Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Abortion article titles/Archive 3

Re appeals to WP:TITLECHANGES
Isn't the counterargument under several versions that they are "specifically contraindicated by WP:TITLECHANGES as compromise titles made up to quell contention" made moot by the very fact of having this RFC? Mangoe (talk) 04:47, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, yes; but you can always count on a contingent that will claim their understanding of why a thing is being considered is the reason. Generally they will not acknowledge an opposing claim otherwise. That doesn't mean they are correctly applying policy. We're not attempting to quell contention! We are attempting to adopt a best practice, that will benefit future discussions as they ensue, and our goal is to adopt a presentation that unequivocally identifies the group/or person's position without insisting that the cultural norms of the most vocal, or best referenced demographic (by quantity); be applied! So scrap the WP:TITLECHANGES argument as a non-starter. IMO - My76Strat (talk) 06:01, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * You're right, there certainly will be such people. The motivation of the constructed titles that brought us here was to quell contention, what the community wants from this RFC is to quell contention, what ArbCom wants from this RFC is to quell contention.  "Better to have a discussion... resolved rather than have endless disputes over it."  Who could disagree with that?  Nobody, right?  Well, that's what "quelling contention" means.  There are enough broken policies to cite for every possible position that I don't see that WP:TITLECHANGES should control, but it remains relevant. —chaos5023 (talk) 14:02, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Your comments are reasonable. I substantially agree with your assertions. I don't believe this discussion violates wp:titlechanges but I didn't mean to imply it was irrelevant. I agree that my comments could be construed this way so I am glad to clarify my regards. My76Strat (talk) 00:48, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I was the one that came up with the Support for / Opposition to titles at the MedCab back in August, and I cited IAR. Better to have a discussion (over an article title I remind you) resolved rather than have endless disputes over it. Better to use that time...ya know..editing articles? Steven   Zhang  DR goes to Wikimania! 06:14, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * This case has basically become a poster child for a major reason WP:TITLECHANGES is important: highly contentious naming turns people into balls of stress about the situation, which leads to trying to cut the Gordian knot with a rusty spoon &mdash; "solutions" become ever so shiny because they're not what we have now, and people want not what we have now so badly that serious problems are ignored in the drive to DO SOMETHING. As it turns out, the solution needs to be acceptable on its own merits, not just different. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:11, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I actually think the mediation compromise went down pretty well with the vast majority of participants.
 * That said I think at this point I think am likely to !vote for one of the "third way" candidates as my #1 choice, though admittedly not the one Steven proposed originally. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 21:52, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The one I proposed initially was the best that I could come up with at the time. At some point in the discussion I will weigh in on my viewpoint, but I feel that now is not the time to do so. Steven   Zhang  DR goes to Wikimania! 06:09, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Nice work
I am liking the process set up here. Makes me wish something similar had been thought up for discussion of WP:Pending Changes. Maybe it will be one day. But let's not do it at the mo, while we are in the middle of this discussion. Yaris678 (talk) 18:41, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you Yaris678 :)... but it took awhile to get it to this as you can see from the discussions above. Regards,  Whenaxis  talk &middot; &#32;contribs &#124; DR goes to Wikimania!  21:07, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes. Discussion is good.  Maybe what I am saying is that some controversial topics could have done with more discussion before being advertised for comment.  Keep up the good work!  Yaris678 (talk) 22:04, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

The purpose of this exercise
Certain editors are adding rebuttals of points in the "for" and "against" sections. I believe that the statements included should aim to be as accurate as possible, based on group consensus, and therefor shouldn't require separate, bullet pointed rebuttals which are largely just rephrasing of either an "against" point or a "for" point from a competing name (assuming the section in question is a "for" section). Could the mediators/admin or whomever is running this shindig shine a light on which approach is more fruitful? I don't want to see the sections get bogged down with rebuttals and counter-rebuttals when there is already a designated spot for those opinions.LedRush (talk) 23:04, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think that arguments for should be in the "for" section and the argumets against should be in the "against" section. If the rebuttals are a reiteration of the other section, they are not necessary. Rebuttalls and cross-examination can be done during the "Community consultation" phase of this discussion. Regards,  Whenaxis  talk &middot; &#32;contribs &#124; DR goes to Wikimania!  