Talk:Siding (construction)

history
Is there any information on the history of various types of siding, or at least dates when they first appeared?
 * I assume this is a joke, but the question is valid.

Needs work
Siding is an important aspect of building construction since it is visible and thus affects buildings appearance and it's important purpose to keep the structure dry. There is a history to each type which can sometimes help tell the age of a building, although siding is something which is rarely original on ancient buildings since it is designed to be replaceable. I do not have time or I would add more info, but at least I will point out that slate siding is absent and some wooden buildings were covered with plaster siding. Jim Derby (talk) 13:18, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

This is a great start. It would be nice to see either comments or a link to a page that talks about Siding Installer (Building Exterior Contractors seems less precise) as a profession. This does not currently exist as a page so could start out as a couple paragraphs. If we could build a new page it might be modeled after something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofer. Thanks for your consideration.

Requested move 31 August 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 to Siding (construction). Sceptre (talk) 14:58, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

– I don't see a primary topic between the article about the architectural element, and Siding (rail). Two topics of comparable long-term significance, receiving roughly equal pageviews (56% vs. 44%) |Siding. However, I'm not sure about the best new title for this article (this is really not my topic area). Siding (architecture)? Wall cladding (beware of American vs. British usage here)? Siding (construction)? – Uanfala (talk) 17:24, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Siding → ?
 * Siding (disambiguation) → Siding
 * I think Siding should remain the primary topic, if not because of pageviews, then because it is far more common for people to talk about architectural siding than about types of railroad tracks and is more likely to be what the typical reader is looking for. MB 18:29, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * How do we conclude that it's more likely to be what a typical reader is looking for if it receives the same number of views? And in some parts of the world, like the UK or Australia, people don't talk about sidings on their houses at all, they talk about cladding. – Uanfala (talk) 19:22, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Just my guess, based on the many millions of people that own/maintain homes and buildings vs thousands of rail-knowledgeable people. I just googled the word siding, and what I got here, in the US, in the first 100 hits were 99 about building siding and 1 (the 34th) about track (a dictionary.com definition). MB 02:16, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * In America that it probably the case, but do remember that this is not American Wikipedia and American English is not universal English. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:02, 2 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose. I agree with MB that the current article is the primary. Based off of Google search results, it seems much more likely that someone searching "siding" on Wikipedia is looking for this article. Rreagan007 (talk) 17:07, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Support based on the pageviews. Neither criterion for WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is met. Siding (construction) would be consistent with Framing (construction).-- JHunterJ (talk) 11:28, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Support. This appears to be a WP:ENGVAR issue. I would have said that in British English, Siding (rail) was the definite primary topic, and I suspect most people would never have heard of any other meaning for the term. We generally call the architectural element "cladding". Given that, in an international encyclopaedia there is clearly no primary topic. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:58, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * WP:ENGVAR does not really apply to titles; WP:TITLEVAR is more relevant but is still about spelling. My point is that even if the rail track is the most common meaning in the British-eng-speaking world, the building cladding is still probably what more people want if they look for an article on "siding" because it is a common everyday word in the US, whereas globally, there would be fewer people looking for the rail article because that is a much more obscure topic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MB (talk • contribs) 15:03, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * In fact, ENGVAR is very commonly applied to titles. And railway sidings are very commonly known worldwide. I've been aware of them since I was a kid, whereas I didn't even really know what the architectural term meant until this debate started (when I thought, oh, they mean cladding!). As I said, an ENGVAR issue. If you're going to argue that the US has more people so more pageviews then we may as well just ditch ENGVAR altogether and turn this into American Wikipedia, as it's going to be the case with every topic that the American version has more pageviews. Because America has lots of people! -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:40, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Not every topic. This one, for instance: the pageviews are split, so we're in agreement here, for different reasons. ENGVAR may be trotted out in title discussions, but WP:ENGVAR itself isn't written that way beyond WP:COMMONALITY (this topic doesn't seem to have one), and doesn't apply to what WP:PRIMARYREDIRECTs go to a common title (if one exists). -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:22, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Support per views and long-term significance.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 16:35, 7 September 2020 (UTC)


