User talk:Mike Cline/Articles Under Contemplation/Title RFC

Consequences of changing Recognizability and Naturalness naming criteria
The ongoing debate at WP:Article Titles over criteria and MOS issues has raised this question in my mind. Additionally experience over the last several months in evaluating and closing Requested Move discussion informs this question as well. Currently we have 5 title decision criteria that are laid out in WP:PRINCIPALCRITERIA:

* ''Recognizability – Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic? Naturalness – What title(s) are readers most likely to look for to find the article? Which title(s) will editors most naturally use to link from other articles? Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.
 * Precision [Ambiguity] – How precise is the title under discussion? Consensus titles usually use names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously. For technical reasons, no two Wikipedia article titles can be identical.[3] For information on how ambiguity is avoided in titles, see the precision and disambiguation section below and the disambiguation guideline.
 * Conciseness – Is the title concise or is it overly long?
 * Consistency – Does the proposed title follow the same pattern as those of similar articles? Many of these patterns are documented in the naming guidelines listed in the Specific-topic naming conventions box above, and ideally indicate titles that are in accordance with the principles behind the above questions.''

In my experience and view Recognizability and Naturalness are much too obtuse to be effective policy statements. They are obtuse because they put the burden of interpretation on readers of the title, not the title itself. One can look at any given WP title and access its conciseness, consistency and its precision by comparing the title to other similar titles. The same assessment cannot be made for the criteria Recognizability or Naturalness. To assess these criteria, one must determine how millions of diverse readers are going to react to the title. Although an unnatural title is possible, no other editor has been able to describe an unrecognizable title. And from my experience, whenever an editor tries to defend the recognizability or naturalness of a title, they do it through our common name process and support of reliable sources. Although this is not an explicit proposal to do so, this is an exploration of potential impact if changes were proposed and accepted.

Question
If we abandoned Recognizability and Naturalness as title policy decision criteria and replaced that criteria with the criteria we actually use—common name and reliable sources, what would the impact on the encyclopedia be? For discussion sake, the criteria might be replaced with the following wording: WP titles faithfully reflect the subject of the article as supported by reliable sources. WP titles reflect the Common Name of the subject of the article in English language reliable sources. If wording to the effect of the above replace Recognizability and Naturalness as WP policy, what would be the impact to WP article titles and the RM process? Thanks --Mike Cline (talk) 19:42, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Opinions that believe the impact would be adverse
Please provide examples that would be considered an adverse or negative impact and why?==== Opinions that believe there would be no positive or negative impact==== Please explain how the net effect would be neutral and why?==== Opinions that believe the impact would be positive === Please provide examples that would be considered positive and why?

What is Community practice regarding Wikipedia article title decisions?
When one evaluates titling decisions and especially contested titling decisions in our WP:RM process, it is very rare to find Recognizability or Naturalness invoked as a policy reason for a title change. It is also rare to find any holistic policy based discussions on titling decisions. These and other elements of our titling policy have been contentious over the last few months. So following the mantra that many of us subscribe to, that policy should follow and document practice wherever possible, I decided to think about this differently. What are the major choices the Wikipedia community of editors has made relative to article titles, and what were the alternatives to those choices that we’ve essentially rejected through policy statements and practice. If the community could agree on that, we might be able to agree on the most functional policy wording to convey that practice to the rest of the community, including new editors. So the following list displays in my view the choices the community has made and the alternatives we had. It is organized by priority. In other words, think of it as a policy ladder where a previous choice has precedence over and informs the following choices. I have bold faced the choices I think the community has made. I’ve intentionally left out neutrality as it requires some special thinking which can be addressed later. Also, this list does not ignore that fact/practice that individual title decisions are decided by WP:CONSENSUS, but instead conveys the policy elements/choices that such consensus is based on. This list is not intended to convey the detailed methodology by which each decision area is adjudicated or applied to individual title decisions. So there is only one question that I seek an answer from the rest of the community. Does this list accurately reflect the choices we’ve made as a community and community practice regarding titles? Whether editors individually agree with these choices is not the question. Please indicate your view in only one of the sections below. Discussion or challenges to an individual editor's position on this is not required or relevant to the outcome and should be avoided. I encourage all editors who have created articles or participated in article title decisions to participate in this RFC. Your individual view of WP practice is important.
 * Sources (What is the source of the title wording?)
 * As supported by reliable English language secondary sources
 * As contained in Original Research, primary sources, etc.
 * Pure fantasy, made up names, fanciful constructions, et. al.
 * Type of Name (Names of most things have alternatives and those alternatives can be characterized as follows)
 * Official Names (names issued by official organizations, entities, etc. these might be scientific names, legal names (people and entities), government names, etc.) – Organization X is the official name keeper and it determines that XXXXXX is the official name. (most restrictive and least encyclopedic)
 * Authoritative Names (Names that an authority on a subject uses. Authoritative names are usually found in sources that are scholarly, or at least come out of some type of structured, disciplined process) – John Doe is the authority on subject XXXXXXX and says XXXXXXX is the name used for this subject.  An authoritative name may be an official name, but an official name is not necessarily the authoritative name. (less restrictive and more encyclopedic than official names)
 * Common Names (Names that are most widely used by all types of sources—official, unofficial, authoritative and general media). (least restrictive and the most encyclopedic for a generalist encyclopedia). A common name may indeed be official or authoritative, but it is the commonness that is the important characteristic.
 * Descriptive names can also be constructed from terms that reflect common usage in reliable sources.
 * Ambiguity (Names may or may not have some level of ambiguity)
 * Uniqueness – (Demanded by the Wiki software)
 * Little or no ambiguity (Titles require enough detail to leave no doubt as to what the subject of the article is about. The more articles that exist with a related title, the most disambiguation information must be added to the title to ensure no ambiguity between articles exists.  This represents the idea of detailed disambiguation.
 * Moderate ambiguity (Titles should contain sufficient detail to allow readers to make informed navigational and search decisions, but without ensuring that every navigational or search decision is unambiguous. (This represents our current practice of reasonable levels of disambiguation).
 * High levels of ambiguity (Titles require only sufficient differentiation to make them unique, as long as titles are unique, it doesn’t matter whether or not there is serious ambiguity of titles among a bunch of related articles.) This represents the idea of no unnecessary disambiguation. It discourages even moderate disambiguation if a more concise alternative exists.
 * Style (What is the visual form that we like to see in our titles)
 * Rigid consistency – All titles must conform to rigid style standards to include parts of speech, capitalization, punctuation, abbreviation, structure etc.
 * Moderate consistency – Basic style standards are delineated through MOS and naming conventions and should guide the visual form of our titles (literally and comparitively), but not in a rigid, one size fits all way.
 * No consistency – Basic style standards are irrelevant, anything goes.

The choices highlighted above faithfuly reflect the title decision practice of WP

 * [Username]

Some of the choices (but not all) highlighted above faithfully reflect the title decision practice of WP
If your position falls here, indicate which category/choice is inconsistent with practice and why.
 * [Username], [category/choice is inconsistent because:]

The choices highlighted above fail to include this important title decision practice

 * [Username], [describe missing practice]