23:07, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * ^What he said. Additionally, people should not be removing comments by others. I would also like to remind that statements added need to be backed up in some way. If you say a title meets COMMONNAME, you need to demonstrate how. You can't just say "Oh, it's more common". We don't allow unsourced claims in our articles, I see no reason why it should be different here. Steven   Zhang  DR goes to Wikimania! 06:12, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I reverted the removal as I saw no evidence that the points were being re-added elsewhere on the page. Sorry if I jumped the gun a bit, I wanted to go to bed. I'm perfectly happy to see the points moved elsewhere on the page. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 07:22, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The points are already somewhere else; you were merely repeating them. If I am wrong on this, I suggest you add them to the appropriate section (for example, if you think that the "for" argument for "pro-choice/pro-life" regarding NPOV is wrong, either change that specific entry in a way everyone can agree with or state a counterpoint either under the "against" section of that title or the "for" section of another title.  Do not, however, make a rebuttal which makes an "against" argument in an indented bullet point on the "for" list.  I think that will become cumbersome and will not allow the consensus building of pros and cons to work correctly.LedRush (talk) 14:54, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure it's inappropriate for mitigating points to be added directly to a For or Against item rather than being moved to the other section; if the mitigation speaks directly to the item, then it makes the total weight of the argument much more digestible than if one is required to go read a different section and then go back and apply a factor against what one has already finished reading. I do think the indented-sub-point approach is a bad idea, though; it tends to turn the document into natter rather than a consensus-built analysis. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:19, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * If it can't be separate, incorporate it so that there is a relatively concise statement "for" or "against" which is accurate. Otherwise this degenerates into talk-page walls of text with rebuttals and rebuttals which make us lose our way (like it was last night).LedRush (talk) 15:38, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I entirely disagree that "people should not be removing comments by others". This document is not a talk page dialogue, and it needs to be our best collaborative analysis of the merits of each option, not a self-esteem building exercise for every special child who happens along.  It's a structured analysis precisely so that we don't wind up with a logorrheic wall of nonsense like the broken proposal that got us our current titles. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:30, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed. This should be a collaborative process, like editing an article.  Not a talk page.LedRush (talk) 15:38, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

"Opposition to abortion" is POV
Someone keeps changing the arguments to say that "Opposition to abortion" is NPOV. I would have to object to this. Many pro-choice activists also support family planning, birth control, and adoption, and consider themselves very much opposed to abortion (which is completely compatible with believing that abortion should not be a criminal offense). By framing the debate as supporting or opposing "abortion" rather than the "legality of abortion", the pro-life POV is being advanced. Kaldari (talk) 05:24, 28 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Although the opposite can also be said, see Arguments common to variations that construct opposition in terms of legality. Maybe you can add your argument to that point and remove the NPOV statements, the community can than decide which cons weigh heavier. JHS nl (talk) 06:59, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think before we wholesale start removing statements by others we should think. Feel free to change it to "some think X is NPOV" (since it wouldn't have been added otherwise) but there's bound to be disagreements here. Just because a few think it's not NPOV doesn't mean you should remove their argument, and vice versa. Steven   Zhang  DR goes to Wikimania! 08:25, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed, but it would even be better if the NPOV claim would be supported with arguments. JHS nl (talk) 10:57, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay, have an argument: who in the world looks at Support for abortion legality / Opposition to abortion and decides to read the position of the "support" side from playing logic games with the "oppose" article's title rather than reading the "support" article's title? —chaos5023 (talk) 17:28, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
 * When we choose these article's final (for at least 3 years) title, we are inherently (as WP:AT is at pains to clarify) choosing their scope. So if the article is titled "opposition to abortion", then that is what it is about, and it is not about the American pro-life movement except insofar as that movement opposes abortion, and opposition to abortion by people who support legal access to abortion would be in-scope.  Now, I happen to think that, for WP:PRESERVE and other reasons, this is a bad idea, and the articles should be titled, and recognized as being scoped, as about the US pro-life and pro-choice movements.  But it doesn't mean that "opposition to abortion" doesn't present a workable scope.  (The fact that all efforts to construct artificial titles that cannot be interpreted as POV have failed seems like an argument against them entirely, as well.) —chaos5023 (talk) 17:39, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Pro-choice/Pro-life
This seems to be well-structured generally.