 * I just wanted to reply to your point,, about the preponderance of the construction meaning in web searches: I also see a lot more uses for that than for the railway meaning. Maybe the web is biased towards DIY content, the same way wikipedia may be biased by the disproportionate number of people writing or reading about railway topics. I believe in the absence of a primary topic mostly for fundamental (rather than technical) reasons, but the case for usage is, of course, not settled. Article pageviews (just like web results) are only an indirect indicator for what people are looking for when they type "siding" in the search box. If you're interested in getting good data on that, you can wait until all the incoming links are fixed and then edit the dab at Siding so that each of the two links are piped via otherwise unused redirects. The views for these two redirects would then give us a clearer picture of reader choices. – Uanfala (talk) 16:45, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , I fixed the dabs (about 200, including ~15 that had been meant to link to rail siding but were actually linking to the wrong article all along) and added the temp redirects. How long do you think we need to monitor this to get a clear idea? A month or so? MB 21:06, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Well done! I've only managed to track down and fix a dozen or two of the more obvious rail-related links last week. With everything fixed, a month should definitely be enough to give us a sense of what's going on. – Uanfala (talk) 21:18, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , It has been about five weeks and the |Siding_(railroad) the analysis shows that the building siding gets 5x the daily average hits through the dab page than the rail use. I think this is a clear indicator that the dab should not be at the title since most people that get to the dab are apparently looking for building siding. (I suppose there could be a few that were looking for rail siding but because of the dab learned there is another meaning and went there out of curiosity). So what do we do now, boldly restore the redirect or open a new discussion? MB 05:02, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I would exclude the first week after the move of the dab page, because of the time required for incoming links (including external) to get updated. Then the ratio is more like 4.5x. That still makes for a strong case for a primary topic. Given that the previous RM wasn't only about pageviews (some people supported based on long-term significance), the proper way forward is to start another RM – given the pageviews available now, it's likely to succeed. I would probably wait a week though, to confirm the unusual trend of the views in the last week is temporary. – Uanfala (talk) 12:07, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually, if you ping the supporters in the previous RM and they all agree, there won't be any need for another RM. Again, before that, I'd prefer to wait for a bit until the apparent anomaly in the views disappears. – Uanfala (talk) 23:21, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I have been watching. If you look at the last week only, it as been just 2:1. We may have to wait a few more weeks. MB 00:17, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Restore siding (construction) as primary topic
An |Siding_(railroad) experiment that has ran almost eight weeks shows that the building usage had received 5x the views compared to the rail usage (measured by special redirects only linked on the dab page). I think this shows that since most readers are looking for the architectural product, it should be the PT so readers will get there directly. The minority looking for the rail siding will have to click again on the hatnote (which is no worse then going through the dab). If there is any disagreement we will need a new RM. Notifying prior participants. MB 04:06, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Again, I would cite WP:ENGVAR. Most Americans are probably looking for the thing we in Britain call cladding. Most in the Commonwealth are not. Pageviews are not the be all and end all of titling, otherwise anything with an ambiguous meaning would default to the American usage, given America's massive internet presence. A new RM only two months after the previous one was closed? I think not. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:57, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * There are no move request moratoriums by default, and when there's substantial new information available, a new discussion would be warranted even immediately after the previous one was closed. – Uanfala (talk) 14:14, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * There is no "substantial new information". The situation has not changed. This is still a variance in varieties of English. "By default", Wikipedia does not default to American usage (or any other usage). The best solution is therefore the current one. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:52, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * That might partly be due to the fact that the building topic was primary so when moved external links pointing here and search engines sent people here looking for the building meaning.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 10:18, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The pageviews ratio is more like 4x (for the link above, that's 4.11 – that's found by dividing the total views, not the daily averages as these introduce rounding errors). That's still substantial though, and even if it is true that we may never know what part of the traffic is coming from external links intending the previous primary topic (barring search engines, which should have updated long ago), I don't expect they can significantly alter this picture. We've got good data – as good as we can ever hope for – suggesting that 80% of readers who type "siding" are looking for the construction topic. – Uanfala (talk) 14:14, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Well I think the page views for the articles are pretty convincing, Siding (rail) gets 1,905 and Siding (construction) gets 1,243[|Siding_(rail)] the higher views for the construction DABTEST link are as noted probably because this topic was primary and links still land people here externally.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 17:24, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Could you clarify for which of the two aspects of a primary topic do you see the article views as convicing – long-term significance, or usage (what readers are looking for when they search for "siding")? – Uanfala (talk) 03:07, 10 November 2020 (UTC)