Talk:Ian Alexander (actor)/Archive 1

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Requested move 7 April 2019

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 section.

The result of the move request was: Consensus not to move, therefore, not moved. This discussion is closed with no prejudice on opening another move discussion in the future, if circumstances change. Although pageviews have been much larger than other articles on the dab page in the days following the opening of this move discussion, they have significantly dropped in daily pageviews from the 21,000 spike (16th of April) to 2,600 (as of the 25th of April) pageviews. The daily pageviews are showing a consistently falling downward trend (since the spike), so gives basis to the oppose votes based on WP:RECENTISM, in that the person's pageviews were affected due to the release of the new season of OA (and so won't have the consistency for determining WP:PRIMARYTOPIC). (closed by non-admin page mover) Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 21:38, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Ian Alexander (actor) → Ian Alexander – The article for the actor Ian Alexander seems to literally be a thousand times more popular than the other Ian Alexander pages. The actor got over 100,000 views in the past 30 days vs. less than a 100 each for the politician or the footballer. In addition, the article for the actor cites 13 sources vs. just 2 for the footballer and 4 for the politician. It's silly that searching for the name takes you to a disambiguation page and it's likely just because the actor is young and only became notable recently. I've already moved the disambiguation page from Ian Alexander to Ian Alexander (disambiguation) and I've added a disambiguation hatnote to the actor's page. (Obviously if the RM fails I'm fine with those changes being reversed.) WanderingWanda (they/them) (t/c) 00:22, 7 April 2019 (UTC)--Relisting. B dash (talk) 10:48, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Anyway, if we ignore the months when the page was deleted, and ignore the recent gigantically huge spike in interest: for every month since the page was recreated, the actor's page has gotten many times more interest than the alternatives.
I'll also note that the politician and footballer articles have been around for years and they've never, in all that time, managed to become popular or to get past the stub stage. Readers and editors just aren't terribly interested in those articles and clearly never will be. Meanwhile readers are, increasingly, interested in the article about the Ian Alexander the actor. Instead of second guessing our readers we should be serving them and helping them to find the content they're trying to find. And if the winds shift again in the future and it no longer makes sense for the actor to have the primary page, well, we can always move the pages again. Nothing is set in stone. WanderingWanda (they/them) (t/c) 03:42, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
Also: I don't think I have the technical ability to move the disambiguation page back to where it was. If someone else wants to while the discussion is ongoing that's fine by me, but it is essentially acting as the primary page because "Ian Alexander" redirects to it. WanderingWanda (they/them) (t/c) 05:06, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
Popularity of this article has been steadily dropping on a daily basis since the March 22 release of the latest season. Still no evidence of a long-term trend, no evidence of this arrangement of articles being anything but WP:NOPRIMARY. This is why we try not to indulge WP:RECENTISM. If you're confident this move is a good long-term plan, then there is no harm in seeing how this looks in a year. Obviously, all these recent curious visitors are having no problem finding this article at its current title. -- Netoholic @ 04:01, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Support Per interest. Even if the recent season release is ignored, you can see he was getting 80% views before this. And the second most viewed then was Ian Alexander disambiguation. --Quiz shows 03:32, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
    There really is no "before this" - this article was created very recently in Oct 2018. Simply WP:TOOSOON to see how things will end up. -- Netoholic @ 03:51, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per WP:RECENTISM. —Joeyconnick (talk) 07:26, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
    • Support – changing my !vote having looked at the pageviews circa the release of the first season of The OA. While this actor doesn't have a very long resume, he's been in the public eye long before the creation of this article. The page hits to his page have trended upwards since the article's creation, well before the release of the second season of The OA and, even adjusting for the spike at the second season's release, seem likely to continue in that direction. The other two pages don't show that same trajectory. —Joeyconnick (talk) 18:54, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Netoholic. This is a fairly recent article and there's no evidence that those page views will hold over the long term. Far too soon to be elevating this to a "primary topic". PC78 (talk)
  • Support, clear primary topic. WP:RECENT has nothing to do with primary topics. —Xezbeth (talk) 06:31, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Support. Good grief. The actor gets 99 percent of the pageviews. Over 6,000 views/day, versus less than 10 views/day combined for the other two. Even a dramatic dip in those numbers would leave this as the more sought-after article. Neither of the other two have any particularly compelling long-term significance either. Let's be kind to our readers and editors, shall we? Dohn joe (talk) 14:29, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
Those page views cover just the last four weeks, that's hardly indicative of a long-term trend. PC78 (talk) 18:13, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose Seems premature for an an article about a child actor that's only weeks old. Why not just leave it for 3-4 years and revisit the situation. There is WP:NORUSH. Nfitz (talk) 15:32, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
User:Nfitz: I understand the sentiment, but the "why not" is because for those 3-4 years, we will be inconveniencing thousands of our readers and editors. It would be much better to go the route suggested here - we've seen the usage of the dab page go up 100x, which is an objectively bad result for people looking for "Ian Alexander" articles. Dohn joe (talk) 16:49, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
I disagree. The default is that to use the main name as a disambiguation page. There's many many similar examples. A simple click brings up the desired page. No prejudice against revisiting in a few years. Nfitz (talk) 01:43, 9 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Pure WP:RECENTISM. This short article for a 17-year-old is in no way primary. If all that can be written about him is a few lines, this claim is laughable. And move the dabpage back to Ian Alexander. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:07, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
    • The other articles in question aren't any better! And they've had much more time to become fleshed out. (Another way to look at this is: if the actor's article was already the main page, would anybody argue in favor of making the DAB primary if it already wasn't?) WanderingWanda (they/them) (t/c) 17:06, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
      • And that's why there's no primary topic! He's a young actor in a currently popular series. That's the very definition of recentism. No long-term significance as yet. Currently notable only because of his current role. But still notable only to those who watch the show. Most of the rest of the world will never have heard of him. -- Necrothesp (talk) 21:34, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Support Disambiguation is meant to aid the readers -- in this case, what is not up for debate is that for the overwhelming number of reads it is doing the opposite. RECENTISM is a great policy meant to ensure we are thinking in the long term, but is not some kind of prohibition of newly popular articles being the primary when the numbers are so blatantly obvious as to what the most helpful solution would be. --Yaksar (let's chat) 00:29, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per above. The three Ian Alexanders are around equal in terms of significance within their fields, and the page views are misleading per WP:RECENTISM.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:24, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose for the time being, without prejudice against future reconsideration if circumstances change. We do not just automatically deem somebody primary topic for the name just because of a current spike in pageviews tied directly to the premiere of his current project's current season — we take the long view of history, not just the "who's currently in the pop culture gossip blogs" view, and it's not yet clear that one role in an ensemble-cast Netflix series is enough long-term significance to override two people who both already had Wikipedia articles long, long before the actor did. If he gets an Emmy or Oscar nomination in the future, or becomes a major movie star, then there will be stronger grounds to revisit this — but just because he's getting more views right now than two other people whose notability claims are 30 years older does not mean he's already permanently eclipsed those other people's notability yet. Especially when you've got three people in the disambiguation mix: if there were just two, I might accept him as primary topic since trying to avoid a WP:TWODABS page is important. But with three, he needs much more than just one role in a Netflix series to simultaneously outprimary both an NPOL-passing legislator and a major league athlete who were both already notable in the 1980s. Current pageview stats can help in some cases, but they are not always the trump card in every situation. Bearcat (talk) 18:10, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Netoholic, PC78, Nfitz, Necrothesp, Amakuru and Bearcat. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 23:48, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Additional discussion

