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Legislative elections in places

Currently there are two conventions, both of which had been used for quite some time:

The latter has been "chosen" as the one that should go here. The question is, what happens to the other convention? Both have good qualities, with the former being a descriptive title (showing no preference on what the subject is called), while the latter implies that the "United Kingdom general election" is the name of the subject. I'd argue the former makes sense grammatically. I also don't like the fact that the latter is disambiguated twice if you could do it once; of course if we'd put the year in front of the title, or even ditch the comma, the disambiguation "problem" (may not be a problem for other people) resolves itself. –HTD 13:01, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I also don't like the fact that there seems to be no discussion here on which naming convention was chosen. It's like what happened to Talk:Taiwanese general election, 2016 where a "rules" were imposed on a page that already is consistent with other articles of its set (in this case, all Taiwanese elections have separate articles for the presidential and legislative elections), on a rule that is used on other articles of a different set that no one edits (in this case, the format used on African elections, that no one edits, were used on Taiwanese articles which already have established formats).

While I would like universal formats, in cases of politics and elections, it could not be possible. This is not sports where everyone plays by (almost) the same rules everywhere, so you could use the same format on all articles. –HTD 13:12, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Personally I think the latter option is preferable (I'm one of those in the "not a problem" camp). One reason is that the former includes an unnecessary plural that is not in line with the titling guideline for national elections. Another is that IMO the latter format is clearer; I think it's better to give primacy to the year rather than the subdivision.
I guess articles not matching the convention (whatever it ends up being) should just be renamed – it seems silly to have one group of articles not aligned with the guideline (and I don't believe universal formats are a problem, and certainly not impossible). Number 57 13:17, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
I dunno how having two disambiguations, the year and the place, is "clearer" but the former uses just one, which is the year. On which should be primacy "the year" or the "subdivision", I honestly dunno, so I'd probably trust on you on the year, but the former doesn't diminish the year, in fact it gives primacy to it as it is the "last" thing you'd see on the title.
As for plurals, I'd ask the WP:REFDESK as "House of Representatives elections" does look more correct than "House of Representatives election", as long as there are more than one district being contested. See for example, Belfast South by-election, 1982 vs. Northern Ireland by-elections, 1986. –HTD 13:29, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
This is rather different to by-elections (which are completely independent elections that happened to be held on the same day – they are more like local elections (also independent of each other) where the plural is used – e.g. United Kingdom local elections, 2015), so I don't think it can be used as an example for why a plural is needed here. The guideline advises using the singular when referring to elections a certain body in multiple districts (e.g. Scottish Parliament election, 2007). Number 57 13:32, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
Aren't individual elections, including the MMP seats, "completely independent elections that happened to be held on the same day" as well? Or is this some BrE vs. AmE distinction that I don't know of? Again, I know the guideline exists, but since there's no discussion on how it came to be, which means it probably evolved from existing practices, that means we can't apply it on each case. –HTD 13:44, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
No, because they're part of a simultaneous planned election to the same body (I don't think it's an ENGVAR issue). Number 57 13:54, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
Can't a simultaneous planned election be completely independent elections that happened to be held on the same day? The results in one constituency doesn't really have an effect on the other, right? And if there's no ENGVAR issue, why are American election articles titled that way, and British (Scottish and Welsh), French and Japanese ones aren't?
And why is Australian Senate special election in Western Australia, 2014 titled this way? –HTD 14:07, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
1. No, I don't think so. They are inextricably linked. 2. Just a historical quirk, I certainly don't believe there is any difference in the language around these. 3. I guess "speical election" is the Australian term for by-election (I think the same term is used in the US?). But it certainly looks awkward. Number 57 14:30, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
1. One could certainly argue that way, right? 2. There might be a difference in language. It's well documented that certain usages between these two varieties (dialects) are different.
3. I really don't care about "special election" (was quite surprised by that actually), but if this was just named "organically" (no one looked on how to name this article), then it's the most natural way on how to title articles such as this, isn't it? Unless the person who named the article saw the U.S. article titles and realized that it made sense instead of the clunky <country> <type of election> election, <year> (<place>) -- you'd have to admit that you'd be hard pressed to find a WP:RS that calls it that way, isn't it? –HTD 14:42, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
Both naming methods developed organically, so it can't really be used as an argument that that one is more natural than the other. The final point is falling into the common name trap again – you'd probably be hard pressed to find a RS using the "United Kingdom general election, 2015" format, but as it's a formulaic thing, common name doesn't come into it. Number 57 16:30, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
So if both are descriptive, and both are used widely (the latter more widely used as there are more US elections articles), then why is just one of the naming conventions "codified" (for lack of a better word) in here? Shouldn't the editor be given a choice on which to use, considering no discussion was done on choosing which naming convention gets to be "codified"? –HTD 02:00, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
It depends on how you define "widely used". If you take it to mean number of uses, then the American way is probably more common. If you take it to mean number of countries it's used for, I would imagine the other way is more common. Number 57 12:11, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
I've seen the American convention used since 2010, and perhaps earlier. The only longtime usage of the convention suggested by this guideline that is founded and zero discussion is on European elections results in each country. The UK election "national" results pages only started for 2015; similar 2010 election pages were created only in 2014, a year before the parliamentary term expired. I don't think there are other usages of this convention elsewhere; I don't see this for Canadian elections, and Australians do theirs a little differently. I may be wrong on usage of the convention suggested here, so feel free to correct. –HTD 15:36, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
The guideline convention is over a decade old – see e.g. European Parliament election, 2004 (Spain), whose title dates to 2004, and may even pre-date the creation of any of the subnational American examples (I can't find any that are for before 2005). One of the examples cited in the guideline (Italian general election, 2001 (Veneto)) dates back to April 2008. It is used for British, French, Italian, Indian, Nigerian and Portuguese elections, as well as all the EU elections. Number 57 18:18, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
Interesting that Italian general election, 2001 (Veneto) was originally at Italian general election in Veneto, 2001 when it was created in 2007, then moved by the same author more than a year later. I don't know how early is the US convention has been used, but it's like the "we've been using this on African election articles no one else touches, so that's the format that we'd be using." In other words, it doesn't hold water.
Sorry, I don't really follow your logic on the second half of your point. What doesn't hold water? I assume your "African election articles no one else touches" comment is just another one of your not-so-subtle digs at me? Number 57 08:23, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Considering there's no discussion at all on which naming convention to use (no one has presented evidence suggesting otherwise), I'd assume that one could pick which convention to use, right? What's the guideline for if there's no consensus behind it? –HTD 07:57, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

I've clarified the guideline wording to explain when the order used in the Massachusetts and London cases would be preferable (without suggesting there's a consensus against one or the othere), and linked the policy bases for this. This does not address the question of why the MA case has plural "elections" in it, though. Opening that as a new thread.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:23, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Requested move notice

Greetings! I have recently relisted a requested move discussion at Talk:43rd Canadian federal election#Requested move 9 February 2016, regarding a page relating to this WikiProject. Discussion and opinions are invited. Thanks, AusLondonder (talk) 04:53, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Please see WP:CANVASS. This is not a wikiproject, and guideline talk pages do not need to be notified of every discussion that invokes them in some way.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:45, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
Actually, it does involves this talkpage because editors are openly defying the guidelines listed here and undermining them. That isn't canvassing. AusLondonder (talk) 17:51, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Handling of "Next..."

The old text read:

For future elections of uncertain date, use a form similar to Next Irish general election.

which suggests what to do (if you read carefully) only when the date (in a very broad sense, even a year is sufficient) is not known. This has two obvious problems. First it implies that a complete date is needed, and more importantly it's a "then what?" problem. The date will eventually be known, but we don't say what should happen to the "Next..." name. Experienced editors already know what happens (it redirects to a dated article), but our guidelines are not written for experts.

I expanded this, per WP:COMMONSENSE to:

For future elections of uncertain date, use a form similar to Next Irish general election, though a title like this should otherwise redirect to an article with a known date (e.g. Irish general election, 2016), since "next" is a moving target.

This solves both problems, by saying what to do and illustrating that knowing the year of the event may be sufficient (obviously it won't be for a monthly event, but because this is obvious we don't need to spell it out, per WP:CREEP).

This was reverted with an edit summary of "Don't change convention without widespread discussion" [1]. However, it is does not change convention in any way, it records more clearly what convention already is. This is the exact role that guidelines perform, as a matter of WP:POLICY.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:43, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I've restored this clarification, per the outcome of Talk:43rd Canadian federal election#Requested move 9 February 2016, and made some additional improvements (cited the applicable policies, accounted for "referenda" as an accepted [probably more accepted] spelling of "referendums", made the example formatting consistent, fixed a run-on with too many "or"s, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:11, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose @SMcCandlish: I see no reason for this. Using "next" is a practice used on every single future election article except one. I believe next is more appropriate and easy for casual readers. I especially oppose the proposed wording of the change. AusLondonder (talk) 17:43, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
    • That's just WP:IDONTLIKEIT + WP:WEDONTNEEDIT. You haven't provided any actual reason for opposing the addition of the wording, nor anything in the wording, and haven't provided an alternative (though others have already worked on this wording to improve it, so the wording you objected to no longer exists in the page, anyway). What little you've said here is a red herring. We already know that using "next" in the title of future election articles, when we don't know a date for them, is standard practice, since it's long been done that way, and we've long advised that it be done that way. We also already know that it's standard practice to redirect these names to the dated articles when we know the date (e.g. United States presidential election, 2016), since that's also how we've long been doing it. The purpose of policies and guidelines is to record, not dictate, WP best practices (see WP:POLICY). So, you have no (or at least have articulated no) rationale for opposition. The RM in which you proposed that things go your way did not go your way. Please see WP:DROPTHESTICK.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:15, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
You haven't provided any reason other that WP:IDONTLIKEIT. AusLondonder (talk) 23:14, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
That's self-evidently false.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:30, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
Adding a little common sense here as SMcCandlish did can only be a good thing, since two recent move requests illustrate how this guideline can be mistaken for an absolute "policy." Ribbet32 (talk) 14:30, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Election vs. elections

Three threads above, there's a word-order discussion which I think is resolved (unless consensus somehow emerges only for one disambiguation style, which seems unlikely). However, one thing it did not address is why there's a plural "elections" in United States House of Representatives elections in Massachusetts, 2014, vs. "election". The guideline does not address this, and seem to consistently recommend "election". I do not think this should be left to random whim. Either we should standardize on "election" completely, as a reference to the process, or standardize on using "election" for single offices, and "elections" for multiple offices, as references to the offices.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:26, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Virtually all election articles aside from the US examples use the singular (see e.g. Category:2015 elections in Africa. Category:2015 elections in Europe). The only exceptions are local/municipal elections, where the articles cover numerous elections to different bodies and so use the plural.
I'm confused by how you came to the conclusion that the guideline recommends "elections", as none of the cited examples use the plural (unless your statement was a typo?). However, I agree that all elections should remain singular with the exception of the aforementioned local/municipal/regional elections cases. Number 57 16:31, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
That was a typo; I've fixed it. What I'm getting at is that the Mass. example does not follow the singular election pattern, but elections, and it is not about "local/municipal elections ... cover[ing] numerous elections to different bodies". Yet it is asserted above to be an already established convention. So, is it one we want to account for or get rid of? I don't mind the revert of some of what I put in there (yes, it was in the wrong section), but again, above we have two claims of established conventions, with different word orders, neither of which agree with the guideline. So, either we account for them as valid options, or a mass RM needs to happen.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:05, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
As the plural is limited to a tiny section of Wikipedia (and is potentially misleading – "United House Senate elections, 2016" can be read as there being more than one election to the Senate during the year, rather than it referring to a single election taking place across the country), perhaps those articles should just be brought in line with the rest of it? Number 57 20:13, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
I don't see why not. What about the UK ones, also using the divergent comma-then-year formatting?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:17, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
Which UK ones are you referring to? Number 57 20:42, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
See 3rd line (2nd bullet) at #Legislative elections in places.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:30, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
Still don't understand what you're referring to. Belfast South by-election, 1982 is an article about a single by-election; Northern Ireland by-elections, 1986 is an article about multiple by-elections – the singular/plural has been applied correctly based on the general election/local elections split. Number 57 19:46, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
Never mind; I was confusing myself (I was thinking of a parenthetical date case elsewhere). Derp.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:22, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Talk:Ministry of Defense of Georgia#Requested move 30 May 2016

Talk:Ministry of Defense of Georgia#Requested move 30 May 2016 - Please see this requested move which relates to WP:NC-GAL AusLondonder (talk) 04:48, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

