logical choice of title. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:47, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Your "balderdash" comment doesn't really address the question of whether most of these are independently notable, as evidenced by significant coverage in reliable sources. Many of these articles are sourced to nothing but a score tabulating website. Dicklyon (talk) 02:18, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

I reckon a lot of them are actually notable events. Just because the articles are under sourced doesn't mean that sources don't exist. Adamtt9 (talk) 02:36, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

I could pick a relatively lower level tennis tournament like the Challenger taking place this week in Chile. While it is nowhere near the level of the Australian Open notability wise and press coverage wise, it is still mentioned in a variety of different reliable sources like ESPN, local Chilean news, and in general tennis websites. All the while the actual Wikipedia article doesn't have much sourcing. Adamtt9 (talk) 02:42, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm open to learning more about what's in sources. Are there articles specifically talk about the "men's singles", "women's doubles", etc. for such lower level tournaments? And what do they call them? It's hard to tell from those links. Dicklyon (talk) 03:05, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

You mean like this link, or this link, or this link, or this link, or this link, or this link, or this link, or this link, or even this link. Fyunck(click) (talk) 10:01, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

The sources I provided were specifically taking about the singles event but there was no specific mention of gender as this tournament is only part of the men's tour. Adamtt9 (talk) 04:02, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

I see. That wasn't obvious. So maybe something like "Men's tour singles (Australian Open)" would be a way to express that? Dicklyon (talk) 04:47, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Firstly, the year would have to be in the title somewhere to differentiate between different editions of the tournament. I am actually fine with the way the titles are right now and don't see a problem with amending any sort of style guidelines to permit the construction of the title that is currently being used. Adamtt9 (talk) 11:36, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Many editors (but not a consensus) expressed an opinion in the last RfC (above) that the dashed construction was a "good idea" (summarising the various reasons given). The dashed construction has been shown to be not a WP:COMMONNAME as derermined in running text nor has it been shown to be an official name. Per WP:CRITERIA: it may be recognisable, it has been shown that it is not natural (in prose) and, it is reasonably precise but significantly less concise than other options in some circumstances. The main reason given is that it is consistent. However, notability of articles (or rather, the lack of) may be a reason for not agreeing with the dashed construction. If a significant number of articles created fail to meet WP:GNG (or do not otherwise reasonably meet other P&G), the rational of "consistency" fails as a justification for the construction. Per WP:GNG (policy): A topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. Local consensus does not override but gives supplemental advice. I acknowledge that "men's" singles (and like) are notable. I acknowledge that the US Open (tennis) and other tournaments are notable. I acknowledge that the 2014 US Open (tennis) event is notable and even that the winners and particular players are notable. What is not yet clear is that the 2014 US Open – Men's Singles is sufficiently notable to warrant a stand-alone article. Furthermore, that it passes WP:NOTNEWS. I am open to being convinced that a substantial number of articles taking the dashed form are individually notable and therefore justify consistency as a rationale for acknowledging the construction. I am also open to any other cogent arguments that are for or aganst the construction being acknowledged. Please convince me. Cinderella157 (talk) 13:12, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

There might be a semantic distinction between "acknowledging" and "permitting" the construction but I don't know if I any substantial practical distinction. The proposal is restricted to sports articles. Those sports that already use the dash construction will continue to do so in either case and those that don't are unlikely to change. Of course, you are not bound to respond to the questions in a prescribed way (only that it is ultimately easier for a closer and ultimately, the argument made is more important). The earlier RfC (above) did raise some concerns about these articles, including notability, title length and, of course capitalisation. I could also say that there is something of WP:NOTEVERYTHING. There are clearly some practical issues of asking too many questions at once. Even this RfC is a stretch. If there is a consensus to permit (or acknowledge) the dash construction, then these issues can then be addressed. If there is a consensus against such a construction, those issues become moot (or perhaps mute). In the previous RfC (above) advocates for the dash argued that they were a good idea. Some argued that their extensive use effectively made them a fait accompli. Answering the questions separately is not a contradiction. I specificly addressed this in the "Outline of RfC". One can disagree with the proposition at Q1 and then answer Q2 and Q3 on the basis that the response is contingent on there being a consensus for Q1 but not implying your support for Q1 - ie if we are going to have them (even though I don't like it) I would prefer this option. Myself, I am not certain where I stand on Q1 but I have some views on Q2 and ultimately think there are good reasons to record the outcome per Q3. I am just waiting to see if there are any good arguments being presented. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 03:23, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Notice of RfC

