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Ticker symbols in article leads

Hi. I saw some of your recent reverts of my edits (e.g., this one).

Can you explain why you think ticker symbols should go in the article's lead sentence? I read your comments at

the policy village pump and it still isn't clear to me. --MZMcBride (talk
) 17:13, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Sure, I think many users find the symbols there useful, as evidenced by the fact that they have been there in hundreds of articles, for many years, alongside the same content in the infobox, until just one month ago when you started removing them without any discussion, and manufactured a page to enable you to use misleading edit summaries while doing so. UnitedStatesian (talk) 17:17, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
Manufactured a page? You mean I created a page in the Wikipedia (meta-)namespace?
What about my edit summary was misleading? I mentioned that I was removing the ticker symbol from the article lead and cited a page that explained why.
Regarding usefulness, I'm not sure I follow. A lot of things might be useful to particular subsets of users in an article lead. Is there a reason to put particular emphasis on a NASDAQ ticker symbol in the first sentence of an article? --MZMcBride (talk) 17:59, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
Yes, there are many reasons. To get the full list, you would have to ask every one of the many hundreds of editors who put a ticker template into the lead sentence. UnitedStatesian (talk) 18:02, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
In this case, you personally have re-inserted the ticker symbol into a few article leads. So I'm asking you. :-)
Why do you feel this NASDAQ ticker symbol should be included in article leads? In my research of this practice, it doesn't seem like an encyclopedic practice to me. It's fairly common in (financial) newspapers, though. I may ask other editors later, but for now, as you're reverting my edits, I'm asking you. Why do you feel these NASDAQ ticker symbols should go in the first sentence of the article with a link to nasdaq.com? --MZMcBride (talk) 18:21, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
I feel that any external link (and wikilink, for that matter) that is in the infobox should also be in the article text, and that the readers of WP articles on publicly traded companies have come to expect to see the exchange link template in the lead sentence. Is the presence of any external link "an encyclopedic practice" to you? Most important, though, I feel very strongly that it doesn't matter what I think, or what you think, but only what consensus is, and consensus is clearly to have these links in the lead sentence. UnitedStatesian (talk) 18:27, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
Well, as Ds13 has noted, we specifically do not include an external link to a site in the article's lead section. For example, Microsoft, Google, and Apple Inc. do not include links to microsoft.com, google.com, or apple.com in their leads. External links are fine in the "External links" section. In this case we're not really not talking about a general external link, though.
Regarding consensus, I think there's some historical inertia behind the practice, but I don't think there's much (any?) evidence to suggest that there is a clear consensus for the inclusion of these ticker symbols in article leads, as you suggest. If you know of any previous discussion on the matter (where consensus may have been gathered or gauged), I'd be very interested to read it. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:34, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
One person's historical inertia is another person's consensus. The widespread, nearly universal prevalence of the practice (before the last month, when you started removing them) is definitive evidence for consensus. We do not require discussion to establish consensus, only to change consensus. UnitedStatesian (talk) 18:39, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Is there any evidence for your claim that this practice is nearly universal? I started clicking through Category:Companies listed on NASDAQ and it wasn't difficult to find articles that don't include a ticker symbol in the article lead. For example, ASML Holding and Asiatravel.com. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:04, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