1. I would like to say that it might be listed under the opposition to using these two phrases, that "Pro-choice" implies that the pro-life people are opposed to women having any choices. Actually, it takes on average about 100 "encounters" (without the use of birth control) to become pregnant. So the woman, at least, has exercised 100 "choices" already in favor of pregnancy. So the phrase "pro-choice" is begging the issue quite a bit.

2. It may say this somewhere, but Catholic pro-life are also opposed to war, capital punishment and euthanasia. So "pro-life" is across the board and not merely "anti-abortion." Many of the "pro-choice" supporters favor choosing suicide, but not choosing war and the justice system/people not choosing capital punishment. So it is a bit ambiguous, which might be displayed as "against."

But basically, an objective presentation. Student7 (talk) 16:30, 28 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I wish you left it at the first sentence. Carrite (talk) 20:41, 28 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Some argue that the scope of "Pro-life" is potentialy too broad. But I have yet to see this same logic applied to "Pro-choice". If people speculate that "Pro-life" could be potentially applied to a variety of non-abortion topics, "Pro-choice" is certainly more vulnerable in this regard. But, in actual practice it is widely understood as being related to the discussion of the choice of abortion. I would suggest we keep in mind that any title will have to be understood as having some scope limitations. No title will be beyond potential (deliberate?) misunderstanding and misapplication. I suggest we use Pro-choice movement / Pro-life movement.

Everything is POV
I think this is really getting a bit far fetched...

Personally I think it would be far more helpful to only mark terms that are described by reliable English language sources as being POV. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 17:51, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Most of our "constructed titles" are not going to be discussed by reliable English language sources. Kaldari (talk) 19:34, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Then there isn't a real POV problem for the given terms. Sure if we used a term like "baby killers" to refer to pro-choice people that would be obviously POV - but none of the terms given so far are anywhere near as obviously problematic as that. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 19:35, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I've expressed some frustration with the fantastic chains of inference being used to construe some of the titles as POV, but really, I think it's just a cautionary tale about why you shouldn't make up titles for this sort of thing. In some miniscule way, I think we are aiding the propaganda aims of the American left if we use Opposition to legal abortion, and we are aiding the propaganda aims of the American right if we use Opposition to abortion.  And since we are making these things up, we have to bear responsibility for that.  Which is why we should stick to the damn sources. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:09, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It depends on what the articles are about. If both are about the legality of abortion, then Opposition to legal abortion and Support for legal abortion absolutely make sense and aren't "POV" at all. If the articles are about the associated "movements", then different titles should be used. I should also point out that opposition to legal abortion and opposition to abortion (or the "support" counterpart) aren't the same thing at all, and should not be confused. -- Scjessey (talk) 21:17, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
 * And if the articles are about the movements as a whole pro-life movement is certainly the most appropriate title to use. I also think in that case arguing that that name isn't neutral isn't really particularly strong. The Guardian stylebook for example only suggests not using pro-life to refer to only abortion.
