This is going to be a long one. I first would like to point out
the guide for closing RM's as a non admin
, which states that a non-admin close should only occur if the consensus or lack thereof is clear after a full listing period (seven days). I do not feel that this was "clear" in any way - there are many nuances in this RM (some of which the closer failed to take into account) that suggest that an admin closure would be better. Regardless, my primary concerns are not with the non-admin closure, but with the following:
closed the RM and placed an arbitration discretionary sanction against discussion of "insurrection" for the page title for one month. Many (at least dozens) of editors in this RM were solely or primarily advocating for "insurrection" in the title. While no administrator stepped in during the RM to enforce this discretionary sanction, the closer of the discussion should've done their part to enforce the discretionary sanction by discounting/ignoring any !votes that wholly or primarily advocated for an "insurrection" title.
Many (most?) !votes were based solely on
original research
. There were a plethora of !votes that, instead of providing any policy based reason to not accept the move request, simply stated in no uncertain terms that the editor felt that the title "wasn't accurate" or "was too lenient in describing the events". Some of these !votes overlap with those which should be prohibited per the ACDS against "insurrection", but many of them were of the form "riot isn't adequate because I don't feel it's accurate compared to storming" - which is not a policy based reason to not move the page and should be discounteed.
Of those !votes that provided a policy based reason to move, a majority referenced
five criteria for naming an article
- nor did a vast majority of editors who were arguing against "riot" as the name.
The closer claimed in their response to my challenge that "Wikipedians absolutely get to decide what the subject of an article is" - which I don't disagree with. What Wikipedians don't get to do, however, is decide what the
Wikipedia follows reliable sources, not what Wikipedians "want" the subject to be
.
For all of these reasons, I feel that the close should be overturned and re-closed by someone else, and at a minimum, the eventual close should be required to explain the !vote analysis in more detail. The title of this article is contentious and would greatly benefit from trying to find consensus in the current RM, rather than continuing to find "no consensus" in 50 RMs to follow. I firmly believe that there was likely at least a weak consensus for a move here when considering my points above and the analyses on the page, and discounting !votes that violated the AC/DS placed by El C, but I at a minimum think that the closer's argument that there was a consensus against "riot" is inaccurate and should be overturned. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 04:15, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note of a forked discussion here. I addressed some of these points there. I don't have an endorse/overturn position; I don't particularly agree with the closing comment, but I do think there was no consensus to move. I also disagree with the idea that AC/DS (a system to manage conduct, sanctions implemented as unilateral admin actions) can be used to discount votes in an RfC. AC/DS, and ArbCom (the source of its authority), have no say in content decisions. The moratorium is legitimate, but I think it's distinct from whether opposes on the basis of another title being better is legitimate. That's tantamount to a forced compromise, which would be invalid. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 04:29, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Okay...? Do I refactor about how this isn't my first
WP:ACDS-imposed move moratorium and how I doubt it's gonna be my last, and all the other things I said...? I guess I can just link to the diff. But I don't like having a split discussion happening like this. El_C 05:23, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply
]
It wasn't my intent to fork the discussion, because I felt they were separate (DS discussion versus move review) - but if you feel any of my comments are better on this page I give you whole permission to refactor any of mine to this page you feel need to be to keep discussion on topic - I obviously trust your judgement at this point El C :) -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 05:25, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As I just noted on the article talk page, but maybe it bears repeating here: the venue to challenge
That depends on if there's anything to challenge, El C. As far as I can see, your moratorium was to suspend moves to that title, but not as a means to discount oppose rationales for a different title's RM (which is how Berchanhimez has interpreted it). I don't think you're arguing that such opposes should be discounted per your restriction? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 05:44, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
