Talk:Republican primaries

What is the WP:PRIMARY TOPIC for Republican primaries?
The first comment of this discussion has been copied from User talk:Born2cycle. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:35, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I disagree with you about having this redirect link to the current event, rather than the general article. I see you specialise in naming, so thought you'd appreciate this feedback, and most likely inform me of my ignorance! ... WP:RECENT. This is consistent with WP:NOT NEWS, and the current events. I double-checked the democrat primary redirect points to the general article. I reverted your version. I think they should be consistent. Widefox (talk) 09:36, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * WP:RECENT does not apply here because the length of the primaries is over a year long... not the kind of "breaking news event" with which WP:RECENT is concerned. During that long period, most people searching for "Republican primaries" are almost certainly looking for the ongoing primary, thus making it the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC.  That's why Republican primaries should redirect to Republican Party presidential primaries, 2012, not to Republican Party presidential primaries. There is no comparison to the Democratic primaries in 2012 since they have practically no interest because there is no serious/credible challenge to Obama on the Democratic side. By having Republican primaries redirect to Republican Party presidential primaries, you're forcing users searching for the article about the current primary to either type in "Republican Party presidential primaries, 2012", or go through the dab page.  Who does this help?  How does that improve the encyclopedia?   --Born2cycle (talk) 18:35, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Article traffic statistics

 * Some relevant article traffic statistics from last month:
 * Republican Party presidential primaries, 2012 has been viewed 600322 times in 201202.
 * Republican primaries has been viewed 5681 times in 201202.
 * Republican Party presidential primaries has been viewed 1835 times in 201202.


 * This shows that:
 * Republican Party presidential primaries, 2012 is very popular
 * Republican Party presidential primaries is relatively obscure.
 * People going through Republican primaries are at least five times more likely to be looking for Republican Party presidential primaries, 2012 than for Republican Party presidential primaries.
 * --Born2cycle (talk) 18:51, 17 March 2012 (UTC)


 * A thought experiment: what would we want to do if Republican primaries were the article (covering many years) and Republican Party presidential primaries were a redirect to it? Is there a reason for treating redirects differently from article titles, bearing in mind that the average reader won't know in advance whether the words he is typing match an article title or a redirect? Certes (talk) 20:13, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * In that case the article at Republican primaries would require disambiguation (and Republican Party presidential primaries would be a good choice for where to move it) so that Republican primaries could be changed to redirect to the article about the topic which is primary for "Republican primaries": Republican Party presidential primaries, 2012. Either way, the redirecting to a primary topic guidance applies:
 * No matter how you slice it, I don't see a way around the obvious fact that the primary topic for Republican primaries, at least in 2012, is the topic of Republican Party presidential primaries, 2012, nor the topic of Republican Party presidential primaries, nor any of the other topics listed there. In fact, one could argue that Republican Party presidential primaries should redirect to Republican Party presidential primaries, 2012, and the article currently at Republican Party presidential primaries should be moved to either Republican Party presidential primaries (disambiguation) or List of Republican Party presidential primaries, except that the hit count for that is so low it's not worth it.   --Born2cycle (talk) 20:44, 17 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The bottom line is that about 6000 times per month - 200 times per day - people are using "Republican primaries" almost exclusively to get to the 2012 article (which is an outstanding article, by the way). Why would we send them anywhere else?  --Born2cycle (talk) 21:00, 17 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Would a hatnote like the one on United States presidential election do the job? For several months every four years, the primary topic for the term US presidential election is surely the current year's vote.  However, US presidential election is a stable redirect to United States presidential election and doesn't get diverted to United States presidential election, 2012 etc. Certes (talk) 21:27, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * A hatnote does not address the PRIMARYTOPIC issues. I'm not familiar with the presidential election articles and redirects, their traffic stats, etc. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:37, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

It must redirect to Republican Party presidential primaries. The title is not exclusive to the 2012 primaries. Bazonka (talk) 10:33, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure WP:PRIMARYTOPIC applies at all. Republican primaries obviously should redirect to Republican Party presidential primaries simply because the two terms are exact synonyms.  If one of them is ambiguous, then the other one must be as well, but the latter is not a disambiguation page (nor should it be).  Redirecting to Republican Party presidential primaries, 2012 would violate the principle of least surprise:  anyone who enters "Republican primaries" in the search box and ends up at the general article cannot reasonably be surprised by arriving at this destination, even if they were actually interested in this year's primaries; but someone who is looking for the general topic and ended up at an article about one specific instance of it might well be surprised that a very general search term did not take them to the most general article in the subject area. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 01:36, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Well put Russ, Republican primaries and Republican Party presidential primaries are synonyms and should lead to the same article. Should that article be about this year's primaries or every year's? The ten year test, although not developed for exactly this case, suggests the latter. Certes (talk) 17:27, 18 March 2012 (UTC)


 * (Note I raised this issue as WP:RECENT violation, and not WP:PRIMARYTOPIC as per current section title). WP:RECENT covers it well, and to answer the timeframe, WP:10 year test, and not 1 year primaries - we should not have to update redirects annually, or every election. BUT - on the other hand Born2cycle's popularity argument is persuasive, and similar to WP:RECENT "Recentism as recruitment". WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for a news site maybe, but not for 10 year view. The synonym argument is probably the simplest. Widefox (talk) 19:18, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Republican primary
As per the growing consensus here, and the 2 of the 3 editors of the page, I changed Republican primary to redirect as I did above. Widefox (talk) 21:37, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I added some hatnotes to the various list and general articles to point towards the current ones (as per suggestion above) for both Democrat and Republican articles. Widefox (talk) 08:19, 24 March 2012 (UTC)