Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people)/Archive 6

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New "Naming conventions (sportspeople)" drafted

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (sportspeople) (WP:NCSP) has been drafted. Hopefully it will provide a more cohesive and less divisive place to resolve the remaining disputes, and more importantly will cover the sometimes thorny issues of sportsperson article disambiguation more clearly. This should reduce the load on WT:NCP and the sports-related verbiage in WP:NCP. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:00, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

punctuation

I'm puzzled. The article contains the statements "Punctuation marks are generally discouraged in article names" and "However, try to avoid punctuation marks in article names as much as possible", and no other general statements about punctuation marks. This contradicts both common practice and advice given elsewhere in the article. Specifically:

  • use of parentheses is contradicted by the section "Qualifier between bracketing parentheses" and in fact they are used with great frequency, including in the article's own name
  • use of commas is contradicted by section "Qualifiers not between brackets", and commas are in fact used with great frequency
  • use of periods is shown in examples in the article such as H. G. Wells
  • examples such as John F. Kennedy, Jr. are recommended (three punctuation marks)
  • for saints, the use of the full form like Saint Peter is recommended, but in practice in WP the forms such as St John's College, University of Sydney or St. John Ambulance are much more commonly seen. The only consequence of the advice here is perhaps in the omission of the period, which is hopelessly inconsistent in practice
  • nothing is said about apostrophes, but I have seen article names with apostrophes wrongly omitted. I fear that this may have been on following this advice
  • hyphens are not often an issue, but there should be no suggestion of deprecation in correct use, as in Tara Palmer-Tomkinson. Similarly with ampersands in Godley & Creme

In sum, I think the advice in the given sentences mostly just looks rather silly. The one area where it may be having some effect is in the use of periods, where it implies their omission, while the examples in the article itself all use them. I suggest those two sentences are just omitted. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 00:01, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Punctuation marks in page names are generally discouraged: that is, we avoid them when we can. What's your problem? --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:50, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
I broached this subject above on 18 January. Since Francis Schonken apparently has strong ideas on the subject, it is a pity that he did not do me the courtesy of a reply at any time on the following six weeks. When I made the changes, which I naturally by then assumed to have consensus support, he immediately reverted with a one-line comment consisting of an untruth followed by a mildly offensive rhetorical question. Would a proper reply to what I wrote be too much to hope for? SamuelTheGhost (talk) 21:38, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
We use commas all the time. Both for (disambiguation) and for titles, eg: Birmingham, Alabama (where the automatic pipe trick now works in the same way for commas as for brackets Birmingham) and for titles such as Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. So although I agree we could do with changing the sentence I disagree with the replacements,[1] "When in doubt, prefer longer forms of names to shorter ones." Not use the most common version as used in reliable sources, because lots of American Military are known as first name, initial, surname; and "Use titles and honours in the name only where they are essential to establish the persons identity." contradicts Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) unless it is made clear we are talking about inside "(round backets)". --PBS (talk) 19:11, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for your contribution. For your first point, I could easily modify my suggestion just to omit the current first clause on punctuation, and go straight in with "If the version of a name with the first and middle names written in full is used nearly as often as the version with abbreviated names ..." and the J S Bach example as now. For the second, again I would be happy just with some deletions, so as to say "It appears best to see page names as a "navigation utility" exclusively, not as a "tag" with which to pass on subliminal or other messages regarding the person whose name is on top of a page. This kind of qualifiers ...". I intended the extra text I introduced to be merely a restatement of existing policy, so of course I withdraw it if it wasn't. Please suggest forms of words which you propose, unless you'd like me to try again as I've suggested here. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 23:44, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
I could go with deletion. Since the addition of "Wikipedia determines the recognizability of a name by seeing what verifiable reliable sources in English call the subject." to the naming conventions policy last year there is a lot of the guidelines that can be junked as the rules were introduced as a work around to names in unreliable sources. But before that is done I would like to hear from Francis if he has some examples in mind where this rule could be of use, as there may be some specific examples like acronyms that need covering. -- PBS (talk) 00:05, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
I would certainly be interested to see any real or credible example where a "deprecate punctuation" rule made a difference. I agree that it would be appropriate to allow time for any editor watching this page to give us such an example or make any other relevant point. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 12:04, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

There's no "deprecate punctuation"; there's "avoid punctuation where possible" that's present or implied in multiple naming conventions. There's certainly not a single naming convention that encourages to add punctuation for no reason. There's also multiple examples that illustrate this principle in the "people" naming convention. So I think it would be better to keep it in here too as an explicit principle.

For comparison, there are multiple exceptions to the "common name" principle (as detailed in naming conventions), that doesn't make it a less valid over-all principle. If there was only the principle (without exceptions as explained in ancillary guidance), a single guideline would suffice, because there wouldn't be exceptions. That's not how it works: avoid punctuation is an actual principle, for which (for example) WP:DISAMBIG details exceptions, while leaving no doubt about the principle not to add bracketed disambiguators if there's nothing to disambiguate. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:10, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Can you give me any real or credible example where the rule "avoid punctuation where possible" would make a difference? SamuelTheGhost (talk) 17:28, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

As said, there are multiple examples in the people naming convention, I don't understand why you have such difficulty extracting them. E.g., in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Difficult to disambiguate: some examples there's the James Stephen Smith example. But there are more, just take the time to read the guideline, it'd be impossible if you couldn't find some more examples by yourself.

See also, part of the policy page: WP:NC#Avoid non-alphanumeric characters used only for emphasis: we don't do "Hey Jude" nor “Hey Jude” (although that would be flawless spelling in English), we do Hey Jude. --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:05, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind advice to "just take the time to read the guideline". I have of course already read it many times, but I have just done so again to refresh my memory. I have found no example where the rule "avoid punctuation where possible" makes a difference. Your suggested example of James Stephen Smith is given in a context of ways of disambiguating in difficult cases. The avoidance of punctuation as such plays absolutely no part in that discussion. There are many other cases where one form is preferred to another. In some cases the preferred form has less punctuation, in others less. In no case does the quantitiy of punctuation play a role in the decision. As for WP:NC#Avoid non-alphanumeric characters used only for emphasis, that is a specific rule for a specific piece of punctuation. As that rule is present, any reference to a more general rule is unnecessary.
Perhaps I can explain to you the consequences of the "avoid punctuation where possible" rule, if it had any reality. Take the choice between
All three might be possible. We prefer the first, which is the one with most punctuation.
One case where this rule might apply, if it existed, would be to avoid dispensible periods. This would lead to the style H G Wells rather than H. G. Wells. If that was actually proposed, I might well support it. But it is clearly not being proposed, even though "avoid punctuation where possible" implies that preference. As it is, the sentences I wish to delete are at best cruft, at worst actually misleading. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 15:46, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, we don't add punctuation "for no reason".

Re. "...The avoidance of punctuation as such plays absolutely no part in that discussion...." — I can't remember you were part of that discussion. I was part of it, and avoidance of punctuation played a role in that discussion.

"John Smith (football)" is covered by naming conventions; "John Smith, footballer" isn't, neither is "John Smith the footballer".

"H. G. Wells" is covered by naming conventions, "H G Wells" not (at least, not for the content page).

"Charles, Prince of Wales" is covered by naming conventions, "Charles (prince of Wales)" isn't.

Always the same principle: no punctuation unless where covered by explicit guidance. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:39, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd be interested to know whether and where in the WP policies the preference for "H. G. Wells" over "H G Wells" is explicitly discussed or stated. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 15:15, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

It's explicitly covered at guideline level: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Nicknames, pen names, stage names, cognomens (again, please familiarize yourself thoroughly with the people naming convention before attempting to change it). Not everything is *explicitly* covered at policy level. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:35, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, what you say simply isn't true. I asked where
"the preference for "H. G. Wells" over "H G Wells" is stated.
This clearly refers to the presence or absence of periods (full stops in BE). You have referred me to a paragraph which does not mention that choice; it uses the form "H. G. Wells" without mentioning the possibility of the form "H G Wells". I don't know whether you are showing a surprising lack of understanding of my request, or an equally surprising lack of familiarity with the paragraph you recommend, but either way it would help if you could think before you write.
I'd be grateful if you could stop your repeated, unnecessary and patronising advice to me to read the guidelines. On the other hand, it would help if you could read more intelligently what I have written.
You say "we don't add punctuation "for no reason"", and that we don't "allow random interpunction in page names". Absolutely nobody has suggested that punctuation should be added for no reason or at random. What is being suggested, obviously, is that punctuation should be used wherever it is appropriate to do so. That is already current practice. All we are saying is that the guideline should not appear to to contradict it.
You have given an edit summary to PBS "Please avoid to use edit summaries for back-and-forth discussions: that should be at the talk page." If you could take your own advice, there is more chance that we might make some progress. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 13:18, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Notwithstanding the hollow eloquence,

  • "H. G. Wells" is in the guideline, as: preferred over any other spelling of the name. That alternate spellings aren't mentioned there is irrelevant. As for stability of that example: afaik it is the most stable example of the entire guideline, and (as an example) predates the existence of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) (it used to be an example in WP:NC(CN) before being also included in the people naming convention, and still is an example in the CN convention - under the "Exceptions" heading). So, no idea what more you want.
  • You're unaware of most things in the guidelines, there's nothing patronizing in a recommendation to get more acquainted.
  • If we don't add punctuation for no reason, it is perfectly in its place to be stated thus in the guidance.

