Talk:Fallout (disambiguation)

Fall Out
Fall out small case goes to Fallout. But Fall Out capital O is not likely to be intended for Fallout. In ictu oculi (talk) 21:45, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 1 June 2024

 * 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: no consensus. No consensus; editors supporting the move argue that this is the primary topic by use, editors opposing the move argue that this is the primary topic by long-term significance.

With neither side significantly disputing the factual basis for the others position, this would come down to which side has the most support among editors, and that is evenly split.

Given that fourteen editors have already provided input I don't expect that to change with an additional relist, so I am closing this as no consensus. (closed by non-admin page mover) BilledMammal (talk) 06:08, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Fallout (disambiguation) → Fallout – the redirect is to be deleted to make way for the move.

– I am here after finding this disambiguation page on top of WikiProject Disambiguation/Popular pages for April '24 with ~2.8 million views, which is a bit too much to ignore.

Page history shows this was moved based on Special:WhatLinksHere/Fallout (which is an indication of editor behavior, not necessarily reader behavior, and WP:RF), and anonymous users tried to move it twice now (but a long time ago).

https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Nuclear_fallout for April shows the by far the most popular outgoing clickstreams from there are to the hatnotes, outpacing the next identifiable clickstream by orders of magnitude.

Honestly the main reason I'm even raising a discussion here instead of just moving this is that nobody seemed to complain since 2010. This seems to imply that either navigation was fine, or that the threshold for modifying it was too high.

