Talk:Foreign Affairs

On whether this article should be at Foreign Affairs or Foreign Affairs (journal)
See Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions; it seems that having two articles differing only by case is generally considered a bad idea, and there's an article Foreign affairs we may not want to cause confusion with. -&#8472;yrop (talk) 18:27, May 16, 2005 (UTC)
 * When there is a link from one to the other it shouldn't be a problem. Also with since Foreign Affairs was simply a redirect to Foreign Affairs (journal) there was actually no disambiguation taking place, just a redirection. Leaving Foreign Affairs as a redirect has exactly the same effect as actually having the article at that name, but adds a needless redirection notice to anyone reading it. Moreover I personally think that foreign affairs should just be a redirect to its more common synonym international relations. - SimonP 18:56, May 16, 2005 (UTC)
 * Actually, i agree with you that foreign affairs should be merged into international relations. I think that solves the problem. -&#8472;yrop (talk) 20:22, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

Foremost?
Um, can we see a source for that statement? MC MasterChef 12:51, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Added some stuff
Yeah, I made some recent additions. I'll try and add some more later....tired right now...--Jersey Devil 08:26, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Deleted info
An IP keeps on deleting info regarding Pillar's article in the "Post-Cold War" section of this page. I think, considering that Pillar has been interviewed on, the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, NPR's Fresh Air, etc... regarding this particular article that it is notable. And will revert the info back into the article. If any other community members have a problem with this please comment on this talk page.--Jersey Devil 02:43, 22 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Foreign Affairs articles are often prominently featured in many places; to go from Huntington to Pillar without talking about other articles that have achieved even greater note is misleading.


 * The content about China banning Foreign Affairs is also quite notable. I don't see why this content should be left out of this article.--Jersey Devil 02:47, 22 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Um, that's not Foreign Affairs, the American journal; that's a Chinese journal of foreign affairs. Read the article again.

Oh, yes you are correct. I only read the headline and that shouldn't be in this page. But with regard to Pillar's article, I do think that it is notable enough to be mentioned in this article and don't see an argument for not including it in the article. If there are other prominent pieces written in FA, well then add the information about that in the article. I'll wait for more comment from the community on this to avoid a revert war. P.S. Add this, ~ to the end of your posts on talk pages to sign your comments.--Jersey Devil 03:56, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Perspectives, readership and authorship
I think what is dearly needed on this page is some information about the flavour of articles that you get on Foreign Affairs. I think the best way to give this to include a discussion of the primary readership and authorship with a goal to accounting for its perspectives and biases.

205.250.248.100 08:54, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Requested move 3 September 2015