 * I really don't see the particular POV concern with any of the names mentioned by the two of you. There may well be an accuracy issue, and there are good reasons to use non-made up names (WP:TITLECHANGES and WP:COMMONNAME being two) but I don't think there is a legitimate neutrality issue. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 21:40, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The neutrality issues of the constructed titles are debatable, but they shouldn't be completely dismissed. Our goal here is to list all the arguments for and against, not to decide which of those arguments are the most valid or compelling. That's for later. Kaldari (talk) 00:16, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * And most of these arguments are based on personal opinions, not reliable sources or policy...which is how the evidence is supposed to be formatted. I've poked one of the admins appointed to close this discussion to get their 5c. Steven   Zhang  DR goes to Wikimania! 00:19, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * If for now the points can just be struck that would be great - I'll try and find sources for as many as possible. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 09:25, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I really have to object to that with extreme vehemence. Basically, when we're already talking about constructed titles, it's too late to start delegating our due diligence to our sources.  We are making those titles, so we have the responsibility for analyzing them in terms of NPOV (and any other applicable policy); the idea that sources are going to somehow provide us a magic list of words and phrases that map to "violates NPOV" inside the context of an arcane and involved Wikipedia process is starkly impossible.  We can't have it both ways -- once the actual terms that sources refer to a topic using have been ignored, farming out POV analysis to them becomes a cop-out.  None of our sources do, can, should or would want to write in a way that addresses Wikipedia NPOV.  This is on us.  And that also means that we have to listen when people tell us they're hearing a political benefit for one side of the dialogue in a particular title, not just wave our hands and say that we don't think there should be a problem because of how the logic looks in our heads.  That way lies a considerable quantity of tears. —chaos5023 (talk) 10:17, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with chaos5023. This is a direct result of the artificialness of getting evidence for one month and not debating the contents of that evidence, while a large part of the evidence is based on interpretation of policy (and not a count of use in other sources). Not that I would suggest commencing the discussion immediately. But I think the whole point of having a structured discussion is that we, together, first get an overview of all the possibilities and possible arguments, than have one-more big discussion and then hope to achieve consensus (or, probably, vote). Therefore, we should accept all argument ('evidence') which are not evidently nonsense, illogical or can be proven to be not true. That's were evidence and sourcing might play a role, not in every argument which ends up on the page. JHS nl (talk) 13:48, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Thinking of blowing away redlinked title options
I am presently considering deleting the sections for the redlinked single-article title options (Abortion debates, Debates about abortion, Opinions on abortion, Positions on abortion), and asking people, before re-adding them or adding any other options to the list, to observe a somewhat higher standard for inclusion than I think has previously been held to: that, rather than building out lists of options driven more by wanting to cover a lot of bases than anything else, people only add options if they, personally, at the moment they're doing it, feel that the option they're adding is the best option available and is the single way this RFC should be resolved. This, if adhered to, would at least scope the options to things that somebody in the world for one second thought was the way this should go, or was willing to pretend they did, rather than what we have now, which is the inclusion of a bunch of pointless non-starters that interfere with anybody's ability to cogently engage with this process. Would anybody like to offer opinions on whether this would be a good idea? —chaos5023 (talk) 23:21, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree. Besides, the rest of the page has just come up with titles that are basically just the same but just paired up with something else. I need to restructure this page again.  Whenaxis  talk &middot; &#32;contribs &#124; DR goes to Wikimania!  23:39, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅. —chaos5023 (talk) 00:36, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * And then I nuked the whole "single article" thing because it's a broken non-option. —chaos5023 (talk) 01:03, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Removal of "single article" outcome from this RFC
As my removal of the "single article" outcome, which I consider an entirely nonsensical non-option, from the RFC was reverted, citing my doing so "unilaterally", per WP:BRD it is now time to discuss this. My overall thinking on this matter is already on record, but to reiterate, this "option" is useless and outlining it serves no purpose but to clutter the RFC and the thinking of anybody trying to evaluate the RFC. The idea of actually putting all the content of these two articles, one of which is large and the other of which is downright bloated, into a single article is laughable, and the idea of the merge target being an already-existing, already-bloated article, Abortion debate, yet more so. Which is why the very first point addressed in describing this "option" is that of course material about the United States pro-choice and pro-life movements would be factored out to new articles! So at the end of all this frantic shuffling of content and destruction of article history (as has been noted, the history merge involved is so complex it probably just wouldn't be done), we are almost certainly back to having at least three articles, two of which cover the original topics of the current two articles, and one of which is a general, global overview of the debate that already exists! Which is exactly what we'd get if the RFC were resolved in favor of Pro-choice movement / Pro-life movement and material not about those movements were factored to Abortion debate. So at the end of the day, this option nets us nothing but extensive article history destruction. I propose, therefore, that it in no way even begins to be a realistic or sensible outcome for this RFC and should be immediately removed.