European Parliament election, 2009/ Candidate list/ Dutch Labour Party

I came across this article and moved it to Dutch Labour Party candidates in the 2009 European Parliament election but I've been reverted. I was wondering what the policy was for these articles in terms of naming convention? Using / seems entirely incorrect to me. I would welcome someone with any experience in these type of articles to weigh in on the appropriate title. Thanks, Woody (talk) 15:06, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't think there is a policy, but I agree the article name as it stands (and those of all the other lists) is completely inappropriate, not to mention strewn with errors in terms of inadvertent spaces and incorrect party names. I would suggest the format "[Party name] list for the [election article name]", e.g. Labour Party (Netherlands) list for the European Parliament election, 2009. Number 57 20:10, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
Although ultimately I wonder whether it would be better to merge them all into Party lists for the European Parliament election, 2009 (Netherlands) as some of the lists are very short and I'm not sure whether they are useful standalone articles. Number 57 20:29, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
Hello guys, i am the maker of 99% of the candidate lists for any European election in the Netherlands. I copy'ed the naming from the Dutch wiki back in 2009 or something and just kept running with it. I also reverted Woody's rename, because there are like 30 pages by now and can't have only one with an other name. That being said. I have no problem with Number 57 suggestion. Just know these article names have been imbedded on several pages and tables. So go ahead and edit them. But please don't edit like 1 of them and then leave the rest. --BasBr1 (talk) 00:53, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Italics for legislation

I have opened a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Titles#Italics for legislation that concerns this page. Ibadibam (talk) 17:37, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation form and capitalization

The issues raised in Talk:Dan Sullivan (American senator)#Requested move 8 September 2018 may be of interest.    Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 02:17, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Guideline under discussion

Note that I have just tagged[2] the guideline as "under discussion", while discussions are underway above about whether the RFC adequately established a broad consensus. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:47, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Now that the RFC has been re-opened, I have amended[3] the "under discussion" notice so that it links to the re-opened RFC at #Proposed_change_to_election/referendum_naming_format. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:08, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Proposed change to election/referendum naming format

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.
After reading through this discussion, I am closing this RfC in support of the proposal to amend the naming format of articles about elections and referendums to move the year to the beginning of the title. I'm additionally noting that there's consensus to leave redirects in place from the former naming style when adjusting the article titles. Although there were arguments both in support and opposition of this proposal, the supporting arguments were both more numerous and more convincing, with many citing existing policies and guidelines including Wikipedia:Naming conventions (events) and WP:NATURAL. Several of the oppose votes cited the essay Wikipedia:If it ain't broke, don't fix it, which I did not find particularly convincing, and some were more along the lines of WP:IDONTLIKEIT (although it is only fair to point out that the same was true of some of the support votes). Furthermore, a number of the oppose votes were specifically based on ease of searchability, and it has been pointed out that leaving redirects from the previous titles will eliminate this concern. GorillaWarfare (talk) 03:34, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Should the naming format for elections/referendums be amended to move the year to the front of the title? – re-opened 20 October 2018 by User:Number 57. 20:21, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

I'd like to propose amending our naming format for elections/referendums to move the year to the front of the title; so, for example, French presidential election, 2017 would be 2017 French presidential election. I think this has several advantages:

  1. It brings election articles in line with the vast majority of other articles with years in the title and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (events), which states that order of a title should be when, where, what
  2. It allows the article titles to be used in prose, as the current format cannot be used (one could say "the 2017 German federal election resulted in a hung parliament")
  3. It would make certain election articles titles more logical (for instance United States Senate election in Florida, 2018 would become 2018 United States Senate election in Florida
  4. It would make the titles of related articles more logical (for instance Fundraising in the United States presidential election, 2016 would become Fundraising in the 2016 United States presidential election)
  5. It would automatically sort elections by year in categories

I mentioned this a year ago at WP:E&R and a valid point was raised that currently you can start searching "French presidential election" and you get the whole list. This is an advantage, but as far as I can see, the only one. A way to keep this benefit is to still create redirects from these titles.

The full list of article types and their proposed new format is:

Type (link to list of articles) Existing format New format
Standard election/referendum name United States presidential election, 2016 2016 United States presidential election
Central African general election, 2015–16 2015–16 Central African general election
Election with month United Kingdom general election, February 1974 February 1974 United Kingdom general election
Election with day and month Polish presidential election, 9 December 1922 9 December 1922 Polish presidential election
Sub article for main election (type 1) French legislative election, 1945 (Cameroon) 1945 French legislative election (Cameroon)
Sub article for main election (type 2) United States House of Representatives election in Vermont, 2010 2010 United States House of Representatives election in Vermont
By-election (US style) Virginia's 11th congressional district election, 2010 2010 Virginia's 11th congressional district election
By-election (ROW style) Barnsley Central by-election, 2011 2011 Barnsley Central by-election
US ballot measures California Proposition 10 (1998)[a] 1998 California Proposition 10
Election-related articles[b] Controversies in the Canadian federal election, 2011 Controversies in the 2011 Canadian federal election
Electoral fraud and violence during the Turkish general election, June 2015 Electoral fraud and violence during the June 2015 Turkish general election
List of candidates in the Iranian presidential election, 2013 List of candidates in the 2013 Iranian presidential election
List of Donald Trump presidential campaign endorsements, 2016 List of Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign endorsements
Opinion polling for the United Kingdom general election, 2017 Opinion polling for the 2017 United Kingdom general election
Results breakdown of the United Kingdom general election, 2017 Results breakdown of the 2017 United Kingdom general election
  1. ^ These articles are often not in line with the pre-existing guideline and should be at titles like California Proposition 10, 1998
  2. ^ Too many types to list them all here, but hopefully this gives an idea of what moving the year would do. Happy to respond to any other specific types.

This will involve moving many thousands of articles (I will notify as many relevant WPs as I can find), so I propose that if this passes, a bot run is set up to do it (see separate discussion below). Cheers, Number 57 20:41, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Survey