Page view statistics for the popular topics indicate the latest spike is because of the recent reader interest in the TV series. This latest thing also being based on the franchise in turn contributes to the notion that the long-term significance of the franchise isn't ignorable compared to that of nuclear fallout. --Joy (talk) 20:26, 1 June 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. BilledMammal (talk) 11:55, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Support per nom (and I've added the TV show to the hatnote) - the "popular pages" is almost certainly bot-driven, but for many years the video game franchise has been comparable in traffic, and with a contemporaneous TV series of this name it is clear there is no primary topic. Walsh90210 (talk) 22:00, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. There's no 100%-clear primary topic for the term itself; the safest bet is to move the disambiguation page to the basename. Paintspot Infez (talk) 01:20, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose "Nuclear fallout" is still the primary topic by longterm significance, even the Fallout series is so named because it's referring to nuclear fallout. Simply, there is no reason to conduct a move. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 16:23, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Zxcvbnm the reason is that we have tangible proof that way too many readers are not being navigated well. Likewise, we don't have much of a rationale for why nuclear fallout is the primary topic by long-term significance for the term "fallout" alone. Providing all these readers with a clearer list would allow us to at least measure where the reader interest really lies. --Joy (talk) 18:30, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The "nuclear fallout" page has the franchise as the first link in the hatnote, as it should. People are still only one link away from their destination regardless of whether they go to the disambiguation or the page on nuclear fallout. So I am not sure what is insufficient about this setup. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 01:06, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * It's not great because we link the franchise, now the TV series, and don't even link the video game which is the topic with persistently high reader interest historically. It's a lot of clutter at the top of the article instead of a normal separate list. --Joy (talk) 07:22, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Support clearly not primary by usage for just "Fallout".  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 16:48, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Clear primary topic by long-term significance. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:14, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Necrothesp now that volcano-related and society-related meanings of substantial long-term significance are documented in the list (d'oh), could you please reassess the comparative long-term significance? --Joy (talk) 07:46, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Absolutely not. Still the very clear primary topic. The other meanings do not come close to the long-term significance of the nuclear meaning. The volcano-related meaning is very specialist and not at all well-known in the wider world. The other meaning is no more than a dicdef which almost certainly comes from the nuclear meaning in any case. -- Necrothesp (talk) 07:53, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * How is vulcanology more specialist compared to nuclear chemistry and radiobiology? How is e.g. the well-known story of Pompeii covered in ash fallout not coming close to the significance of relatively recent nuclear fallout? I'm sorry, this makes very little sense to me. --Joy (talk) 08:49, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * You misunderstand me. The nuclear meaning is well-known and well-established in popular culture and common parlance, not just in specialist terminology. The vulcanology meaning is not. Who would use "fallout" to refer to the ash covering Pompeii except a specialist in the subject? Almost nobody. Who would use "fallout" to refer to the after-effects of a nuclear war? Everyone. It's the clear primary meaning of the term. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:51, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Why is this term so inconceivable to be used by the average reader in contexts other than nuclear? In fact, I think if we're talking common parlance, the most common meaning is the figurative one - fallout from some negative event, a scandal, political fallout, economic fallout, etc. These are not strict references to nuclear or volcano fallout, but general explosion fallout, and the term is common not just because of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl, but also because of Pompeii, Krakatoa, that Icelandic volcano that brought down all the planes in Europe fifteen years ago, etc. --Joy (talk) 10:03, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Zxcvbnm who said basically stated all thoughts I had on this. Steel1943  (talk) 23:45, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Steel1943 maybe you could also help clarify these thoughts :) For example, why should the fact that the entertainment topics were named after nuclear fallout matter to the extent of keeping a primary redirect? WP:DPT says Being the original source of the name is also not determinative. Readers looking up the term "fallout" in the encyclopedia are not necessarily looking for an etymological explanation, they're looking for a compendium of knowledge about this term. This includes the dictionary definitions as well as all these various works about it. Indeed, even in the realm of dictionary definitions, nuclear is only one of those - there's other notable fallouts like volcano, figurative, etc. The sum of the knowledge about the term "fallout" seems to be significantly larger than the article we currently short-circuit readers to.
 * And we do that short-circuiting despite the apparent wishes of most of the readers. To continue doing that, we need a stronger rationale than this. --Joy (talk) 07:36, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * In a nutshell, the majority of the alternative meanings for "fallout" exclusive from Nuclear fallout seem to be loosely based on the concept of Nuclear fallout. (I see your stance goes against this, but I would believe that whoever is looking up this term would not be surprised to arrive at the current article.) Steel1943  (talk) 21:32, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I think there's little surprise either way, because people looking up an entertainment topic are aware that it's an encyclopedia so it's not illogical to see a more scholarly meaning. At the same time, it's also not illogical to see a conventional list for the word they recognize as ambiguous. --Joy (talk) 13:14, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Steel1943 I just re-read what you said, and realized our current fallout disambiguation page doesn't even document volcano-related meanings. It's actually amazing that we have the whole laundry list of entertainment topics, bird fallout and deposition (aerosol physics) linked, but not the more conventional meanings :) I apologize, I should have fixed this before bringing the RM up for discussion, because that prejudices it. --Joy (talk) 13:32, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Support Reader convenience comes before editor pedantry, and we have clear data to back this up thanks to Joy. Toadspike   [Talk]  03:58, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Toadspike now now, making people read lists, surely that's a higher level of pedantry :) --Joy (talk) 04:14, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Long-term significance is heavily weighted in favor of Nuclear fallout in this case, just as in the well-known case of Apple. Links to both the video game franchise and the series are already prominently displayed at the top of Nuclear fallout, so moving the disambiguation page will not much aid readers looking for one of those. With the web series having premiered this April, there is little chance of determining its long-term significance at this time. The number of visits for Fallout (disambiguation), per WikiProject Disambiguation/Popular pages, fell almost 90% in May. Dekimasu よ! 14:03, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Dekimasu actually, yes, it is more likely to aid readers than not because we are currently seeing a picture of reader traffic in our stats which isn't actually reliable or comprehensive. In numerous other examples, we have observed significant changes in pattern of reader traffic based on how our navigation is organized, cf. Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 56. Likewise, there's a slew of examples of such pattern changes at WT:D. The point is that we can't really make certain claims about what the readers are experiencing before making changes one way or another, apparently because a lot of our incoming traffic is modified by search engines which take our navigation hints in a rather opaque manner. --Joy (talk) 20:56, 10 June 2024 (UTC)