This message provides notice that I have started an RfC at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (broadcasting)#2022 revision proposal on a proposed rewrite/update to the text of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (broadcasting). Your comments are welcome. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 03:55, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Natural disambiguation RFC

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Proposal rejected by a vast majority of editors, as unclear in application and scope. While a RfC discussion may amend or clarify the original proposal, and a more narrowly focused one could achieve some consensus, this one was rejected as a non-starter. Closing early per WP:SNOW. No such user (talk) 15:54, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

---

Should WP:NATURAL and WP:NCDAB be rewritten to reflect that natural disambiguation should generally only be used to settle titles where there are near equal choices such as Chinese whispers v Telephone (game) (RM) and Handa Island v Handa, Scotland (RM) and not generally allow significantly less common titles trump the most common such as Bus (computing) v Computer bus (RM) and Fan (machine) v Mechanical fan (RM)? In the 2nd sentence at WP:NATURAL I propose to change "Do not, however, use obscure or made-up names." to "Natural disambiguation can generally be used where there are titles that are near equal choices (such as French language v French (language)), where its otherwise disputed such is best (like Chinese whispers v Telephone (game)) or where adding a qualifier is difficult or impossible like Sarah Jane Brown where plain Sarah Brown is ambiguous. In general qualified titles are preferred to natural disambiguation if the choice is not near equal even if the title would be understood, thus New York (state) is preferred to New York State and Bray, Berkshire is preferred to Bray on Thames, in particular do not, use obscure or made-up names". I don't mind if all or some of this is in a footnote if this is too long and I welcome any suggestions for better examples. @Born2cycle, Amakuru, and RGloucester: Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:47, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

• Support. This will be a welcome change to bring policy in line with the de facto convention which has been confirmed by numerous RMs over the years, and the examples Crouch supplies above. I suppose the only other examples that may be worth highlighting are Association football, French language and Bizet sheep. The latter two are valid NATURALDIS because putting brackets in, to make French (language) and Bizet (sheep), simply adds characters for no discernible benefit. Association football is just another Sarah Jane Brown case, since nobody liked the previous title of Football (soccer) and nothing else really comes to mind.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:54, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
• Support as proposer, its quite clear that articles should generally be at the common name even if a qualifier is needed and in some discussions we blindly follow NATURAL without giving much thought about common names which can cause problems for both readers and editors, even I admit I've done this in the past. Crouch, Swale (talk) 23:02, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
• Support, though I recommend tweaking the language to be clear “near equal” is in terms of how commonly the natural disambiguation term is used in reliable sources to refer to the topic at issue compared to the ambiguous most common name of the topic. —В²C ☎ 23:42, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose, though I agree the current language is too vague and can be used to support natural disambiguation when it’s too rarely used, and so I initially supported this proposal, upon further reflection I’ve decided it needs more than a few tweaks, but a complete rewrite, and this train wreck is not where to do it. —В²C ☎ 15:31, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
    • @Born2cycle: The proposal is tightening/clarify of the language/adding to it so you can support some changing/clarify even if you don't agree with the precise wording change. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:17, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
      • I appreciate the goal and your effort, but the wording needs to be fleshed out. I suggest withdrawing this specific proposal, hatting it, and starting a new discussion to work out wording to be proposed. —В²C ☎ 06:58, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
        • This proposal can discuss the wording, it wasn't intended that the proposed wording be exact just that it be clarified/tightened, you can propose different language or start a new proposal after but I think some may view that as forum shopping given this proposal was no over specific wording. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:13, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
          • What about simply changing Do not, however, use obscure or made-up names to Do not, however, use significantly less common or made-up names? Ruбlov (talk) 14:29, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

            I support that but I don’t see how to achieve a consensus for it or anything in this particular discussion. —В²C ☎ 15:14, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

