Talk:Poplar

Requested move 3 February 2016

 * 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. Number   5  7  21:41, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Poplar → Poplar (disambiguation) – Poplar was a redirect to Populus. As there are a number of topics which have the name Poplar, including the place in London: Poplar, London; and as the genus Populus includes trees which are not polars, such as Aspen and Cottonwood, while common poplars such as Yellow poplar or Tulip poplar which are NOT part of Populus are not covered by that page, I saw the redirect as problematic, and moved Poplar (disambiguation) to Poplar, rewriting it to make it more informative and helpful. As I did that I noticed that the vast majority of the incoming links to Popular were for the tree poplar, though without specifying which tree (they could be for white poplar, black poplar or the non-Populus tulip poplar). I wondered if a new article, just on the poplar tree - a broad concert article to briefly discuss poplar trees including tulip poplar, and then direct readers to the right place, might be a way forward. I also wondered if this was going to be too much work for me, and if I should just return it to how it was. In the meantime a couple of editors have raised concerns about the move on my talkpage. More imput is need on this matter. I am neutral on this and am not actually advocating a return to the status quo, though that may be the easiest solution. User:SilkTork ily: Segoe Script">SilkTork  ✔Tea time  11:06, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Support (return to status quo. The trees are clearly primary. Apart from London the settlements are tiny. As in many other cases, the plant names are messy, but nonetheless it seems to me that the liklihood that someone searching for "poplar" want a Populus species (if they know what they want) is overwhelming. I don't see what a "poplar tree" article could say that populus doesn't, beyond a little on the other species. Common plant names are often not broad concept article-material, without OR and synthesis. Johnbod (talk) 20:12, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Support I think Populus is the primary topic. I can't imagine how to write a decent article that covers Populus poplars and tulip poplars; they don't have anything in common besides sharing part of a name. The best we can hope for would be along the lines of our sycamore article (in the case of sycamores though, there isn't one tree that is a clear primary topic globally). Plantdrew (talk) 21:05, 3 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Now Oppose a move. Keep Poplar as a disambiguation page. When this move request started there were 500+ incoming links to "Poplar". There are now no incoming links from article space; they've all been disambiguated. Future incoming links to Poplar will be a trickle compared to the flood that has been dealt with. The occasional new links that pop up will show up as needing disambiguation as they appear. Flagging new incoming links for disambiguation is a better result in the long run. Plantdrew (talk) 05:04, 13 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Support return to status quo. Page views suggest that most readers are in fact looking for the tree. Last month, Poplar was viewed 2942 times, while the dab page was viewed 263. Since it's very unlikely that anyone would get to the dab page apart from going to the primary location first, we can assume that those 263 people typed in "poplar" looking for something besides the tree. In other words, less than 10% of people who typed in "poplar" in the search bar were looking for something else (and thus clicked the link to the dab page), which is a pretty convincing argument for a primary topic here. Parsecboy (talk) 21:34, 3 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose The initial move, in my mind appears to have been the correct one. Redirecting Poplar to Populus isn't really a solution so much as a deferral to what is generally a case of poor linking. From my neck of the woods (no pun intended) poplar (whether colloquially or in literature) almost exclusively means Populus balsamifera (aka balsam poplar) not the general genus Populus. I would suspect the same applies for others and in effect redirect to the genus Populus isn't what searches are necessarily looking for. For instance, the monthly stats of Jan show that Liriodendron tulipifera, a tree commonly called poplar but not part of the genus Poplus received more view than the Poplar redirect in January (3182 vs 2942). I have no doubt that most searches are links are associated with trees but I am not at all convinced it's cohesively within the Populus realm and redirecting to that location is simply a bad move.--Labattblueboy (talk) 22:28, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Of course people looking for "poplar" are probably looking a particular tree species not the genus as such! But which one, that's the problem. The chances are, most of the time they won't know. If you want to bring search evidence forward as to which of "Liriodendron tulipifera—known as the tulip tree, American tulip tree, tuliptree, tulip poplar, whitewood, fiddle-tree, and yellow poplar..." has the most ghits, that might be useful. Even if it is "tulip poplar", which I very much doubt, poplar is only the second word - most will search on "tulip". The genus page is generally more useful than a disam page. Johnbod (talk) 04:53, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