--Francis Schonken (talk) 11:45, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I made a perfectly clear enquiry about discussions on the use of periods after abbreviations. You have been unable or unwilling to give any useful information. You assure me you have no idea... Indeed. Forget it.
I'm fully aware of what's in the guideline, and of what game you're playing, which is a tactic of rudeness and non-cooperation designed to maintain your position as WP:OWNER.
Where there's cruft in the guideline I will remove it. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 13:07, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
Francis, I favour the version of the article to which SamuelTheGhost is reverting. Please stop this reverting the the version you prefer. --PBS (talk) 12:57, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, I don't prefer that version, and I've given some good reasons why. You haven't been able to convince me of something different by your (lack of) argumentation, so that means: no consensus currently, for the good reasons I've given.

If we're gonna act simply by what we prefer, and suppose that needs to override any consensus-building attempts, then you haven't got much of WP:CONSENSUS yet I suppose. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:40, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm certainly willing and eager to engage in discussion, if there's anything to be said that hasn't already been said. As for consensus, only three editors have given any opinion at all on this matter. I presume that all the rest have (understandably) taken the view that it's of miniscule importance. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 16:12, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
I suggest that instead of edit warring that an RFC is requested. -- PBS (talk) 18:22, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Yes, if it comes to that. Francis has mentioned "consensus-building attempts". If he would like to show us the way, that would be welcome. It would require a bit of flexibility and willingness to compromise from all of us, but that would be the best way forward. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 11:00, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Question regarding parenthetical qualifiers

Okay. WP:QUALIFIER specifically discourages using years of birth as qualifier. I've run into an interesting case - Hans Dekkers. Previously, this title was used for an article about a Dutch cyclist, born in 1928 and active in the 1950's who died in 1984. As of this season, a new pro cyclist, also Dutch and also named Hans Dekkers (born in 1981) has joined a UCI ProTour team. Per WP:ATHLETE, he is competing at the highest level available in his sport, and thus is satisfactorily notable. There's no article on him just yet. Hans Dekkers now redirects to Hans Dekkers (1928), someone's attempt to rectify this, and all current wikilinks to the current Hans Dekkers point to Hans Dekkers (1981). Is there some other way to disambiguate between the two? It especially is irksome that only the year itself is currently used to disambiguate. Oughtn't the disambiguation at the very least be Hans Dekkers (born 1928) and Hans Dekkers (born 1981)? Don't fall asleep zzzzzz 10:35, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree that Hans Dekkers (born 1928) is preferable to Hans Dekkers (1928). The average reader will have a much easier time understanding what's in the parentheses with the addition of the word "born".--Fabrictramp | talk to me 15:36, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Wouldn't (1950s cyclist) and (2000s cyclist) be better? DoubleBlue (talk) 16:37, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Re: Re: Using the full name rather than common name to avoid disamb parenthesis

See #Re: Using the full name rather than common name to avoid disamb parenthesis and #D. D. Lewis (Seattle Seahawks) and D. D. Lewis (Dallas Cowboys

As Wikipedia grows there are more and more articles for which there are two or more people commonly called by the same name. See above the example of James Stephen Smith and Steve Smith (ice hockey). I think that the current suggestion "Adding middle names, or their abbreviations, merely for disambiguation purposes (that is: if this format of the name is not the commonly used one to refer to this person) is not advised." is unhelpful particularly as it can cause complicated strings in side the brackets which can be resolved more easily and clearly by using a middle name. As to the argument that it could cause confusion, that is easily solved with wording such as that used in James Stephen Smith. So I suggest we remove the sentence. --PBS (talk) 10:47, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

This is not something for which an easy generalization can be made. In some cases, such as for relatively obscure, long dead politicians, using a middle name for disambiguation is quite appropriate. For people who have attained some measure of familiarity in popular culture, using middle names for disambiguation would be detrimental. It is much easier to link using parenthetical forms and even despite the guidance to avoid "fixing" redirects that aren't broken, many editors will routinely change links through redirects to use a direct link. Consider for example a fairly high profile California politician, Willie Brown (politician). He is rarely refered to by his full name, Willie Lewis Brown, Jr. Using Willie Lewis Brown, Jr. as the article title would make it more confusing for editors to create links that reflect how he is commonly known. The title of the article should reflect common usage. older ≠ wiser 14:19, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
I completely disagree. The present system works very well. -- Necrothesp (talk) 22:46, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Ditto. It is inappropriate to change someone's name just because there is someone else of the same name. The present system works just fine. The case of Steve Smith (ice hockey) was particularly unique, as there were two Canadian ice hockey players both named Steve Smith, and both born in 1963, meaning that people were running out of ways they could think of to separate them. That sort of quadruple duplicate doesn't happen very often. 199.125.109.126 (talk) 15:38, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Initials - technical proposal

I know the issue of whether to write e.g. M. C. Escher, M.C.Escher, M C Escher, MC Escher (or - why not? - MCEscher; in fact he signed his artwork MCE) has been discussed before, and the policy is to write what is most commonly found in other sources, redirecting or disambiguating from all other reasonable forms. I will not reopen this debate, but I'm wondering whether a technical change could reduce the number of redirects required. I know this is not the place for technical proposals, but I thought I might get some feedback here before perhaps making a formal technical proposal.

My quite radical idea is this:

When looking up articles in Wikipedia, always treat blank, underscores and punctuation as whitespace characters, and treat multiple consecutive whitespace characters as one whitespace character.
(Another related change, probably too radical: When looking up articles in Wikipedia, always ignore the case of letters in the article name.')

This would no doubt make a number of existing pages coincide, calling for many renames and new disambiguation pages, but it would remove the need to create multiple redirection pages for the many forms of M. C. Escher - or rather, for new articles about people. (Actually, MC Escher and MCEscher would still be required - I can't see any technical solutions eliminating those.)--Noe (talk) 14:45, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually the technical proposal solving those is simpler: always treat blank, underscores and punctuation as virtual whitespace characters, and ignore all whitespace characters, real or virtual. This would produce even more new ambiguities (blue bird and bluebird) but we may be better off avoiding them anyway. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:45, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

El Hadji Diouf

Could someone help come up with a better disambiguator for El Hadji Diouf and El Hadji Diouf (born 1988). I don't know what to do, they both have the same common name and are both Senegalese footballers. - kollision (talk) 12:31, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually the latter is Dutch of Senegalese descent. So El Hadji Diouf (Dutch footballer). Rd232 talk 21:14, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

An article about a case involving multiple (related) people with the same surname

I am writing an article about a high-profile murder case in Singapore. Three related people with the same surname - Huang Na (the victim), Huang Shuying (her mother, a divorcee who later remarried) and Huang Qinrong (her birth father) - are each mentioned several times in the article (or, to be more specific, the draft in my thumb drive). How do I unambiguously refer to them? (Note that in Chinese names, the surname comes first, so their surname is Huang.) In my draft, I used "Huang Na", "Mdm Huang" and "Mr Huang" respectively, but is there a better solution? --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 14:07, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

  • Huang Na, Huang Shuying, and Huang Qinrong. Wikipedia is not a respecter of persons. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:47, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Inclusion of advice to avoid punctuation marks

The article contains the statements "Punctuation marks are generally discouraged in article names" and "However, try to avoid punctuation marks in article names as much as possible", In fact there are many cases where punctuation is explicitly called for in the article, and a few specific cases where it is discouraged. Where punctuation appears in names, the article agrees to its retention. So these sentences are unnecessary or even potentially misleading. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 22:59, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

(I deleted the divisive subsection titles) - Above I made some observations why I think it a good idea to keep this. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:38, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Comments

This seems eerily similar to a situation I've been involved in where Francis has maintained ownership of an article, constantly reverted, and failed make any effort to work towards consensus. It's a frustrating thing to deal with, and I commend Samuel for persevering. - SimonP (talk) 01:46, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Summary

The RFC commentary has been modest in volume but unambiguous in direction. It's time to bring this rather trivial argument to a close, but that must be on terms which respect the views of the majority. I hope it can be left there, and we can all get on with more important things. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 17:16, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Not impressed by SimonP's inappropriate ad hominem. So no, we don't even have a comment to the content. --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:37, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
Ad hominem possibly, but wholly convincing. Have you no sense of shame? SamuelTheGhost (talk) 11:47, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Can't see that such a general remark in the policy makes much difference in practice either way, which works mostly by example and custom. Rd232 talk 21:19, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Firstname "Nickname" Lastname

The section on "Nicknames, pen names, stage names, cognomens" doesn't include any explicit examples for this common construction. For example, we have an article now titled Carmen "Nuch" Trutanich. I'm fairly certain that we should either call it "Carmen Trutanich" or "Nuch Trutanich", but it'd be helpful to actually deal with this type of name in the guideline.   Will Beback  talk  07:40, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

  • It depends on usage; sometimes normal usage is the nickname, and sometimes the full name. This is usually an effort to squeeze two names into one espression, but I suppose there are cases where Firstname "Nickname" Lastname is what the subject is actually called.

Monarchs of multiple realms

  • Propose change of naming convention to list by name only where they are verifiably referred to by different titles in each realm. Disambiguation pages to be used where necessary. 78.86.226.253 (talk) 17:21, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
    • Try bringing this up at the controlling convention, WP:NCNT. Please be clearer; I have no idea what this is supposed to mean in practice.