You must be joking: the evidence is the hundreds of removals you have preformed, and you are only up to the letter "C," and you haven't started on any of the other exchanges. UnitedStatesian (talk) 19:12, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
I'm not joking. You said it was nearly universal. I'm asking for evidence for that claim. Having studied the prevalence, it certainly is a common practice, particularly for tech-related articles, but I don't think there's any evidence to suggest that it's nearly universal. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:19, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
So how can you argue that the "common practice" you concede is not evidence of consensus? UnitedStatesian (talk) 18:17, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure you have a firm grasp of the word "consensus" or how it relates to English Wikipedia content decisions. Your and Apteva's recent comments make this pretty clear. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:55, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
Please, educate me. UnitedStatesian (talk) 19:57, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
Simply because something is (currently) common doesn't mean it's a very good idea going forward. As I noted at
WP:TICKER, a lot of these stock ticker symbols were added at a time when infoboxes didn't exist. I dug through page histories to find examples of this. Looking at other articles (such as the ones cited above: ASML Holding and Asiatravel.com
), it appears that due to the existence of the traded_as infobox template parameter, users have stopped including the ticker symbol in the article lead.
Some people have made it seem as though I originated the ideas found in
WP:TICKER about placement of ticker symbols, but when we look at Template:New York Stock Exchange/doc, from May 2009
, it's pretty explicit that the practice of including the ticker symbols in article leads was becoming deprecated. Only in cases where no infobox is present was it recommended to include a ticker symbol in the article lead. You'll notice that all of my edits were to pages where the ticker symbol was already in the infobox.
Articles have a tendency to follow other articles. If someone adds an infobox to the Microsoft article, it's to be expected that the Apple Inc. and Google articles will soon have infoboxes. The same is true of navboxes or ticker symbols or anything else. So something can become a common practice, but not necessarily have any consensus behind it, per se.
A lot of the conversation in recent days has focused on the means rather than the ends. At some point, probably after the current
MFD is finished, we'll need to have a reasoned discussion about whether continuing to place ticker symbols in article leads is a good idea. I believe the practice is not very encyclopedic and should be deprecated. Others disagree. We'll see what happens. --MZMcBride (talk
) 20:13, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
Unfortunately, means do matter: I would argue that the time for discussion is before hundreds of articles are changed. Would you not agree? UnitedStatesian (talk) 20:30, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Maybe. I created a page explaining my actions, made a few changes to maybe half a dozen articles in early September, then waited about a month for any complaints. When there weren't any complaints, I moved forward. There isn't really a great place to discuss a change like this, I don't think.

Manual of Style
, but there were objections to that (albeit largely baseless ones).

There's also a reasonable argument to be made that this was a very minor change. Nothing is really being deleted from any articles. That is, the ticker symbols aren't being removed completely, just made less prominent. So the amount of debate, discussion, and consensus needed really shouldn't be that high, in theory.

In an ideal world, what would you have liked to see happen? I ask because we'll still need to have a discussion in the future about this topic, so figuring out next steps will be very helpful. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:12, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I think raising the proposal on Wikipedia:WikiProject Companies before doing any removals from the lead sentence would have done the trick. And I think that is where the current discussion should be taking place. UnitedStatesian (talk) 21:15, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

WP:WTAF

Would like your input on my addition to the article added HERE. I've added some wikilinks to several related guidelines, added a font color to "redlink" and added an excerpt from

List of real-time operating systems who has followed me over to "Write the article first", so your eyes on this would be nice. cheers--Hu12 (talk
) 21:45, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Hey H12: those changes look great. Let me know if I can be of any help (there is less to do now that ) 03:15, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi. I'm contacting you as you participated in the policy village pump discussion regarding

ticker symbols in article leads
.

I've posted a section here about next steps to take, specifically examining whether an

RFC is needed to reach a clear consensus on this issue. If you have the time and/or inclination to weigh in, please do! --MZMcBride (talk
) 18:45, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I have both the time and the inclination! UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:06, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
I really don't see why you felt the need to change
WP:LEAD so it supported your position when there's already an RfC going on. Legoktm (talk
) 19:49, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

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editing of talk page comments

Dear UnitedStatesian,

I noticed that you made a copy edit to another user's talk page comments. You also seemed a bit surprised when I stated that subsequently editing your comments without indicating might be confusing. I thought you might want to take a look at

22:11, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, lost track in the indents of whether it was my typo or not. I have put it back. And thanks for pointing me to
WP:REDACT; will try to do that going forward. UnitedStatesian (talk
) 22:50, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

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Hi. I fixed a small typo in NetScout Systems. Template:Infobox company uses a "traded_as" parameter, not "traded as". For reasons passing understanding, while page titles and links treat underscores and spaces as identical, template parameters do not. Just a heads up for you, not a big deal at all. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:20, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Practice will make perfect, eventually. UnitedStatesian (talk) 00:16, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

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Hello. I saw that you'd redirected the above to Category:Navigational boxes (back in 2011) and am wondering whether you did so because there seem to be quite a few "X navigational boxes" categories, or because all navigational templates are boxes, or for another reason, or for all the above..?

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Sorry

Hadn't looked at the timestamp on your Monster Beverage edit. That was a bit quick on the trigger. And yeah, seems like a good idea. That other category was mainly redirects, and had the wrong name. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:36, April 16, 2013 (UTC)

No worries, I just need to learn to type and click faster! UnitedStatesian (talk) 01:37, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

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I'm also working on improving the article for Accenture's chairman and CEO, Pierre Nanterme; if you're will to take a look there as well, that would certainly be appreciated as well.

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