• Strong oppose – WP:NATURAL disambiguation has, for many years, been considered preferable to parenthetical disambiguation on Wikipedia. The additional text is confusing (it doesn't set down a framework for what a 'near equal choice' is), and for reasons that cannot possibly understood, issues a new preference for parenthetical disambiguation that has never existed before. This may result in many, many article titles needing to be changed, and it is not obvious that there is any good justification for this change, which could lead to extensive disruption. The present AT policy's wording is more than sufficient, already proscribes using 'obscure or made-up names' as 'natural disambiguation', and allows for editorial discretion. There is no need to remove the existing flexibility from this policy, and enforce a preference for parenthetical disambiguation. RGloucester — ☎ 23:50, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. For the reasons brought forward by RGloucester. If anything, we don't use NATURALDIS enough as in the case of fisher cat which wasn't supported in favour of fisher (animal) despite fisher cat being a valid regional name for the animal (yes, I still care about this). –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 01:01, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

  We don't use NATURALDIS enough because it's a pile of horse manure. Wikipedia is supposed to follow sources and call things the same way as sources do. Most people who participate in RMs recognize this, which is why we end up with sensible titles on most of our articles. Plus, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a parenthetical disambiguator. To see so many seasoned AT experts digging in their heels in and defending a policy which has been dead in the water for years is disappointing to say the least. Perhaps the wording of the above proposal can be tightened and made clearer, but the fundamental point is both necessary and already in place.  — Amakuru (talk) 17:38, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

What sources refer to 'New York State' as 'New York (state)'? NATURAL has never, ever encouraged the use of uncommon titles. It very clearly says that any naturally disambiguated title must something that the subject is 'commonly called in English reliable sources'. This proposal does not do anything to achieve the goals you claim to have. It simply creates a pretext for disruption across the encyclopaedia...and for what? RGloucester — ☎ 17:59, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

What sources refer to 'New York State' as 'New York (state)'? That is the same as asking "What sources refer to the planet Mercury as 'Mercury (planet)'? It is called plain old 'New York' in the context of states, [2] and the parenthetical disambiguation mirrors that fact. StonyBrook (talk) 05:57, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose per RGloucester and MJL. Dicklyon (talk) 01:14, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
• Conditional support with perhaps some more clarification on what "near equal" means. For example, if the US uses an ambiguous name requiring parenthetical disambiguation while the UK uses a naturally disambiguated name, it can be totally valid to use the latter even if the former is much more common by sheer numbers due to population. I think that will take care of MJL's concern. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:30, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

  @King of Hearts: "Near equal" means where the natural disambiguated title is almost as common as the "preferred-but-ambiguous title", in some or many cases like the 1st 2 examples above it may be as common or moreso. Think of the New York example with respect to the city and state, some sources call the city just "New York" such as the AP Stylebook, Google Maps and the censuses while Britannica uses "New York City". For the city both "New York" and "New York City" are good choices but New York is unalienable so the unambiguous title "New York City" is an effective tie breaker while the consensus seemed to be that "New York State" wasn't common enough. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:15, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

• Support; natural disambiguation's that are not sufficiently common fail WP:NATURAL and WP:RECOGNIZABLE, and should generally be avoided, even if it means we need to use a parenthetical. BilledMammal (talk) 02:59, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree with you on that. The present wording of WP:NATURAL does as well, describing natural disambiguation as 'Using an alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English reliable sources, albeit not as commonly as the preferred-but-ambiguous title. Do not, however, use obscure or made-up names.' This proposal doesn't do anything to further to discourage 'insufficiently common' names, which are already proscribed by the present policy. On the contrary, what it does is declare a Wikipedia-wide preference for parenthetical disambiguation, something that has never existed before. Why is such a change necessary to accomplish the goal you have described? RGloucester — ☎ 03:40, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

You, and Wugapodes, have a point. I still broadly support the proposal, and would prefer it over the status quo, but a middle position might be better. Perhaps Do not, however, use made-up names or uncommon names, even when they are the official name or understandable. Natural disambiguation such as New York State will continue to be an option and so the dispute there will not be resolved, but it should address the general issue which goes beyond more ambiguous options such as that.