Confusion about policy @ Michelle Rhee

Resolved
 – Off-topic, but answered by clear policy anyway.

The article about Michelle Rhee contains a Korean alternate name in Hangul which - according to a Korean newspaper - is another name she has. However, she is American, born in the U.S., and to my knowledge, there is no indication that she actually uses this name. I have had an interesting discussion with another editor on the article's talkpage about this, and now find myself at a loss as to whether or not there is a convention/policy concerning such cases. What say ye? Any thoughts on this? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 06:50, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

This isn't an issue of naming - nobody is suggesting that the article be named as anything other than "Michelle Rhee". This is an issue of article content - whether or not to include, in the content of the article, another name that she has. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 07:12, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
I understand that. So who could enlighten me on this? And where? RfC? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 07:24, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
Naming conventions aren't a matter of policy, but guidelines. However, WP:BLP is policy and tells us to not add unsourced facts to articles on living people, so there's your answer. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 08:39, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Should naming conventions for people apply regardless of topic/project?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Line that was added in August 2008 has been removed by the filer of this RFC (who also requested this be closed). Wknight94 talk 21:27, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Because of the holidays, please leave this RfC open until at least January 8, 2010 (i.e., 1 week after New Years Day).

Does this guideline apply Wikipedia-wide, regardless of what field the article subject is notable in, which WikiProject(s) assert scope over the article, and whether or not some would rather name articles in their scope differently from how this guideline specifies? In particular, should biographical articles be renamed if they disambiguate in ways that conflict with the convention, such as a) by the field rather than the role of the person in the field – e.g. "(baseball)" or "{football}" instead of the prescribed "(baseball player)" or "(football manager)" – and b) by year of birth instead of by other criteria? If left as-is, should such exceptions just be taken as unusual cases and ignored by the guideline, without attempting to change its basic advice? If this is not a brief and neutral enough statement of the issue, then I give up trying to write one. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 10:54, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

The material marked with <ins>...</ins> is subject to some dispute of its own, below. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 21:42, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
It was marked "stricken by me since it is not part of the guideline and is confusing participants below. Wknight94 talk 12:58, 28 December 2009 (UTC)"
The following original version of the RFC statement-of-issue has been rewritten by request. Please do not modify it.'

Is there a consensus against the normal expectation that the provisions of this general naming guideline are taken to apply Wikipedia-wide, regardless of what field the article subject is notable in, which WikiProject(s) may assert scope over the article, and whether or not some members of a WikiProject would rather name articles differently than how this guideline specifies? Is a project in a position to ignore the advice of a site-wide guideline because they have been doing something different for some time? In particular, should a project be considered in a position to not only ignore Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Qualifier between bracketing parentheses and use disambiguators that describe the field not the person (examples: "Jane Doe (chemistry)" or "John Doe (truck driving)" instead of the prescribed "Jane Doe (chemist)" or "John Doe (truck driver)") stricken by me since it is not part of the guideline and is confusing participants below. Wknight94 talk 12:58, 28 December 2009 (UTC) but issue a directly conflicting naming convention and label it a guideline? As another example, should a project be considered in a position to not comply with the same section, this time with regard to avoiding disambiguation by year of birth unless absolutely necessary, and instead doing so by default on articles within its scope? I believe this to be a neutral statement of the questions to be resolved. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 14:32, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

    • Please rewrite the preceding paragraph to follow the instructions on WP:RFC, which says to "include a brief, neutral statement of the issue below the template." The paragraph above is neither brief nor neutral. BRMo (talk) 17:47, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
  • No, on all counts is my strongly held view Changed to: Yes, on all counts after the rewording, above. 1) WikiProjects are not exempt from guidelines nor empowered to make up their own rules that conflict with the broader consensus, however much laissez faire leeway they have when there is no such conflict. 2) Disambiguators that are themselves ambiguous are worse than useless, e.g. "Bob Smith (baseball)" which looks like a brand name of sporting equipment, not a person. 3) It's a slippery slope, and lack of clarity that WikiProjects cannot just randomly do whatever they want in the face of established guidelines and practice has already caused major problems, like editwarring at this guideline to insert nonconforming ice hockey examples, and at the draft Wikipedia:Naming conventions (sportspeople), including deletion of dispute tags about nonconforming association football (soccer) examples. It's even led to the promotion to "guideline" designation of a POV-forked conflicting naming convention at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (baseball players), which was not properly proposed as specified at WP:POLICY#Proposals. (Even if it was not promoted outside normal process as a fait accompli to short-circuit this entire debate and game the system, it has certainly been wrongly cited as "evidence" that there suddenly is no dispute and no issue to resolve).
We have system-wide naming conventions for important reasons, chief among them consistency and clarity, and these conventions should not be derailed because a few people at three projects do not acknowledge them. Editors and readers alike depend upon very stable and predictable naming conventions, as do important processes like WP:RM and WP:DAB. Even processes not directly related to article names, such as WP:CFD and WP:WSS rely heavily upon these characteristics of the article naming conventions and derive their own stability from them. We have a long-established consensus that guidelines are broadly applicable, not take-it-or-leave-it depending upon project whim. And we even have ArbCom cases that have been more than discouraging of projects defying broad consensus (search ArbCom archives for "fait accompli" for a good example). Further, WP:CONSENSUS plainly states that small consensuses (e.g. a few WikiProject members) cannot trump large consensuses (like major community-wide guidelines). And WP:IAR (which has been dismissively cited in this debate) only applies to rules that thwart one's ability to improve the encyclopedia, which a simple naming convention everyone else has no problem following certainly doesn't. The reasons given, which is rarely, usually boil down to "because we said so" (one example: "Yeah, that's the way its been done over at WP:FOOTY for as long as I can remember", in reference to disambiguating by year of birth, a bad idea roundly rejected by NCP). Meanwhile the closest thing to a defensible rationale that has ever been offered for things like "(baseball)" as a human name disambiguator has been that some sportspeople have played multiple roles (e.g., players and coaches and team owners) and could be considered equally notable in any of them. However, this problem is easily solved with redirects, and could also be solved by using "(baseball figure)" instead of something more specific like "(baseball coach)". A player is not a ball, nor a game, but a person. A project is not a private club or a kingdom, but editors agreeing to pool human resources to improve a specific area of Wikipedia within its consensus-built policies and guidelines.
PS: I want to make it very clear that the majority of participants in the three projects in question have not been involved in this issue at all, some that have been have sided with NCP, and that the holdouts I have in mind can counted on one hand. I'm not bandying about any usernames or linking to diffs, because I want this to be about the issue on its simple merits, not about the editors – this is not an RfC on user behavior. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 14:32, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
As you wrote almost 16 months ago, overly-long disambiguations are worse than disambiguations that include the field of expertise rather than occupation. "Baseball" accomplishes the main point - i.e., disambiguates - just as well as "baseball coach", so what's the problem? We're not describing the person, we're disambiguating the person from other people with the identical names. It's been like this for 16 months now and everyone has seemed happy as far as I know - so leave it alone. Wknight94 talk 14:54, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
You were overwhelmingly shot down last time you brought this up. I agree on all counts with Wknight. You simply have no support for your views. -DJSasso (talk) 18:27, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
The only people who ever ever opposed me on any of these points have been you two and a handful of others, all from the same three projects. I've already addressed why "{baseball}" is not a good disambiguator. I want it noted for the record that you have again removed dispute tags from a disputed page. The point of this RfC is to take this matter out of your and my hands. PS: The issue has been quiet because you filibustered the discussion. The page has been so moribund it was marked {{Historical}}. No progress has been made toward resolution of the questions, or furtherance of the proposal, whether you try to hide the dispute or not. Just let the community decide the matter. WP dispute resolution, of which RFC is a part, exists for a reason. PS: the edit of mine you quote was an attempt at peacemaking. I put the wording the way you liked it during some discussion in hopes of calming you down. I did not agree with the wording then and do not now, as everything I've said on talk pages here and at the draft indicates clearly. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 19:48, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