Just to be clear, I'm saying that searching "French presidential election" and then getting the list is a very big advantage to the current format. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:09, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
As I noted above, this can be solved by having redirects. Cheers, Number 57 11:08, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
Would redirect actually be the entries that appear in the preliminary search results? I am very sceptical of that, it does not appear to be the case. Onetwothreeip (talk) 11:13, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
Yes. Start typing 2017 French presidential election, and you'll see that it shows up even though it's only a redirect. Number 57 11:15, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
Of course, the date is often essential but not as the first "word" of a title. This is the norm and it makes sense: Canadian federal election, 2015 Peter K Burian (talk) 23:28, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
But it's not the norm, as has been demonstrated above and below by Impru20 (However, your citing of the Canadian election example makes me wonder whether you have misunderstood the purpose of the discussion – the proposal is to move all election articles, not just one I mentioned, so the Canadian one would be moved too. The current title of that specific example is therefore irrelevant in the context of this discussion as all election titles are currently at that type of naming format). Number 57 15:10, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
It is more than practice, actually. It is an actual Wikipedia naming convention. Impru20talk 18:22, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
  • Support - it'll reduce the amount of piping around links to the articles. Cabayi (talk) 09:55, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
  • Support - I came to this debate somewhat neutral. However I've read through these votes and have realised that it would make more sense to be "Year Event" than "Event Year". I get that people might want to search for a specific event by name, but the year being at the front would direct them to their search a bit quicker than it being at the end. As above, also, there are already sporting and cultural events which have the year at the front so we'd be putting things in line with that too. doktorb wordsdeeds 16:41, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
  • (Summoned by bot) Support — Would reduce the amount piping (per Cabayi and seems more natural and better to me.
    Regards, SshibumXZ (talk · contribs). 15:04, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
  • Mostly oppose, except to your point 4, which I do think would be better. Otherwise I prefer the current convention. Nevermore27 (talk) 18:38, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
  • WP:BADNAC. Contentious. Bad close. That was not a consensus. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:10, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose – The present convention is more appropriate for election articles specifically, allows easy searching by region, and avoids awkwardness when months are added. The reality is that we should not be bound by an iron rule of date before event when it doesn't make sense to do that. There isn't a navigation problem anyway, as redirects can be provided. I do not see the benefit of this change. Point four makes sense, but there is no reason why those articles cannot have a different format, regardless of the location of the election articles. I specifically oppose a 'bot run' on the grounds that it doesn't allow for nuance as opposed to the appropriate title in specialist cases. Point four makes sense, but there is no reason why those articles cannot have a different format, regardless of the location of the election articles. RGloucester — ☎ 15:10, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
Specifically, the current naming convention (i.e. the one having the year placed last) goes against WP:NAMINGCRITERIA as well as WP:NCE. On the one hand, because it goes against WP:COMMONNAME, WP:NATURAL and WP:CONSISTENCY (which are better fit by the proposal of using the year first), has a (very marginal, but anyway) disadvantage on WP:CONCISE and brings no difference with WP:PRECISE. On the other hand, elections are a type of event: aside from the fact that it is quite peculiar how did they get included under NCGAL in the first place (they were unilaterally added here in 2009 under no rationale), it only leads to confusion that elections are regulated under a different naming convention than that used for other events. It would be fine if that came as a result of some explained reasoning or consensus, but it is neither explained nor was such a convention conceived as a result of any discussion (its original wording dates back to an unilateral edit in 2004).
Then, the practice of placing the year last has actually led to frequent issues on the naming style of specific articles (as can be checked here and here), so the proposed change can only mean an improvement on this. Impru20talk 15:39, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but I don't agree. Any article title with the year first feels unnatural to me, and certainly is not a common name of any description. They are WP:NDESC titles. The natural format in English syntax is 'American presidential election of 1925'. No talk about naturalness can be had, as we are simply not using natural titles at all. We are using Wikipedia jargon, which is based on headlinese. There is no confusion. Do what you like, but I'm quite certain it will only make article titles clunky and more unnatural. RGloucester — ☎ 16:00, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
You may find unnatural yourself, but WP practice shows otherwise. In practice, most of these articles do indeed use the <date> <place> <event> wording in the lead's bolding anyway despite the title being <place> <event>, <date>; and WP:NCE shows how natural is the use of the year first in article titles. The NDESC form of the titles would be the one you point out, not the one shown in the pre-existing convention. Besides, it is not clear how would the change make the titles "clunky and more unnatural" when other events have been named like this for years in WP! Impru20talk 17:40, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
Standard English syntax never puts the date before an event. Wikipedia has used that format, but not because it is natural. The natural format in English is 'Event of Date'. As I said, the Wikipedia format is based on news jargon, not natural English usage. The reason it is 'clunky and unnatural' is because the year is only included for disambiguation; the actual topic is 'Such and Such election'. It is natural for the most important piece of information (the topic) to come first, and the disambiguation second, as in the standard English syntax 'British general election of year' or 'General strike of year'. RGloucester — ☎ 17:58, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
Maybe it is because I am not an expert on standard English syntax, but I feel that "Event, date" is definitely not natural. You are mixing up what standard English syntax is with what naturalness is. "2017 German general election" may not be standard English syntax, but it is natural. "German general election, 2017" is neither standard English syntax nor natural. Just because you see "German general election of 2017" as more befitting of standard English syntax does not mean that, subsequently, "German federal election, 2017" is correct in that sense.
Besides, when I talk about naturalness, I am talking of WP:NATURAL. In this sense, either "<Date> <demonym> <event>" or "<Demonym> <event> of <date>" would be more natural disambiguators than the current "<Demonym> <event>, <date>". No matter how you put it, the current convention is unworkable when you need to add a link to the election in text, and one must usually resort to link piping for that.
And general strikes? You mean like 1926 United Kingdom general strike, 1922 Italian general strike, 1892 New Orleans general strike, 2018 Spanish women's strike, 2017 Brazilian general strike... and I could follow. Impru20talk 18:34, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Support This makes a lot of sense. All the new article titles make more sense and read more smoothly. I see this as making it much easier to link articles, letting you scrap the pipelinks in many cases. It will also look much better when the elections are linked in the "Main article" templates at the tops of sections or the "About" templates at the top of articles. The only change I would make would be in the "By-election (US Style) where I'd remove the possessive from the state name. So it would be 2010 Virginia 11th congressional district election instead of 2010 Virginia's 11th congressional district election. I tested out the issue mentioned above about searching by region, and confirmed that redirects solve the problem. The other benefit I see is that it would make categories like Category:General elections in the United States more navigable. ~Awilley (talk) 15:29, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment I just want to reiterate my support from above, including my specific support for all the examples and for the use of a bot. Both YYYY (Location) (type) election and (Location) (type) election YYYY are prevalent in reliable sources. As stated in the proposal, easy searching by region remains through redirects. I marginally prefer the style (Location) (type) election, MMM YYYY aesthetically, but aesthetics aren't a requirement of WP:NAMINGCRITERIA. Naturalness is, and MMM YYYY (Location) (type) election is more natural. It also gives consistency with other events, which contributes to another naming criterion. None of the naming criteria favour the status quo. If there are specialist cases which haven't been mentioned already, the wide scale of promotion of this re-opened RfC should bring them to light. Certainly the change in policy shouldn't be stopped based on the theoretical existence of edge cases. Ralbegen (talk) 15:41, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Support, would be way more natural. I always search by year first. Never understood the current naming format. Renata (talk) 15:43, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. If I start typing in the search bar, "United States Presidential..." it's going to take a lot of letters before I am even offered years, and then there are hundreds of them (both general, and "in-state"). If I start typing "1912 United States..." I will get that election must faster. However, we should also get rid of the possessive case in these titles, and have 2010 Virginia 11th congressional district election rather than 2010 Virginia's 11th congressional district election. See, e.g., 538's Virginia 11th, not "Virginia's 11th". bd2412 T 15:52, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I do not see the value in making all those edits, and I also approach things geographically first... so I'd look up "Polish parliamentary election" before "1993 parliamentary election" (and then try to find Poland) -- even if I knew the year. Which is IMO unlikely for all but the most famous contests (international or local). Markvs88 (talk) 16:05, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Support per natural English syntax and simplicity of a bot run. The argument against—that elections are primarily categorized by location rather than the year—is misleading because the titles are not in the context of an alphanumeric categorization; if the "big to small" argument were fully applied, titles like "South African general election, 2019" would be moved to "Election, general, South Africa, 2019", which might make good indexing but would be a syntactically very poor title. Doremo (talk) 16:07, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Support and leave the old name as a redirect. Though I guess one would have to prepare the bot, otherwise it would be quite tricky. Juxlos (talk) 16:16, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
    @Juxlos: As the operator of the proposed bot to do this (Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TheSandBot, which is also the reason this RfC was reopened), I can say that leaving the old title as a redirect is not an issue and was already planned (and implemented, I just need the list and the bot could be going within minutes, it is mostly just a policy matter). --TheSandDoctor Talk 17:00, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - WP should be written for readers, not editors. It's far easier and more intuitive for a reader to find the article they're looking for by starting to type "Irish general elect-" and have them all appear in the search box, rather than them having to already know that the most recent Irish general election was in 2016. This is an unnecessary move of >30,000 articles for little advantage. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 17:09, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
This is explicitly mentioned in the proposal as something that can be dealt with by redirects. TheSandDoctor mentions above that the bot is already set up to leave old titles as redirects, so the search box would retain its existing functionality for users. Ralbegen (talk) 17:11, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Doesn't matter - there are basically no good reasons to do it one way over the other. It's all a matter of preference, and readers/editors who prefer it the other way can be addressed through redirects. Just pick one and stick with it. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:15, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
    I guess this is really oppose per WP:AINTBROKE. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:15, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
    Actually, the mention of AINTBROKE has no sense here. It has been pointed out that the bot is ready and that it would be a matter of just minutes to conduct the moves while leaving the old titles as redirects. Thus, we can obtain the advantages of the change (and there are a few of them) without any of the disadvantages of the pre-existing convention in a quick fashion. Besides, AINTBROKE would be of application "if there is no evidence of a real problem", but the pre-existing convention has actually been a source of various problems throughout the years. Obviously not for the shorter Spanish general election, 2016-like titles, but yes for the Portland, Maine mayoral election, 2011-like titles or other longer and unnatural-looking titles. The conflict with NAMINGCRITERIA and NCE remains an issue. Impru20talk 17:23, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
    Just to clarify, the bot could be started in minutes, assuming I am online and able at said time. The duration of time it would take to move over 35,200 articles would be longer, probably several hours from start to finish. It should be noted though that is just a guesstimate based on previous work I have done and some basic math assuming a move takes 1 second and that the bot is run at full speed. This would take considerably longer if the bot speed was limited artificially by, say, 5 seconds in between moves. Basically, it would take mere minutes to start, but actually completing all moves, YMMV. Each second delay would result in a one fold increase in the time taken when compared to full speed (ie 5 second delay = 5 fold increase). --TheSandDoctor Talk 17:29, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
    It would still be a reasonable amount of time given the number of articles involved, anyway. The purpose of my answer was to highlight that the benefit is clearly there when considering that the pre-existing convention has created problems for years, if not for over a decade. Impru20talk 17:36, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Number 57, thank you for breaking this down by type. Overall, I support, as redirects should resolve the primary concern about the new titles being hard to find, and most of the new titles are more natural (especially under "Election-related articles"). Oppose the "US ballot measures" change because it seems like the significant majority of those pages, where the title is a proper name (e.g. "California Proposition 10"), never followed the existing guideline and I don't feel the new phrasing is natural (I've said more about this here and here at the BRFA). Uncertain w.r.t. the "By-election (US style)" titles; I think bd2412's proposal above is less awkward. — Earwig talk 17:30, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Support More natural way of referring to things. It was right that the debate was reopened to enable a larger number of editors to comment Lyndaship (talk) 17:36, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose The current article format makes hierarchical sense with the order of where, what, when. Suggestion: Make a redirect in the proposed format for each article to achieve the goals stated. Cheers, HopsonRoad (talk) 17:45, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
Is there any particular reason that the order should be where, what, when rather than the when, where, what that WP:NCE recommends? Ralbegen (talk) 17:50, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@HopsonRoad: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (events) states that the order of article titles should be when, where, what. This is an effort to bring this convention into line with pretty much all others. Number 57 17:52, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@Ralbegen and Number 57: Thank you for calling attention to WP:NCE. As I read it, it pertains to one-off events, not regular, recurring events. So, when I search on "Place X election" in the WP search box, those are the characters that would show up, followed by dates. I would then pick a date. This may be possible with returns from redirects, as well. I don't know. Sincerely, HopsonRoad (talk) 18:01, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
NCE guideline is completely irrelevant when dealing with recurring events. Furthermore, it's hard to take such a page seriously when it makes such strange assertions as "This is the common name (Rule #1 applies), but redirects to Nanking Massacre, which in view of everything that happened is probably a better title since more than just rapes occurred. However, "massacre" probably shouldn't have been capitalized". Apparently some people haven't bothered to look up the word 'rape' in a dictionary...what's more, they then editorialise about capitalisation? 'Bizarre' and 'absurd' both come to mind. The relevant policy, WP:AT comes first, and the AT criteria clearly support the present convention of 'topic disambiguation', rather than 'disambiguation topic' for recurring events. RGloucester — ☎ 18:11, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@HopsonRoad: It's a good point that WP:NCE uses examples that are one-off. That said, bringing elections in line with this format would improve consistency, which is one of the policy naming criteria. Redirects at the existing titles would still allow the search box functionality you're describing, which I think is really important and valuable for readers. Personally, I wouldn't be supporting the proposal if that functionality would no longer be available. Ralbegen (talk) 18:14, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
Consistency between apples and oranges is neither desirable nor sensible. I do not want to bite into an apple and taste orange. RGloucester — ☎ 18:16, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@RGloucester: NCE guideline is completely irrelevant when dealing with recurring events.
2000 Summer Olympics, 2004 Summer Olympics, 2008 Summer Olympics, 2012 Summer Olympics, 2016 Summer Olympics, 2020 Summer Olympics...
2014 Atlantic hurricane season, 2015 Atlantic hurricane season, 2016 Atlantic hurricane season, 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, 2018 Atlantic hurricane season...
Should I follow? Elections seem to be the only kind of recurring event not abiding to NCE. Impru20talk 18:19, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
'Other stuff exists' is not an argument. The present convention for election articles is better for election articles. That's my last point on this matter. RGloucester — ☎ 18:22, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
From WP:OSE: This essay is not a standard reply that can be hurled against anyone you disagree with who has made a reference to how something is done somewhere else. Though a lot of Wikipedia's styles are codified in policy[...]. From WP:AT, which is a policy you referenced above, we have the criterion: Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. Ralbegen (talk) 18:29, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
Again, I do not consider recurring events and one-off events to be similar, and more importantly, I do not consider events that are not elections to be relevant when deciding how election articles should be titled. Consistency within the topic area of elections does matter, but consistency with other non-related topic areas is irrelevant. Please, spare me the trouble of having to reply any further to this mess. RGloucester — ☎ 18:33, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@RGloucester: "Other stuff exists" is not an argument, but WP:CONSISTENCY is. You know what is not an argument? WP:IDONTLIKEIT. We have plenty of recurring events abiding to NCE; elections are the only kind of event which have a different treatment. And no reason other than personal preference has been brought as of yet for the current "<Demonym> <election>, <date>" format to be preserved. Impru20talk 18:35, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