Honestly wasn't expecting this move to be controversial. Regarding WP:RECENTISM: it's an essay not a guideline, and it actually has arguments in favor or "recentism" as well as arguments opposed. Under Recentism as recruitment it notes that What might seem at the time to be an excessive amount of information on recent topics actually serves the purpose of drawing in new readers—and among them, potential new Wikipedians.

But for those who prefer the long view, here's a very long view: since Pageviews Analysis began counting on May 10, 2016, "Ian Alexander (footballer)" got a total of 4,441 views, for a total of 3 a day. At that rate, it would take Ian-the-not-particularly-well-known-footballer well over 100 years to catch up with the actor's current total of 161,899 views.

It's also obvious if you examine Pageview Analysis closely that there has been sustained interest in the actor ever since, at least, The OA debuted on Netflix over two years ago. (The OA was his first on screen role.) When the show debuted on December 16, 2016, the actor's page didn't exist, but interest in the Ian Alexander disambiguation page suddenly spiked, going from getting a couple views a day to hundreds a day, and this interest was sustained. Meanwhile, interest in the footballer and politician remained very low. For the almost two year period when the actor's page was deleted, the disambiguation page averaged 1,715 people a month and the footballer and politician pages averaged about 200 a month combined. (Of course we can't know for 100% sure why people are visiting the disambig page but, looking at the evidence, it's reasonable to infer it was mostly driven by interest in the actor.) WanderingWanda (they/them) (t/c) 21:40, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

I stopped reading at the word "rando" used to describe one of our Wikipedia subjects. Please show some decorum and remember that WP:BLP applies to talk page contents. WP:PRIMARYTOPIC considerations are not a "competition" between subjects. -- Netoholic @ 23:13, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
Rephrased. WanderingWanda (they/them) (t/c) 00:30, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
I'll add: I obviously have nothing against the footballer or politician personally. The "rando" comment was meant to be lighthearted, not mean spirited, and I was happy to remove it on request. The fact is that the other Ian Alexanders just don't have much editor or reader interest and never have. If they did, I would happily argue for the DAB page being primary.
Randy Pausch said "when there's an elephant in the room, introduce it", so I might as well: Ian Alexander the actor is trans. I have a note about pronouns in my signature. And Netoholic recently went on a paranoid rant about trans articles and editors. WanderingWanda (they/them) (t/c) 17:57, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
Oops, it looks like in your paranoid rant above you linked to your own paranoid rant related to trans activists. I look forward to you fixing this personal attack on me though, as well as linking to "paranoid rants" of other Oppose voters too. I recently voted against a move of the Captain Marvel article which was another RM badly-timed during a major hype boost... are you going to mislink to any "paranoid rants" of mine related to superhero articles? Grow up. -- Netoholic @ 20:24, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
I linked to that diff because it was the easiest way to link to both your post and my response which provides some context. Hope your day's going well, WanderingWanda (they/them) (t/c) 00:21, 9 April 2019 (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.
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