Nice revision of history. Your edit was an attempt at peacemaking - and look at that, it worked! So you admit that you are simply undoing the peace. As was said by Resolute way up on this very page, your changes in August were all a solution looking for a problem - and now you're doing it again. You and maybe two other people give a rat's ass about this issue, but you insist on digging at the scab - which is a scar at this point. Stop beating this horse - it's quite dead enough. Wknight94 talk 21:19, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
You've certainly given your opinion as to whether or not "(baseball)" is a good disambiguator, but for my money, the degree of confusion and disruption involved in sorting through and changing the names of tens of thousands of articles every time some sticky hands go on a new "conformity" kick dwarfs smoothing over the rumpled feelings of the vanishingly rare reader who (a) encounters an article named "Bob Smith (baseball);" (b) feels genuine confusion as to what the name means; (c) can't figure it out with a two-second glance at the article; and (d) flees the website in dismay and terror. Then again maybe I just have more faith in the intelligence of your average editor.  RGTraynor  21:52, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
Exactly. We heard you already, SMcCandish. You are so impassioned about it that you call it the #Sports "revolt" above! Everything you're saying has already been said, everything I am saying has already been said, and now you have RGTraynor repeating things that have already been said. There was no problem last August when you brought this up, and there has been no problem since. Take a read through Wikipedia:Tendentious editing and see if any of it sounds familiar. You're on a crusade of one. Wknight94 talk 22:31, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
There's nothing tendentious about pointing out that 3 projects are ignoring a guideline accepted by everyone else on the system, asking them to justify this or stop doing it, getting lambasted for it repeatedly, leaving the matter alone for months in an effort to let the issue settle down a bit, and then turning the discussion over to community consensus after discovering that you've attempted to push your own views as a new guideline while I was away, despite the fact that they conflict with established naming conventions. I can't really be any more even-handed and non-personal about it than I am being, and the matter can't really be any clearer. There's a convention. You don't like it. So you are ignoring it. And attacking me for pointing this out. You can hurl insults at me all you like, and attack my position simply for being mine, but doing so does not make your position look any more rationally presented or any more like an effort at consensus building; it's sheer hostility and territoriality. NB: The fact that what I've said has already been said and what you've said has already been said is the entire point: No progress has been made. This should have been an RFC a year ago instead of a circular argument, but better late than never. So, if you'll please actually address the issues raised instead of making this personal I'm sure everyone will be happier. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 23:07, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
You say "no progress has been made" - you mean no progress has been made towards your viewpoint. You're right - that's because almost no one agreed with it. In August 2008 or now. Count up the opinions at #Sports "revolt" above. It was mostly you. Crusade of one. Tendentious is bringing up an issue that had so little support merely because some time has passed. You're hoping enough people have retired or forgotten or taken this off their watchlist that you can sneak your viewpoint into the guideline. If you want me to believe otherwise, contact all of the people at the previous discussion. You say, "after discovering that you've attempted to push your own views as a new guideline while I was away" - what does that mean? And I'm really asking - I have no idea when I've discussed this since August 2008. You can play babe in the woods and pretend I'm insulting you somehow, but the simple fact is that you are trying to waste the community's time bringing up something that you tried to unilaterally add to the guideline in 2008 and failed. If anything, the few changes you managed to get into the guideline were accepted because you were the one filibustering, not me. You were trying to force your change in - three times at least, reverted by three different people ([2][3][4], the community balked and forced you to relax your stance, and then sighed and agreed to let you have what you have in there just to keep the peace. Now, for whatever reason, you're trying to expand on what should not have been in there in the first place. Now it's being tendentious - there's no other word. Wknight94 talk 00:55, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
I went back and looked over that linked discussion. Only two editors concurred with SMcCandlish. It being Christmas and hot tempers being inappropriate here, I can't phrase this in the terms I'd prefer, but that being said, by what right do you presume on three people being a consensus on this issue, never mind to the degree that you feel the need to hector editors for not toeing your unilateral line? Kindly drop this extremely inappropriate demand at once.  RGTraynor  03:49, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
I re-read just now and I don't even see two - all I see is Necrothesp (talk · contribs). Who is your second? Wknight94 talk 12:36, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
Chuq. Of course, there are a round dozen going the other way. I agree with SMcCandlish that 12-3 constitutes a consensus; just not one favoring his POV.  RGTraynor  14:53, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Update: I want it noted for the record that parties to this dispute are now editing WP:NCP without discussion or consensus, to remove any evidence that their preferred style of naming conflicts with the naming conventions. I'm trying to stay out of this debate entirely, no matter how much the opposing parties try to goad me both here and on my talk page, and just let the RFC run, but it's hard to do when stuff like this is happening. If you can't win except by cheating, your position is bankrupt indeed. NB: The conflict with NCP is real: The language even I agreed to was that ridiculous disambiguations like "(baseball player and coach)" are too long, not that all baseball figures should be disambiguated with "(baseball)"; but as I already pointed out here, we wouldn't use such long-winded disambiguations anyway. That wording was in fact a compromise, not language "forced" by me as the deletion's edit summary claims (cf. the above accusation of revisionism; I'm not the one engaging in it.) I would prefer not to have to bring up details like this, but I have to note that my views and edits were blatantly mischaracterized above.) Hopefully this is the last I'll need to say here, other than noting that not one respondent has actually addressed any of the issues raised, only character-assassinated me and asserted that there are no issues. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 01:14, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
  • What dispute? All I see is one individual swimming up-stream, again. Yes, one individual removed something you added that has no consensus, and you reverted them. Oh my god! It's a conspiracy! And, of course, count me in with your opponents who do not feel the need to change things. Though, I am sure that when this year's "dispute" ends up with the same result as last year's "dispute", we will get to "dispute" this again next year. Resolute 01:46, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
  • We have responded to this over and over again everytime you bring it up. Disambiguation is meant to be the shortest possible route to disambiguating an article that will have meaning to the reader. As such to use your baseball example. The shortest possible word that will disambiguate a baseball player is the word baseball. We are not supposed to be trying to describe the person in the brackets like you think we are, we are only supposed to use a word that most aptly and succinctly disambiguates the person. As such since the person is involved with baseball the shortest and most clear disambiguator is the word baseball. You keep attacking the people who oppose you, right from your very RFC summary (which isn't even close to being worded neutral like its supposed to be) and then have the gall to try and say we are the ones going against discussion or consensus when its clear that describes you more than any of the respondents. There are no issues, the last discussion ended up 12-3 against your position, which is a clear case of consensus. The fact that there has been not a single other person mentioning this since that discussion 18 months ago, bolsters the fact that there is consensus by acceptance. The community has spoken, and its spoken against your position. What more do you want? -DJSasso (talk) 02:20, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Precisely. SMcCandlish, the "compromise" last August was just you exhausting everyone by trying to change something that almost no one was complaining about. So now since you've brought up the issue again and we're less exhausted, the false compromise can go. There was no need to refine the guideline the way you did. Disambiguation was happening naturally just fine without your intervention. Baseball players are disambiguated from authors, etc. and the world is at peace. Leave it that way, please. Wknight94 talk 02:24, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment - Wikipedia does not have firm rules. That's from Wikipedia:Five pillars. All of this talk about "not exempt from guidelines nor empowered to make up their own rules that conflict with the broader consensus" sounds like an argument in court. Wikipedia is not court, and decisions are made by consensus in context, and not by advancing abstract arguments about consistent "rules".