ProcrastinatingReader, what I'm saying that if you "disagree" with my ACDS action to the point that you wish to challenge it, ARCA is that-a-way. But, yes, again, the only thing the moratorium does is disallow launching a new RM about it before the moratorium lapses. However way a closer approaches closing a different RM isn't really something that they can invoke that ACDS action for, except in so far as that RM's outcome can't yet be to move to "insurrection." El_C 06:04, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@El C: I don't disagree with the concept of DS moratoriums at all. I do disagree with using them as means of discounting content comments in an existing discussion, but it looks like we're on the same page on that matter so there's nothing to challenge from my view. Was just left a bit confused as to your position by your response here to my comment (which I rephrased to address points #1 and #2 of the MR rationale). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 06:21, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
ProcrastinatingReader, oops, I overlooked the part where you said: the moratorium is legitimate. Sorry about that! El_C 06:28, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I doubt it'd do that much harm at this point for me to reveal that I, myself, believe "insurrection" to be the best title (by far). Which could have been gleaned from my choice of words in
Jan 16 RM, and that's that. El_C 06:15, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply
]
Endorse the closing of this move request. I supported the move to riot, but it obviously didn't gain consensus. As for the points in the move review above: 1. Yes, some comments mentioned insurrection, but not a lot. Discounting them wouldn't change the outcome. 2 and 3. While I agree commenters should have explicitly pointed out which policy their arguments are based on and sometimes were a bit too subjective, I think most comments were reasonable. The thing is that we have not only
WP:CRITERIA: Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness, Consistency. Most comments didn't mention these criteria explicitly, but they applied them nonetheless. Example: "Riot" is not an all-encompassing description and fully-accurate description of what happened. Also there is precedent on Wikipedia for the use of the word storming. I think this is a valid appeal to the Naturalness, Precision and Consistency criteria. Of course, such judgements are always a bit subjective. Some comments were too subjective, but most were OK. 4. I disagree with that interpretation of what the closer wrote. In conclusion: Lots of reasonable and valid arguments were raised during the discussion, and not too many that could be deemed invalid. The discussion had run for about ten days, and there was clearly no consensus for "riot", and no clear consensus for any other option. Keeping the discussion open would have served no purpose. P.S.: @Berchanhimez: There is a link to https://bestmover.ae/ in your move review. What happened? Strange case of auto-completion? :-) — Chrisahn (talk
)
Was added by a spam acct (twice), I reverted once but I am on mobile internet which is spotty right now and find it hard to revert and reply. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 17:28, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I see. I should have checked the history. I'll report the spammers at
WP:ANV. I hope they'll be blocked quickly. — Chrisahn (talk) 17:40, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply
]
sigh Endorse as closer. First, thanks to Berchanhimez for a polite and really well-organized MRV request. It makes it extremely easy to respond to the points he raises. I sincerely, sincerely mean it: thank you. I will answer the four points directly.
Following
2021 United States Capitol riot
. I am not being snarky here when I say I have no idea what this deal about "insurrection" in the title is. "Insurrection" wasn't proposed and it wasn't considered by the vast majority of the responders. I did not consider it as a viable option, either. It ain't my fault if discussions about "insurrection" happened that weren't supposed to take place - I ain't the talk page police, I just closed a move request.
Many (most?) !votes were based solely on
WP:OR. Actually, strike that. It is mentioned. I am literally going to quote from the literal lede of Wikipedia:No original research
: "(This policy of no original research does not apply to talk pages and other pages which evaluate article content and sources, such as deletion discussions or policy noticeboards.)"
Of those !votes that provided a policy based reason to move, a majority referenced
WP:AT
's prescription of 'precise' article titles, as alluded to by multiple editors below". My apologies.
The closer claimed in their response to my challenge that "Wikipedians absolutely get to decide what the subject of an article is" - which I don't disagree with. What Wikipedians don't get to do, however, is decide what the
WP:AT
overriding what the literal most common name is? It's very normal.