 * We can't tell from the previous set up what people are looking for. When a term such as "poplar" is so vague that we can't know what the reader is looking for or what the linker intended then a dab page or broad concert article might offer them a little more than a (potentially) misleading genus page. At the moment we are assuming that when people type in or link "poplar" that what they actually meant (silly them) is "populus", so that's what we give them. If we step back from that assumption and consider it from the user's point of view, what is the disadvantage of offering them a dab page which gives them a list of the poplar tress they might be looking for, along with other possibilities, including the genus populus. It might be an idea to allow the dab page to stand for a little while (at least a month) just to see how the page hits go - if we find that populus retains its hit level, and that the other poplar targets do not grow in hits, then poplar redirecting to populus is the way to go. If on the other hand, hits for populus decline, while hits for the other poplar articles go up, then keeping poplar as a dab page is the way to go.  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  13:50, 4 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Support move. The Liriodendron situation is unusual with plant common names; there are two major meanings of "poplar" depending on whether the living tree is meant or the timber. At least in North America, "poplar" timber for sale in the retail stores is invariably Liriodendron. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:59, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
 * That would not be the case in Europe, where I think Liriodendron is a rare garden specimen everywhere, certainly in the UK. Historically, poplar (populus) was commonly used for sculpture, but otherwise I think "poplar" timber is not big in Europe. Johnbod (talk) 23:00, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure from your comment if you mean that we should keep poplar as a dab page, or that it should return to being a redirect to populus. I realise that they way I have set up the discussion perhaps isn't as helpful as it could have been.  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  13:50, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I meant that I would favour a dab, without a redirect to populus. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:07, 4 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose returning poplar as a redirect to populus. It is unclear what people want as the term poplar is so vague. My feeling is that if people wanted populus that is what they would have typed or linked. I suspect that people want one of the poplar trees, or the poplar wood, which may not be part of the populus genus, so therefore either a dab page or a broad concept article is going to be more helpful. I don't think in a situation like this, where it is unclear, we should be guessing what people want;  we should be offering them options, and assisting them to find the article they want.  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  14:00, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
 * You might want to strike "I am neutral on this" in your nom above, then. Johnbod (talk) 11:06, 7 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Support. Any ambiguity about the specific kind of wood at issue, or about other non-Populus plants called "Poplar", can and should be cleared up in the Poplar article. bd2412  T 14:58, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree. But the proposal is not to have a poplar article at all, but to redirect poplar to the populus article, which by definition cannot deal with non-populus plants.  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  22:56, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Is that the proposal? This is getting very confusing. If someone can come up with a clear formulation of the question, perhaps we should all vote again. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:10, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Why can't the populus article explain that most plants called poplar are in the populus genus, but some plants called poplar are not? bd2412  T 23:26, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Exactly - it can, and should. The lead is only 2 sentences long. The proposal implies that Poplar tree should not be set up as an article covering anything called poplar (and excluding asperns etc) This is what Silk Tork suggested before his undiscussed move. Johnbod (talk) 11:04, 7 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Support restoring status quo ante. A hatnote can direct readers to the tulip tree, as currently. Srnec (talk) 16:56, 7 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose. For vast swathes of the English-speaking world, poplars are Liriodendron tulipiferae and Populi are aspens.  —  AjaxSmack   04:04, 16 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose I'm against any further moves and I'm also against creating a vague article on the poplar term. this is a nice disambiguation page which I believe helps address many of the original issues with the Poplar name. Being from the Eastern US, our use of the "poplar" term is almost exclusively on the Liriodendron train. In botanical discussions around here, we use "cottonwood" rather than "poplar" to refer to Populus trees in the region.--MCEllis (talk) 23:21, 22 February 2016 (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.