 * oppose clearly the primary topic based on long-term significance—blindlynx


 * At the obvious risk of looking like I'm badgering people, I would like to remind everyone that we need to explain our reasoning for consensus to be achieved. Why would nuclear fallout be the topic of most long-term significance, when for example fallout from volcano eruptions seems to have at least comparable long-term significance, having happened substantially more often in history and being a topic of a likewise large amount of reliable source coverage? We have a lot of knowledge in the encyclopedia about ash and tephra fallout, per search results for the first phrase and likewise for the second phrase, but we're obscuring that fact by choosing to focus readers on only a single homonymous topic. I can understand the unwillingness to weigh significance of entertainment topics, but there's also much more to consider here beyond that. --Joy (talk) 12:45, 11 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Support per nom, no PRIMARY.--Ortizesp (talk) 13:29, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Support per nom as there is no primary topic. Lightoil (talk) 19:20, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose Regardless of the traffic and views, long term significance still points towards the technical topic. To adjust this now would be recentism. When the Fallout franchise fad inevitably dies back down in a few years there's a good chance the traffic will follow. Bensci54 (talk) 16:14, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Bensci54 in all the available statistics since 2015, the fad has been more prominent than its eponym. How many decades until a fad is no longer a fad? --Joy (talk) 14:12, 18 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Oppose Nuclear fallout is a clear primary topic for the term "Fallout", and many of the pages linked to on the disambiguation are topics named after nuclear fallout, such as the game franchise or the 1989 book. --MtPenguinMonster (talk) 04:31, 19 June 2024 (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.

some page view statistics
I'm posting this in a separate section because it would lengthen the RM section too much.

Looks like the recent interest in the TV series has been the driver of a lot of extra disambiguation traffic.

We can exclude those last few months from consideration as they're not representative. Likewise, the 2015 statistics show a large spike in traffic, so I'd avoid that as well.

This is the graph of monthly views of the redirect and the disambiguation page: https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&start=2016-02&end=2024-02&pages=Fallout|Fallout_(disambiguation)

So we can compare the numbers a bit:


 * November 2020:
 * 2232 incoming views of "fallout", which looked like this, with Fallout (series) and Fallout (disambiguation) in the hatnote, and Fallout (video game) and (TV series) linked in See also
 * 800 recognized clickstreams towards video game series, 205 towards disambiguation page, 48 to video game and 12 to TV series, but also 14 to Fallout 4, 11 to Mission: Impossible - Fallout and 10 to Fall Out Boy without links, as well as 19 to Hyphen-minus and 16 to Main Page which could be anything so I won't count them as ambiguous
 * In total likely 1100 out of 2232 probably in the wrong place, ~49%


 * May 2022:
 * 2517 incoming views of "fallout", which looked like this, same layout
 * 766 recognized clickstreams to video game series, 211 to disambiguation, 74 video game, also 10 to Fallout 3, as well as 24 to Main Page for comparison
 * In total likely 1061 out of 2517 probably in the wrong place, ~42%


 * July 2023:
 * 7959 incoming views of "fallout" - noticable spike, which looked like this, same layout
 * 836 clickstreams to video game series, 227 to disambiguation, 30 to 2006 TV series, also 29 to M:I, 21 to video game, 18 to Fall Out Boy, 12 to Fallout 4, as well as 41 to American Civil War, 39 to Main Page, 22 to Nuclear technology, 19 to Puberty, 12 to Hiroshima, 10 to Trinity test, 10 to Oppenheimer film
 * In total likely 1173 out of 7959 probably in the wrong place, ~15%


 * October 2023:
 * 2022 incoming views of "fallout" - noticable dip, which looked like this, same layout
 * 633 clickstreams to video game series, 154 to disambiguation, and 24 to video game, 11 to Fall Out Boy, as well as 25 to Main Page
 * In total likely 882 out of 2022 probably in the wrong place, ~40%

While it's possible that some of the traffic to items linked from the article is not actually in the wrong place, just readers who read this article and then casually moved on to linked items, that doesn't seem terribly likely to be a large contingent of readers, so I didn't try to account for it. It's also possible that some source-destination pairs are missing from the clickstream so any of these numbers could be a bit off.