    This all seems to be smoke from another fire. If the disagreement is about the use of "(baseball)" as a disambiguator, then talk about that, directly, in context. Build consensus over actual edits, in the field. No lawyering, no top-down rules. -GTBacchus(talk) 05:05, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

I mean "rules" only in the sense that WP:IAR and other documents here use the term, informally. I've never implied there should be no exceptions, or I wouldn't have been the one to add "(baseball)" as an exception in some cases (and as noted I think other solutions are better in those cases, but I conceded the point (I was the one numbed into submission by repetition, not the other way around). The issue is that random wikiprojects should not be coming up with their own conflicting naming "conventions" for bio articles (or anything else) without very good reasons. Only three projects have done so, and I have named them, so I'm not sure how to get more specific. And none of them have provided a defensible (if any) rationale for going their own way. I worded the RFC in general terms because it was about three projects, not one. Not sure what else to do at this point. The discussions about "(baseball)", "(ice hockey)" and "(football)" as human name disambiguators have all already been had, both in detailed context and in the abstract, to the point of standstill. My strong feeling is that it ground to a halt without resolution because it was the same handful of people talking about it the entire time (most of whom I invited to the discussion myself by notifying their project talk pages about the original discussion here - virtually no one has ever spoken on the topic other than those individuals and me), instead of fresh eyes examining the question from outside, with a viewpoint neither tied to this guideline and my personal feelings about the value of its consistent application, nor tied to any of the involved projects and the personal feelings of some of their members about their preferred alternative ways. Thus, an RFC seemed like a better idea than further one-on-one argumentation. So there you have it. If I were really a tendentious editor with an axe to grind and something personal against Djsasso and friends, and whatever other accusations I'm already forgetting, the last thing I would do is remove myself from any further real input into the course of the debate by making it an RFC. Think about it. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 05:41, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
I've certainly never called you "a tendentious editor with an axe to grind". As for your assertion that "random wikiprojects should not be coming up with their own conflicting naming "conventions" for bio articles (or anything else) without very good reasons," I would ask: Why not? Where is the concrete harm, in some specific case? I'm strongly of the mind that things that "ain't broke" shouldn't be fixed. -GTBacchus(talk) 06:33, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
And quite aside from that, even were your assertion black-letter policy, very good reasons have been proffered. That you dislike those reasons is patently clear, but I'm sure you can appreciate that what is required to disbar them is a consensus against them, as opposed to your personal preferences. So far the consensus seems solidly in the opposite direction.  RGTraynor  10:02, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
RGTraynor, the lack of any defensible reasons has been the main sticking point. Proponents of "(baseball)" and the like have been so consistently not forthcoming with any rationales that cannot be immediately dealt with, that I lampooned them for it as far back as 28 August 2008. (That wasn't charitable, I admit, but I was getting frustrated explaining simple matters only to have the explanations not even parsed much less reasoned over.) – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 10:54, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
There is a .sig I typically use on VBulletin-based forums which runs "It's not that we don't understand what you're saying. It's that we don't 'agree with what you're saying." Your repeated posts certainly make your frustration at our collective lack of disagreement with your position clear, and I'm sorry you feel that way. That being said, the sole reason you proffer for your own position is "consistency." That's an oft-repeated shibboleth on Wikipedia, but unfortunately for the "consistency" advocates, not every position applies in every situation. Do we, for instance, have a universal rule as to whether articles are compelled to use diacritical marks or not? No; different parts of the world use them and others do not. Let's take a sports example, since the sports projects are your whipping boys on this deal: are professional minor leagues notable or not? Well, they are in some sports (hockey, soccer, baseball) where there are strong minor league systems and not so in others (American football) where they're not.
There's another sentiment I've had cause to voice on Wikipedia more than once, and it's this: that the nature of a consensus-based system means that oftentimes you'll find yourself on the opposite side of it, and the only sensible thing to do in that event is lose gracefully and move on. So far you've written a great deal which boils down to the fundamental stance "We should be consistent! We should be consistent!" Do you have anything else to contribute to this discussion that you haven't already mentioned several times over?  RGTraynor  12:13, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
Oh, I know you didn't call me things like that, GTBacchus; the bashing was higher up in the thread (and plenty more of it last year, for that matter). To answer your questions: The reason to not use "{field name}" instead of "(role in field)" patterns is same reason there are conventions at WP:CFD and WP:WSS among others: Consistency. It is unhelpful to readers and to other editors to have disambiguations that, for no intractable reasons, do not fit the disambiguation pattern used by all other bio articles on the whole system, especially if the "breakaway" disambiguators are themselves at least potentially ambiguous (2 of the 3 cases in point). It frankly isn't fair to the editorship at large to expect them to memorize which 3 random topics have their own disambig standards. And I'd bet good money that 9 times out of 10 any oddball disambiguation, like "Jane Smith (music)" or whatever, describing the field not the person, was created by someone who got the idea from an article in one of these three sports topics, since it's not intuitive to label someone that way, and no one else is doing it systematically, in or outside of sports topics. It does seem to rub off, as I find random cases in various topics, with no rhyme or reason, and I find them more now than I used to, suggesting that increased exposure to DABs that don't fit the standard pattern leads to increased confusion about whether there even is any kind of convention for people disambiguation, much less what it is and whether to care about it. It's a small shift, but I still notice it and it seems to worsen.
Anyway, another way of putting it, and returning to the aforementioned examples: If this had been a category naming or stub tag naming issue instead of an article naming issue, it would have been settled a year and half ago, with no muss and no fuss, in favor of consistency instead of inexplicably insisted-upon variance. The history of debates there, and at other XfDs and various other processes, formal and otherwise, from WP:RM to the WikiProject Council proposals page, is basically a continual increase in consistency. Why should we treat article naming conventions as magically different from category naming conventions, etc., and just blithely not care if they are consistent or consistently applied? Especially given that consistency is probably the #1 message of our guidelines taken as a whole, and consistency is the entire point of a naming convention, pretty much by definition. Wanting a different convention for some particular sport seems to me to be more a case of trying to fix what isn't broken that what I've proposed (i.e., doing what NCP says, or did say before a party to this debate changed it mid-RFC), since there's not anything evidently broken at all with the "(role in field)" convention. At very worst there is hypothetically the case where some person a) needs to be DAB'd, and b) is notable so equally for two or more roles that we can't decide which to DAB by, but this is so rare that I challenge anyone to come up with an actual example. This is important because the "smoking gun" case presented in favor of "(baseball)" (or "(football)" or whatever) – one of the only rationales ever offered aside from "we like it" and "we don't like you" by the other side of this debate – was the player who became a coach and a manager (or whatever). But "John Doe (baseball player and manager)" type stuff is a double red herring, since real cases like this haven't been coming up (subjects are almost invariably more notable for one role than another), and if one ever did, it would still be at one role (probably the most current) with a redir from the other, easy-peasy. I hope this clearly answers what you were asking, without belaboring anything too much. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 10:01, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
Ok. If I didn't call you names, then maybe don't defend yourself against names when talking to me. It's distracting. I'm attempting to comment on the content, not the contributor, and I'm not remotely interested in who called whom what.

The rest of your post began, "to answer your question", and then you didn't answer it. I asked for real, concrete harm. You provided abstract talk about consistency. Can you cite any case where anyone (real person!) is confused or misinformed due to disambiguation not being handled in your preferred way? Actual harm? You're saying that occasionally someone breaks the pattern in other areas (i.e. "Ann Brown (music)")? So what? Things being done differently on occasion, and maybe questioned on account of that, is part of the wiki's healthy functioning.

I would suggest: if there doesn't seem to be a forthcoming consensus that this (non-)issue matters to other editors, then it's a bad tree to keep barking up. This is an RFC, and that's my take on the issue. Find a different battle, one that matters. Add sourced facts to articles or something. Help clear the WP:RM backlog (but please IGNORE (not attempt to consistently enforce) rules while doing so). This is a pointless debate, over a trivial matter that should not cause anyone to type thousands of words. Walk away.

In summary: There is no rule but "write an encyclopedia; use consensus". WikiProjects may do whatever they want within that framework. -GTBacchus(talk) 15:22, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

I have been adding sourced facts to articles and otherwise working on visible encyclopedia work (cf. hours of continuous work on Darius I of Persia and related articles recently). I'm not psychic so I can't provide you with evidence form a real person's brain that they were confused in this case or that. What's clear is that all of Wikipedia except for the few holdouts here follows a simple and consistent convention, and that would obviously have evolved for specific reasons, just as the simple and better codified conventions we have for categorization. No "actual harm" had to be demonstrated for these conventions to arise, and no such harm is demonstrated at CfD when things are renamed to flow with them. No harm must be shown at AfD to delete an article that doesn't cut the mustard. So, I can't satisfy the level of proof you're demanding, but I don't see that I should have to. You're the one that said that WP should not be treated in a legalistic manner. In closing, thanks for your comments, and I have given them a lot of thought. I didn't respond for quite a long time. I'm well aware that this dispute and its topic aren't a huge issue. I've never tried to imply that they were. Issues don't have to be of the "Wiki will die if this isn't fixed!" level to be resolved at RFC. RFC exists to help resolve disputes when the sides will not come to resolution with each other, which has been the case here for over a year and half. I'm sorry that you feel that this RFC is "pointless". – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 07:41, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
I'm glad to hear you're not letting this keep you from article work, and thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'm not trying to set "actual harm" as a legal standard, or proof, or anything formal at all. It just seems to me practically unthinkable that someone is going to see "Joe Brown (baseball)" and think that Joe Brown is a baseball. Clearly he's a person who is active in baseball, and that's great. I'm just taking the "ain't broke don't fix it" position.

I don't place much value at all on "consistency". I don't see that as part of our mission, except insofar as it is helpful to avoid actual realistic confusion or misinformation. There is a natural human longing for consistency, but I don't see that it holds up to scrutiny as a necessary quality of an encyclopedia. We inform. When consistency makes us inform better, we're consistent.

I don't see that this particular issue is related at all to being better or worse at informing anyone of anything. When those feet leave the ground - the actual misinformation of an actual reader in this world - I think we've strayed from our mission, and gone chasing consistency for its own sake. The pointlessness actually arises as a result of two things: it doesn't matter much (nobody's realistically misinformed), and there is significant opposition (diminishing returns, finite time and energy, poor battle to choose).

Please don't take any of this personally. I know that you do a whole lot of good work here, SMcCandlish, and I wouldn't want Wikipedia to be without you. Cheers. -GTBacchus(talk) 02:55, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

