Talk:Animal Locomotion

Requested move 16 March 2022

 * 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: Moved. Calidum 14:00, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Animal Locomotion: An Electro-photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements → Animal Locomotion – Per WP:COMMONNAME which has examples almost exactly like this one showing that using such a long title is a bad idea. The title will not conflict with Animal locomotion due to WP:DIFFCAPS policy. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 14:12, 16 March 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. Spekkios (talk) 04:01, 8 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Oppose move - Length of the title is in compliance with the Manual of Style WP:TITLELENGTH – it does not exceed 256 bytes when encoded in UTF-8; it is 98 bytes, therefore does not require a shorthand name. The reason for the capitalization (and italics) is because this article in about a commissioned art/science project – a specific body of work by a notable photographer. The long title of this article is the proper name of both the project itself as well as the portfolio of images/animations and the name of the resulting eleven-volume publication. The reason why this article has a long name is because that is the formal name of the commissioned artistic and scientific project itself. It is capitalized and italicized because it is a proper name, the title of a publication and photographic portfolio - which is correct. The other article, Animal locomotion, is about animal behavior - self-propulsion of an organism. This article is about an artwork and specific scientific study by Muybridge; how the commission from the University of Pennsylvania came about; the exhibitions of the photographs, the museum collections housing the artworks. If you read the text of the article, and not just look at the pictures, you will see that is the case. This article is about an important contribution to the history of art  and its influence on other artists – and specifically art-and-science-collaborations. Muybridge photographed human movement for this portfolio as well as non-human animals. Here is another example to illustrate and clarify: on today's Main Page, there is an article called The Colossus of Rhodes, which is a painting by Dalí that depicts the colossus. It would be incorrect to rename and move that to the article to Colossus of Rhodes, which is about the actual wonder of the world, just because it has a similar name. Netherzone (talk) 14:46, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Weak support. The examples listed in WP:COMMONNAME for both scientific concepts and product names make it easy to draw the conclusion that the two-word name is far, far clearer.  Arguments suggesting that the use of particular formatting is essential don't appear to have any basis in policy, and one editor's comparison to the naming of Colossus of Rhodes articles seems specious.  Capitalization is often a distinction without a difference, however, particularly for anyone using spoken-word versions of articles, or screen-reading technology; I think that WP:DIFFCAPS doesn't necessarily capture that fact.  I'd prefer it be moved to a more common name that also makes the difference clear, such as Animal Locomotion (study).--~TPW 15:23, 16 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Support move - see David Copperfield and On the Origin of Species... or even Don Quixote, Birdman (film) and Dr. Strangelove. Even though these books and films have much longer titles, we use the shorter common names. If you want a different type of argument, I think that by choosing to use a main title, Muybridge essentially chose to have his work referred to as "Animal Locomotion"; he could have easily just called it "An Electro-photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements". The way I see it, these long subtitles were never meant to be used in common parlance, but were rather mean to describe the work, and I also believe they were particularly in fashion during the 19th century.  ‡ El cid, el campeador  talk  17:06, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Honestly, my favorite example is When the Pawn... and its 444-character-long title. And that's not even the longest one! Most of the Remixes (552 characters) and The Boy Bands Have Won (865 characters) are even longer. -B RAINULATOR 9 (TALK) 22:19, 16 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Support move per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CONCISE, bearing in mind WP:DIFFCAPS. -B RAINULATOR 9 (TALK) 22:21, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose per the almost 300 page views a day for the primary Animal locomotion, the slow demise of WP:DIFFCAPS, and per Netherzone's reasoned opposition. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:16, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * DIFFCAPS either exists or it doesn't, there is no choosing to ignore Wikipedia policies because you don't prefer to follow them. Nobody types in "Animal Locomotion" searching for the scientific topic, unless you totally ignore the significance of capital letters in the English language. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 11:37, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
 * It exists in a limbo of often not being a factor in RM's and has been on its way out for years. And "nobody types in..."? You seem to have a misplaced faith in the universality of current word usage and school systems (where anything goes and usually does). Randy Kryn (talk) 11:51, 18 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Support per WP:COMMONNAME, WP:CONCISE, and WP:DIFFCAPS. The latter is a part of policy, with explicitly-supported examples Iron maiden vs. Iron Maiden, or Ice cube vs. Ice Cube, which match this very situation. Those who oppose the DIFFCAPS aspect can develop consensus to get that part removed from the policy page. Erik (talk &#124; contrib) (ping me) 15:48, 18 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Comment (from article creator) - The problem to my mind, is that editors from the 21st century wish to shorten the formal title of a significant work of 19th century art-and-science because they think it is too long, (and perhaps reflective of the influence of Victorian literature.) Yet the existing title is well within Wikipedia's policies per Manual of Style WP:TITLELENGTH – as it does not exceed 256 bytes when encoded in UTF-8. The existing title is 98 bytes, therefore does not require a shorthand name. The encyclopedia should honor the the title of the study that Muybridge gave his work. If anything, simply create a redirect. I am strongly opposed to changing the formal title of an artist's work, and moving the article to the shorthand name. Netherzone (talk) 16:17, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