 * Support as proposer. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:59, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment I think Chaos makes some good points here. I wonder if the best part of Owain's proposal might be saved if it is reworded not to involve the actual titles of the articles, but rather to say that all content regarding the debate itself be moved to Abortion debate, while the Pro-choice movement / Pro-life movement articles be strictly maintained as being about the movements and not about the debate.  --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 12:42, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Support The following discussion has convinced me. --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 18:04, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The thing is, that isn't a distinct proposal at all, it's a natural consequence of adopting Pro-choice movement / Pro-life movement. Since those articles would, at long bleedin' last, have a well-defined scope, it becomes natural to factor material that isn't about the movements to someplace else, and Abortion debate is the most immediately obvious place for that. —chaos5023 (talk) 14:34, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
 * If that is the end result, then that's ok, but at the moment, renaming (or not) is probably the smallest problem these articles have. I still think it is important to capture scope here, before naming, because one strongly affects the other.  If this article content change doesn't happen, my answer on what it should be called is completely different to what it would be if the content change occurs (so, if the content changes don't occur, I think 'arguments for/against abortion' is probably best, BUT if the content changes are made (and i'm happy to do the work BTW) then 'Pro-choice/life movement in the United States' would seem to be the best option).  Without clarity on content, the naming debate is meaningless - its all very well saying it would be a natural consequence, but that's far from certain on WP, especially on an emotive topic prone to POV, unless it is set out in advance.  Maybe we need to structure the options to include this.   OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 08:34, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I could not agree with you more that these articles' real problem is their scope, not any POV in their titles. Since Wikipedia articles' titles set their scope, though, we have the opportunity to address that here.  The main difficulty there, really, is just the fuzzy assumptions people mostly come in with that these articles are "about abortion", whatever that happens to mean to them, and the issue is how to title the "about abortion" articles.  But I cannot emphasize enough that what we are doing here is not defining how Wikipedia will cover abortion, broadly construed, but very precisely choosing the titles of two very specific articles that have meaningful history and context.  Now, I suspect that the actual original scopes of these articles, when they were titled Pro-choice and Pro-life, was not abortion, it was the movements, but the vagueness of using those adjectives as titles immediately started screwing that up and causing confusion.  Adding "movement" to each title clarifies that and, I think, would get us back on track.  You're right, of course, that what might seem natural could escape people entirely, but that can hopefully be addressed by repeating, early and often, that choosing X as an article's title means X is its scope, maybe with an added "per WP:TITLE".  I don't think there's a need for "in the United States" on the "pro-X movement" variations in any event; even if any movement outside the US identifies using those terms, which I have not heard about, the US movements are certainly WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for them. —chaos5023 (talk) 16:21, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * (Abortion-rights movement and Anti-abortion movement, on the other hand, would need "in the United States" as a suffix or "United States" as a prefix just to achieve a coherent scope.) —chaos5023 (talk) 17:30, 7 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Oppose - Several people have said that it makes sense to have a single article. As far as I can see it, this RfC is different to most in that we are deliberately getting options and arguments on the table in a structured way at the beginning, before going on to assess them later.  Not applying that principle to an option that several people have argued for weakens the whole process.  Your point about a lot of the article content ending up in articles called "The pro-choice movement in the United States" (or simiular) is a good one.  That also has to be considered.  Probably people will decide they don't want to go that way after all.  I for one would say that it makes sense to have something like "Opinion and debate on abortion" and then "Opinion and debate on abortion in the United States".  Any page that mentions movements or pro-X will obviously suffer from the same problems as have been outline already.  Yaris678 (talk) 15:43, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Starting with a structured overview of options and arguments does not mean that we're brainstorming here. Various people have reacted to the sight of a list of options as meaning that we should start following the usual Wikipedia approach of throwing a bunch of shit at the wall to see what sticks.  I respectfully submit that following the usual Wikipedia approach here is a lovely way to get the usual Wikipedia clusterfuck. —chaos5023 (talk) 16:27, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Err..
 * What's wrong with brainstorming? I'd say that's exactly what we need.
 * So Wikipedia is a clusterfuck? I think that the wiki ways works most of the time.