Note the intent of "understandable" is to prevent titles that the reader will understand, but are harder to understand than parentheticals. BilledMammal (talk) 03:57, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

I would be willing to support something like this. Iffy★Chat -- 17:26, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure we need to mention official names but yes a qualified title for a common name should generally be preferred over an obscure official name. This is part of the "commonly used" part, the important point is that it should generally be almost as commonly used as the apparently preferred ambiguous title. With both the Fan and Bus RMs those supporting did so apparently mainly because they felt that natural disambiguation was generally preferred even if significantly less common while those opposing pointed out the problems with using natural disambiguation. There was no consensus in both cases and while the Fan article should probably have been reverted given the previous move request it looks like many actually supported such a move in the previous request even though they were against making the machine primary so leaving as is was probably OK especially since the move revert was because of the RM going on at that time. Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:33, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

• Comment So the case affected is that it would dictate parenthetical disambig when the titles are not of similar stature. I don't see where this makes any sense. What they might be after is the laudable goal that if there is a large difference in stature disambig should be avoided on the far more prominent one. For example if the article Dog (band) gets created, that does not dictate changing the Dog article to Dog (animal) or Dog species. North8000 (talk) 02:15, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose The proposed text is a regressive step that makes the disambiguation policy harder to understand and will lead to more disputes, not fewer. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 03:00, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
• Comment How are New York (state) and New York State not near equal? They're literally the same sequence of words, just that the first has parentheses. Why would we prefer that as a display title and not the shorter and more natural title? — Wug·a·po·des​ 03:43, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
  • I would agree with that. I broadly agree with the proposal - unnatural disambiguated titles are problematic - but I don't believe the provided example of New York State demonstrates that, although the official name is not always suitable disambiguation. BilledMammal (talk) 03:50, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

The history of the article name of New York (state) is very unpleasant. To summarise, some editors argued that using the naturally disambiguated New York State was inappropriate, as it would give readers the impression that that was the 'official' name of the state, and hence, they preferred to use brackets. There was also some question as to whether MOS:CAPS would allow 'state' to be capitalised. The brackets allow that issue to be circumvented. Meanwhile, I tried to come in and point out that 'New York (state)' itself proudly proclaims itself as 'New York State' on its own webpage, but this was treated as folderol. RGloucester — ☎ 04:03, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

User:Wugapodes, similar to the ambiguous Washington State, New York State was considered ambiguous with State University of New York. SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:20, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

 Oppose per Wugapodes. ― Qwerfjkltalk 07:07, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

• Strong oppose, with the disclaimer that I'm not 100% certain how sweeping this proposal is, and that more generally this isn't a vote yes-or-no type issue. There are hordes of requested moves; nominator has cherry-picked some failed moves that favored natural disambiguation, but it'd be equally possible to cherry-pick examples of RMs that endorsed a natural disambiguation title. It's possible that the consensus of the community will shift over time from 50/50 to 70/30 to 60/40 or the like. That's all fine. It's clear that both natural disambiguation and parenthetical disambiguation are used, and there's different use cases for each, and the community differs a tad on how applicable it is to any particular case. That's perfectly fine and healthy: there's no need for any such proposal as the above at all. If the community really does soft-deprecate natural disambiguation, then we'll see all RMs start closing that way, and there won't even need to be a RFC then, just a validation of the hypothetical future situation. But I doubt that will happen - there are many cases where natural disambiguation is, well, natural. Some of the example failed RMs were not so much that natural disambiguation is bad, but rather that the nominator was trying to force an unusual or unclear phrasing - that's not a statement against natural disambiguation in general, just whether "computer bus" was really that common a phrase. SnowFire (talk) 07:20, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry, but I don't see how anyone benefits from vague guidance that facilitates decisions made randomly based primarily on the arbitrary personal preferences of whoever happens to show up at each RM discussion. While I prefer we don't imply some "naturally disambiguated" name is commonly used for a topic when it isn't, ultimately I suggest we should care much more about stabilizing our titles with clarified guidelines so the community doesn't burn so much time and effort debating issues that ultimately matter very little to anyone, in any practical sense. --В²C ☎ 16:30, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

    Here is one example of a failed parenthetical RM that I was involved in. I preferred Meta (company), but the naturalists thought otherwise. StonyBrook (talk) 06:19, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. This seems like a solution in search of a problem and the proposed new guidance is pure instruction creep. Calidum 16:32, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose - yes, we shouldn't be using obscure or made-up names as natural disambiguation, but there are many times where the natural disambiguation would be preferable to the parenthetical. See for instance, King of Hearts's reasoning at Talk:Battle of Carthage, Missouri. This is instruction creep that isn't even an across-the-board positive. Hog Farm _Talk 16:43, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose per Calidum, Eggishorn etc. Way too detailed, too many examples (some of which don't even have consensus, for example the last Sarah Brown RM didn't have any consensus whatsoever and I doubt that the other examples have a clear consensus either). We already use too many obscure and made-up names in misguided efforts to avoid parenetical disambiguation, so what we need to is to enforce the written policy better rather than try to write every possible scenario in to the policy. Iffy★Chat -- 16:55, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Oppose because I read the proposal thrice and don't understand it, so I oppose replacing a short instruction with a long confusing one. Sandstein 16:59, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