 * It has long been Wikipedia policy to shorten overly long names to what a person would actually call it in common parlance, which would pretty much never be its current title. I have no opposition to listing the full title in the article body, so this is not any sort of attempt at censoring the title. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 17:17, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
 * It disrespects the integrity of the artist's intention to rename their work of art. Here's a thot....rename Picasso's painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon to The Dames, and Damien Hirst's work The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living to TPIoDitMoSL, or even better, Shark Tank. To compare Muybridge's accomplished contribution to photographic-and-film history to a pop song by Fiona Apple is simply absurd to my way of thinking. And is completely out of touch with the art historical importance of this work. We don't have to dumb things down for our readership. Netherzone (talk) 21:48, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
 * This subtitle doesn't seem to me like an "artistic" flourish so much as a utilitarian explanation of what the work entails. I agree that if the title was made lengthy for artistic purposes it should have more thought as to whether or not to shorten it. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 01:36, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
 * With all due respect, your reply shows a deep misunderstanding of the Victorian sensibility within which Muybridge's work is contextualized. If I try to put my mind into the place of logic suggested, here are a few other articles on creative works that could do with a PoMo trim: Raymond Carver's book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love could be shortened to: 'Bout Luv, or let's rename Murakami's novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World to Hard-Boiled or David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again should be shortened and moved to No Fun. Come to think of it, Firesign Theater's I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus definitely should be moved to Bozos! :-) These examples are supposed to be humorous, I mean no offense, but I am dead serious about the absurdity of the proposed change. Netherzone (talk) 02:34, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Netherzone's own DYK above refers to "over 100,000 images for [Muybridge's] study Animal Locomotion (example pictured)". If a shortened form in common usage isn't a problem for those Victorian works On the Origin of Species and David Copperfield, why would it be for this? Ham II (talk) 09:56, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Pop album, anyway. As for your suggested renames, those names would be Wikipedian-invented, rather than naturally occuring, and thus would never be acceptable for being the title of those articles. While I get sentiments of names being too informal for use when a consistent, full name (see Talk:Dred Scott v. Sandford (permalink), in which I opposed a proposed move of to  as too informal, comparing it to renaming  to ), this is not one of those cases as the name given is used outside of Wikipedia in many sources as if it were the full name. See also KonoSuba, which also does not include the subtitle in the article name (or the expanded version of its common name, mind you). -B RAINULATOR 9 (TALK) 01:10, 20 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Move to Animal Locomotion (Muybridge) or Animal Locomotion. Much of the argument in the first Oppose !vote is irrelevant to the naming question or is invalidated by WP:COMMONNAME: "Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it generally prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable English-language sources)". Looking at the online sources used by the article, the Brooklyn Museum, MoMA, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Tate, The Art Bulletin, Artstor, The Atlantic, the Huxley-Parlour Gallery and Penn Today omit the subtitle, while only the Met, the RA and Widewalls include it; that seems like a significant majority for the former. There's also a book titled Indecent Exposures: Eadweard Muybridge's "Animal Locomotion" Nudes and, in the bibliography, Muybridge's Complete Human and Animal Locomotion, Vol. I: All 781 Plates from the 1887 "Animal Locomotion". I could add more instances of Animal Locomotion sans subtitle which aren't cited in the article, from the Art Institute of Chicago and the National Gallery of Art, and in the biographical articles for Muybridge in the Benezit Dictionary of Artists, the Grove Dictionary of Art, the Oxford Dictionary of Art... Ham II (talk) 09:56, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Request for closure - Please do as these experienced editors know to be the correct outcome. Netherzone (talk) 01:29, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Has many days to run, although Netherzone's oppose comments seem to carry the day. At a bare minimum if the name is truncated the page should be called something like Animal Locomotion (photography series). Randy Kryn (talk) 03:37, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
 * "Carry the day"? Almost everyone supports the move besides Netherzone themselves. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 11:07, 21 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Support per WP:COMMONNAME. Ham II's analysis of sources confirms that the series is commonly referred to as "Animal Locomotion" in RS. I think that WP:DIFFCAPS provides sufficient disambiguation, but as a second choice I would support a parenthetically disambiguated title such as Animal Locomotion (photography series) over the status quo. Colin M (talk) 17:29, 25 March 2022 (UTC)