Talk:Major championships

Requested move 1

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:56, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Major championships (disambiguation) → Major championships – The term is too ambiguous to be automatically a redirect to the men's golf championships. The disambiguation page should be at the base name. Powers T 17:11, 11 August 2011 (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. No further edits should be made to this section.

Challenging the Move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: No move - per discussion below. Andrewa's proposal seems sensible. fish &amp;karate 13:16, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Major championships → Major championships (disambiguation) – I'm challenging the move from redirecting to the Men's Majors article. As such, I will revert the move back to it's original state before the challenge (I understand it was moved because there was no challenge, but because there was no agreement either, if the result of this is "no consensus" then per WP policy the original state should be maintained, i.e. major championships redirects and there is a separate dab page).

According to the http://www.owgr.com/about_us/default.sps?iType=425 the name of these events is SOLELY "Major championships" as in their opinion - the official ranking body of ALL OF GOLF (including women) - there is no disambiguation required as to the events they are referring to. The main article title, which I've already clearly demonstrated is factually incorrect with "men's" in the title was kept due to no consensus, but there is little harm in keeping the redirect at the least unless there is a substantial reason to do so. First of all, the only events commonly referred to as "major championships" are the golf events - the tennis ones are listed on that page for clarity, but are never referred to as "major championships" in everyday speech. In regard to the other golf events, they have a qualify. The regular/original/actual majors have no qualifiers in that they are open to both men and women of any age, and so no qualification is needed.

The assertion that "major championships" is too vague seems incorrect given that a search for that term returns overwhelmingly golf related results and related to these ones in particular - only saw the women's wiki article as the one that came up on the first few pages not referencing the regular events.