 * 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. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move. Cúchullain t/ c 15:50, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Foreign Affairs → Foreign Affairs (magazine) – see Foreign affairs (disambiguation). (Foreign Affairs (journal) moved to Foreign Affairs) In ictu oculi (talk) 17:05, 3 September 2015 (UTC) Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 23:31, 10 September 2015 (UTC) Relisted.--Aervanath (talk) 17:47, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The magazine is the clear WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for "Foreign Affairs" with a capital "A" for both usage and historical significance. Last month's pageviews:
 * Foreign Affairs (this article): 5218
 * Foreign Affairs (album): 2081
 * Foreign Affairs (Family Guy): 1075
 * Foreign Affairs (1966 TV series): 77
 * Foreign Affairs (1964 TV series): 78
 * Foreign Affairs (novel): 525
 * That's 58% for the journal. Even with a discount for occupying the base title, that's more than all the other "Foreign Affairs" combined. It's also the most historically significant, with the Tom Waits album second. Note that there are over 700 links to the magazine that would be disrupted by this move. Editors and readers both expect to find the magazine here. See also WP:SMALLDETAILS. Dohn joe (talk) 18:25, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
 * These view stats are not real. The article traffic stats do not distinguish between lower and upper case letters, and so the numbers for "Foreign Affairs" include all searches for "foreign affairs". DrKiernan (talk) 19:51, 22 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Strong Support per nom. There are many Departments of Foreign Affairs, and Ministers of Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Affairs Ministries, all called "Foreign Affairs" -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 06:21, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose, suggest procedural close. No rationale provided.  IgnorantArmies  (talk)  07:58, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The rationale should be obvious, this isn't by any means the absolute majority topic of "Foreign Affairs". Even User Dohn Joe who resolutely opposes any form of disambiguation shows only 58% of hits are for this. Statistically that weighs off against all looking for the other 42% are likely to end up going via the magazine since it's sitting where the dab should be. Combine that with the hassle of downloading a wrong page on your mobile for a magazine you don't want, how much easier would it be to give readers the choice. And easier for those looking for the magazine too since (magazine) will come up in the Android or iPhone autocomplete. In ictu oculi (talk) 08:15, 4 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Support per stats provided by User:Dohn joe which clearly show the journal is not WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Zarcadia (talk) 12:43, 11 September 2015 (UTC)‎
 * WP:PRIMARYTOPIC states "A topic is primary for a term, with respect to usage, if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term." (emphasis added). The stats provided by Dohn joe suggest that the journal meets both of those criteria, so it'd be good if you could explain why the opposite is the case.  IgnorantArmies  (talk)  14:00, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * 5218 vs. 2081 (just over double) is not much more likely than any other topic, especially taking into consideration the views which were mis-directed to the base name title. Zarcadia (talk) 16:18, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Between this title and the album, 71% went to this title. Even with a "primarytopic discount" that is much more likely that people wanted this topic over the album, no? Dohn joe (talk) 17:32, 12 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Support. Clearly not the primary topic. The article view stats give a false impression because they include all the people who were misdirected here after searching for foreign affairs without actually wanting to be at this article. View stats only work for that kind of argument when the articles are already clearly disambiguated. DrKiernan (talk) 18:48, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * User:DrKiernan: what about the 700+ links to the magazine that currently exist and would be disturbed by this move? Compared to almost no links to the other "Foreign Affairs". Isn't that a reasonable argument that this is what editors expect to link to, and readers to read? Dohn joe (talk) 17:32, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Usually, but in this case most of those links are from references not article content. DrKiernan (talk) 17:39, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It is worth noting that Foreign policy which may also be considered the primary topic here, had over 12k views during the same period. So the question is, is the capitalization sufficient do be the only element to disambiguate between the magazine and the political position/role? Tiggerjay (talk) 18:26, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Dohn joe, but backwards.  Of all of the several "Foreign Affairs", this one has considerable long term significance, being published since 1922, etc.  The large number of incoming links speak directly to significance (but be careful if it is linked in some template).  It also dominates in pageviews.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:54, 22 September 2015 (UTC).  All are commercial products, but of the top viewed set, only this one is serious non-fiction.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:00, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * As I stated on 11 September, and more clearly just now, the view stats are false. They include searches for "foreign affairs" and "Foreign affairs". DrKiernan (talk) 19:54, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * There are many governments out in the world with Foreign Affairs (ministers, ministries, secretaries, bureaus, departments, etc), which have greater long term significance -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 05:15, 24 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Support - if ever there was a clear example why WP:DIFFCAPS is flawed, this is it. The primary meaning for the words "Foreign Affairs", in any capitalisation whatsoever, is very clearly Foreign policy. Most readers typing "Foreign Affairs" in the search box will not be looking for this magazine. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 11:06, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Dohn joe and SmokeyJoe (a pair of above-average Joes, hah). Consider in particular how many incoming links are presumably raw wikilinks in citations, because people are expecting the capitalized version to refer to the magazine. {&#123; Nihiltres  &#124;talk &#124;edits}&#125; 19:05, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Because Wikipedia has done it this way, it should not be fixed? They are in citations, that is not the text of the articles. Piping the links will not change there being a blue link there.-- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 05:15, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose, per above and lasting importance. The magazine is well-known, so there are probably not as many people coming to it by mistake as thought. Primary topic. Randy Kryn 14:28, 28 September 2015 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Post-closure discussion
Just for posterity.... I created a special redirect from the hatnote in the article to the disambiguation page, in an effort to see how many people arriving at the journal article went on to the dab page, presumably because they were looking for an alternative "Foreign affairs" article. The results? Over nine days, the special redirect was viewed 51 times, or an average of 6.5 times per day. Dohn joe (talk) 22:25, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Actually, I've just seen that by examining the page view stats for the 3rd September, when this page was at "Foreign Affairs (magazine)" for 15/24ths of the day, it is possible to show that it is not the primary topic in terms of page views.
 * On 3rd September, there were:
 * 233 views of "Foreign Affairs" and "Foreign affairs" (note these are combined as one figure)
 * 44 views of "Foreign Affairs (magazine)"
 * 73 views of "Foreign Affairs (album)"
 * We can therefore deduce that most of the 233 views were of "Foreign affairs" not "Foreign Affairs", and that there were actually more views of the album article than the magazine article. If we assume that all 44 views of the magazine article were in the first 15 hours of the day and views are evenly distributed, then in the full 24 hours there would have been 44*24/15 views (70 views). DrKiernan (talk) 13:59, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
 * That's not quite true. This page may have moved, but the hundreds of links to Foreign Affairs were still active for that timeframe. So clicks on those links would be counted in the Foreign A/affairs stats. What we know for sure is that only 6.5 people per day clicked from the journal article to the dab page while the special redirect was up and running. Dohn joe (talk) 14:21, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Anyone who clicked on "Foreign Affairs" that day was redirected to this article at "Foreign Affairs (magazine)", so at worst they are counted twice: once at "Foreign Affairs" and once at "Foreign Affairs (magazine)". So, we know that if anyone did click on "Foreign Affairs" to be redirected here, then there were only 44 of them at most. DrKiernan (talk) 14:25, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
 * And your explanation that on September 30, 241 people visited Foreign Affairs, and only 6 people clicked on the hatnote to the dab page? That's less than 3% clicking away. Did everyone else give up? Or had they perhaps found the page they were looking for? Dohn joe (talk) 14:31, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
 * On 3rd September there were no more than 44 page views of this article between 00:00 and 14:51. That is shown by the view stats. The view stats do not show where the viewers went after that or where they went after being here on the 30th. DrKiernan (talk) 14:37, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
 * You're incorrect about how the stats are counted:
 * "Q: What is the logic for redirects and when a page gets moved do the stats move?
 * A: It counts the title the page was accessed under, so redirects and moves will unfortunately split the statistics across two different statistics pages."
 * So the redirects are counted separately from the article page. Your argument is still unsupported, and the only hard numbers we have show that fewer than 3% of people actively clicked to the dab page. Dohn joe (talk) 16:55, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 2 October 2015

