Talk:Octavius

Requested move 12 October 2020

 * 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: not moved. A challenge to WP:IMPLICITCONSENSUS still leaves the argument to change consensus to the challenger. --  JHunterJ (talk) 12:10, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Octavius (disambiguation) → Octavius – Octavius currently redirects to Augustus, but there's no evidence the latter is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Gaius Octavius is currently a disambiguation page, Octavius should be one too. Avis11 (talk) 00:57, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This is a contested technical request (permalink). Megan☺️   Talk to the monster  05:55, 12 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose. If you Google "Octavius," nearly all the hits refer to Augustus. No evidence has been provided to indicate he is not the primary topic.  -- Calidum  16:59, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not up to me to prove a negative, you need to provide specific evidence why he is. Avis11 (talk) 18:39, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Octavius has redirected to Augustus for ten years. Per WP:CONSENSUS, you need to offer a reason why this consensus should be changed. Asserting "there is no evidence" he is the primary topic isn't good enough. -- Calidum  16:57, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * That this redirect has been neglected without discussion for years is no evidence for your imaginary consensus. Your empty argument as it stands is basically pointless time-wasting obstruction and "WP:IDONTLIKEIT". Augustus is seldom referred to as Octavius, and there are many people who are called by that name more often than he is. There you have it, there's no evidence that Augustus is the primary topic, and that's more than good enough. Avis11 (talk) 21:20, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Please read WP:IMPLICITCONSENSUS before you go criticizing my arguments. Your argument is a patent violation of WP:BUTIDONTKNOWABOUTIT. -- Calidum  14:23, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * None of those WP guidelines support your argument. I challenged this implicit "consensus", so there's no consensus to begin with, and you offered nothing to challenge me aside from empty arguments and links to impertinent WP rule links. BUTIDONTKNOWABOUTIT only supports my case. I ask that you withdraw your disruptive obstruction and instead provide, if you can, something concrete and constructive that can actually lend weight to your position. Avis11 (talk) 17:20, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * With regards to the claim that Augustus is the primary Google search result, which you added through the back instead of presenting in a new paragraph: first, it's not even true; second, Google Searches are a far from definitive method to determine what's a primary topic; and third, a search for "Octavius" on Google Scholar presents very few results on Augustus. Google Scholar is, of course, a much better way to determine a primary topic than a simple Google Search. Avis11 (talk) 17:30, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 05:12, 13 October 2020 (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.

Requested move 10 December 2020

 * 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: moved --  JHunterJ (talk) 12:24, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Octavius (disambiguation) → Octavius – I can't see a primary topic.

The main argument against the previous proposal was that the Roman emperor dominated the results on Google. I can definitely see that on the firts couple of pages of results, but the trend does not seem to hold further down: for example, only three of the twenty entries I see on pages 10–11 are for Augustus. More importantly though, even where the emperor is intended, the text will most commonly refer to him as "Gaius Octavius" rather than simply "Octavius" (and so is less relevant here than it would be for deciding what to do with the page Gaius Octavius). Overall, only a fraction of the hits, either on the web or in books, are for the Roman emperor.

The pageviews are also relevant: the redirect and the dab page receive comparable hits |Octavius. Even though the numbers are as usual difficult to interpret with certainty (for example, the dab page is linked from Augustus, so presumably also siphons off clicks from the average readership), they're not easy to reconcile with a scenario where most readers searching for "Octavius" are happy with where the redirect takes them.

Also, the implicit consensus for the current target may be obvious (it has been since 2011), but there's history of disagreement about the target in 2010–2011, while for the preceding six years, that title was actually occupied by the article about the Britonic king. – Uanfala (talk) 22:53, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Pinging participants from the previous discussion:, , and. – Uanfala (talk) 22:56, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Support. Augustus is seldom even referred to as Octavius (he only had this name for a fraction of his life, and when he wasn't notable), and a Google Scholar search returns basically zero results related to him. According to WP:DETERMINEPRIMARY, a primary topic can be determined through "Usage in English reliable sources demonstrated with Google Ngram viewer, Books, Scholar, News, and Trends", while "Simple web searches may be problematic due to limited sources, open interpretation, and personal search bias". These arguments were all presented in the previous discussion already, but WP:IMPLICITCONSENSUS was inexplicably found to override all of these. Avilich (talk) 23:46, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment When was briefly a dab in October, there were 31 incoming links to fix.  25 referred to Augustus, a count biased by Octavius having previously redirected there.  Certes (talk) 00:46, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Support per the redirect v DAB views noting its quite possible many readers don't find the DAB and just search again though there may also be some that click on it anyway since its at the top.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 10:14, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Support. The future Augustus is almost always referred to as Octavian rather than Octavius and only that should redirect to him. He is not primary topic for Octavius. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:25, 16 December 2020 (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.

Arrangement of entries
What is the best way to arrange the entries for the various people with the name? I'm seeing two ways of doing it in the history: Version A, which groups all the ancient people together and lists some of the more prominent ones, and Version B, which lists only Augustus.

Noting that Octavia gens has a long list of people of the gens, so I'm wondering how much, if any, of that should be duplicated here? If any of the people there have been commonly known as just "Octavius" we'd need to include them. Should we link at all to Gnaeus Octavius (disambiguation) and the other dab pages?

I'm thinking at least we could split out all the modern people who have "Octavius" as a first name into Octavius (given name), to reduce clutter. Also, I can't say I'm happy about the narrowly alphabetic order followed in the current version, which puts the two closely related articles about the gens and the praenomen at opposite ends of the list, separated by a mass of unrelated links to ships, horses and the like.

Any thoughts anyone? ? – Uanfala (talk) 22:51, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Pinging also, who's contributed most of the gens article. – Uanfala (talk) 23:00, 20 December 2020 (UTC)


 * I'm fine with the current version: only the gens/family is cited, with a brief mention of Augustus below due to his notability. The list isn't too long that it needs to be split. Avilich (talk) 23:01, 20 December 2020 (UTC)


 * I don't think I've ever edited this page, and I didn't have it on my watchlist—if I had, I would have recommended that this title redirect to "Octavia gens", and the disambiguation page stay where it was. If I noticed it before, I probably decided that there was little chance of redirecting it from Augustus.  But that trireme has sailed, so dealing just with what's on the page now, I think it's logically organized.  The older and most important uses are at the top, together with a few miscellaneous ones, followed by a long list of persons named "Octavius" in alphabetical order.  There are a few choices: alphabetical order or chronological order, or subdivided by field or nationality, followed by alphabetical or chronological order.  But a simple alphabetical list seems sensible, since it's not generally a surname, and most of the people in the list aren't related; and a longer list of unrelated persons is easier to search in alphabetical order.  If most of them belonged to one or two families, or the list were divided into several short sections, I could see placing them in chronological order.  I don't see any advantage to doing that here.  So I'd say it's fine the way it is now.  P Aculeius (talk) 00:39, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Name page
If this ever gets split to a given name page, it might mention Ocky as a short version of the name, as cited at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-22192523. – Fayenatic  L ondon 09:58, 11 October 2022 (UTC)