Obviously, you've not read what I've written. This whole debate is a folderol. Do what you like with the titles of these articles, but do not kid yourself into thinking they are any more 'natural'. I do not even like the present scheme. I simply consider it the lesser of two evils, and more in line with WP:AT. But, you're determined, so you'll get what you want, no matter what damage it does to the encylopaedia. RGloucester — ☎ 18:42, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
Please, no. If you suggest that the proposed scheme does damage WP, then we have an issue, because NCE and other recurring events do follow that scheme (and yes, elections are a specific sub-type of recurring events, but just like the Olympics, wheather seasons or the such. WP:AT applies to all of these alike, so the difference in treatment is not justified). Then, I do not think that the people supporting the change do it because they see it may cause a damage to the encyclopedia. Impru20talk 18:56, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • As a FINAL, really final, comment on this subject, I'd like to note that NCE guideline was unilateraly changed, without discussion of any kind, to favour the 'when first' approach in 2015. Prior to that, NCE made no such prescription, and so many of the arguments above about the prior existence of NCE make no sense at all. I'm sure this won't halt anyone from continuing to do what they see fit, but, the reality is, all of these guidelines stink, and are filled with prescriptions that have no real basis in consensus, created by singular editors to encourage fait accomplis. I've seen this all too many times...but fine, make one person's change to the guidelines years ago without consensus the basis for moving thousands of articles. Go ahead. RGloucester — ☎ 19:40, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment. An editor may feel really strongly on this issue, I get that. Still - commenting on other editors' contributions - nearly a dozen times so far - might be taken as bludgeoning the process. You've had your speak? Grand. Let others have theirs. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 19:55, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
Oh, spare me. I've said about five times now to STOP directing comments at me so I can get out of this nonsense. I will not, however, allow canards directed at my person to stand unanswered. RGloucester — ☎ 19:57, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
I am not sure whether Bastun referred to yourself, to myself, or to both (or to Number 57). Nonetheless, I would suggest any user getting involved in this discussion to avoid commenting on the contributor and keep this constructive. Bludgeoning is applied when the exact same argument is repeated over and over again, not when new arguments, explanations or examples are brought into play (further, it is ironic because the RfC was re-opened precisely because further input was sought, which I think everyone involved here did contribute to). In my personal case, as I made my point of view fairly clear, I do not have any issues with withdrawing from the discussion. Impru20talk 20:05, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
My comment was not directed at you, RGloucester. Thank you for the explanation of WP:BLUDGEON, Impru20, but I assure you it was unnecessary. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 08:05, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
@Bastun: So much unnecessary was your disruption in this discussion. This could have very well worked by using our personal talk pages, instead of having to engage in further (and unrelated) talk here. Specially when this was done in a "throw the stone, hide the hand"-style, confusing readers as to whom were you referring to. Impru20talk 08:15, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
I requested that people not attempt to refute or argue every point made by others, Impru20. Yet here we are, engaging in further (and unrelated) talk here. I'm done, goodbye. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 08:28, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
Your fault, my friend Bastun. If you play with fire, you get burned. Bye. Impru20talk 08:31, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Partial support. While I find "2016 United States presidential election" natural, I don't find "February 1974 United Kingdom general election" natural, still less "9 December 1922 Polish presidential election". If it is to go by year, it should go by year in all cases, e.g. "1974 United Kingdom general election (February)", "1974 United Kingdom general election (October)", "1922 Polish presidential election (9 December)", "1922 Polish presidential election (20 December)". Scolaire (talk) 20:11, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The year is a qualifier, or disambiguator, of the subject, not the other way round. Readers are far more likely to search on the subject first and then the year, so the year is better placed at the end. Bermicourt (talk) 20:30, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Support but List of Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign endorsements should be List of 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign endorsements or should have a better title anyway. Some of these articles where it's tricky to figure out how to move the date to the front are just poorly named. I intend to move some of them to names which better reflect current consensus, such as merging the two December 1922 Polish presidential elections into one article. Including my !vote, the tally currently stands at 22 23 support, 10 oppose. Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:51, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose, largely for the same reasons as Bermicourt above, the year is the disambiguator and the search term will normally be the election type. And as has been pointed out, multiple elections in the same year be disambiguated as "1974 (February)" at the end rather than shoe-horned in at the start. Sionk (talk) 22:02, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
    • @Bermicourt and Sionk: (and anyone else opposing on the grounds that the year is a disambiguator) Almost all event-type articles on Wikipedia start with the year (Impru20 has quoted many examples above regarding strikes, hurricane seasons, Olympics etc). Why should elections be different? Also, did you see the statement that redirects can be used for searching? Number 57 22:40, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
      • You're flattering people if you really think everyone knows the years where elections have taken place. In my view it is more likely the average reader would search for the type of election, rather than guessing the year. And if it's not broke, why fix it? Sionk (talk) 23:01, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
        • @Sionk: The point was that people will still be able to search starting with "Polish presidential election" etc because the search function includes redirects. This has been discussed a few times above. Number 57 23:50, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose - this is one of those cases where you could style it either way, but for historical reasons we chose to do it the current way and we should not change it. Wikipedia values incumbency, and we usually favour the first non-stub titles for articles (including when there are ENGVAR issues at stake) because once people are used to a particular format for naming, WP:RECOGNISE and WP:ASTONISH (if you change the thing) come into play. Now obviously if there were a persuasive reason to move the pages, as there generally is when an RM discussion is closed as "move", then that would be fine, but IMHO none of the support reasons above are very persuasive. It's just an alternative and equally good but not better way of styling the articles. FWIW I also think Bermicourt and HopsonRoad make good points above. The title should start with what the thing is, with the year at the end as that is a qualifier, not the fundamental identifier of the page. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 22:48, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
    • @Amakuru: There is precedent for this type of mass move - football season articles (of which there are also many thousands) orginally had the year at the end, but around 2009 it was decided to move it to the start in line with practice elsewhere. I don't think inertia is a particularly good reason for not making a change. 23:50, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Support to the following suggestions: 1) Standard election/referendum name and 2) By-election (ROW style). Oppose By-election (US style), I'd presume the correct nomenclature is "Virginia's 11th congressional district special election, 1861|, not "Virginia's 11th congressional district election, 2010". I would support a move to the new nomenclature of "1861 special election at Virginia's 11th congressional district". No opinion on other suggestions. Howard the Duck (talk) 05:54, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Support - making sure to cast my opinion here. Per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (events) - events should be "When, Where, What" - that is just much more logical to read and write. Per WP:NAMINGCRITERIA#Naturalness - readers could either start writing "US presidential election..." or "1972 US presidential election" - the first option will return 10 results, none of which are for 1972, while the second one will return the results already at "1972 us" - while yes, a redirect could solve this issue, this goes to show that for searching, the more natural one is the year. Per WP:NAMINGCRITERIA#Conciseness - if we really want to nitpick this, then the title is even shorter due to not needing a comma or brackets around the year. Per WP:NAMINGCRITERIA#Consistency - this change brings these groups of articles in line with all other event articles on Wikipedia. To my fellow editor, Amakuru, claims that we tend to keep historical titles, I see no basis for that claim in any policy or guideline, in-fact, a week at WP:RM shows that stable titles that have been with a title for years are changed when an editor that cares enough, notices that those titles fail to match with Wikipedia updated policies and guideline (as an example, the 2016 WP:DATERANGE change which articles are still being sent to RM). Also, just to be clear, I support the bot usage; I support the naming style examples; I support the use of days and months, if those are to be kept in the title; I support Impru20t in merging this guideline with WP:NCE. I oppose the claim that WP:NCE does not cover recurring events, as it clearly does and states this in the date section: The date is not needed when the article pertains to events that are unlikely to recur, meaning that the use of dates should be used when the event is likely to recur, such as elections. I oppose the need for any article specific RM as that would be WP:Stonewalling and gaming the system and for the same reason, I oppose the caveat raised earlier that if an editer reverts the bot then that would be OK. The person reverting must have a pretty good justification as anything else would be WP:IDONTLIKEIT and WP:ICANTHEARYOU. I'm pretty sure that any reason that editor might have, the issue would have probably be raised in this discussion already (the bot should probably direct to this RfC in the edit log). And finally I oppose any further use of this RfC as a precedent in re-opening RfCs. This should be a very rare exception. --Gonnym (talk) 06:01, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Meh per Ivanvector. In general I find the oppose comments more compelling so take that as you will. This is a matter of taste. It doesn't suit mine, but if it suits yours, fine. I couldn't care less if the change were made. What would be the difference from just making redirects? Those would require far less discussion than a mass move of 35,000 pages. This whole thing feels like a discussion on template colors. I worry our time could be put to better use. Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 08:47, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. Having the date first makes the title into a usable noun, makes the titles sortable, and generally makes things cleaner. Worth the renaming. --Yair rand (talk) 15:31, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. Since the proposed destination titles can actually be used in actual prose, this will be a boon to editing, in addition to being consistent with how we name other events on Wikipedia. This is especially true in visual editor, where it would make the page much easier to find in the insert link function, since search threads that begin with "[Year] [Location]" will immediately turn up the desired page, vs search threads that force you to either type out everything or type out "[Location] [Type of Election]" and then scroll through a long list which is usually not in chronological order. This would also reduce time wasted piping links (e.g. if the redirect at the natural language title doesn't exist 1972 Canadian federal election vs Canadian federal election, 1972, or if you don't want to waste time potentially futilely typing out that natural language title). Since redirects would be created by the movebot, people can still use the old page titles essentially as they would have before. ---- Patar knight - chat/contributions 16:26, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment - I have no strong views on this but do have a couple of comments on categories. Firstly, are categories going to be re-named as well as articles otherwise we will have a mismatch e.g. 2016 United States presidential election v Category:United States presidential election, 2016. Secondly, whilst this may help in sorting some categories, sorting in other categories may be end up being corrupted e.g. the articles in Category:2018 elections in Asia will all be listed under "0–9" rather than under the correct alphabet.--Obi2canibe (talk) 19:20, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Support: Existing style always seemed strange. This is more natural and consistent with other types of recurring events. ViperSnake151  Talk  21:21, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I can support with caveat, caveat being that the bot has no license to edit war. It gets one move per article and if the move is undone or altered for any reason other than ANI/AN-consensus vandalism, any further move has to be manual and may go to RM if not handled informally. (If RM is required for technical reasons, i.e. you can't make the edit to move the article back, then the bot's opinion should not count toward making it a "contested" move in that proceeding) I should think that should be obvious - the bot is being approved for one job, after all, not permanent edit warring - but I just want to be clear. Furthermore, as a part of that, the bot should *tell* users they can revert it, preferably in the edit summary and its user page. Also, of course, people have brought up some good examples of pages that should be excluded in advance so that people don't have to move them back. "To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer." Wnt (talk) 23:21, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose current format is easiest to read and in a logical format (ie. what the election was, and then when). Do not support any change to this, and I also don't think there is enough evidence there is a problem worth solving. --Tom (LT) (talk) 07:53, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
  • We're at 27 28 support, 13 oppose now. How long should this go for? Onetwothreeip (talk) 08:49, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
28 is correct. I did count Number 57's proposing as a vote, but there was someone else I missed. Onetwothreeip (talk) 09:21, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
So I approached this with an open mind, and took the nominator's five points in turn:
Details ...
  1. "brings election articles in line with the vast majority of other articles with years in the title and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (events)"
    I don't see any great principle here. Yes, consistency has its advantages, but so long as we have consistency within each topic set, consistency beween topics is less crucial. More below.
  2. "allows the article titles to be used in prose, as the current format cannot be used"
    The example given is "the 2017 German federal election resulted in a hung parliament". The proposed renaming would indeed allow that sentence to be written without piping the link, but such cases are rare.
    Most articles refer to elections in a context where the full name is superfluous, so piping will still be needed to avoid repetition of words which already unambiguously implied by the context. E.g. an article on the XYZ Party in Ruritania wouldn't say "XYZ won a majority of seats in the 1995 Ruritanian congressional election, the 1997 Ruritanian congressional election, and the 2002 Ruritanian congressional election". In each case, we'd pipe the link to strip out the words "Ruritanian congressional", and probably also structure the sentence to avoid repeating the word "election".
    So that's a minimal gain, but it comes at the price of losing the ability to hide the year by a pipe trick. We won't be able to write [[Ruritanian congressional election, 1954|]].
  3. "It would make certain election articles titles more logical (for instance United States Senate election in Florida, 2018 would become 2018 United States Senate election in Florida"
    at best a marginal again, The question of which is more logical depends on your focus. If your focus is on the 2018 election, then bringing 2018 nearer the front helps. However, if your focus is on Florida, then the date is better at the end.
  4. "It would make the titles of related articles more logical (for instance Fundraising in the United States presidential election, 2016 would become Fundraising in the 2016 United States presidential election"
    again, at best a marginal gain, whose benefits depends on your focus. If your main interest is the 2016 election, then good news. However, if your interest in the broad (and perennially hot) topic of campaign finance in US elections, then the current order is better.
  5. "It would automatically sort elections by year in categories"
    But it would lose automatic sorting in other categories which are not sorted by year
    e.g. Irish general election, 2011 is currently[4] categorised
    • [[Category:2011 elections in Europe]]
    • [[Category:2011 in Irish politics|General]]
    • [[Category:General elections in the Republic of Ireland|2011]]
    If this was renamed as proposed, we could indeed drop the sort key on Category:General elections in the Republic of Ireland, but we would have to add one to Category:2011 elections in Europe. So zero net gain, just thousnds of sort keys to add.
    Similar issues with Glenrothes by-election, 2008. It currently[5] has a DEFAULTSORT with no at-specific inline keys, and after renaming it would still need that. No gain.
    Oregon gubernatorial election, 2002 currently[6] has 3 categories, each with a sort key. The "Oregon" sort key on Category:United States gubernatorial elections, 2002 is currently superfluous. After renaming, the "2002" sortkey on Category:Oregon gubernatorial elections would become superfluous. So no gain.
So overall, points 2–4 are neutral; the gains come with roughly equal downsides. They don't point us in either direction.
That leaves me only with point #1, the principle of consistency. As above, I am not thrilled by rigid consistency betwen diverse topics, and I don't think that WP:Naming conventions (events) actually supports the nominator's assertions. It says that In the majority of cases, the title of the article should contain the following three descriptors: When the incident happened; Where the incident happened; What happened.
Note that it just says to include these 3 points. Nowhere does it explicitly assert a general principle of "year first". And most of rest of the page is taken up with numerous topics where other naming formats are preferred.
So in the end it seems to me that what we actually have here is a much weaker broad convention than claimed, with many exceptions ... and almost zero net advantage to either format.
If we were starting from scratch to build an encyclopedia, I'd say toss a coin on this proposal. But when we already have so many articles with so many wikilinks, and so many category sort keys which may need attention, it seems to me that only significant effect of this proposal is a massive amount of work in updating navboxes and sort keys, and consequential renamings of many hundeds of topic categories (e.g. Category:United Kingdom general election, 2015 → Category:2015 United Kingdom general election) thousands of set categories (e.g. Category:Minnesota elections, 1907 → Category:1907 Minnesota elections. I would much prefer editors' energies to be devoted to improving content rather than to this zero-sum card-shuffling which will beat the living daylights out of the watchlists of editors who work in these topic area.