 * Yaris678 (talk) 17:05, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * There's nothing wrong with brainstorming in general. And I fully support people brainstorming -- in this talk page.  But let's keep the actual product we're working on to things that are good ideas, or at least can be described as such by somebody while keeping a straight face.  If you want to see what's wrong with brainstorming as the entire process, I need refer you no further than the proposal that got us our current titles.
 * Yes. We need to do better here.  We've needed to do better for months, but better late than never.
 * —chaos5023 (talk) 17:35, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * When this RFC fully opens, the response will likely be massive and fast-moving. If we are still "brainstorming" at that stage, the result will be nothing less than chaos (so to speak).  I believe that is the purpose behind this two-stage RFC.  Now is the time for brainstorming and talking though ideas that are not fully coherent.  If you want to rebut the merits of chaos5023's arguments, then by all means do so, but I don't think that "the RFC should be for brainstorming" is a sufficient reason to oppose this proposal. --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 17:59, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * BlueMoonlet, Can I check what you are saying? Are you saying that now is the time for brainstorming and talking though ideas that are not fully coherent but that we should remove one of the ideas that some people think need exploring?  Yaris678 (talk) 08:38, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Now is the time for brainstorming and for talking through the ideas produced by that brainstorming. Once such discussion (which is what we are doing right now) identifies ideas that are not fully coherent, those should be removed from the RFC before it opens fully so that the masses are presented with clear and coherent choices.
 * As I read the discussion up to now, chaos5023 has argued that the single-article option is not functionally different from the two-article options, because one article on the debate and two articles on the opposing movements will exist in either case, and that all that is needed to address the concerns that led to the single-article option's proposal is to clearly define the scope of each article's content. OwainDavies (who came up with the single-article option by raising valid concerns about the scope of the articles' content) doesn't seem to disagree.  So it seems to me that the issue is largely resolved.  As far as I can tell, you have not made any disagreement with this settlement, but have argued instead that all possible options should be presented as part of the full RFC, and that is what I am rebutting.
 * Of course, if I have misunderstood anything, I would be glad to be corrected. Best, --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 11:43, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I guess the source of confusion here is that I have some sympathy with the idea of merging the two articles but I have no sympathy with the idea of then creating articles such as "The pro-choice movement in the United States". I agree with chaos that creating articles like "The pro-choice movement in the United States" is not functionally different to the current situation... but that's why I wouldn't do it.  This is the sort of thing that I would have liked to have made... had the thing been left on the table.  Yaris678 (talk) 13:30, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Hey, y'know, Yaris, if you want to seriously brainstorm, not just use the concept as an excuse for poor curation, we should do that. The right way.  Start a talk page section where people just write out whatever naming schemes they can think of, no analysis or discussion or judgment allowed, one after another.  Whenever you decide brainstorming time is done, then you go back over the resulting list and pick out ones that look worthwhile for further development, and give them some analysis and discussion and judgment.  Ones that seem to be good ideas with no obvious dealbreakers can then go into the RFC proper. —chaos5023 (talk) 22:20, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually, what the hell, I'll start. —chaos5023 (talk) 22:24, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * It wasn't me who first used the term brainstorming. If that is what you mean by it then good.  I think the list you have generated is worth adding to and then considering.  Those ideas that people like can be expanded on at Requests for comment/Abortion article titles with sources, aguments for and againsts etc.  Yaris678 (talk) 13:30, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Simple Solutions:
Since the issue seems to be how to “label” a group involved on one side or another of a contested issue, it seems to be the best solution would be to use whatever term THEY prefer, much as the Southern States called themselves “The Confederate States” and the Northern States called themselves “The United States” during the American Civil War (other examples abound by the millions, that was just an easy example). Overall, “Pro-Choice” and “Pro-Life” seem to be the terms preferred by the contesting positions. A. J. REDDSON


 * Strong Support we could even add one of those self-evident tags along the lines of "This is a fluid article on which We The Community are unable to impose our policy on  You The Reader” Tom Pippens (talk) 19:29, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

NEO