"'John Doe (baseball player and manager)' type stuff is a double red herring, since real cases like this haven't been coming up... Well of course they haven't been coming up - because we have only been using (baseball) for quite some time now! We have achieved peace! And now you're trying to tear down the peace deal using the peaceful state as evidence that no deal is necessary. Impressive circular logic, but you're actually bolstering "our" case. Wknight94 talk 14:26, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
They haven't been coming up anywhere. Yours is the reasoning that's circular. Your position might make sense if everything at the baseball project was running great, but the rest of Wikipedia was a morass of chaos. It isn't. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 07:41, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
  • In my opinion, disambiguating with, for example, "(baseball player)" is preferable to disambiguating with "(baseball)". It makes more logical sense. Unless there are exceptional cases that don't immediately come to mind, I think it is always better that the disambiguation text describes the person rather than a field of activity. 86.134.72.35 (talk) 12:34, 27 December 2009 (UTC). [Oh, by the way, I have not been involved in or even aware of this debate before.]
  • I wasn't aware there was an actual problem which needed to be fixed. To paraphrase H. L. Mencken, if the guideline requires doubling the length of parenthetical disambiguation, then the guideline is an ass. Mackensen (talk) 14:09, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) To me, the reasons for (baseball) and (hockey) are:
    1. They accomplish the main point of WP:D as well as any other - i.e., disambiguating. The reader is immediately made aware of what separates the person from another.
    2. They are simple one-word disambiguators for areas that don't happen to have simple one-word descriptions for the people involved. It's not my fault there is no one-word description, it's just English. If there were a set of construction worker articles and, as a group - not even necessarily a project! - people decided it was easier to disambiguate them with (construction) rather than (construction worker), I would be perfectly fine with that for the reason of brevity alone.
    3. And maybe most importantly, (baseball player), etc., is often not a good enough disambiguator because many players go on to other careers within the sport. The Connie Mack example was a chief one - he played for a long time, managed for a long time, and was an owner for a long time. Forcing one of the those titles would cause believers in the others to get upset. This would get worse with current people like Howard Johnson. His life definitely shouts "player" but he is currently a coach so recentists would cause a ruckus saying he should be labelled a "coach".
    These reasons have been stated numerous times last August and now, and yet SMcCandlish persists in calling them "indefensible". Can we stop calling them that now that the "defense" is laid out in detail? They don't violate any of the "prescribed" rules that have been agreed to by the community (despite what SMcCandlish has said - and failed to show). Wknight94 talk 14:20, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Heck, I can think of other examples. John Stevens (ice hockey) is an article I created myself, come to that. He had a long and distinguished minor league career, captaining two separate teams to league championships, whereupon he suffered a career ending injury and became a very successful coach, winning Coach of the Year honors both in the minors and in the National Hockey League. What is he, a "player" or a "coach?"  RGTraynor  15:06, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
Well clearly John Stevens (ice hockey minor league player and minor league coach and National Hockey League coach). Wknight94 talk 15:11, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
May I add that, Connie Mack would be one of the clear "exceptions" to the naming "policy" because of his extensive baseball career. He couldn't be named Connie Mack (baseball player, manager, owner), so Connie Mack (baseball) will have to do. Now someone like Tommy Bond (baseball), for example, does not have these other baseball identities, so instead of naming him Tommy Bond (baseball player), just make the first disambiguation be universal within the Project for "consistency". Now, for sake of adding an alternative, we could go with the 19th-century version of the term "baseball player": "baseballist", or simply "ballist", which would cover any sport that uses a ball. But this, I believe, would cause more confusion among contemporary wiki-reader than just simply (baseball).Neonblak talk - 03:58, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Frank Patrick (ice hockey player, coach, general manager, team owner, arena owner, league president, innovator). Resolute 05:10, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
(outdent, since the indentation level of these examples and stuff is all over the place). I'm going to respond to all of that in one go. All of these cases are easily handled with redirects. For example, Connie Mack (baseball manager) would be the obvious article title, as he is most notable as a manager, being a multiple record-holder in that capacity. The rest would be redirects (hopefully they are already). Patrick is obviously most notable as an innovator in the field (at least from what's in his stub), even if he played on a Cup-winning team. If people don't like "innovator" as an DAB (I wouldn't be fond of it), use coach, since most of his innovations were introduced in his coaching years, I gather (his league administration stint was only 1 year). Stevens is most notable as a coach since he was honored with Coach of the Year awards but nothing comparable as a player (just winning plenty simply makes him competent, not a superstar). I've yet to ever see any evidence of "believers in" (?!) one disambiguation or another getting so "upset" (these are not my words) that intractable problems have arisen at any bio article. If it has, I'm sure a consensus was eventually reached. Show me even one active case of this, in any field/topic. Not sure what the point of the "ballist" material is supposed to be, since no one would actually propose that. Anyway, the string of responses I'm replying to is a massive straw man; I did not challenge anyone to come up with names of sports figures who have notably played multiple roles, but ones whose notability in those roles is so even that we just can't reasonably put him/her at one disambiguation or the other (nevermind that no one would really care, since all of them would redirect to it anyway). None of these examples qualify. WKnight94, your 1-2-3 in particular: 1) They do not disambiguate well, since they read like product disambiguations as well as people. 2) No one cares if it's two words instead of one - DABs are cheap, and their principal purpose is as links with very certain targets, not as something readers search for or type manually, so their length is of less concern than their clarity (up to a point of course). 3) Already addressed; frankly, anyone so "hyper-famous" that we can't decide how to DAB them would most likely end up being the "primary topic" for the name needing to be DAB'd anyway. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 07:41, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
PS: See Tony Evans, a random DAB page. No one appears to have had their head explode because some of the disambiguations are multi-word. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 13:29, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Yes, you've certainly responded, but frankly, it's starting to look like the filibustering of last time, and no one beyond a SPA's concurred; the same consensus that was strongly against your POV last year is strongly against your POV this year as well.  RGTraynor  09:43, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Well, this is "damned if you do, damned if you don't" stuff, RG. If I respond personally to each of you, I'll get lambasted for "fillibustering" or "tendentiousness" or whatever anyway. If I don't respond at all, you'll claim "victory" in my absence and silence. If I respond very tersely to you, you'll say I'm being incivil or nonresponsive or something else. I can't win with you or the handful of other people flaming me incessantly here, no matter what I do, so I'm not trying. I consider my effort to consolidate my response to all of your similar messages, which would otherwise have led to a series of redundantly similar replies, to have been the best option, even if resulting in a post that was longer than one that would have been written directly to you only. If you cannot accept that in the good faith it was intended, well, that's frankly not my problem and none of my concern. I can't please everyone all the time, and you've made it clear, here, my talk page and elsewhere, that I can't please you at all. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 13:29, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Firstly, I want to say that though I may not have participated in many of these types of discussions, I can't help but notice that in almost every one that I've read where someone's referred to the opposing view as a straw man argument in some way, shape or form, I've come disagreed with that person. And it's happened here too. Next, I want to point out that I'm involved with WP:BASEBALL, and specifically WP:AUSBALL. In fact, a post at the talk page was how I came across this discussion. I say this because our project is one of the three apparent "renegade" or "breakaway" projects, and I don't want my voice to be sullied by accusations of not declaring my interests. I'd also point out that  ::Now I understand that there is a naming convention that would, in the case of baseball as an example, require an article to be disambiguated with "(baseball player)", "(baseball manager)", or something similar, as opposed to "(baseball)", which is commonly used at the moment. To my knowledge the longer version of the disambiguaters is generally only used where there are two people in baseball with the same name, so obviously using just "(baseball)" is not sufficient. Apart from conformity—which I accept is reasonable, but not in and of itself sufficient in my opinion to warrant over-turning the existing article names—the only argument that I've seen in favor of changing the article names is that there is a level of confusion in disambiguating with just the sport name. That by using only "(baseball)" that the reader will believe that the article refers to a brand, a product, a company, or something other than the person. ::While I cannot truthfully offer a statement of "no one would ever be silly enough to think that" (if for no other reason than that people in general seem to get sillier and sillier as time goes on), after a little thinking, it seems unlikely. The main ways I can think of that someone would arrive at an article that for the purposes of this discussion could be seen as having a confusing name, would be either using Wikipedia's search function, using a search engine, following an internal link from another Wikipedia article, following a link from an external page, or typing the url directly/using a bookmark. Using either of the two search methods would either provide the first part of the lead or some amount of context if a term other than the name was searched for. In both cases this would clear any confusion fairly quickly, and I would think in most cases before even having to open the article. When following a link from within Wikipedia, there is almost certainly going to be context surrounding the link to limit any confusion, the article title is likely to be somewhat irrelevant. When following an external link, context is harder to be certain of, but again I would think likely. And if they're using a bookmark or typing the url out itself, then I think we can be certain that the reader knows exactly what the article is about, and would there would be no confusion. ::I wish that there was a way to avoid using disambiguaters, but I can't come up with one, and I doubt any of the other thousands of editors have either. At least not with a way that works well. Given that we have to use them, I want them to be as short as possible. I want them to be as clear as necessary, which also means that they don't have to be specific. The shorter, briefer, and more general they are, the better they are in my opinion. Though this would be a fairly extreme case, obviously we don't want to get to a situation where disambiguating the article turns into duplicating the lead section in the article name. At the end of the day, using the term "(baseball)", or "(ice hockey)", etc is sufficient in many cases. If there's more than one person that could come under a generic term like that, then its fair enough to use more detail. ::I think that its reasonable for individual WikiProjects to use variations of the various guidelines out there. As stated above by someone else, there are situations that only apply to certain cases that shouldn't be set at a global level, or that while set appropriately for the majority of cases at that global level, don't work for specific circumstances. I don't think there is any harm in continuing with what has been used up until now. ::I'm also forced to note that the only people arguing for the change at the moment are the person who originally openned the discussion and an IP user. I'm also forced to note that at the time the comments were made by the IP user, it was their 2nd and 3rd edits in Wikipedia respectively. In fairness, that user has claimed to have made thousands of edits in the past and to not have the history because of a dynamic IP address. My problem is that the note about the lack of edits was removed completely rather than struck out like this, that the claim of many previous edits was made in the edit summary, and that I would expect someone whose made "thousands of Wikipedia edits over a huge range of topics'" to have created a username and login with it. If your claims are correct 86.134.72.35, then I apologise for casting aspersions. However it does give the appearance that SMcCandlish and 86.134.72.35 are in fact the same user. Even if you both are different people, it would still indicate that you are significantly in the minority on this.  Afaber012  (talk)  10:45, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
