Talk:New York (state)/July 2016 move consequences

A long discussion about moving the New York article was conducted in July 2016 and is currently under review by a three-person closing panel. This page is meant to assess the consequences of the discussion, both in case the state page is moved and in case the status quo is maintained. Lots of work has to be planned and executed in both cases.

Background
Currently, New York is the title of the Wikipedia article about New York State; New York City is the title of the article about the city; and there is a disambiguation page at New York (disambiguation) that lists both the state, the city, and other topics that might commonly be referred to by the name "New York".

Some users have proposed moving the article about the State to a different title, such as New York (state). By default, this would create a redirect from the title New York to the moved article, but that could be changed (either by changing the target of the redirect, or by moving a different page to that title) based upon the results of this discussion.

The purpose of the discussion was to seek consensus about whether (a) the article about the State should be moved to a different title; and (b) if it is moved, whether to change the target of the redirect or to give either the article about the City or the disambiguation page the title New York.


 * The main debate is now closed pending evaluation by the panel.
 * However you can still voice your opinion on the appropriate article title, in case there is consensus to change it from "New York".

Immediate actions
Irrespective of the debate outcome, some steps must be taken as soon as the decision is known.
 * New York naming FAQ – The existing New York FAQ must be updated, summarizing the decision and the rationale. — JFG talk 17:34, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Restore talk page archiving – After this discussion, talk page bot archiving on New York (temporarily commented out) should be restored or updated to specify new subpage target. — Andy W.  ( talk  · ctb) 19:44, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Publicize outcome – In case of a move, such a momentous decision would need publishing in several venues: New York State and City wikiprojects, village pump, geography infobox projects. Perhaps on the article pages themselves? A Signpost article? — JFG talk 17:34, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
 * All of the above except the articles. Keep the articles clean of any evidence of the renaming, since it wouldn't interest the average reader. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 02:37, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Consequences of the status quo
Even if the article titling of New York and related pages is left unchanged, there are tens of thousands of incoming links to New York that are meant for New York City and must be fixed. Please contribute proposals for an action plan below. — JFG talk 17:34, 28 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment. I don't think you can extrapolate from the manual survey that "tens of thousands" of links are wrong, especially since many links come from templates which are far more likely to link correctly.  And even if some links are wrong...  so what?  There's a hatnote on top of New York.  It's not a big deal nor is it "detrimental to readers and to the integrity of the encyclopedia".  This kind of problem happens on many articles and has been around since the start of Wikipedia without anybody really noticing or caring.  To the extent that people volunteer time by "importance" rather than their own interests, I'd think that time would be far better spent on Wikipedia's *actual* areas for improvement - better sourcing, spot-checking shady references, systemic bias issues, etc.  Links to slightly wrong pages are not a "break out an action plan" problem.  SnowFire (talk) 16:18, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
 * (I should probably add that I have my own WP:GNOME type tasks I enjoy, like fixing the styling on disambiguation pages. So if someone WANTS to go fix links, please do, it'll help!  But...  it's just good housekeeping, not a Big Deal.)  SnowFire (talk) 16:21, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Well yes, there is some perspective to be had. In fact, the single most important thing we could be doing is making sure our core articles are up to snuff. Government for example. Practically a stub :) But then that's not everybody's cup of tea, and correcting the New York links is still something worth doing. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 17:36, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Fixing wrong links to New York
A rough analysis of the situation and initial proposals for addressing the issue can be read at Talk:New York, #Backlinks and #Time to execute. Such efforts should be structured and coordinated here.

Preventing buildup of similar links in the future
said here regarding the plan to fix links: "It won't bring the ambiguity to editors' attention as they save their work (only making "New York" a dab page would achieve this) ". But I wonder, what prevents us from drawing attention to direct links through other means? An edit filter could warn editors when they save a direct link to New York and request that they create a piped link, or a bot could be configured to warn them to check their intended meaning at their talk pages like we do with dabs. Diego (talk) 12:34, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

If New York becomes a dab page
In this case, internal links to New York will be flagged automatically as requiring disambiguation. A concerted effort by editors and bots will be required to fix the large number of such links which were meant to point to the city page. After this initial effort, editors will be warned when linking to New York, so no recurring buildup of wrong links should take place. As a side bonus, maintenance bots can keep hunting for some regular patterns identified during the drive to stamp out wrong links.