I am also left disappointed by how the nominator pitched the RFC. Opening statements are supposed to be neutral, but so far as I can see, in points 2–4 the nom selected only one half of a less cleacut picture. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:22, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
Some two-editor back and forth about that:
Just pointing out one thing in order to keep it brief: while the other points are debatable, point 1 is untrue. We do not even have consistency "within the topic set". Ordinary elections use the "Demonym type election, date"-format, but future elections use the "Next demonym type election"-format (not "Demonym type election, next"). Precisely, the change would help to bring consistency not only beween topics, but also within the same topic area. Impru20talk 17:10, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
Edit: This circumstance also affects point 5, actually, since as of currently you still need to sort key future elections as these are not automatically categorized by place. Impru20talk 17:15, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
(ec) Wow. It's hardly a surprise that with-a-known date uses different naming format to topic-with-title-incorporatig-known-date.
Stretching the notion of consistency in that way and using the big stretch to describe my point with an unqualified label of "untrue" doesn't look to me like a good faith form of discussion. We are here to form a consensus, not to lob dodgy allegations of untruth. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:26, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
Could be hardly a surprise, but it is not "consistency within the topic set" (which is how you worded it). Obviously, the formatting is different, and the proposed change would make it to be fully consistent within the topic set. Thus, and the fact that WP:CONSISTENCY is a WP:NAMINGCRITERIA, pretty much solves the issue with point 1. And I said it was untrue because it is untrue: we do not have consistency within the same topic set when it comes to the date placement. Please, assume good faith: I was neither attacking nor accusing you of anything. Impru20talk 17:51, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
Impru, if you want me to assume that you are acting in good faith, then don't start out by accusing me of spouting untruths on the basis of your attempt to equate two very different types of article. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:11, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
I just said point 1 was untrue, and I explained why. I did not "accuse you of spouting untruths". That's a wording you are using that I have never written. I do not wish for this to be moved into personal territory just because you saw your argument was not sustainable in the terms you had exposed it. Besides, I do not have to ask you to assume good faith, as that's a Wikipedia policy and I already told you I was neither attacking nor accusing you. This said, I see we are not discussing on content any longer so I withdraw from this bit of the conversation. Impru20talk 20:21, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
Not really, Google Trends shows that the usage is evenly split. Hddty. (talk) 07:50, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. I've long regretted creating a situation that was difficult to reverse, and didn't foresee that I would still be annoyed by the article names all these years later. In fairness to my past self, there was already an article named United States presidential election, 2000, so I was following precedent. But IIRC, there was a person or two that suggested giving the election articles names like "2000 United States presidential election", and I might have even argued "nah, too much work!". I'm really grateful @Number 57: and @BD2412: are taking up the cause, and hope this RfC successfully results in a change. -- RobLa (talk) 03:38, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Support But keep all titles as redirects. Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 04:13, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Support I've always found titles like United States Senate election in Florida, 2018 to be confusing/awkward. Overall an improvement; more clear and logical, and as per above, consistent with the naming of other events. Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:38, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose per BrownHairedGirl. Spleodrach (talk) 15:42, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Weak support As an experienced Wikipedia user, election articles are often hard for me to find because of this different kind of naming convention. However, I believe this is mostly because I'm used to a different practice in other articles, and it's not really a problem for not-active-Wikipedians that would warrant moving thousands of articles. So just a weak support. --Pudeo (talk) 22:23, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Strongly oppose - for something like elections, which are recurring, the location is more important than the date. When someone is searching, the location is the most important factor. Saying that issue is solved by re-directs really doesn't address that the name of an article should be the common name, as others have pointed out. If it is considered necessary to have a re-direct for every single article, that is actually a recognition that the common name is the geographical one, not the date. I also don't think we should get too hung up on the naming convention issue, because conventions are just that: conventions. When you have 35,000+ articles already named with the geographical location first, that is itself an indication of a broad consensus of how to name election articles: the place where the election is occurring is the most important identifying feature. I also agree with the comments made by HopsonRoad, Bastun, Markvs88 and RGloucester, so will not repeat them, but I think they are on the mark. --Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 18:31, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Support MOS:EVENT and almost all other non-election articles put year first. So for consistency, so should all the election articles. Joseph2302 (talk) 07:50, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • General oppose I support the change for election related articles because the wording is much more natural. I do strongly oppose the proposed change to ballot initiatives, since I think most people are looking for the proposition number, not the year. For the rest, I am in the weak oppose camp, largely because, again, I think that more people will search first by jurisdiction, then office, then date, but at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter much. --Enos733 (talk) 21:56, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Just a comment on all the references to "natural" - I notice that both supporters and opponents of the proposed change support their position by claims of "naturalness". I think that just demonstrates that the claim based on "naturalness" is inherently subjective, and therefore not compelling. For a similar example, I find referring to today's date as "October 29, 2018" to be "natural", and "29 October 2018" to be "unnatural". Other editors no doubt feel exactly the opposite. All that demonstrates is that there is no "natural" way to refer to dates; it's a matter of what people are personally used to seeing. That's why the guidelines for dates say that either date format can be used in Wikipedia, consistency be damned. So, I'm not really impressed by calls for "naturalness" or "consistency". I'm more of a "pave the paths where people walk" person, and I'm impressed by the 35,000+ articles that place the jurisdiction or office first, then the date of the election. That is a substantial number of page creators and editors who find that form of title is more informative about the article than starting with the date. That is more compelling to me than a call to "consistency". Let the editors create pages, and if there is variation amongst them, so be it. Why is a call to "consistency" compelling? --Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 00:53, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
    @Mr Serjeant Buzfuz: I don't think the DMY/MDY date format issue is particularly comparable. There are obvious geographic differences (at least between the US and UK), and one format is clearly used more than the other in each of those places. On the other hand, most people probably do not use or prefer either proposed format in generally referring to elections, and MOS dictates "no slashes in dates" even though slashes are very commonly used in representing dates outside Wikipedia. I also suspect most people have just followed that format because the existing articles are all named using that format (or people have deliberately moved articles to match that format), and not primarily because the practice is enshrined in a guideline. Jc86035 (talk) 10:38, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
    @Mr Serjeant Buzfuz: Regarding your observation that it would be better to "pave the paths where people walk": I think this is an interesting way to think of it. I believe the status quo is the status quo because of status quo bias toward the established tradition (which I accept some blame for, and describe in my "Support" statement above) rather than any sort of natural affinity toward the "Election, YYYY" style of naming. Do we have an easy way of aggregating the pipelinks to election articles? My hunch is that "Election, YYYY" in prose is rare, and that "YYYY Election" is a common pipelink label. Knowing what the most common pipelinks are represents "paving the paths where people walk" a lot more than observing the use of already-paved paths. -- RobLa (talk) 22:43, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Support for general consistency with other article titles and the naming conventions (consistency, commas, natural word order, titles of articles about events). If you don't like this one you'd hate to see how many railway station articles have been moved purely because WP:NCCAPS doesn't like unnecessary capitalization. Jc86035 (talk) 10:38, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. Naturally the year is written first in the prose. I agree that sometimes both title cannot avoid piping to avoid repetition of words, but the disadvantage with the current title is that the readers clicked in the prose that put year in the first only to arrive at the title that put year in the last, the proposed title would make the title consistent with the bolded text in the first paragraph in the lead and the prose, although sometimes the prose need to be piped to shorten the words. The argument that the current title has the advantage with using a pipe trick is irrelevant because Wikipedia should serve the readers, not the editors. Saying that the location is more important than the date/most readers approach elections geographically first is subjective. Hddty. (talk) 00:41, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
No, it isn't. Sure, in somewhere with set elections, you'll (presumably) know the year and can type that in first, e.g., U.S. presidential elections. What was the first general election of the 21st century to take place in Ireland, though? Or the U.K.? Without knowing the year, you have to start with the location! BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 17:14, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Using the "first general election of the 21st century in the U.K." as an example, I went on an ad hoc search for pipelinks to United Kingdom general election, 2001. The Social Democratic and Labour Party article has a lot of pipelinks in the prose to election articles: "2001 General Election", "2003 Assembly Election", "2004 European elections", "2005 Westminster Election". That was admittedly a very hastily found example, but I'm curious: can you find an article where the prose puts the election before the year? -- RobLa (talk) 22:48, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
I think most readers use Google to search that kind of information if they forgot the year. Hddty. (talk) 07:27, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Still a lot of work for no real gain for the reader, but yes, I'd switch to neutral. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 17:14, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
@Bastun: Redirects would be created for all the existing articles when the pages are moved (if this succeeds). For any future ones, we could request that AnomieBOT creates redirects for new election/referendum articles (it already does this for sports seasons where endashes are used, usually within a few hours of the article appearing). Number 57 17:40, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm quite happy with my decision thanks. As I said (I think), if it's not broken don't waste your time fixing it. Sionk (talk) 18:58, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Mild oppose - mild because there are merits either way, and it is not very significant. I do not weight WP:NCE heavily, as it specifies content and not order, and in itself, and in action, is in no way fully conformant. I will not rehash all the above, but Oppose mostly for practical reasons, which I think are not given enough weight in the debate. We all know we lack capacity, we don’t have enough editors and editor time to do all we want, to the quality level we want. So we must treat time, attention and motivation as treasure. And a move like this *will* eat time, in reading notices, in tweaking edits, in working on sorts and categories. To me, this seems only justifiable for significant gain, and I just don’t see that here. When we have 50% better coverage, 70% fewer stubs, and more, then we can run bots and tweak to perfect WP...SeoR (talk)
@SeoR: Once this RfC ends (if it succeeds), there won't be any further notices to read; all that will happen is that the bot approval discussion will restart. As the proposer of the change, I was planning to do all the legwork required to sort this out, including categorisation etc. We have also done these mass changes before, for example when all the sports seasons articles (of which there are also many thousand) were moved in around 2009. Cheers, Number 57 21:38, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for the consideration, but I would not change my vote as in my view this is a lot of work for what I don't consider a gain. I also agree with SeoR's time point above.Markvs88 (talk) 23:58, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I don't think there's much either way in the arguments - this is a true case where it doesn't really matter. However, I think BrownEyedGirl makes good points above regarding the suggested merits of the move, and I also think WP:CONSISTENCY is generally overstated, particularly in many of the arguments above. Given that, and given that I think those saying a bot can do all the work have underestimated both the number of related pages that would also need moving where I'd hesitate to let a bot do it, and the unholy avalanche that will swamp - and basically render useless - the watchlists of anyone who edits seriously in this area, I say this WP:AINTBROKE. Frickeg (talk) 23:27, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I'm no expert, but I know my time for this project is hard to find, and I take the point just above, and those of BrownHairedGirl and SeoR, to heart. If benefits are marginal I strongly suggest not to break things, and even supporters of the idea don't seem to claim big benefits. I've checked some profiles quickly, and I also think some weight should be put here on the experience of the commenting editors. BrownHairedGirl is in the million-edit range, and much of her work as Admin and Editor is in essential but unseen maintenance, so I would take her comments on the burden that this could create *very* seriously. Twilson r (talk) 10:24, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
  • The proposal currently has 43 support, 23 oppose. 22 oppose if we consider Bastun changing their oppose !vote to neutral. Does anyone have any idea how long this should go on for before a determination is made? Onetwothreeip (talk) 20:27, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
    • Generally RfCs are meant to be open for a month. However, this was reopened after being closed (after a month), so either we wait until comments stop for a few days, or until a month after the reopening. Perhaps also worth pointing out that consensus is more than just the !votes; it's also about the strength of the arguments put forward (I'm completely biased, but I'd say the arguments in favour are also much stronger). Number 57 22:26, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Strong support. I've always found these "event, year" titles odd and unnatural; I've talked a lot recently about the "2018 [US] Senate election", but I can't imagine myself or anyone else talking about the "[US] Senate election, 2018". And of course, as others have pointed out, these titles are inconsistent with (almost?) all the other event titles in this encylopedia. I know that naturalness and consistency aren't the Holy Grail, and I agree that foolish consistency can be a hobgoblin of little minds, but I think they really do matter. Wikipedia is an incredibly complex project, hard enough to understand for experienced editors and nigh impossible for people just starting out. Every little Wikipedian exception to broader rules and evert local inconsistency with general Wikipedia rules adds to this mental overhead, so there's real value in sticking with consistency unless there's a strong argument against it. Here we have a (relatively) easy and straightforward way to do that.—Neil P. Quinn (talk) 10:10, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Support, to bring it into line with article naming for other events and because it parses better, though I'd somewhat prefer Scolaire's variation, which is to put only the year at the beginning and put the month and day (if any) in parentheses at the end, as a disambiguator. I would prefer that because it seems better for sorting: "9 December 1922 Polish presidential election" doesn't sort by year any better than the current "Polish presidential election, 9 December 1922", while "1922 Polish presidential election (9 December)" does. – PointyOintment ❬‽ · ✍❭ 04:17, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Support as more natural and readable titles. Redirects should be kept (or created, for future elections) for the "old" style though, which has the minor advantage of making it easy to find a specific election when you aren't sure which year it was (e.g. typing in "French presi" nicely shows various French presidential election, 2012 type auto-suggestions right now, which won't work with year-first). SnowFire (talk) 00:15, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. Elections are commonly referred to starting with the year i.e. 2016 presidential election, and not presidential election, 2016. Calidum 02:27, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
  • It's been two weeks since the last "oppose" !vote. 47 support, 23 oppose, it's time to close this and proceed with the change. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:43, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
    Well, it's not a head-count vote. What matters is the policy bases of the arguments.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:23, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Support, to better comply with the WP:CONSISTENT, WP:NATURAL, and (in most cases) WP:CONCISE policies. However, the WP:COMMONNAME argument is fallacious; these are neutral descriptive titles not actual names, and COMMONNAME (WP:UCRN) is not a criterion, it's an instruction to pick the most common name of something as the default best choice to then test against the actual WP:CRITERIA to see if we should use it as the title. COMMONNAME comes into play in these only with regard to the base part of the title (e.g. whether to use "referendum" or "proposition", following what the reliable sources call it). In short, COMMONAME is a basically lengthy explication of WP:RECOGNIZABLE and why to start with the most recognizable name/term as our first choice, yet none of these titles in either format present any kind of recognizability problem. Rather, the current ones are text strings the average reader will not guess at, because they're backwards from normal English (they're bureaucratese, like "meals, ready to eat"), they add extraneous characters like commas and parentheses, and they sharply diverge from how we are are treating all other event articles' titles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:23, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
@Onetwothreeip: Now that it's been 30 days since the reopening, I've requested closure at WP:AN. Number 57 18:45, 19 November 2018 (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.