• WP:NCSPDAB says "It is strongly discouraged to add a middle name, initial, "Jr.", etc., or to use the birth name rather than the nickname (or vice versa), merely for disambiguation purposes. If this format of the name is not the one most commonly used to refer to this person, that simply makes it more difficult for readers to find the article." I think this was Amakuru's point at the Fan RM. Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:51, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose as per Sandstein above. I keep re-reading the proposal and I can't figure out just how it will affect many articles. If it's that convoluted and long I can't support it. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:58, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose per Sandstein etc. I don't understand the proposal fully and don't like the parts I understand. You should re-write the policy first ... if you think there is any chance it passes. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 00:10, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. Ditto X last nine opposes. Mike Cline (talk) 00:51, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
• Support The current wording gives too much room for ignoring WP:Common name. Avilich (talk) 16:06, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose - Either natural disambiguation as first preferred or case-by-case basis should be status quo. Parenthetical disambiguation should be reserved primarily for topics lacking primacy or primary topic discussions or individual discussions about commonly used names. @Crouch, Swale: Have you considered withdrawing the proposal? The whole majority opposes, if not strongly opposes, it. George Ho (talk) 02:48, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

  I can't withdraw it because there is support and its not a WP:SNOW case. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:13, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose - there are two issues here: the intended change, and the language attempting to make said change. Mild oppose to the change, strong oppose to the word salad. Retswerb (talk) 07:24, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose as written. I might just be tired (or stupid) but I can’t make sense of Natural disambiguation can generally be used … where its otherwise disputed such is best (like Chinese whispers v Telephone (game)). It’s also not clear that this change reflects a community consensus based on RMs in general, especially when many of the examples given were close calls or lacked a consensus entirely. And maybe this is a different problem, but if we’re being this verbose, I would like the guidance to include an explanation for why New York State is looked down on, while French language isn’t. — HTGS (talk) 09:09, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

  Because it was felt that "New York State" wasn't common enough to be "near equal" but "French language" is. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:13, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

That's not the reason why 'New York State' was rejected. You may want to read the old discussions again before making such assertions. In fact, 'New York State' is the most common way to refer to the entity when disambiguated... RGloucester — ☎ 17:58, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

@RGloucester: My reading of the RM was along the lines at least of it not being near equally used/being inconsistent with other states which is the point is that it may not be a near equal choice? My understanding is that the term "state" is generally used as a modifier rather than part of the name which is why it was put in brackets rather than capitalized without. What is you're thoughts as to why the NATURAL title was rejected? Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:16, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose because after several readings I haven't a bloody clue what the proposal is. Less is more. Stifle (talk) 10:06, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose This is completely wrong. WP:TITLEDAB only offers the options; it does not suggest which is best, because that is indicated by the WP:CRITERIA. GreatCaesarsGhost 16:11, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose I'm not sure I agree with the proposed interpretation, which is excessively wordy and seems hyperfocused on a few examples. Worse still, I think the proposed interpretation creates more disputes, not less, and could even interfere with other practical discussion. I'm open to other proposals, but I see the status quo as pretty good. Better than this proposal. Shooterwalker (talk) 21:05, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose I had to read through a few times to try to understand it, and I'm still not sure I get what it means. If I as a veteran Wikipedian can't make heads or tails of it, then newbies who rely the most on our policies will be utterly lost. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 02:40, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. Natural disambiguation is, as the name says, the natural form of disambiguation - ie, it is the name that can and usually is used to describe the topic. It is wording that can often be written out in an article sentence without the need to pipe. Natural disambiguation is simply an acceptable alternative name, sort of next on the list of most commonly used names for a topic. Adding brackets to a name is not what we normally do when describing something - it looks awkward, is awkward to use when creating links to the article because it always has to be piped, and is not something we would say out loud (because it's not "natural"). Using brackets to disambiguate should be the last resort when other forms are felt not to work as well. Natural disambiguation should always, naturally, be the first choice if it is available. SilkTork (talk) 04:19, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