I don't think there's much left to be said. The discussion was heated, yes (though not that heated--people were generally on their best behavior), but the consensus was really clear. People thought "riot" wasn't specific enough, so they rejected it despite it being a more common term. (By the way, when you search for "thesaurus specific one of the words you get is that famous word "precise" ) RedSlash 00:00, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comments: After all this, I'd like to add that the reasoning given here by the closer just further makes me feel it may have been a supervote. The vast majority of people arguing for "insurrection" or "storming" were doing so based on personal opinion, not based on the article titles policy. The job of a closer is not to judge which outcome is most policy-compliant - that's the job of the people in the discussion. The job of the closer is to summarize arguments and find (if any does) the one with the community's consensus. That is not done by simply saying "hmm, this small group of people made this argument, and a ton of other people also like this outcome but for obviously non-policy based reasons, so lump them together". At a bare minimum, I don't think there was a consensus against "riot" at all - because over half of the arguments against "riot" were made based on overtly political/biased/non-policy based reasoning such as "it's white-washing" or similar.This brings me to my second point - this is getting close to being closed, with really only one person other than the closer themselves who commented in depth (and one other comment of "neither agree nor disagree" from PR). This discussion would really be helped by someone outside coming in - but alas I doubt even people who frequent move review would touch this with a long long pole. That's one of the problems in this topic area - people are afraid to step in for various reasons - but in this case I really do think some more opinions and views would be useful. I accept that my point about the DS applying is not accurate, however, I still do believe that !votes for "insurrection" were not appropriately weighted for policy-basis and my other points as well still stand. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 04:04, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think this MR is tainted by sheer length and a couple of invalid arguments (such as the DS one). I don’t really think either title (current or proposed) is unambiguously more compliant with the article titles policy, from my previous skim of the discussion. Certainly not to the degree to be discounting enough votes to reach a consensus to move. I think people on that article are suffering from RM fatigue at this point, with 3 RMs back to back for different titles and people trying to force a new title through. This is a case where a moratorium would be helpful, and waiting for RS’ to converge and written literature and expert analysis to become available for a more calm, collected and evidence based discussion some months down the line. An admin should really invoke AP2 and implement such after this current (4th? 5th?) RM closes. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 04:58, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse. <uninvolved> Go with the closer on this one. Interesting how, when the closer is terse, editors say the closer didn't expound enough, and then when the closer expounds enough, some editors call it a supervote. See no supervote and the closure is acceptable. Agree with the "wait and see" attitude of editors in the RM discussion. It appears that sources are still up in the air about what to call Trump's decidedly worst day as President of the United States of America.
If terse mean inadequate explanation, and an explanation means supervote, then non admins shouldn’t close it. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:18, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe, but I've seen the attitude applied to admin closures, too. Too terse, not enough; adequately explained, supervote. Sometimes even admins "can't win". Curious that I didn't mention nacs, but you apparently assumed that's what I meant. Explains a lot!
In a difficult case, an almost-consensus to a rough-consensus, the closing explanation makes all the difference, and requires skills. Bad judgements, and poor explanations, in my long experience at review forums, has a definite correlation with non-admin closers. There are exceptions to the correlations on both sides, but when talking about old admins with poor skills of distilling and summarizing a discussion, they tend as a rule to know their limitations, or at least don't make the same mistake twice. Old admins returning from inactivity used to get into trouble, but these days inactive admins are procedurally desysopped. Some old NAC-ers are excellent closers. In this case, something tells me he used to be shockingly immature, and I have noted over several years a strong improvement in reliably good closes of difficult cases. The real problems are new ambitious Wikipedians who don't know their limits, and respond to complaints with things like "but I am allowed". In large part I assumed NACs because you frequently speak to NAC issues. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:18, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse. <uninvolved.> Good close. No Supervote. Inconceivable to argue there was a consensus to move as proposed. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:23, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The above is an archive of the move review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
I'm sorry but this Requested move occurred way too fast, as it was closed 2 days into the WP:RM, and it was closed by a new user who has, as of this moment, has 47 edits. It needs to be reopened and let the full 7 days occur. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Starzoner (talk • contribs) 00:08, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse it's a speedy snowball close. I don't see any reasonable opposition to it RedSlash 04:06, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse. Excellent improvement on concision, and all agreed. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:35, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@SmokeyJoe:, Red Slash, yes I agree its fine but I felt like someone else other than the person should have been the closer, and the full 7 days should have happened. Starzoner (talk) 13:40, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, you're allowed to feel that, but we're
when they stop us from improving the overall encyclopedia. I see and respect the point you're making, and I can easily understand that an encyclopedia that follows that point might even be better than one that doesn't. ... But your proposal will probably never be a popular one here, as it directly contradicts an enormously important part of Wikipedia. With all due respect, if you want processes to always be followed to their full conclusion even when unnecessary, you should make your own encyclopedia. RedSlash 23:26, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply
]
Was it necessary for the condescending attitude? perhaps a wp:ani report could fix that up with respect to wp:civil, AGF, and keeping your cool. anyways, I'm retracting this, if I could. no need to rile people up here. Starzoner (talk) 12:51, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The above is an archive of the move review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