Bot run

As mentioned above, I proposed a bot run to move all election/referendum articles in the manner outlined in the table above. This is for specific comments about the bot run; for example, should the bot run be limited to certain formats of titles (for example, the proportion articles, which I am sympathetic to as I find the current titles quite awkward) and others done manually on a case-by-case basis.

The list I've created also contains a small number of standardisations to be made whilst moving the year (for example, there were a mix of "Endorsements in/for the Fooian general election..." (in this case I went with the majority usage, i.e. "for"). These can be removed if anyone is unhappy with the idea of doing this at the same time). Cheers, Number 57 14:57, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

  • Suggestion I suggest that the articles be left with their current titles and have the bot create a redirect that supports the natural speech version for linking from articles. HopsonRoad (talk) 17:48, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment: There is no need for a separate vote on the bot. Any person asking this be done manually is just trying to game the system and to make this not happen. --Gonnym (talk) 06:03, 21 October 2018 (UTC
  • Comment Several articles affected by this RfC, including 2018 United States elections, 2018 United States Senate elections, 2018 United States House of Representatives elections, 2018 United States gubernatorial elections, and similar articles from the preceding few years, have already been moved manually. The original article titles have been kept as re-directs, but they are no longer searchable, which was one of the primary concerns of the !opposers above and was supposed to be addressed. Davey2116 (talk) 06:56, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
    • The redirects are still searchable; I suspect the US ones are not coming up because the entire article set has not been moved yet, so it is prioritising articles that still exist at the original titles. I tried "united states senate election, 19" (which gets far enough into the article title that it can't possibly be the state articles) and it brought up the redirects (the entire Senate set has been moved). I also tried "Sark general election" and it worked there too as all the Sark articles have been moved. Number 57 08:29, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
      The search algorithm is generally poor when it comes to redirects. Try typing "underground" for example. You might expect to see the underground train redirect but it's not there. The same applies to the election links mentioned above, but this was a known issue which drove some of the objections in the RFC.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:31, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
      It is sometimes poor, but it does definitely work for the election redirects – try the Sark example. Number 57 12:47, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment On an unrelated note, we should try to make these RfCs easier to find. Even with the editor who moved the above articles referring to (but not linking) this RfC in the edit summaries, it still took me a while to find this RfC since I don't regularly visit the WikiProjects. Davey2116 (talk) 06:56, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

RFC inadequate, bot not justified

RfC was reopened. --TheSandDoctor Talk 18:33, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

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.

I am disappointed with the RFC above, for several reasons:

  1. Only 16 editors !voted, 11 in favour to five opposes.
  2. Given those numbers, a very small number of further oppose !vote would have pushed this RFC into no consensus territory. It is therefore a marginal decision, inadequate for its scope
  3. While the majority is clear, that is very low participation for a decision which affects 35,226 articles. I see that @Number 57 commendably notified a few WikiProjects such as WikiProject Elections and Referendums and WikiProject_Politics_of_the_United_Kingdom, the reach was low -- most countries do not have politics-specific projects, and most of the editors who work on elections in specific countries do not frequent the meta-projects. Most country WikiProjects were not notified (see e.g. WT:IE and WT:FRANCE). And as far as I can see, this proposal was not listed at WP:CENT.
  4. It is now being proposed to use a bot to mass-move all 35,226 articles without any WP:RM discussions. (See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TheSandBot) This breaches WP:NCGAL's status as a guideline, which like every other guideline says prominently at the top that is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Bypassing WP:RM on an industrial scale precludes discussion of exceptions.
  5. The RFC did not consider issues such as local usage, nor the cases where the current title is not "Foo election, year": e.g. United Kingdom general election, 1918 (Ireland) or Irish general election, February 1982.

So I think that this RFC was inadequate for such a wide-ranging change: not enough notifications, not enough participation, and inadequate consideration of exceptions.

I also see no consensus to use a bot to bypass WP:RM's consensus-forming process on 35,226 articles. I will now post at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TheSandBot to oppose the use of the bot. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:56, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

  • PS I should stress that I am not suggesting any bad faith by anyone involved. Just excessive haste and insufficient consensus. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:57, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
    • PPS I have just noticed that in the last sentence of the nomination, the nominator did mention the use of a bot. However, it seems I was not the only person to miss this: no other particpant in the RFC even mentioned the word "bot". And the WikiProject notifications did not mention unleasing a bot to move 35,226 articles.
      So there is no explcit consensus to use a bot. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:07, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Just to make it clear, as me and you just had a discussion on a different topic, I came here since you posted this in the Village Pump which is on my watchlist. Just a coincidence. That said, I've re-read the RfC and it seems fine. 17 participants with 12 voting support (you didn't count the nom) are pretty good numbers. Most discussions I see get 10 and less people involved. The discussion was open for over a month, so no haste. Note that one of the opposing rationals was pretty close to WP:IDONTLIKEIT territory (except to your point 4, which I do think would be better. Otherwise I prefer the current convention. The bot process was stated clearly in the proposal and not hidden. If I were to !vote here, I wouldn't have commented on its use either, as it isn't the heart of the issue. Sending 35,226 articles to WP:RM would just cripple that page and there is no need, as the guideline change has been discussed here, and any WP:LOCALCON should not override it. With all that said, I see a clear consensus, in a well written RfC that was open for enough time. No need to re-open this issue. --Gonnym (talk) 06:50, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

@Gonnym: One nom and 12 supports sufficient to bypass RM for >35,000 articles?
When none of the limited notifications even mentioned bot renaming? Wow. Just wow. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:46, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

I was one of the opposing votes, and I would now change my vote. That makes it 13 votes for and 4 votes against. I became more neutral reading the arguments of others, and if I was a deciding vote I would absolutely vote in favour. I did not think this would be necessary given the strong outcome for support, but given the circumstances I !vote support.

It is reasonable to expect this matter to have more people considering it than the seventeen that did. However, this cannot be obstructed simply because of the low turnout. If this doesn't get more opposing votes in a week, the proposal should certainly be carried. I understood the use of a bot to be very clear. Otherwise my main objection would have been that the change would not be necessary compared to the work that would have to be done. In the other opposing votes there was no mention of that, which shows an understanding that a bot would be used. Most importantly, this was part of the proposal which had overwhelming support.