Grace period
There should probably be a grace period, in which the state article is moved but not yet the dab page. That will give us a few days to sort out the incoming links before completing the change of ptopic. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 21:59, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree with the grace period. WP:R2D obviously doesn't apply to a redirect which will soon be changed into something else. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 02:42, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, and according to the process should take a few weeks. We can track progress below and move the dab page when a large enough chunk of incoming links have been corrected. — JFG talk 17:34, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Automated fixes

 * A proposal to automate the replacement of frequent patterns is open at WP:Bot requests.
 * Category renames (Cydebot task via WP:CFDW) - I've started a list at /category renames
 * Actually, we should do these at Categories for discussion/Working/Large, and inform . This is per the edit notice at CFDW. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:05, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Manual fixes

 * Modify hatnotes – Hatnotes for both New York State and New York City must be updated to reflect the new titling, disambig and redirect situation. — JFG talk 17:34, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Update edit notices – Note the existence of Template:Editnotices/Page/New York / Template:Editnotices/Page/New York City (created by and ). If it's decided that the page(s) are to be moved, these editnotices should be moved to target the new titles. — Andy W.  ( talk  · ctb) 19:44, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes if New York becomes a dab page. Not necessary if New York City becomes primary topic, in which case New York and New York State just swap places and the edit notices say the same thing (basically, use American English). — JFG talk 17:34, 28 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Update navboxes – It probably also makes sense to update links to that page from highly visible navboxes, etc for aesthetic reasons. (New York City, New York) — Andy W.  ( talk  · ctb) 19:44, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
 * US states navbox with columns - note that we need to update the name "New York" to the new article name, no other changes involved there, deal with templates which transclude it. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:10, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
 * User in New York - replace value of "region" parameter; add "simple" parameter called "New York". (Based on User in Washington). עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:30, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Igonre Country abbreviation/test 3
 * Manual review of all subpages of POTD, POTD protected, Did you know nominations
 * All templates not listed above can be auto-modified by a bot/AWB task to replace New York to New York and to [[New York (state)| - I've checked them all. [[User:Od Mishehu|עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:35, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Many of the articles at /articles to rename need to be renamed to match the state article's new name. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:27, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Mmhhh… I don't think we should embark on a mass move of article titles that happen to contain "New York". This should be done only in ambiguous cases, so very few on your list would need it, and I think any such moves should be discussed via the regular WP:RM process. — JFG talk 18:20, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Agreed with here. Arts in Upstate New York (for example) should not need a move imo. A move for Economy of New York or Crime in New York may be more legit, but still questionable and worth of discussion at RM. Most (but probably not all) of the /category renames seems okay per Category:Mountains of Washington (state), Category:Cities in Georgia (U.S. state), etc. — Andy W.  ( talk  · ctb) 23:12, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I said "many" 0f the article list need to be renamed; the economy and crime articles you mentioned should be moved; movie names shouldn't - I've removed a few, but dudnt really search for them. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 01:54, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

Stub types
I believe that, in this case, stub categories with the geographical scope of the whole state would get renamed along with other categories; and stub tags and stub categories about parts of the state would keep their current names. Pinging and, the other major participents in WikiProject Stub Sorting, to allow them to express their opinions in the matter. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:44, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
 * That would make sense. given that there are both NewYork-stub and subtypes of it for the state and NYC-stub and subtypes of that for the city, there may need to be a massive template-renaming process too, at least for the state stubs. Grutness...wha?  06:55, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't see the need for mass renames here. The state is still called New York; NewYork-stub and NYC-stub remain valid descriptions of stubs about New York (state) and New York City. — JFG talk 08:43, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
 * The whole argument for the move of the article seems to be that "New York" refers primarily to the city. As such, keeping the state's stub template at NewYork-stub would be counterintuitive for editors. Given that wherever possible stub types reflect categories, if the category for the state becomes, then some move of both stub categories and stub templates should happen. Grutness...wha?  01:44, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

If New York City becomes primary topic
There would still be tens of thousands of wrong links to New York, the mirror image of the pre-move situation. So, instead of fixing links to New York intended for the city, we should fix those intended for the state. The question of preventing a buildup of wrong links in the future probably would call for similar steps to those outlined in the status quo case. — JFG talk 17:34, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
 * If the City of New York becomes primary topic at the title "New York", it will need to be decided whether to use  (meaning the city) or   to link to the article. e.g., infobox elements such as birthplace, residence, hometown, etc., and in article bodies. Ḉɱ̍  2nd anniv.   02:42, 30 July 2016 (UTC)