  Natural disambiguation should often be piped anyway as with bracket and comma disambiguation such as "X is in the [[Torridge District|Torridge]] district" as opposed to "X is in the [[Torridge (district)|Torridge]] district" and inappropriate natural disambiguation may result in longer inaccurate names being shown instead of piped as editors may think the longer name is the correct one. Crouch, Swale (talk) 09:51, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

  1) There is no rule that says natural disambiguation must always be piped and it makes no sense to use piped links in the example you provided. 2) There's still time to abandon this sinking ship. You're no Edward Smith. Calidum 16:32, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

  It doesn't always have to be piped but it generally should as the name a topic is referred to should normally be the actual name rather than a less common alternative but there will be cases where the less common alternative is appropriate to use. To use a better example imagine if my September 2020 RM for Mississippi had have been successful but the consensus was to use Mississippi State per WP:NATURAL we'd have people writing "X is a city in [[Mississippi State]], United States" instead of "X is a city in the state of [[Mississippi State|Mississippi]], United States". Or an even better example (ignoring that fact its very unlikely to need disambiguation) Massachusetts State instead of Massachusetts (state)]] you might have "Holyoke is a city in Hampden County, Massachusetts State, United States". So article titles aren't just to help readers they also help editors use the correct name in running text. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:38, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

  No, this would never occur because 'Mississippi State' is not a common way to refer to 'Mississippi' and 'Massachusetts State' is not a common way to refer to 'Massachusetts', so both would be unacceptable as NATURAL disambiguation under the current text of the policy, and no one would ever think to write like that anyway. However, in a case like New York State, where 'New York State' is actually a common way to refer to the state, there is certainly nothing wrong with writing 'xyz is in New York State', especially when confusion with the city is possible. By the way, WP:COMMONNAME does not apply to article text, and there is no policy on Wikipedia that specifies that article names dictate how one must write in the body of articles. RGloucester — ☎ 21:48, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

• Comment: I think it is time to withdraw this. My reading of the discussion is that there may be a consensus for a change, but not this change. BilledMammal (talk) 18:40, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

  The proposer is unable to do that. The least we can do is wait for someone to close this already. George Ho (talk) 20:07, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

  Snow close then. Stifle (talk) 14:23, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, please. Snow close ASAP. —-В²C ☎ 15:16, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Consistency

@Primergrey: I was partially reverting an edit from two days earlier that appeared to provide additional weight to the "consistency" argument without a consensus to do so. BilledMammal (talk) 23:32, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

• I see. Discussion over, then. I won't impede you again. Primergrey (talk) 00:16, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Proposal for new article title naming convention - RfC or local consensus, which is within the scope of this WikiProject. — DaxServer (t · m · c) 18:03, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Discussion regarding updating chemistry naming conventions

There is an ongoing discussion about an update to chemistry naming conventions occuring at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemistry#Updating_naming_conventions_for_groups. Mdewman6 (talk) 23:51, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Discussion regarding naming conventions for events and incidents.

There is an ongoing discussion regarding naming conventions for events and incidents occurring at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Guidance at WP:NCEVENTS out of step with application of it. Thanks. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:20, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:CRITERIA" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Wikipedia:CRITERIA and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 June 15#Wikipedia:CRITERIA until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. TartarTorte 21:22, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § Improper acceptance of a new proposal as policy

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) § Improper acceptance of a new proposal as policy. —usernamekiran (talk) 06:53, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

This is related to Constituency titles. —usernamekiran (talk) 06:53, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions Indian constituencies has an RFC

Wikipedia:Naming conventions Indian constituencies has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. BilledMammal (talk) 10:52, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Crickets example

This example came from Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 58#SMALLDETAILS and plurals, it was removed by User:162 etc. on the grounds of the article title being Cricket (insect). As far as I can see SMALLDETAILS doesn't just deal with titles as such it also deals with WP:PRIMARYREDIRECTs so the example of a title that is relatively unambiguous as a plural even if the singular is far more ambiguous seems like a good example. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:21, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

• I'll note that the "discussion" you use as justification consists of only a comment by yourself, and makes no mention of cricket or crickets. 162 etc. (talk) 21:36, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