There isn't really a problem here for elections with irregular titles. If any problem arises, a local consensus can decide on that, or another major consensus. This process shouldn't be obstructed by potential minor problems like those. The vast majority of the articles affected are going to be small, so it's not as if 30,000 commonly viewed articles are being altered. Most importantly, where is the discussion going to be now? It seems quite messy. Onetwothreeip (talk) 11:15, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Low turnout matters a lot, especially when so many articles are to be renamed.
The level of notifications was higher than usual, but it was wholly inadequate to the scale of the changes proposed. How can anyone possibly assert that for example there is a consensus to rename the 860 affected articles under Category:Elections in Ireland when a) no Irish WikiProject was notified, b) no articles have been tagged in any way, c) there was no notice at WP:CENT, and d) the notifications which were made did not even mention a bot?
I don't believe there was any ill-intent by the nominator. But huge changes need broad consensus, and that has not been demonstrated here.
Fine, you would now change your !vote. But that still leaves only 13 editors supporting moving 35,000 articles.
I am personally undecided on the merits. But I do know that making such a big change on the basis of so little support or substantive discussion is a very bad idea. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:00, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
  • @BrownHairedGirl: What do you actually want to happen now? There are four discussions in separate places on the same thing with no clear focus as to what needs to happen for this to move forward. Do you want to reopen the original RfC for more input/explanation of what would happen with certain titles, put out wider notifications and put the bot request on hold? Number 57 12:16, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
    • @Number 57: I'm afraid that the lack of focus is an inevitable consequence of moving directly from inadequate RFC to technical discussions at BRFA which proceeded even when concerns were raised at an early stage about the inadequate consensus. The BRFA should have been halted at that point pending wider consensus-building.
However, we are we are, and I do appreciate the courteous and constructive nature of your response here, which looks for ways forward. Thank you for this effort to regain focus.
Yes, I would like the RFC reopened, with a) very much wider notification, explicitly mentioning the bot; b) the issue of Bot use to be given a separate discussion area in the RFC, because there may editors who support the principle but have reservations/objections about the use of a single-pass bot to do the lot without apparent planning for notification.
I would be v disappointed if the substantive RFC was not re-opened, but in that case there should still be an RFC on the use of the bot. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:34, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl: I'll reopen the discussion and provide a list of examples of how the different types of articles would look and start a separate section about the bot. Where do you suggest it is advertised this time? Number 57 18:11, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
Yes, this is quite ridiculous. A low-turnout RFC on an obscure naming convention subpage should not be the basis of moves of thousands of high-profile election articles. I oppose the moving of these pages.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:45, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
I started moving these manually. Although a bot would be better, if none is approved I figure I can do a thousand a day for 35 days and be done that way. I see no great problem with the RFC, either with the level of participation or the close. The discussion was appropriately publicized, and was open for an extended time. The number of articles is large but the task is ministerial, and redirects will be left in every case. Had I been a participant in that discussion, I probably would have supported the proposal (including a bot, which is just common sense when the number of pages to be moved is large). Had I been the closer of that discussion, I would have closed it with the same outcome as WBG, although perhaps with a bit more explanation (because I am, obviously, long-winded). bd2412 T 22:53, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
Coming here from my watchlist out of curiosity. I too would have supported the moves had I known about the discussion, but wouldn't mind seeing this temporarily reopened for broader community input. ~Awilley (talk) 23:05, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Now that the naming convention has been established, it needs to be tested at an WP:RM, which is the established venue for requesting moves. Start an RM at a high profile page such as United States presidential election, 2016, as a test case. If there's consensus there to make the move, then that would give the green light to move all the others.  — Amakuru (talk) 23:06, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
I don't see the necessity of an RM to conform titles to a title policy amended by consensus. I would expect that if such an RM was carried out, the same people who participated in the policy discussion would participate in the RM, to the same outcome. On the other hand, there is no deadline, so if someone wants to initiate such a process, the whole process will move forward in a week or two. bd2412 T 23:09, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
@BD2412: as you know, there is ongoing discussion both here and at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TheSandBot about whether the RFC was sufficient, and the RFC nominator has already offered to re-open it.
Please can you desist from moving pages until a clear consensus has been reached on how to proceed. Mass WP:BOLD moves just add an extra layer of complexity to a situation which is already complex enough. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:21, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
Sure. bd2412 T 03:57, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:10, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@Number 57: thanks. Given the scope, I suggest it should be advertised on WP:CENT.
I would also like to see it notified on the most relevant WikiProject of each country with articles within the scope of this proposal. In most cases that will be WP:countryname.
Yes, I know that is a lot of notifications. In most circumstances, it would be seen as spamming. But the proposal is for this to be the last chance for discussion on a very big lots of article moves, so I think that this degree of notifications is appropriate.
Another approach would be to analyse the WikiProj banners on the talk pages, and use them to build a list of projects to notify. That will be a longer list than the WP:countryname set, because it will include sub-national WikiProjects such as the US states--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:02, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl: Happy to list it at CENT and any national WikiProjects; I think anything more is a bit OTT (especially as most other banners will be politics related, and all those projects were notified the first time round). Are you happy with this? Number 57 11:11, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@Number 57: sorry for slow reply. I do think it is important to include the WikiProjects for at least some subnational entities, such as the US States and Scot/Eng/Wales/Norniron. For example, there is much discussion of Scottish political topics in WT:SCOT than in WP:POLUK. I just checked the categories for elections in Calfornia and Washington state, where there are resectively 678 and 196 relevant articles. Most of the articles are on non-federal topics, so a notification to the state WikiProject may stand a better chnace of reaching the editors involved. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:27, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl: Can you either help post the notifications or produce a list of projects you want notified? I will start with the national ones (and renotify the ones already notified) and try and pick up state ones where I find them, but this is turning into a huge job and I am currently kind of hamstrung as my laptop is broken and I am using a very old Macbook air. I will open the RfC shortly and then make a start on the notifications. Cheers, Number 57 14:38, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
BrownHairedGirl, I agree that turnout is important, but if only 20 people participate then that's what we have to go on. Have you notified any other groups? I do agree that there was not enough participation. Including BD2412's and Awilley's support brings the tally to 15 for, 4 against, and I'm not sure if Amakuru opposes the proposal or simply opposes moving them for now. Onetwothreeip (talk) 00:05, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@Onetwothreeip: turnout was low because the notifications were wholly inadequate to the scale of the proposed changes. Rather than shrugging off the low turnout, the appropriate remedy is to re-open with wide notification and see where the consensus actually lands. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:29, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm not shrugging off the low turnout, but it's possible that expanding the notifications won't dramatically increase the turnout. What groups do you think should be notified? Onetwothreeip (talk) 03:35, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@Onetwothreeip: we won't know about turnout unless we try. I'm not making any predictions either way ... but it is important to give involved editors the opportunity to contribute.
For where to post notifications, see my reply[7] to Number 57, currently three paras up. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:09, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
So that's one on WP:CENT and then ~200, one for each country? I read what you said to Number 57 prior to my question, but it's not very clear to me. Again I'm completely in support of trying to get more voices involved. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:58, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
If just the countries are notified, I think it would be about 200.
If a notification was sent to all projects which have their WPbanner on the talk page of a dated election article, then I guesstimate that the number of projects would probably be more like 500–1000 (because it would include some former countries and many sub-national geographical WikiProjects such as cities, US states, Canadian provinces, English counties, the 4 nations of the UK etc).
That would be a lot of notifications, but even 1000 notifications would amount to only one notification for every 35 pages which would be moved. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:09, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
So you're not suggesting we notify 200 projects, you're suggesting we notify 1000. The majority of these articles are probably American, British/Irish, Canadian and Australian. Let's not exaggerate the importance of these 35,000 articles, the vast majority of those are very minor articles. Although if it were a bot making all these notifications there would be no problem, but obviously we shouldn't be waiting around for 1000 projects to deliberate over this proposal. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:24, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@Onetwothreeip: (sigh) Please take care to read what I wrote, and please do not misrepresent me. I suggested two options: one which I think would be about 200 notifications, and one which I think would be about 1000.
Also please note that I did not and do not suggest that we wait around for 1000 projects to deliberate over this proposal. I am proposing that we notify the WikiProjects, so that their members can join in the RFC if they want to.
As to your assumption that he majority of these articles are probably American, British/Irish, Canadian and Australian, I would suggest that you do some actual research before making assumptions. The sample checks which I did showed dozens of articles even for countries where en.wp's coverage is sparse. For example, 25 in Ghana, 77 in Iran, 18 in Greenland, 50 in Ecuador, 860 in Ireland. The articles themsleves may be weak, but the topics are usually very significant for the countries concerned: the sparseness of coverage means that an election article in an under-reported country is likely to be about major national topic such a presidential or parliamentary election, and to be ranked as mid- or high-importance. It would be outrageous for a few dozen mid- or high-importance articles on a country to be renamed without any notification to editors working on those countries. --06:44, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
I don't think I've misrepresented you. When you said it would only be 35 pages per notification, that seems like you may support the idea. I admit that estimating how many election articles are from each country was speculation, but due to federalism and the demographics of English Wikipedia, these articles are heavily skewed to those countries. I didn't suggest you wanted to wait around for 1000 projects to deliberate at all, I was assuming you would agree with that. We're obviously not going to have a voice from every country, so some countries will be unrepresented in any reasonable request for consensus. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:41, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
It looks to me that this has a snowball's chance in hell of not passing through anyway; the more people gets involved, the more support the proposal seems to have. Arguments exposed are also heavily in favour of support (with references to WP:NAMINGCRITERIA, which is an actual WP policy; or WP:NCE, which is the actual guideline on events, and elections are a type of event which, for some—as of yet, unexplained—reason are not included within), whereas oppose !votes are mostly based on the WP:IDONTLIKEIT-sort of arguments (note that consensus is obtained through the quality of arguments, not just quantity, and it is clear here that both quality and quantity heavily favors the proposal getting through). Finally, the bot issue was indeed notified in the RfC by the nom, which is why I (who was initially a reluctant participant, then moved to support) did not brought up the issue of there being a whole lot of articles to be moved (which is the most serious argument I can think of to oppose the proposal). No one else objected, either. So, is it really worth it to get through the whole process again? Impru20talk 08:24, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@Impru20: maybe you are right that a re-run would endorse. Or maybe not. Unless we reach out beyond the ~3 dozen editors who have been involved so far, we will not know. I have seen many RFCs where the balance of opinion has changed massively once participation increases significantly.
If, as you expect, the outcome of a re-run is a clear endorsement, then this vast set of moves is more likely to proceed without too much drama.
However, there are several things which I hope would happen in any re-run:
  1. more scrutiny of the nominator's assertions, such by the one picked up by several editors that this will reduce the amount of piping around links to the articles. From my experience of creating thousands of articles on elections and politicians, and editing tens of thousands more, it is very rare for the proposed year-first title to be usable in running text, because the context nearly always makes part of the title superfluous.
  2. more participation from the editors with most experience of working on election topics. (For example, I see no sign so far of any input from the editors who have made significant contributions to UK & Ireland election coverage). I do not want to predict what they might bring to the discussion, but familiarity with source material can markedly change outcomes, as seen e.g. at Talk:United Kingdom general election, 1832–33#Requested_move_18_October_2018 — that is a nom by me proposing reversion of a move driven by editors who appear not to know the topic well, and it is that discussion which led me here when someone mentioned this RFC
  3. More detailed consideration of exceptional cases. e.g. does Delaware's at-large congressional district special election, 1805 really work as 1905 Delaware's at-large congressional district special election? Sounds clunky to me. Might not something like 1905 special election in Delaware's at-large congressional district be better? The discussion above concluded without any systematic effort to identify such cases
  4. Identification of sets of articles which might benefit from more scrutiny. The preliminary analysis work done by the v capable and v through @TheSandDoctor has already broken down the list and identified patterns. Those patterns should be discussed as part of the RFC, not just relegated to the engine room of implementation at BRFA.
There is no deadline, so delay does no harm. Excessive haste runs the risk of huge, sprawling disputes ... and even if the only benefit of further scrutiny is more comunity input into the bot's modus operandi, that will be very helpful. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:51, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl: But isn't that the point of WP:SNOW? If a result is going to be clear whatever the case, why should we be required to go through the whole process anyway? Besides, a higher turnout is not even guaranteed to happen, nor is it required under current RfC rules. Quality and quantity of arguments in this case are clearly in favor of the change; the only difference we could conceivably see from an higher turnout RfC is in the event of some sort of massive pile-on oppose !votes, which even so (which I do not see as likely anyway) would still mean the change being passed due to the arguments' quality. We should remind that WP:NAMINGCRITERIA is an actual policy. The naming convention previous to the RfC goes against it, and no sensible argument has been brought as to why it should remain like that. Specially when, after backtracking the origins of such a convention, you find out that it was unilaterally added to WP:AT in 2004 without any discussion, then similarly moved to WP:NCGAL in 2009 (despite WP:NCE already existing since 2006). You could find some minor and mostly old discussions (with an even lower turnout than the aforementioned RfC) which revolve on the formatting of the year at the end of the title (not on whether it should be brought forward), but nothing else.
Points 1, 2, 3 and 4 you bring revolve merely on technical issues, not policy issues. Points 2 and 3 in particular could maybe need a RfC of their own to address their specificities within the naming convention, but these are really situations that could happen under both the former and the new proposals and are not incompatible with either. Point 4 revolves on the wholly technical issue of how should the moves be carried out (again, not an argument for re-opening a RfC on how the convention should be, unless you try to argue that we should not propose changes in WP conventions and policies based, not on opportunity, but on how difficult would these be to implement). And if something has been made clear with point 1, is that the proposed convention does better than the former with avoiding link piping, not that it addresses all situations (not a policy-based argument either, anyway). None of these are arguments that could stop the change from succeeding as per NAMINGCRITERIA and NCE. An actual reasoning as to why the particular naming convention for elections should go against these two should be given, but this has not been done.
As far as I can tell, the practice of using the year at the end for election articles comes just because it was done like this in the early 2000s, yet has not been revised or discussed ever since despite the clear evolution in WP policies and guidelines (particularly the aforementioned NAMINGCRITERIA and NCE), to which it has come in conflict with.
If anything, I think that any new RfC should address the usefulness of having this naming convention for elections included in NGAL—which is the naming convention for government departments and legislation—instead of in NCE—which is the one for events. I see that as a more sensible issue. Impru20talk 10:38, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@Impru20: I think we are probably going to have to agree to diasgree on most of that.
First, I really don't like the idea of applying WP:SNOW based on the response to such limited notification and such low participation by topic experts.
And secondly, while I dispute your characterisation of my 4 points as technical, I think that's ultimately not important. There clearly are issues to address on sevral fronts, and if we are going to invite editors here in the hopoe of better participation here it seems invidious to put the central decision out of bounds. Better to just put everything on the table, and see where we get to. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:46, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl: Firstly, if you see this as a "low participation" and "limited notification" RfC, I would like to hear what is your vision on how the previous naming convention on elections was achieved (namely, unilaterally and with little to no discussion on the actual year's placement in the title, the spotted divergence with NAMINGCRITERIA and NCE, etc). Indeed, this is a problem which has been around for years, ultimately showing how the convention of putting the year at the end brings more issues than it solves. But it was never properly addressed until now.
Secondly, the characterization of your points as technical is, indeed, ultimately not important. What I wanted to convey is that none of your points is actually a policy-based reason for opposing (or supporting, btw) the proposed change. There could be issues to address "on several fronts", but none your points is actually relevant to the actual proposal; and of these four, I only see two (namely, points 2 and 3) as truly meriting further input in connection with the naming convention's development. Precisely, because you are trying to link the ultimate decision on the change to these issues, I am not particularly supportive of re-opening the RfC, as we would just going around in circles for no meaningful reason as these could be discussed separately. But if we are going to do that, then I will also request that the issue on whether this naming convention belongs in NCGAL or in NCE be brought into discussion as well, as I think that is a much more related and sensible front to this issue. If we are going to cover all fronts at once, we should also address such an anomaly of a particular type of event being covered in an entirely unrelated naming convention article. Impru20talk 12:13, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@Impru20: I haven't tried to form a view about where the guidance (whatever it is) should ultimately be placed. So if you want to add that to the mix, fine.
But I am bemused by your willingness to write so mnay words about why you think we shouldn't have a discussion. That usually indicates to me that a discussion si indeed needed. So it would be much more productive to save the words for the substantive discussion, lest this page turn into en.wp's version of 1990s Northern Ireland politics, where the major ongoing news story was of the various political actors possibly being engaged in "talks about talks"[8], and sometimes even negotiations about the format for "talks about talks". I used to muse about how many layers of recursion could develop before everyone involved disappeared into a black hole. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:54, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@BHG, you mean, "Northern Ireland politics, 1990s", right? ;-) ~Awilley (talk) 14:07, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
I am bemused by your willingness to write so mnay words about why you think we shouldn't have a discussion. That usually indicates to me that a discussion si indeed needed Or you could view it the other way around. We could find ourselves bemused of a single person writing so many words in order to force a new discussion despite a very clear consensus having emerged from a one month-long RfC with so many arguments exposed. But I will not try to make that obvious to everyone; I just wanted to point out that your reasonings for re-opening the RfC would actually be arguments for having specific RfCs on the issues you bring, not for re-opening a RfC with a clear consensus. Nothing else, since the RfC's nom did indeed agree to re-open it. Impru20talk 14:03, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@Impru20: You think that an RFC with 16 participants has somehow produced a a very clear consensus on the fate of 35k articles. We evidnetly have very different concepts of clarity, so let's leave it at that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:16, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl: Yes, that is how Wikipedia works. Besides, it is not our fault that 35,000 articles (most of them are minor ones, btw) were named according to a naming convention which was unilaterally conceived by one person in the first place. Nor do I see how the opinion of 16 participants—ironic that each time we count them, there seems to be even more—is less important than that of 4 who opposed. Nor how 16 is less than that of just one who is seeking to re-open the RfC to have a second shot at it under specific terms which are not particularly relevant to the outcome. Further, you are laying out a condition (an alleged low turnout) which is not even a requirement for a RfC to succeed according to WP:RFC. In fact, WP:RFC provides for questions to be withdrawn if the community's response became obvious very quickly (here is where WP:SNOW enters into play), without requiring further input or a large turnout.
I say this because I consider it dangerous to subordinate a RfC's success to conditions not established nor required by policy. How many participants would this need to succeed, then? How many WikiProjects would be required to be notified (I saw the number of 1,000 earlier in the discussion) for any result of this be considered a success? How many support !votes would this need to be considered as a favorable RfC? 100? 1,000? And who chooses that number? And so on. Impru20talk 14:41, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
  • If the RfC is still open, I should say that it seems an overall desirable change. I can support with caveat, caveat being that the bot has no license to edit war. It gets one move per article and if the move is undone or altered for any reason other than ANI/AN-consensus vandalism, any further move has to be manual and may go to RM if not handled informally. I should think that should be obvious - the bot is being approved for one job, after all, not permanent edit warring - but I just want to be clear. Furthermore, as a part of that, the bot should *tell* users they can revert it, preferably in the edit summary and its user page. Also, of course, people have brought up some good examples of pages that should be excluded in advance so that people don't have to move them back. "To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer." Wnt (talk) 21:12, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@Wnt: The RFC is still open, but it's in a section above. You may want to copy your !vote to there. Ralbegen (talk) 21:41, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
@Wnt: As Ralbegen says, the RfC is open above (just copying the message as not sure Ralbegen's ping will work as it wasn't made at the same time as a signature stamp). Number 57 21:46, 20 October 2018 (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.