Article traffic statistics indicate that the men's article has been visited 39000+ times in August, the women's article 4200 times, and the senior article 2000 times. If you're thinking that was just because the PGA was that month, it's a possibility but last December the men's article was 83% of the traffic when nothing was happening, so I'm guessing it's a trend, with a slight bump for when they actualy happen. Considering the men's article consists of over 85% of the golf related traffic, I think leaving it the way it is is most prudent. Relisting Andrewa (talk) 20:41, 21 September 2011 (UTC) Starwrath (talk) 01:03, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose - When talked about on tv or newspapers the term "Majors" or "Major Championships" are reserved for both Golf and Tennis. To have it link to only golf would be wrong and to have (disambiguation) tagged on is unneeded. If someone types in "Major Championships" or really "Majors" a page should come up with links to golf and tennis championships. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:36, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
 * "The majors" already redirects to a disambiguation page because that has substantially more common usage (could also refer to MLB). Can you find me a link from some sort of official tennis source that consistently uses the term "major championships" and NOT "Grand Slams" to specifically reference those events?  Also, if you do a search for "major championships" (with quotes) I saw ONE reference solely to the tennis events on the first 5 pages.  9 of the 10 first results are referring to the men's golf events, and 17.5 (one event references the head of both ANGC and the U.S. Open (tennis)) of the first 20.  Without quotes, 9 out of 10 refer to the men's golf events, and 16 of the first 20.  Without quotes, I saw only 2 references on the first 5 pages to a tennis article.  Now, granted, this isn't an exact science or anything, but these results seem to indicate that at least Google thinks the men's events are clearly the primary topic for the term "major championships."  Again - remember we're arguing about primary topic.  If you're saying that the men's golf events are not the primary topic, shouldn't these searches be returning mismashes of tennis and golf articles?  Primary topic means that this one thing is referenced far more than any other, and of others combined.  I think the searches support that "Major championships" refers to these specific golf events far more than the women's/senior versions, tennis versions, and random other sports (FIA, PBA, GO) combined - at least over the first few pages. Starwrath (talk) 01:24, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Strongest possible oppose. There is a ridiculous and unacceptable gender bias when it comes to naming sports articles on Wikipedia, and to reverse this step forward now would be unconscionable.  Powers T 16:02, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Could you be more specific? I'm not sure where the gender bias is when the redirects purpose is to help people find what they're looking for. I think I demonstrated that people expect "Major Championships" to redirect what we have incorrectly labeled as the men's article, and therefore, that's where it should redirect to - are you saying that's not the case? You alluded to a more in general form of gender bias on all of Wikipedia in regards to sports - is there something specific you're referring to? Starwrath (talk) 21:24, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The idea that the men's golf championships are open to all is a nice conceit, but we all know in practice that only men have any serious chance at competing. They are, de facto, the men's championships as they are the only ones open to men.  However, it is unfair to the women to assume that a reader searching for "major championships" is automatically looking for the men's.  Far better not to assume gender one way or the other -- especially with the tennis championships confusing the issue.  I don't know that I was alluding to anything, but you can see some background here.   Powers T 21:27, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
 * While I can see why you would say it's "unfair", I think it's only realistic. 85% of the traffic to the golf majors articles is to the men's article.  Don't you think that therefore the redirect should be to the men's article, since that is clearly where people are most likely to be going?  Also, part of my point is that you're NOT assuming gender, because the men's events - while de facto men's events I agree - technically are not.  You have simply the "Major Championships" - as referenced by the Official World Golf Ranking as 4 tournaments that do not have gender, age, nationality restrictions and so on on them - and the "Women's Major Championships" which have a gender restriction.  I actually think it's unfair to the men to not redirect.  The only reason why we're saying they're de facto men's events is because women don't have the skill to compete in them - yet if they did have the skill, there would be no "women's" events as there would be no need for them to exist as a separate category, and this entire conversation would be pretty moot and we could just call the article "Major Championships".  This whole discussion is happening because you have these original events without qualifiers, a group was not able to compete in them so they made their own (perfectly legitimate of course) but now we're trying to change the term for the original events to require extra disambiguation, and that is both ridiculous and unnecessary to me. I personally would expect that if there were two choices (in anything) where one choice was "everything" and the other choice was "everything minus something" that if you wanted "everything minus something" you would put a qualifier in the search term, and if you searched for the generic term it would return you the "everything" article.  That's only logical to me.  I would never expect "Soccer World Cup" to redirect me to a page that had the women's world cup on it as a disambiguation page (and it doesn't - it redirects you to the expected FIFA World Cup article). It's like this in virtually every sport.  You have the "National Basketball Association" and the "Women's National Basketball Association" because in the former, there is no qualifier needed as there is no rule preventing women from playing.
 * When you said "there is a ridiculous and unacceptable gender bias when it comes to naming sports articles on Wikipedia" I assumed you were referring to some sort of trend of gender bias overall. Starwrath (talk) 21:37, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Of course I am. Granted, that bias in many cases merely reflects the bias present in the world, but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous.  Powers T 22:35, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's bias to expect there to be some level of equality among the articles viewership numbers before we changed redirects to go to a disambiguation page. If there is such a heavy imbalance, what is the point of disambiguation, outside of the sake of just having disambiguation because of the remote possibility (I'm saying remote given the disparity) that they meant something else? As I pointed out, if you have an "original" and "original with qualification", why would you ever expect the "original with qualification" if you search for just the original, and there is a large disparity between usage of the "original" and "original with qualification"? Starwrath (talk) 00:12, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Because, in the interest of gender equity, I think we have a responsibility to ignore a certain level of imbalance in raw search results. Powers T 11:32, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Forgetting gender equality for a second, your argument is essentially that "there is a chance that the user did not mean X, therefore we should redirect to a disambiguation page for X and Y, regardless of the difference in amount of views for X and Y." You're essentially arguing against having disambiguation pages at all if there is even a chance (no matter how slim) that the user meant something else.  I just don't buy that at all - the redirects serve the purpose of going to the page the user most likely expects when that is the case.  You seem to agree that that IS the case here as well, but just because it's between men and women as opposed to say World Series versus Little League World Series you seem to be arguing we should be giving special consideration, and I completely disagree with that.  I think we're at an impasse and need further input, otherwise the original redirect should stay the way it has been. Starwrath (talk) 21:34, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
 * No, you've completely and totally mischaracterized my argument. If you'll note, I said "ignore a certain level of imbalance" (emphasis added), not "ignore any difference".  I feel that giving special consideration to topics that are differentiated only by gender is perfectly appropriate, so long as the two topics are reasonably close in popularity.  We need not be slaves to our own rules, as we are thinking human beings who can make appropriate decisions when the rules don't seem to mesh with making an improvement to the encyclopedia.  Powers T 02:33, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok, and you consider the women's major article generating about 13% of the pageviews compared to the men's article as "reasonably close in popularity"? Do you need me to lookup the massive differences in TV ratings between the two? Starwrath (talk) 16:16, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes. And no.  In addition to the women's tournaments, don't forget, there are also the senior men's tournaments and the tennis Grand Slams, any of which a reader might look for under this title.  Powers T 02:19, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * The tennis article is only listed there for clarity, because they are technically called "majors" as well - although virtually no one calls them that. In fact, when I originally created this page (to do this disambiguation you are talking about, just from a hatnote from the men's article) I added it in when I looked at the Grand Slams article.  It's a technicality, so I put it in for completeness.  Percentages for all 3 golf articles related to each other would be 84% men's, 11% women's, 5% senior.  I really don't see how this is even a discussion.  The men's article clearly qualifies as the primary topic. Starwrath (talk) 00:51, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Where did you get that notion, because it is completely false. The tennis championships are called the Majors as often as not. I heard it all week long during the US Open. The press still uses it as a preference over "grand slam tournament" and Serena Williams uses to. Only ignorance keep many using the term "grand slams." Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:21, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but I remain opposed just on general principle of gender fairness. Powers T 13:27, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll agree with you that maybe it's a little "unfair." But Primary Topic isn't about "fairness," it's about what the user is likely looking for from a given search term, and you and I both seem to agree that it is highly likely they're looking for the men's article. Starwrath (talk) 01:29, 15 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment according to the FIA, the major championships are ; which is not tennis or golf. 76.65.129.5 (talk) 05:08, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
 * They're not using the term specifically to refer to specific events. Most sports on earth could have some sort of events that one could generically call "major championships" just using the English definition, which is what they're doing, but that is not a common usage.  Also, when that is done it's with a qualifier as they do in the article, never using "major championships" that I saw, always "major FIA championshps" or similar. Every time I've ever heard the term "major championships" with no qualification such as senior or women's, it's always referring to the 4 events defined by the OWGR. Starwrath (talk) 01:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Well let's look at the ATP official website. Jimmy Connors career highlights. I see the terms major championships and Majors. Fyunck(click) (talk) 02:58, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Like I said, the tennis tournaments are technically called "majors" but they are rarely referred to as such. I'm not disputing that technically one could call them "major championships" - I'm arguing that the term, in relation to tennis, is very rarely used and that the primary topic for the term is the golf events referenced specifically by the OWGR as "the Major Championships."  According to the tournament profiles of the WTA  and ATP  they are referenced as Grand Slams and not as "majors" or "major championships".  Their official categories are listed as "Grand Slams." When the dominant use is "Slams" or "Grand Slams" for those events, and the official governing bodies of the sports categorize them as such and NOT as "Majors" or "Major championships" on the event profile pages, I don't think people would expect the term "major championships" (without some sort of tennis qualifier) would direct them to a tennis-related page when there already is extremely heavy usage of the term in the sports world referring to the golf events, but that's just my take on it. And again, I put the tennis articles on this page when I made it for this very reason - we want users to find what they're looking for.  But I strongly feel that the misleadingly titled "men's majors" article is the primary topic (and have a reference that backs up official use of the term) with a hatnote to the women's/senior/tennis disambiguation article just in case they were actually looking for something else. Starwrath (talk) 01:05, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I can go with your saying the atp and wta use the term grand slam, because they do. They also use the term Major and major championships as I posted before. I never said the term Major was more prevalent than the incorrect Grand Slam usage...it isn't. But to say the term Majors or major Championship is rarely used in tennis is either to be either woefully misinformed or pinocchio. When I look it up online I usually type in tennis majors as I do golf majors, and sure sometimes I type in grand slams as well. Serena Williams talks of winning majors all the time in interviews so not everyone uses the incorrect term. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:03, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't really follow tennis so I rarely ever hear the term used, but maybe it's used more often then I think it is. But either way, in my response to your post above, I noted that the term "major championships" returns 16 or 17 results the refer to the men's golf events on the first 2 pages to ONE tennis result.  So while tennis may use it more often than I think it does, this specific term we're arguing over, using search results the golf majors are clearly the primary topic. Starwrath (talk) 00:11, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Again, I don't doubt that Golf uses the term more, but Tennis uses it a lot. I typed in "major championship" in google "news" and the first two hits were for tennis. And the first hit asked if I want to see the 3,886 other tennis hits in the news. My point is this is a dual title, Golf and Tennis, and while people are more likely to want golf they are still quite likely to want tennis and it should remain a disambiguated page with links to both sports. Fyunck(click) (talk) 04:59, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I typed it in today and the first hit was for golf. Also, the other news results was in TENNIS NOT in major championships and so is irrelevant. Starwrath (talk) 18:40, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
 * And I typed in "major championship" an hour and a half after you and tennis is number 1. Tag your it. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:05, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Alternative proposal
I just added a rather messy line to The Majors, another DAB.

