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close RfC in support of the proposal
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==Proposed change to election/referendum naming format==
==Proposed change to election/referendum naming format==
{{closed rfc top|1=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—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 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. [[User:GorillaWarfare|GorillaWarfare]] <small>[[User talk:GorillaWarfare|(talk)]]</small> 03:34, 20 November 2018 (UTC)}}
{{closed rfc top|1=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. [[User:GorillaWarfare|GorillaWarfare]] <small>[[User talk:GorillaWarfare|(talk)]]</small> 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)
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)



Revision as of 03:37, 20 November 2018

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
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)[reply
]

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)[reply]

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 )
  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)[reply]

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)[reply]
As I noted above, this can be solved by having redirects. Cheers, Number 57 11:08, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply
]
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)[reply]
It is more than practice, actually. It is an actual
Wikipedia naming convention. Impru20talk 18:22, 16 September 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
Specifically, the current naming convention (i.e. the one having the year placed last) goes against
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)[reply]
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)[reply
]
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)[reply
]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
Is there any particular reason that the order should be where, what, when rather than the when, where, what that ]
@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)[reply]
@
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)[reply
]
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)[reply
]
@
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)[reply
]
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)[reply]
@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)[reply]
'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)[reply]
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)[reply
]
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)[reply]
@
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)[reply
]
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)[reply
]
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)[reply
]
  • 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)[reply]
  • 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)[reply
    ]
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)[reply]
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
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)[reply
]
My comment was not directed at you, ]
@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)[reply]
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)[reply]
Your fault, my friend Bastun. If you play with fire, you get burned. Bye. Impru20talk 08:31, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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 "
    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. 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[2]
    has a DEFAULTSORT with no at-specific inline keys, and after renaming it would still need that. No gain.
    Oregon gubernatorial election, 2002 currently[3] 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, 2015Category:2015 United Kingdom general election) thousands of set categories (e.g. Category:Minnesota elections, 1907Category: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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
(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)[reply]
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
assume good faith: I was neither attacking nor accusing you of anything. Impru20talk 17:51, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply
]
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)[reply]
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
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)[reply
]
Not really, Google Trends shows that the usage is evenly split. ]
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)[reply]
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
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)[reply
]
I think most readers use Google to search that kind of information if they forgot the year. ]
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)[reply]
@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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
@]
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)[reply]

  • 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)[reply]
  • 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

RFC inadequate, bot not justified

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 @
    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
    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.
    Irish general election, February 1982
    .
    • In the case of
      United Kingdom general election, 1918 (Ireland)
      , there is a clash of two constitutional viewpoints: the Irish perspective on the constitutional status of that election is v difft to the British perspective, so much care is needed to avoid upsetting finely-balanced work to preserve neutrality.
    • United Kingdom general election, October 1974
      do not sort automatically by date no matter which way around they are arranged. The RFC didn't consider the extent of that exception.

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)[reply]

  • 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)[reply]
    • 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)[reply]

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: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)[reply
]

@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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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
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)[reply]
  • @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)[reply]
    • @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)[reply]
@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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
(
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)[reply
]
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)[reply]
@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)[reply
]
Sure. bd2412 T 03:57, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:10, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@
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)[reply]
@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)[reply]
@
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)[reply
]
@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)[reply]
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)[reply]
@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)[reply]
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)[reply]
@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[4] to Number 57, currently three paras up. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:09, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply
]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
@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)[reply]
It looks to me that this has
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)[reply
]
@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)[reply]
@
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)[reply]
@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)[reply]
@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)[reply]
@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"[5], 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)[reply]
@BHG, you mean, "Northern Ireland politics, 1990s", right? ;-) ~Awilley (talk) 14:07, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
@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)[reply]
@
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)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]
@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)[reply]
@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)[reply]
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)[reply]

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:

  • "Demonym type election, date (subdivision)" (e.g.
    Italian general election, 2001 (Veneto)
    , etc)", and
  • "Demonym type election in subdivision, date " (e.g.
    United States House of Representatives elections in Alabama, 2014
    )

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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply
]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply
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