As the IP editor that you refer to, I can categorically assure you that I have no connection whatsoever with SMcCandlish and that my statement about my Wikipedia editing record is accurate. As you will see, I have another new IP address today, along with (currently) a very short edit history including one edit that I didn't even make (someone had the IP address before me). This is the way IP addresses work for many home users. When I deleted the comment you refer to I assumed it had been added by an ill-thought-out bot (as it looked similar to the auto-sigs). I did not realise it had been added by a human editor. 81.129.130.232 (talk) 12:26, 28 December 2009 (UTC).
@Afaber012, you say "that there is a naming convention that would, in the case of baseball as an example, require an article to be disambiguated with '(baseball player)', '(baseball manager)', or something similar", but that is not true. That is what SMcCandlish is trying to install in this guideline. It does not exist at this point, and there are no projects going rogue here, so don't worry. See immediately below... Wknight94 talk 12:58, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Afaber012: Hey, I'm not the only one who writes long posts. :-) Anyway, thanks for your comments and the amount of time that went into them. The main red flag for me is that you repeat what everyone in support of disambiguators like "(baseball)" repeats, that "(baseball)" is perfectly fine as a disambiguator. Yet it has already been pointed out why it isn't, for a specific reason. If disambiguators like that were not problematic, WP would not have evolved away from them to such an extent that virtually everyone on the encyclopedia uses a person- not- field-naming term, except the couple of projects at issue here. But, I can agree with you on things as well. "The shorter, briefer, and more general they are, the better they are in my opinion." Certainly. This guidelines say that. They simply also say that we disambiguate people as people (player, whatever), not as balls or games (baseball, hockey, whatever). It is far more important that disambiguators be clear and (by definition) unambiguous than that they be short, even if short is also one of our goals. Their shortness is necessarily limited by the need for their clarity. On a side note, if you're going to cross the civility line and accuse me of sock puppetry, just go to WP:SSP and do it properly. I hereby pre-emptively consent to and even encourage a checkuser investigation and any other tool they want to use. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 13:29, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Something you might want to think about SMcCandlish. Is that you keep saying that sports articles are in the minority position for doing it differently from everyone. But you do realize that sports articles make up the majority of bio articles on the wiki right? So technically the majority of bio articles do it this way, its actually the position you support that is out of step with the majority. -DJSasso (talk) 14:35, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Recommend closing: As evidenced by Afaber012 above, the wording of this RFC is misleading - it is presenting a case that the sports projects in question are already in violation of the guideline. They are not!! Even the version that existed last week allowed for an exception. I've stricken the confusing part from both RFC versions above, but you are left with verbiage that doesn't even apply to anything we are discussing. The proper RFC would be to try to introduce a change to the guideline that would then necessitate the sports projects to change their zillions of article titles. Wknight94 talk 12:58, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Of course you recommend closing; your weird disambiguations are the subject of the RFC, and you're the one who changed the guideline without discussion or consensus to reflect your viewpoint and moot the RFC. The exception the guideline allowed for was very explicitly to avoid multi-role DABs like "(baseball player and coach)", but as has already been said multiple times, this wouldn't happen anyway since we have redirects. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 13:29, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Wrong again - the cheesy guideline change only survived because the vast majority forced you to include an exception which essentially rendered the guideline change moot. Therefore the change is pointless and the projects were not violating the guideline - with or without the cheesy addition - and the context of the RFC is moot. Wknight94 talk 14:56, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Um, read the plain wording in the material in question. It concedes that "(baseball)" would be better than a really long multi-role DAB. And nothing else. And stop changing your story. Last time it was that I "forced" this language into the guideline, now it is that you "forced" me to include it. Not sure why you like that word so much. But remember me arguing that it was in fact a compromise (i.e. a consensus), and not me forcing anything? Thank you for so "forcefully" conceding that point, which undermines the assertions you are making in your proposal to change the guideline. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 22:01, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not in any way affiliated with any of sports-related projects, but I do a lot with disambiguation pages. I do not agree with SMcCandlish's interpretation of DAB guidelines so far as naming pages is concerned. It specifically defers to this page for naming conventions of people. There is nothing (at least nothing unambiguous) in WP:DAB to prefer Person (football player) over Person (football). As far as I'm concerned, including the word "player" is unnecessary in most cases. older ≠ wiser 14:04, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I can't agree I'm afraid. I see the problems with potentially long lists of multiple occupations, but in a choice between "(football)" and "(football player)" I prefer the second hands down. For me, it is a much more logical choice. 81.129.130.232 (talk) 14:14, 28 December 2009 (UTC).
(ec) Why, aside from preference? The purpose of the disambiguating phrase is to differentiate it from other articles, not to describe the content of the article. Aside from the possibility of some unusual personal names, does the word "player" help to differentiate an article from some other football-related article? If not, then the word is unnecessary. In another controversial area regarding naming conventions, the community decided against adding unnecessary words to the disambiguating phrase, even though the resulting title was arguably more accurate. For example, with television episodes, guidance is explicitly against using the word "episode" for disambiguation except where it is necessary. older ≠ wiser 14:26, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Just a preference I guess. I feel that logically the word in brackets should describe the thing being disambiguated. A person is not a "baseball", they are a "baseball player" (for example). 81.129.130.232 (talk) 15:02, 28 December 2009 (UTC).
But it does still describe them, a person is involved in baseball. But I do know what you mean. The question comes down to do you think it causes harm to the wiki to have it be baseball instead of baseball player. Is it just a case of preference or do you see actual harm? -DJSasso (talk) 15:06, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Not actual harm; to me, it just seems a bit sloppy. 81.129.130.232 (talk) 15:13, 28 December 2009 (UTC).
(edit conflict)Notsure why you think (baseball) is conusing for long lists of multiple occupations. The whole problem is that (baseball player) becomes an issue with multiple occupations because the disambiguator is too specific. We are supposed to use the most generic disambiguator possible in order to disambiguate one article from another. That is actually the guideline in dabs. -DJSasso (talk) 14:27, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
That's what I meant: I can see that the "(baseball player)" style becomes an issue with multiple occupations. 81.129.130.232 (talk) 15:04, 28 December 2009 (UTC).
  • Concur with closing: SMcCandlish's attempts notwithstanding, sentiment is not only overwhelmingly running against his position, it ran overwhelmingly against his position the last time the issue was raised, and despite his voluminous comments he has yet to cite anywhere where the explicit consensus he claims to have backed him may be found and reviewed.  RGTraynor  14:24, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
  • The discussion should not be closed yet--it seems some more general attention is needed. I have no particular view on how to handle sportspeople, but if the community as a whole chooses to have different naming conventions for different topics, it can certainly do so. Whether we should so choose is another matter, but after all, we make the rules. No project can overturn general rules of its own accord regardless of the wishess of the community, but it can certainly propose changes within its area, to see if they are accepted. I am somewhat confused by the strikeouts above, and I ask SMcCandish to please restate his proposal --and I ask those who disagree with it to let it be discussed on its merits without trying to alter it to a different proposal. The usual way that should be done is to present an alternative, and to present it frankly as an alternative. DGG ( talk ) 14:41, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Did you see my comment after the strikeouts? The gist of the RFC presupposes that the specified projects were doing things against the guideline. That is simply untrue. So what is the point of asking if projects can do things against general guidelines when that's not what was happening in the first place? Wknight94 talk 14:53, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
  • At the same time, if you let this run through with the result that, at this point seems obvious, it might save us doing this all over again next year. Let SMcCandish have his cake. Perhaps this will finally put an end to his crusade. Resolute 15:45, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose as phrased. The purpose of guidelines is to guide, not force. If the guidance is not persuading actual naming discussions, after being pointed out, then a substantial number of editors do not agree with it in some situations, and the proper proceedure is to find what it is we do agree to; rephrasing both this guideline and the project conventions accordingly. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:40, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Does this have to do with moving baseball articles from X (baseball player) to X (baseball)? as we've already done for hockey articles? GoodDay (talk) 20:40, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposal - remove the line in question entirely