  I mentioned similar examples like Rocks and Oranges and yes no one opposed to the suggestion in general so I just gave an example I thought may be even better. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:06, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

• If I read the word Crickets, I think of the insect. If I see the word Cricket, I think of the sport unless other contextual clues give away that someone is talking about a singular insect. Slywriter (talk) 21:18, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

Discussion concerning WP:UE

The Médecins Sans Frontières → Doctors Without Borders discussion at Talk:Médecins Sans Frontières#Requested move 23 August 2022 may be of interest. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 18:10, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Alternate place names in first sentence in lede

There has been an ongoing conflict, occasionally moving to edit-warring by single-purpose editors (see Sydney, where the article had to be protected for a while), concerning the insertion of Indigenous place names in the first sentence of the lede for articles on Australian places. There are conflicting interpretations of the wording in WP:PLACE. The "General Guidelines" section there begins:

• These are advice, intended to guide, not force, consensus; but they are derived from actual experience in move discussions.

1. The title: When a widely accepted English name, in a modern context, exists for a place, we should use it. This will often be a local name, or one of them; but not always. If the place does not exist anymore, or the article deals only with a place in a period when it held a different name, the widely accepted historical English name should be used. If neither of these English names exist, the modern official name (in articles dealing with the present) or the local historical name (in articles dealing with a specific period) should be used. All applicable names can be used in the titles of redirects.
2. The lead: The title can be followed in the first line by a list of alternative names in parentheses, e.g.: Gulf of Finland (Estonian: Soome laht; Finnish: Suomenlahti; Russian: Финский залив, Finskiy zaliv; Swedish: Finska viken) is a large bay in the easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea.
   • Any archaic names in the list (including names used before the standardization of English orthography) should be clearly marked as such, i.e., (archaic: name1).
   • Relevant foreign language names (one used by at least 10% of sources in the English language or that is used by a group of people which used to inhabit this geographical place (Emphasis mine)) are permitted. Local official names should be listed before other alternate names if they differ from a widely accepted English name. Other relevant language names may appear in alphabetic order of their respective languages – i.e., (Estonian: Soome laht; Finnish: Suomenlahti; Russian: Финский залив, Finskiy zaliv; Swedish: Finska viken). Separate languages should be separated by semicolons.}

The wording under question in Australian contexts is this:

…or that is used by a group of people which used to inhabit this geographical place…

This wording is being used as justification to insert additional names into the first sentence of an article using the apparently permissible reason that before European settlement in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, Indigenous Australians lived in Australia and had their own languages and names for places. Eg.

Jelly Bean (Quenya: Gummibar) is a sweet little town in New South Wales.

Such Indigenous names are rarely in current common use or have significant literature, though there are well known exceptions such as Uluru or the many instances where the European colonisers simply appropriated the existing name for their own use, generally Anglicising it to some extent, such as in Canberra. The sort of sources being used to justify additional Indigenous names are generally specialist or tertiary sources, such as a sentence on the town council website eg. "Jelly Bean (or Gummibar as the Aboriginals used to call it) was first settled in 1806 by Captain Harry Beau who farmed sugar cane and koala bears."

There is no dispute over a "Name" or "Etymology" or "Early history" section in the content giving well-sourced details of the previous occupants and their languages and culture and what they called the region, but the insertion in the lead sentence of an archaic name that is not in wide current use, does not appear on maps or in GPS devices, and is found only in a few specialist or tertiary sources, is causing some hearted discussion. Some editors feel that they can redress some of the evils of colonisation by recognising the first Australians in adding an Indigenous name to as many Australian articles as they can find council webpage sources for. It would be helpful in minimising ongoing disruption and conflict if the wording noted above could be clarified to either support or reject such usage as a blanket rule.

I don't think that we are at the RfC stage yet, though if POV-pushing continues we will be. This question has been raised previously at the project talk page but has not gained any traction, and I would like comments from editors specialising in this area of naming conventions. Looking through the extensive talk page discussion archives there shows little or no discussion on using Indigenous names; this section appears to be more about previous foreign language names used in English literature at various times eg. Istanbul was previously known as Constantinople and Byzantium and these names are found in English maps and books and other texts of the relevant period. Indigenous Australian placenames are rarely found as standalone names in English-language texts. --Pete (talk) 08:07, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Is this article title right?

