A fact from Warner's Hotel appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 18 April 2011 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that Warner's Hotel in Christchurch demolished its northern end and built a theatre in its place to shield its patrons from the noise of the printing presses in the adjacent Lyttelton Times Building(buildings pictured)?
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Article moved but should it be at Historic Warners Hotel?[edit]
I suspected the name was Warners without the apostrophe and confirmed that with this image. I went ahead with moving the article from Warner's Hotel to Warners Hotel. Should it be Historic Warners Hotel though? --Marc Kupper|talk 05:33, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My thoughts are that unless a move is clearly uncontroversial, it should always be discussed. If you had bothered with looking through the references, you would have noticed that the majority of sources use the apostrophe. So at the very least, it's not uncontroversial moving this. What's so hard about posting a query first? Schwede66 05:56, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, I should have checked more first and then asked on the talk page. As the talk page had no traffic I went ahead with a bold move and as I was updating the article text I realized the old name was "Warner's Hotel."
Unfortunately, I can't spot a local copy. This PDF file mentions the book and "History of Warner’s Hotel, originally called Coker’s Hotel, then White’s Hotel. Includes list of licensees and freeholders, biographical material on Jack Coker, William White, William Warner, Percival Arthur Henman, Joseph Clarkson Maddison, Robert Falcon Scott, Thomas Arthur Cloudsley, Reginald “Bert” Collins, A.J. White, Stanley O’Keefe, Ernest Shackleton." Though I can find a picture of Stephen Symons I did not spot a way to contact him to see if he could answer the "Warner's" to "Warners" question.
It appears the transition from "Warner's" to "Warners" was happening as early as 2002. Do we want to use the historical or current name for the building for this article? --Marc Kupper|talk 15:33, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure whether you've ever had a look at the WP naming conventions. It says there: "The term most typically used in reliable sources is preferred to technically correct but rarer forms, whether the official name, the scientific name, the birth name, the original name or the trademarked name." So it doesn't matter what their official name might be (and you certainly wouldn't derive that from the sign mounted on the hotel, as those commonly omit apostrophes even if their official name contains it). What should determine the article's name is 'the term most typically used in reliable sources'. I chose the article title with an apostrophe because that's the more common form in the reliable sources. And 'historic' should most certainly not be in the title; hardly any of the sources ever refer to it, when they do, historic is there as an adjective (and thus not part of the name proper) and I regard that as part of their marketing, but not as part of the name. Schwede66 21:05, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The thing that first caught my attention was no apostrophe in name on the front sign and the sign on the roof. I then confirmed that via a better picture. I then checked '"Warners" hotel Christchurch' vs '"Warner's" hotel Christchurch' in Google (the extra quotes tend to force Google to use that spelling) and the result was 152,000 vs. 17,000 pages. My assumption is that most people will know of it as Warners. The current reliable sources are largely historical (well before 2002) and would be expected to use the old name.
Using WP naming conventions the main bullets (Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness, Consistency) lean towards Warners though it's not a huge thing as the names are so similar. I'd suspect "Warners" will create less astonishment given that 152,000 vs. 17,000 edge in today's world. I agree we should not use "Historic" as it seems more about marketing.
I did not try it last night but this Warner's vs. Warners via Google News archives gives 1,490 to 30 edge to Warner's. You'd think the hotel shut down for 80 years. Both time lines show coverage dropping to zero from 1922 to 2003.
I do not have a strong opinion and so if you are not persuaded that Warners is the right title moving forwards then I'm fine with moving the article back to Warner's. I checked and we won't need admin-help to do the move as the Warner's Hotel and talk pages only have one edit which the redirect. We can either revert my edit to the main article or work in that the hotel has been known as Warner's from 1865 to ~2002 and as Warners since at least 2002. It'd be good to get a reliable source on the name change. --Marc Kupper|talk 01:36, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My preference is for Warner's. Thanks for the good discussion here. Schwede66 19:59, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've moved it back to Warner's. I'll continue to look to see why the name changed. I figured out one of the reasons for so many hits for "Warners" is that there are 62,000 hits for the string "Warners Historic Hotel." It looks like someone in the travel industry has something where they can publish an advertisement across thousands of travel web sites. That's giving that particular name an artificial boost. Many recent articles use "Warner's" despite that the sign over the door days "Warners." For example, www.accor.com, the company that built the Novotel, had this January 25, 2010 press release that uses "Warner's Hotel." The Novotel web site though only uses "Warners" and never "Warner's". --Marc Kupper|talk 03:14, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