There's remarkably little corresponding increase in ambiguous traffic in the month when the incoming traffic spiked. |Fallout_(disambiguation)|Nuclear_fallout If we add the nuclear fallout organic article traffic to the graph, we can see the readership spiked that month in general. This could indicate the obvious, that those readers were in fact largely looking for nuclear fallout. It could also mean that there was some undetected bot traffic, or in turn that some of those readers just gave up without leaving further trace in our stats, we can't tell.

The July '23 data point seems to be an abberation just like the 2015 and 2024 data points that I previously ignored. Generally the trend seems to be that by default we've navigated almost half the readers incorrectly. This does not take into account possible obscured patterns - for example with Talk:Charlotte we measured about a quarter of traffic navigated incorrectly with the primary topic redirect, and later it turned out that in reality it's more like three quarters.

All in all this still sounds like general ambiguity to me. For all we know, we might not have been seeing the readers searching for volcanic fallout in the stats :) --Joy (talk) 15:02, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

I also went through Special:WhatLinksHere/Fallout in the article namespace. Started with 248, afterwards there's 207. Of the changed 48, most were references to nuclear or radioactive fallout that were just sloppily linked, though there was about a dozen wrong links that needed fixing. The status of the rest is similar, disambiguating them would not typically detract from the text, it's usually obvious from context that nuclear or volcano or figurative, ... is what is meant. --Joy (talk) 20:07, 12 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I was looking at some of this further, and found these things interesting:
 * the article on smoke mentions radioactive fallout, but has a '06 reference titled "Meteoric smoke fallout revealed by superparamagnetism in Greenland ice" from a Geophysical Research Letters article
 * the article Operation Opera likewise mentions radioactive fallout, but also mentions political fallout and then 'fallout from the strike' in figurative terms. There's also a Time magazine reference from '81 titled "Attack - and Fallout: Israel and Iraq".
 * the article Nuclear disarmament has a reference to a '03 article by the San Francisco Chronicle titled "Fallout from Bush's Tactical Nukes on the American West" which seems to be a figurative use
 * fall out was redirected to nuclear fallout, but the single article linking to it was funnel chart which did not use it like that (I changed that redirect now)
 * A non-trivial amount of the articles mentioning nuclear fallout actually might want to link to something like nuclear weapons in popular culture (perhaps a topical redirect like nuclear fallout in popular culture) because they're about fictional portrayals of it, not the actual topic
 * --Joy (talk) 23:18, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

For the purpose of trying to find if this is recent, the earliest available clickstream archive is for November 2017. That year, the page view statistics still showed the nuclear fallout readership to be comparable to that of the entertainment topic article, |Nuclear_fallout|Fallout_(video_game)|Fallout_(video_game_series)|Fallout_(franchise) shows the readership for those years. clickstream-enwiki-2017-11.tsv shows:
 * 3448 views of the fallout redirect
 * 28k views of nuclear fallout, 21k views of video game
 * Nuclear_fallout     Fallout_(series)        link    883
 * Nuclear_fallout     Fallout_(video_game)    link    491
 * Nuclear_fallout     Fallout_(disambiguation)        link    104
 * Nuclear_fallout     Fallout_4       other   37
 * Nuclear_fallout     Fallout_(RTÉ_drama)     link    23
 * Nuclear_fallout     Fallout_3       other   17
 * total: 5365 to 81 identified destinations

In total that's likely 1555 out of 3448 probably in the wrong place, ~45%, which is fairly consistent with findings from 3 to 7 years later. --Joy (talk) 14:27, 18 June 2024 (UTC)