Jonathan Kestenbaum, Baron Kestenbaum

Actually, it looks as though we are all over the place with these. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Labour_Party_(UK)_life_peers

2603:7000:2143:8500:346E:7EDB:D6A:77B5 (talk) 00:34, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't know if it sheds much light, but there is this 2011 requested move on the article's talk page where someone mentions WP:NCPEER. Seems to be the relevant guideline. --DB1729^talk 01:16, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Interesting. It seems then that "of Foxcote" should appear at the end of that title, no? --2603:7000:2143:8500:95E2:8DC9:F198:3FDB (talk) 03:20, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

No. The title is Baron Kestenbaum. DrKay (talk) 07:44, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Subsections of WP:TITLEFORMAT

To me it seems very clear that the {{shortcut}} box mentioning WP:SINGULAR ought to merged with the one mentioning WP:ARTSINGLE. Those are clearly synonymous, so I moved the mention of WP:SINGULAR to where WP:ARTSINGLE is, i.e. to the specific subject that discusses whether article titles should be singular or plural. However, there is still an inconsistency regarding the other redirects WP:NOUN, WP:DEFINITE and WP:LOWERCASE, which still refer to the parent section rather that the specific subsections associated with each of their names. I suggest these should all redirect to the specific subsections associated with their names. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:03, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

COMMONNAME how-to guide

It's bugged me for a while that we don't have a practical guide to determining the commonname for a topic, so I finally wrote up a draft of such a guide here: User:Colin M/Determining commonname. After I do another pass of edits, I was thinking of linking it from this page's "See also". Any feedback/edits are welcome.

The closest thing we already have along these lines is Wikipedia:Search engine test, but that page is kind of a messy mishmash of advice on using search engines to establish notability (which was the historical focus of the page many years ago, but has since become a deprecated practice), using search engines to find sources for building out an article, and generic search engine advice. It barely talks about naming, and mostly deals with general-purpose web searches, which are basically useless for commonname purposes. Colin M (talk) 17:31, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

I would also include a paragraph warning about the reliability of Google search results ("About 393,000,000 results"), which cannot be taken at face value, because Google will only serve up to 30 pages of search results (300 pages) per query. The number of results becomes unverifiable if both searches end at around 300, such as if someone tries to determine the popularity of Médecins Sans Frontières or Doctors Without Borders. See this table I made in this RM for an example. Pilaz (talk) 22:24, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Is NCEVENTS about consistency or about disambiguation?

I'm starting to get a bit frustrated with WP:NCEVENTS implementation: it's routinely challenged in move requests, usually by more novice editors (but not always) on the grounds that a year is not needed to disambiguate an incident (WP:NOYEAR explicitly states that a year is only needed for disambiguation purposes, whereas the rest of the guideline doesn't). A prime illustration of this is this discussion. However, I thought the primary idea of the naming convention was to make titles WP:CONSISTENT with each other. Is this a common tension among other naming conventions? What is the best way to go about this? I've considered altering WP:NOYEAR through RfC regarding the "disambiguate" wording, but I think this needs some discussion beforehand. Pilaz (talk) 11:52, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

• As is outlined at WP:Article titles, Consistency is but one of several criteria that have to be considered. We must also consider Recognizability, Naturalness Precision and Conciseness. The ideal title achieves all five, but… sometimes that is not possible. When that happens, we have to balance these criteria against each other and reach a consensus as to which should be given more weight.

So… while we do want our titles to be generally consistent, we don’t consider consistency to be the primary idea behind our naming conventions. Indeed, I would argue that it is the weakest of the five criteria… in that it is often the first to be set aside when balanced against the others. Blueboar (talk) 14:09, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

I don't disagree with your reasoning (the supplement WP:CRITERIAORDER comes to mind), and I now reckon I should have also emphasized WP:RECOGNIZABLE. In my mind, someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize an article title better if it comes with the year, with few exceptions. The problem is that one can frame the scope of "the subject area" in any way they want: for 2007 Glasgow Airport attack, for example, the attack is probably not recognizable for someone familiar with the topic of terrorism (myself included), but probably recognizable for someone familiar with the topic of Scottish terrorism. I suppose the "disambiguate only" type of !vote is a reference to WP:PRECISION, too. Pilaz (talk) 16:19, 8 October 2022 (UTC)