Let's be clear what our objective is here. DABs and redirects are there to guide readers to the information they want. My new line is a bit messy because it's to a redir, but I judged that less messy than saying  Major championships (this is another disambiguation page) or similar. But there must be a better way.

It seems to me that we need a single DAB for The Majors, Major championships, etc, including: with several redirects to it, simply because this will be the best solution in terms of navigation.
 * all sports that have Majors
 * Major tournaments
 * Major leagues
 * The Majors (band)

Relisting to allow comments on this proposal. Andrewa (talk) 20:41, 21 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Another seven days and no further comments . I'm tempted to take that as grudging approval and put the above proposal in to practice... any comments on that? Andrewa (talk) 02:01, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I guess I was a little burnt out on the topic. I don't have a major problem with your proposal.  Powers T 18:17, 30 September 2011 (UTC)


 * OK, as no admin powers are required to implement this I'm going to be bold and do it. The DAB at major (disambiguation) already contains all the relevant entries as far as I can see, so its just a matter of redirecting all the other possibilities there. Andrewa (talk) 20:47, 1 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Done. I'll leave someone else to close the RM in the interests of justice being seen to be done, as it shouldn't be a non-admin closure and I'm choosing not to act as an admin here. Hope that's not being too pedantic. Andrewa (talk) 21:02, 1 October 2011 (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. No further edits should be made to this section.