Since we have process wonking in the extreme going on here and at ANI, here is my simple proposal to make it offical: Remove the following line from this guideline: "It is generally preferred to use a noun that describes the person, rather than an activity, genre, or affiliation (chemist, not chemistry). However, this can sometimes lead to awkward or overly-long disambiguations, in which case a shorter but still clear term should be used (baseball, not baseball player and coach)."

The line is not only clear instruction creep, but is being used by SMcCandlish (talk · contribs) as some sort of ammunition to force a change to countless articles that have been disambiguated with (baseball) and (hockey), etc. It was only agreed to as a compromise to end the endless discussion of last August/September (actually I don't even remember agreeing to it - but that's just me), but since the compromise is no longer acceptable to SMcCandlish, let's remove it entirely.

The consensus above and last August seems pretty clear that, as Resolute put it, the line was a solution looking for a problem. Wknight94 talk 15:05, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

  • Endorse I agree with Resolute and Wknight. This line was a solution looking for a problem. There has been no problem with the way things have been disambiguated for years. baseball or ice hockey etc have been used as far as I am aware for over 5 years with no one having serious issue with it except SMcCandlish. -DJSasso (talk) 15:23, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Agreed, at the risk of forming a "cabal" on the matter. Resolute 15:45, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Echoing an exchange on my talk page, what Djsasso said. Less is more, endlessly bulky descriptions of how to disambiguate people with the same name and minutely different careers is simply pointless. When an example comes up then it can be handled through the usual process - and I really don't think this is goign to be hard since if there genuinely were two baseball pitchers with the same name who pitch with opposite hands, as per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (baseball players) (which, incidentally, I have nominated for deletion as processcruft) then the baseball community will probably do the disambiguating for us - as they did with Lefty Gomez for example. Guy (Help!) 15:51, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
  • In my opinion, the bolded sentences quoted ("It is generally preferred to use a noun ..." etc.) are very reasonable as a general guideline. The example given -- "chemist" versus "chemistry" -- seems clear-cut, as are many others in similar vein ("journalist"/"journalism", "geologist"/"geology", "triple jumper"/"triple jump" etc. etc.) Is there any way we can retain the guideline yet not require people who have happily been doing it differently for years to change masses of articles? 86.152.242.148 (talk) 18:52, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) I think every type of article will have some "reasonable" guideline that will occur naturally and be agreed to via consensus - very possibly driven by a group of people or project. The attempt to formalize that reasonable guideline and insist that every article about a person stick to one rigid guideline is what is unnecessary. There are too many different types of people and different reasons for notability to expect that every biographical article to follow a rule this specific. You're listing some that would be fine with this guideline, but think about others that would not. English is not a perfect language. Wknight94 talk 19:20, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
Apart from the known (and documented) issue of multiple occupations -- and momentarily ignoring the disruption to editors who have been happily following a different convention -- which articles would not work with this guideline? 86.152.242.148 (talk) 19:43, 28 December 2009 (UTC).
To my knowledge, no one has written an article, List of occupations which cannot be expressed with a single English word. All I could come up with off the top of my head was "construction worker". Other examples may exist, and even if they don't, it is still a valid reason to discard the overly strict rule per WP:CREEP at minimum. Wknight94 talk 20:10, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
If we have any articles on construction workers that need disambiguating, then "(construction worker)" seems ideal to me. I don't see how this is an exception to the proposed guideline. 86.152.242.148 (talk) 20:38, 28 December 2009 (UTC).
But (construction) would be even shorter, and still disambiguate. Wknight94 talk 20:47, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
I think "(construction)" is a poor disambiguator here. I'd assume that "Fred Bloggs (construction)" was an article about a company of that name, not a person who worked in the construction industry. 86.152.242.148 (talk) 21:41, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Endorse. And in response to 86._._._, why have a guideline that we don't all follow? If we keep it, it seems likely that someone will raise this issue again. That by itself is fine, but is it necessary for it to be held at a Wiki-wide level? If we're happy to leave the existing articles as they are and to let things continue as they have been, meaning that new articles that needed to be disambiguated would be created with "(baseball)", then that section of the guideline should be removed. If there are people that feel strongly enough for something like it to be written somewhere, then perhaps there should be an equivalent line written in the naming conventions for the various WikiProjects. It seems to me that something like this should only be present where there are two large groups of people that are actually in conflict about how to proceed. I don't think we truly have a conflict here: just one person against many. (While that one person does have a supporter, it seems the supporter is happy to leave the work that's been done as is, and to continue as if the line in question didn't actually exist.) Generally the fewer rules the better.  Afaber012  (talk)  19:19, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
I agree that it's an odd concept to have a guideline that numerous articles don't follow. I was wondering if it might be a compromise. It's true that I don't feel strongly enough to support forcing editors to follow this putative guideline and change a bunch of articles whose titles have been stable for a long time. 86.152.242.148 (talk) 19:48, 28 December 2009 (UTC).
This isn't about forcing individual behavior, it's about prevention of POV forking a WP-wide guideline into things like WP:NC-BASE which directly conflict with it, setting the stage for WikiProjects to randomly invent their own "guidelines" against broader consensus whenever they want. And this isn't "one person against many", it's a handful of editors from 2 or 3 projects versus the disambiguation behavior of almost everyone else on Wikipedia, which are consistently (like 99% of the time) doing what the guideline says. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 21:53, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose: This is called forum shopping. Just let the RFC run instead of trying to sabotage it by a different route now that multiple editors are reverting your attempts to delete the discussed material in mid-discussion. Are you that afraid that your side of the dispute is too weak to survive a simple RFC? Also, I would like it noted that the proponent WKnight94 is contradicting himself. His position in the debate from the start has been that I "forced" the wording in question into the guideline, but now he says in this proposal and here, that the language was a compromise (i.e. a consensenus). He also falsely claims that I do not accept the language (please note my objections to is removal, and my reversion of his removal of it). The issue in the RFC is broader, and is about the use of disambiguators like "(baseball)" when they are not needed to avoid a long, multi-role disambiguator, which the wording of the contested language makes very clear. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 21:53, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Endorse: And that aside, perhaps SMcCandlish might care to review WP:CIVIL and cut out the flurry of ad homimen attacks. As the strong consensus on this issue demonstrates, it's not only quite possible to disagree with you, most editors are so far. You might also consider dialing down the exaggeration, such as conflating a single reversion by a single editor other than yourself as "multiple editors." Right now, I count only one editor - the dynamic IP guy - backing your position, and eleven editors refuting it.  RGTraynor  22:01, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
    Yeah, SMcCandlish, you have yourself so twisted into a pretzel claiming that people are contradicting themselves about forum shopping and the projects contradicting something and the guideline contradicting the strawman RFC which..... I hardly know what you're saying anymore. The simple fact is that you are claiming 99% of people agree with you, and yet almost everyone that shows up here disagrees, and says that everything was fine the way it was, and that you're barking up the wrong tree. People are for reducing the process creep (even nominating the baseball-specific guide for deletion) and reducing the drama, and yet you are trying so hard to increase both. I can't even imagine the number of words and keystrokes that have been devoted almost solely to you - back in August as well as now. When are you going to cut your losses? Wknight94 talk 22:24, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
    The only thing I'm trying to increase is the ability of people other than the same handful of editors from two maybe three sport projects who have already spoken on the matter, to even know that there's a WP-wide question to resolve by consensus here and to express their views on it, which may differ quite a bit from those of baseball and hockey editors. Who's barking? I'm not coming up with things like "twisted into a pretzel". I'm finding it hard to imagine why you keep devoting so many keystrokes to me, too, since this isn't about me, it's about a question of consensus, and you've already made your position on the matter clear, again and again and again. – SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 00:06, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Out of curiosity, I glanced at the recent contribution history of those editors who so far oppose your position. There's a round half-dozen so far with no sports-related edits in their last 500. Even given your insinuation that editors who work on sports articles get less of a say here than those who aren't (which would, ironically enough, debar you), that number alone is twice those backing your position.  RGTraynor  05:50, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
I insinuated no such thing. You just chose not to read what I actually wrote. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 07:31, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

"The majority of participants in the three projects in question have not been involved in this issue at all," "The only people who ever ever [sic] opposed me on any of these points have been you two and a handful of others, all from the same three projects," "3 projects are ignoring a guideline accepted by everyone else on the system," "If you can't win except by cheating, your position is bankrupt indeed," "[I]t was the same handful of people talking about it the entire time ... instead of fresh eyes examining the question from outside," "What's clear is that all of Wikipedia except for the few holdouts here follows a simple and consistent convention," "And this isn't "one person against many", it's a handful of editors from 2 or 3 projects ..." "The only thing I'm trying to increase is the ability of people other than the same handful of editors from two maybe three sport projects who have already spoken on the matter ..."

That's what you actually wrote, and the hammering on the premise that you view this as a Sports Editors vs. Real Editors war has long since become tendentious. "I can't win with you or the handful of other people flaming me incessantly here ..." You wrote that one as well.  RGTraynor  10:20, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
Okay, so you just aren't properly parsing what I wrote then. Your interpretation defies reason, since I am first and foremost a sports editor and have been my entire tenure here. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 20:43, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
That's why Wikipedia:Tendentious editing was written and is oft-cited - there are few things as frustrating as 10 people trying to convince one person to give up, and having that one person flat-out refuse. I still remember the only arbitration I was ever involved in where only an arbitration finding would finally bring a discussion to a close. SMcCandlish, you can't expect to gain a lot of good will when you put a group this large through this much hassle. (But I'm about through responding to you since all of your responses are sounding the same). Wknight94 talk 12:43, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
Your continual misuse of "tendentious" to mean "won't go away just because we disagree with him and browbeat him incessantly even after we've made our point again and again" is getting a little tiresome. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 20:43, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Endorse - There's a lot of this overly specific perscriptivism going on in these Naming conventions, so any opportunity to remove an instance of it should be taken.
    — V = I * R (talk to Ohms law) 01:21, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Endorse amendment, per Ohm's law. The sentence is probably reasonable advice, but it's a minor point, not worth abusing people over. It's only advice, not a rule. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:45, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Endorse, it's instruction creep. Disambiguation in person articles works fine without it. --Enric Naval (talk) 02:00, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Endorse, per near consensus. SMcCandlish, I'm sorry, but this is a poor battle to invest your energy in, and a good one to walk away from. If there were more support forthcoming, I would say otherwise, but you seem to be almost completely alone on this. You've got finite time on Earth; how much of that do you want to budget to Sisyphean tasks, vis-a-vis ones where you get somewhere? Besides, I think prescrictivism is anathema to the project, that consistency is only a means to an end, and that projects should absolutely set their own naming conventions. Less central control, not more. Just because we naturally (and in good faith!) slide towards red-tape and instruction-creep, doesn't make it cool. -GTBacchus(talk) 03:16, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Endorse. The instruction does not reflect existing naming practices across all areas of Wikipedia, and it hasn't been demonstrated that the lack of consistency is causing any problems. There would be costs to trying to force consistency (requiring several thousand page moves), and the benefits don't outweigh the costs. BRMo (talk) 05:23, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Endorse. If the word doesn't help to disambiguate, regardless of the part of speech, it doesn't belong. See John Madden (ice hockey) and John Madden (American football) - it's clear who is whoh, without adding "player" or "announcer" (some may argue for removing "ice" and "American", but that's a different discussion). Following another example, Fred Bloggs (construction) is OK if he's the only one associated with construction; otherwise we follow an example like John Deere (construction worker) and John Deere (construction equipment). The guideline should be the minimum wording used to disambiguate Me Three (talk to me) 18:35, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Just close it as a snowball. The RFC too, since this will moot it. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 20:49, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Endorse, as we've got the ice hockey bios at X (ice hockey), where necessary. GoodDay (talk) 21:08, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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