Thank you, Number 57

Since I started this discussion on re-opening the RFC, I want to thank @Number 57 for the way he has responded.

Many people might have reacted defensively to the complaints, or even been hostile, but Number 57 has been consistently courteous, civil and actively helpful. He has taken on board all the concerns about the first run of the RFC having too little participation and too little explanation of what was involved, and too little attention to the use of a bot.

In re-opening the RFC, Number 57 has addressed all these issues:

  • Widespread notifications, to 252 WikiProjects ✔
  • Clear mention of the bot in the notifications ✔
  • Explanation of the some of the many different styles of renaming involved ✔
  • Separate discusison section on the use of a bot ✔

There now seems to be a very good chance that the RFC will have broad participation and consider all the issues, and that its outcome will reflect a broad consensus.

Thank you, Number 57. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:02, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

A huge task to be sure. Though I missed out on the Rfc, I'm content with the results :) GoodDay (talk) 19:10, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
I had no idea this RfC was taking place, but I had previously (and separately) had the idea of suggesting much the same change. Thank you Number 57. Harfarhs (talk) 18:03, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

For articles relating to the holding of nationwide elections in a specific part of a country

There are actually two naming conventions used in here:

The Philippine House of Representatives elections articles were in the second form before, but were moved to the first one because of this naming convention. It's clear that there are two naming conventions and both should be at least kept in the original naming conventions unless all articles will be moved to either of the naming conventions. Howard the Duck (talk) 11:40, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Appreciate we've discussed this before, but I don't see how we can formalise such a terrible formulation in the guidelines. "United States House of Representatives elections in Alabama, 2014" doesn't really parse properly; based on the current scenario of years being at the end, "United States House of Representatives elections, 2014 in Alabama" would be more logical (although still a bit awkward). Hopefully the proposal above will pass, as "2014 United States House of Representatives elections in Alabama" is by far the best of the three titles I've just typed out. Perhaps if the change doesn't pass, we should have a discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Congress on moving them, or do a test RM on a few to see what happens. Number 57 12:38, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
I think we have come to the conclusion on "parsing in naming" as plain old WP:ILIKEIT reasoning and shouldn't really fly as a valid reasoning in this type of discussion. Probably also a good reason to switch to having years first in title as "2014 United States House of Representatives elections in Alabama" looks most natural of all. But again, that's just my personal preference... Howard the Duck (talk) 00:11, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
I don't think we have concluded that (you clearly have, but I still think that "United States House of Representatives elections in Alabama, 2014" is grammatically illogical). But yes, moving the year to the start would solve the problem. Number 57 10:58, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
I actually want the new naming convention to be applied but I'm seeing a good old no consensus result. I hope not! Now, assuming the "year" part of the title serves as disambiguation, we're left with "United States House of Representatives elections in Alabama" vs. "United States House of Representatives elections (Alabama)". We have a rather interesting couple of names here. "United States House of Representatives elections in Alabama" sounds like a descriptive title, like "this isn't the title, just that these elections are "United States House of Representatives elections in Alabama". The latter convention also implies that the predominant name for this set of elections in Alabama is "United States House of Representatives elections" when there's a good bet that it isn't.
We do this to legislative articles. About for zero-sum election articles? Eliminating the year, does "French presidential election in Brittany" mean different to "French presidential election (Brittany)"? If we'll go with "French presidential election (Brittany)", then is "Brittany" a person? Is the presidential election in Brittany for the president of Brittany, or for the French president? "French presidential election in Brittany" resolves these issues with confusion. Howard the Duck (talk) 13:50, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Personally I think there is consensus, but let's see what the closer says. With regards to this, I agree that "in Brittany" is clearer than (Britanny), although I'd dispute that anyone reading that wouldn't recognise what it means. However, the issue is the location of the disambiguator in the current version of the American variant; "United States House of Representatives elections in Alabama, 2014" isn't a logical order – this is an article on the United States House of Representatives elections, 2014 in Alabama. The additional disambiguator ("in Alamaba") shouldn't be inserted into the middle of an existing title, but should go at the end. However, "United States House of Representatives elections, 2014 in Alabama" doesn't really work because of the comma before the year, so ultimately the parentheses option is the least objectionable in terms of grammatical awkwardness IMO. Hopefully the RfC will pass and then we can get to a situation where we have the perfectly logical and parsable "2014 United States House of Representatives elections in Alabama" as the title. Number 57 18:05, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
@Howard the Duck: The RfC was closed as "consensus" and a bot trial has now taken place as a result, so it appears that your wish came true. --TheSandDoctor Talk 21:35, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
Hooray. Now we can talk about this one... I wouldn't have a problem having two naming conventions here if local usage predominantly uses one of the two. Howard the Duck (talk) 02:16, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

For clarity, now that they will be moved in line with the broader changes should we change European Parliament election, 2019 (France) and United Kingdom general election, 2017 (Scotland) to 2019 European Parliament election in France and 2017 United Kingdom general election in Scotland or 2019 European Parliament election (France) and 2017 United Kingdom general election (Scotland)? My preference would be for the former, and if we're starting a fairly wide-ranging change, we may as well have it consostent in this matter too throughout the project. –Iveagh Gardens (talk) 21:33, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

As it stands, they're going to be moved to 2019 European Parliament election (Spain) (the Spanish ones have been moved already) in line with the existing format and the RfC proposal. Currently there is no consistency on this as US articles are all at the "in" title and the rest of the world at the title using parentheses. Number 57 21:41, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
I prefer imposing a uniform usage of "in", as a more natural construction. These are subsets of a larger set, not ambiguous concepts requiring disambiguation. [YEAR] [KIND OF ELECTION] in [PLACE] is natural, straightforward, and instantly recognizable. bd2412 T 23:01, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
I actually moved the Irish ones myself to the 2019 European Parliament election (Ireland), but in circumstances where I was singularly focused on the main change of moving all Irish election pages to have the year to the front. I agree the "in Ireland" format is a more natural construction, and would favour imposing it as standard. Besides, parentheses are used elsewhere for disambiguation, which it not what these pages are. If articles are being moved in any case now for the year in front, now would be a good time to impose a standard. Even if in some cases, like Ireland or Spain they're moved twice, at least they'll be over and set now. -Iveagh Gardens (talk) 08:59, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
I'm happy for the guideline to be changed to replace the parentheses option with "in". If we do it quickly, there is the opportunity to do so before the bot run moves these types of articles and modify the targets for the moves. Number 57 12:27, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
Do we need a separate RFC on this one? It seems to fall under the second bullet point in the Conventions here, "Disambiguation is unnecessary if … a common method of disambiguating in common speech exists (Cabinet of Germany, Prime Minister of Japan, Treasurer of Australia)". We have a common speech method of disambiguating that we should use "in Ireland". Though happy to get a RfC if editors think preferable? If we do decide, we should include it clearly on WP:NC-GAL. —Iveagh Gardens (talk) 16:13, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
As this isn't a major change, is in line with wider policy, and there seems to be unanimous consensus on it from more than a couple of editors, I think it should be ok to change the guideline. Number 57 16:25, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
Thanks @Number 57. Guideline edited. —Iveagh Gardens (talk) 16:40, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Rcat template

Hey guys. I created an rcat template for pages moved due to the changes: {{R because 2018 NCGAL changes}}. I don't know how useful it would be, but I created it as a notice because pages were being moved back and forth by editors who were unaware of the RfC above. Maybe the tag could be included in bot runs. – Pizza1016 (talk | contribs) 00:08, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Nationwide elections, but not in a specific part of a country

I saw the bot move an article to "2016 Philippine House of Representatives election in party-list". Okay, I know bots are stupid, but "party-list" isn't a place in the Philippines (not that I know of). Perhaps we should have a separate convention for this one. The party-list is a parallel election, and we can perhaps make separate elections for countries having these types of elections, including ones using MMP. Another article was originally in "Philippine House of Representatives party-list election, 2013", which probably means that its new name under the present convention should be "2016 Philippine House of Representatives party-list election". Perhaps a separate guideline should be made for similar elections. Howard the Duck (talk) 12:43, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

That's my bad; I didn't spot that specific type of format when I was formulating the new titles. This would fit a pattern like Results of the 2016 Australian federal election (House of Representatives), so I've moved it to 2016 Philippine House of Representatives election (party-list) instead, but Results of the 2016 Philippine House of Representatives election (party-list) might be an appropriate alternative. Number 57 13:46, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
It's not supposedly just a "results" article though, but the comparison is like an article about individual elections on constituencies on a place, only that in this article, it's just one "district" (instead of plenty). Many party-list elections are national in scope (such as Israeli and German ones) but there are some exceptions, such as Italian parliamentary and British European elections. Howard the Duck (talk) 01:14, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Just became aware of the RFC last October on article titles

At the time, I was taking a break from Wikipedia as a result of uncivil conduct on the part of several users, particularly User:Cullen328 and User:Arrivisto.

I agree with the vast majority of the changes proposed in the RFC with one exception: the changes to the titles of articles on U.S. popular initiatives. The key difference is that those are enacted as statutes or constitutional amendments. Either way, those are always cited with the year last in all major citation systems of which I am aware. Only someone unfamiliar with legal citation would put the year first. Using an article title system that necessarily reflects a lack of familiarity with the article subject matter merely alienates many persons who would otherwise be most likely to contribute to Wikipedia. --Coolcaesar (talk) 09:16, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

@Coolcaesar: please could you give an example of this type of article? Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 09:26, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
An example would be the move from California Proposition 13 (1978) to 1978 California Proposition 13.
Anyone who has survived a first-year lawyering skills or legal writing course at any decent American law school is going to look at article titles like the latter with horror and not waste their time with trying to work on those Wikipedia articles. Years always follow the names of legislative acts, regardless of whether they are enacted by the legislature, or by the people through the powers of referendum or initiative. --Coolcaesar (talk) 08:04, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
Coolcaesar, please clarify my uncivil conduct. Thank you. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 17:31, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
Coolcaesar, Ditto. - Arrivisto (talk) 17:56, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
I have already set forth my views at length at Talk:Silicon Valley and Talk:Contract. I haven't seen any responses lately. Please respond there. --Coolcaesar (talk) 08:04, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Have just noticed this, six months after the fact, which suggests that notice might possibly have been less than adequate. Congratulations to whomever is responsible for the single (insert negative adjective of your preference) move in some time. The average reader is looking for an "event" not a year; and the lame excuse that a redirect would address this is nonsense, when redirects of a couple of hundred articles should not be necessary in the first place. I expect to see a superabundance of articles starting with some numbered dates now, which IMHO is simply clumsy and unnecessary. Mannanan51 (talk) 19:56, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

From the perspectives of UK political articles, we've just had nationwide elections, for which hundreds of articles have been created as "Year Event" rather than "Event, Year". Without exception, this format has been used without confusion or error. Indeed the only use of the previous format was by me earlier this morning because I was still half asleep! Putting the year first has been successfully by us, and while I can't speak for all contexts, it appears to have run smoothly at its first major test doktorb wordsdeeds 22:06, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Naming of governments/cabinets

There's a discussion at WP:TITLE on naming government/cabinet articles which may be of interest.--Obi2canibe (talk) 18:03, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

RfC notice: Titles which are part of an ambiguous series

There is an ongoing RfC to clarify our stance on titles which form part of a numbered series whose meaning is not inherently apparent, and whether we should disambiguate for the purpose of clarity even when not strictly necessary. An example would be Symphony No. 104 (Haydn) (as there is no other notable "Symphony No. 104"), which is already covered by WP:MUSICSERIES, but this RfC would explore the application of this principle to other domains, such as sequentially numbered legislation. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:24, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Scope

I'd like clarification on two questions (pertinent to the move discussion at Talk:National Assembly for Wales).

  1. In your opinion, does this policy apply to the titles of articles on legislatures, as well as laws and governments (including roles and departments)? There is no indication in the policy or its talk pages that it does.
  2. Is the following party of this policy intentionally stricter than that at WP:UE:

When writing articles on government bodies or offices with native titles not in English, an English translation should be favored, except when reliable sources in the English language commonly use the native title.

Llew Mawr (talk) 18:31, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

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