 * 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. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Not moved - Wait 6 months and try again if evidence warrants. Don't beat this up Mike Cline (talk) 13:30, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Foreign Affairs → Foreign Affairs (journal) – As discovered in the previous discussion, it is not possible to collect page view stats for this article alone because the views of this one and Foreign affairs are combined in the stats (the bot does not distinguish between capital and lower case letters). Therefore, to prove that this article is the primary topic, I propose that it be moved back to its original title of "Foreign Affairs (journal)" for a trial period of no more than a few days (let's say 3) with "Foreign Affairs" turned into a temporary three-page disambiguation of "Foreign Affairs (journal)", "Foreign affairs" and "Foreign affairs (disambiguation)". It will then be possible to collect data on how many users are searching for the journal, as opposed to foreign affairs and other uses. DrKiernan (talk) 08:06, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment for usage statistics, all incoming links from the citation templates that cites this periodical, should use one of the redirects to this article, instead of directly calling this article, so we can see if anyone actually clicks on those links. Though I have my doubts we are actually helping those people, since they are not being redirected to the articles in the periodical which they would wish to read, but instead are bringing them to the Wikipedia article on the periodical, and not the material being cited itself. If we change all citation template uses of "Foreign Relations" to use Foreign Relations (Council on Foreign Relations) we can have hard statistics. -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 05:01, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Support per last time -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 05:03, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Support permanent move straight away. Johnbod (talk) 22:13, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:DIFFCAPS as explained by others above.  Calidum   01:03, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * DiffCaps doesn't work, since all those things called "Foreign Affairs" (departments, ministries, ministers, secretaries) are capitalized. -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 03:57, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Support should have been moved last time. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:21, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Same reasons as last time.  This RM is a trivial variation on the last, and should not have been allowed so soon.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:06, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose. If the nominee is unhappy with the result of the last RM, they can take it to WP:MR. Starting a new RM days after a previous one is bad practice.  IgnorantArmies  (talk)  11:04, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The above two comments are a form of argumentum ad hominem that challenge the process or the nominator without actually addressing the argument presented in the nominating statement, and consequently they should be ignored. DrKiernan (talk) 12:04, 10 October 2015 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 12 October 2015

 * 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. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Speedy close, recent RM, taken to WP:MR already. Additional information noted but consensus will not change this quickly. Endorse six months before reassessing. Removing move protection as unnecessary -- Samir 18:13, 12 October 2015 (UTC) George Ho (talk) 15:59, 13 October 2015 (UTC) (Rationale not done by me.)

Foreign Affairs → Foreign Affairs (journal) – Not the primary topic. By examining the page view stats for the 3rd September, when this page was at "Foreign Affairs (magazine)" for 15/24ths of the day, it is possible to show that it is not the primary topic in terms of page views.

On 3rd September, there were:
 * 233 views of "Foreign Affairs" and "Foreign affairs" (note these are combined as one figure)
 * 44 views of "Foreign Affairs (magazine)"
 * 73 views of "Foreign Affairs (album)"

We can therefore deduce that most of the 233 views were of "Foreign affairs" not "Foreign Affairs", and that there were actually more views of the album article than the magazine article. If we assume that all 44 views of the magazine article were in the first 15 hours of the day and views are evenly distributed, then in the full 24 hours there would have been 44*24/15 views (70 views). DrKiernan (talk) 14:22, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Speedy close. The previous RM is still at move review. Plus, the nom wouldn't have seen this yet, because I posted it as they were drafting this RM, but these stats are incomplete and misleading. See my response between the two previous RMs, but basically, there were hundreds of links to Foreign Affairs even when this article was disambiguated for part of September 3. Dohn joe (talk) 14:27, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Speedy close and WP:TROUT the nominator for disruptive actions. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 17:41, 12 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment: This RM was closed earlier today and immediately reverted by DrKiernan.  The article is now move protected for 6 months and DrKiernan's action in reverting an admin decision without discussion is now at ANI. Further participation in this RM should be MOOT. --Mike Cline (talk) 18:12, 12 October 2015 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Journal or magazine?
Is this better described as a journal or a magazine? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 01:18, 7 August 2020 (UTC)