Talk:Karl Ehrhardt

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Requested move 30 October 2023[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Reading Beans (talk) 08:47, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]


Karl EhrhardtSign Man – This should be moved per WP:COMMONNAME. Karl Ehrhardt was and is known as "Sign Man" in sports circles, the only realm in which he was WP:Notable. Googling "'sign man' mets" returns 16,500 results. Googling "'Karl Ehrhardt' mets" returns 1,200 results. It seems mostly like obituaries which use his birth name. Dennis C. Abrams (talk) 19:06, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support largely because of this NYT article which repeatedly refers to him as "the Sign Man". And thanks to this discussion for prompting me to start an article about Dude With Sign. Hameltion (talk | contribs) 03:21, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose a nickname that is likely to be confusing. Most of the Google results for "Sign man" are completely unrelated topics. Walt Yoder (talk) 15:27, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Walt Yoder: Unless any of those other results are WP:Notable people, I don't see how that matters. WP:COMMONNAME is still the controlling criterion. Dennis C. Abrams (talk) 14:12, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. He's billed as Karl Ehrhardt on his To Tell the Truth episode, his NYT obit calls him Karl Ehrhardt in the headline, and every source currently in the article uses Karl Ehrhardt. No evidence the nickname ever supplanted his real name. Compare to someone like Freddy Schuman whose NYT obit did actually call him Freddy Sez. Nohomersryan (talk) 01:32, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The same headline you cite also calls him Sign Man, right after his birth name. The body of the obit says the was "known as the Sign Man." Dennis C. Abrams (talk) 02:13, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    But they would never write "Sign Man, an iconic fixture of Shea Stadium, died February 5 at the age of 83...", and the third paragraph describes him as the "Sign Man of Shea". If most reliable sources don't identify him solely as "Sign Man", and he described himself as "Karl Ehrhardt" as opposed to "Sign Man", it is not exactly what I'd say is used by a "significant majority of independent, reliable English-language sources". Nohomersryan (talk) 23:44, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Sign man could describe a certain type of advertising and the search results on Google offer all sorts of things. Killuminator (talk) 13:14, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.