Let's please avoid creating altogether new terms here. If, as some are suggesting, common usage varies by country (or at least common usage in the US may be different than most of the rest of the world), then the names should reflect that. And if pages need to be split (or merged) to reflect that, so be it. Shouldn't the starting point be to list how they are referred to in other places and start from there? That's somewhat done above in the pros and cons, but maybe that should be clearer? I really don't care what the final names are, I just would like to see this done accurately. - jc37 19:01, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * WP:NEO
 * Can you be more specific about the neologisms to which you are referring? --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 19:53, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Looking over Requests for comment/Abortion article titles (and note there were more options since removed), there have been examples which are not in common usage, but just things that Wikipedians have cobbled together to fit whatever perspective they have, rather than what actual terms used in reliable sources. - jc37 19:57, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * While numerous arguments have been raised against doing any kind of constructed title, I think we're kind of stuck with at least having the possibility in the layout, given that our current titles are constructed. It's not news to anybody that those options involve blowing off sourcing completely, and that counts against them in all kinds of ways, so hopefully enough people will care about sourcing that they won't be adopted. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:42, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I would hope that any argument against doing any kind of constructed title would not be taken too seriously, considering that WP:AT reads In some cases a descriptive phrase is best as the title (e.g., Population of Canada by year). These are often invented specifically for articles... (my emphasis). This particular section of the policy is not stable unfortunately but that's its current phrasing and its effect at least hasn't changed for at least the last 500 edits . Andrewa (talk) 03:19, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I take WP:COMMONNAME and WP:TITLECHANGES perfectly seriously, thanks. The example from the text you quote highlights how irrelevant the section it occurs in is; certainly constructed titles are appropriate when there's no sourcing-based name to use for a topic.  That isn't anything like what we have here. —chaos5023 (talk) 04:28, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I take all policies and guidelines seriously.
 * Agree That isn't anything like what we have here. But where in policy does it say that constructed titles are only appropriate when there's no sourcing-based name to use for a topic? That's what it needs to say for your argument above to be valid. And you have offered no explanation as to why WP:AT should be irrelevant here. Andrewa (talk) 05:48, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Brainstorming options
This section is for brainstorming outcomes for this RFC. This is brainstorming in its precise sense: the exercise is to come up with options, no matter how crazy, without evaluating, discussing or judging them in any way. That stuff happens after brainstorming time is over. To participate, add as many options as you like to the list below (without adding duplicates, please). —chaos5023 (talk) 22:28, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I have just expanded and refactored the list. I encourage everyone else to add their own ideas.  Yaris678 (talk) 19:36, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I have undone the refactoring, though not the sorting and expansion. Please, however, just add entries.  This is not a process where we figure out anything about these options.  If this doesn't match what you think "brainstorming" is, please see Brainstorming. —chaos5023 (talk) 20:49, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah. I have read brainstorming.  I agree that it is important to just get ideas out there without editing or making judgements too soon.  I would argue that the judgement I made was so obvious that it should be an exception... but you obviously disagree so I'm happy to leave it like that.  Maybe one day I'll write an essay called User:Yaris678/Brainstorming on Wikipedia or something.  Yaris678 (talk) 08:17, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * "Withhold criticism" doesn't mean "withhold criticism except when it's super completely obvious to you that your criticism is clearly something nobody could ever disagree with to the point that it's germane to a process that criticism has been explicitly excluded from". It means "withhold criticism". —chaos5023 (talk) 17:36, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I think this is a case where I was applying Ignore all rules but you don't think the Ignore all rules was applicable. Can't we just leave it at that?  Yaris678 (talk) 20:00, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Consider it left. —chaos5023 (talk) 20:31, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm thinking of calling for the end of the brainstorming phase and moving on to evaluating options tomorrow, Wednesday March 14, giving us plenty of time to analyze, discuss, add any options that make the final cut to the main page, and let people give them a solid going-over there before voting commences on March 23. Any feedback as to whether this is too early, too late, or just right is welcome. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:04, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yep. Progressing to the evaluation phase later today sounds like the best balance of time to generate ideas and time to evaluate them.  Yaris678 (talk) 08:17, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay, calling time on the brainstorming. I'll open a new section for chewing on what's worthwhile here shortly, with some approach to structure to hopefully keep it not too crazy. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:54, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I've just added three more options. Hopefully that won't confuse the evaluation of the options because we've only just started.  Yaris678 (talk) 08:40, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * No problem. It's not like any of this is official procedure; just trying to give it some vague but reasonable process. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:45, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Cool. BTW.  I'm gonna be off wiki for a few days.  I will help out with the evaluation of options when I get back.  I agree with the approach you have taken so far.  Yaris678 (talk) 18:09, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * United States abortion-rights movement / United States anti-abortion movement
 * Abortion-rights movement in the United States / Anti-abortion movement in the United States
 * Abortion-rights movements / Anti-abortion movements
 * Pro-choice politics / Pro-life politics
 * Pro-choice advocacy / Pro-life advocacy
 * Pro-clinical-abortion / Pro-back-alley-abortion
 * Abortion-rights advocacy / Anti-abortion advocacy
 * Abortion rights support / Abortion opposition
 * Abortion-rights / Anti-abortion
 * Advocacy of choice / Advocacy of life
 * Advocacy of the murder of babies / Advocacy of the enslavement of women
 * Anti-life / Anti-choice
 * Anti-life movement / Anti-choice movement
 * Refactor by locality into Abortion-rights movement in YourCountryHere / Anti-abortion movement in YourCountryHere
 * Refactor by locality into YourCountryHere abortion-rights movement / YourCountryHere anti-abortion movement
 * Refactor by locality and merge into Abortion debate in YourCountryHere
 * Refactor into Pro-choice movement + Abortion-rights movements / Pro-life movement + Anti-abortion movements (pro-X addresses US, others address world)
 * Merge into United States abortion advocacy movements
 * Merge into Abortion debate, then refactor by locality into Abortion debate in YourCountryHere. Allow people to create for example Pro-choice movement in the United States.
 * Move to Pro-choice movement in the United States etc. and then take out the non-US specific stuff. (This gives a similar end result to the idea above but may be less hassle)
 * Merge into Abortion debate, then refactor by locality into Abortion debate in YourCountryHere. Dissuade people from creating for example Pro-choice movement in the United States to prevent issues of neutrality etc. from recurring.
 * Merge into Abortion debate (as per one of the above ideas) and then rename to one of the below:
 * Abortion debates
 * Debates about abortion
 * Opinions on abortion
 * Positions on abortion
 * Opinion and debate on abortion
 * Opinion and debate about abortion
 * Debate and opinion on abortion
 * Debate and opinion about abortion
 * Abortion debate and opinion
 * Abortion opinion and debate
 * Structure options to allow for mix and match, so people could support, for example, for Pro-choice movement / Anti-abortion movement or Support for legal abortion / Pro-life
 * Main topic: Abortion debate
 * Sub-topic(s): Abortion debate in the United States and Abortion debate in InsertCountryHere
 * Movements: United States Pro-life movement and United States Pro-choice movement and InsertCountryHere X-named movement(s) etc.
 * Support for abortion being legal / Opposition to abortion being legal
 * Support for abortion being legal / Opposition to abortion per se
 * Support for abortion being legal / Support for abortion being illegal
 * Opposition to abortion being illegal / Opposition to abortion being legal
 * Opposition to abortion being illegal / Support for abortion being illegal

Sources for "constructed titles"
Can I have a bit more explanation for this edit please? Yes. The reason that we are considering these "constructed titles" is not because they are in common usage. However, frequency of use can still inform the debate. It shows that Wikipedia isn't TOTALLY making stuff up. :-) Contrast the sources I found for "Abortion ban" to what you might get for "Abortion legality". Yaris678 (talk) 19:53, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Just because the term is sometimes used does not mean it is germane to the topic at hand. --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 20:00, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * All you are doing there is contradicting what I have said. You are not explaining why anything I have said is wrong.  Is there a reason why we wouldn't care if these terms were used by anyone other than Wikipedia?  I have agreed that frequency of use isn't the main reason for looking at "constructed titles" but it seems obvious to me that it will still inform things, as illustrated by my contrasting "abortion ban" with "abortion legality".  Yaris678 (talk) 20:13, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I guess I object to it mostly because I see it as clouding the issue and making it look as if the constructed titles have sourcing support when they don't. It smells like another attempt to have it both ways -- ignore sourcing far enough to use a constructed title but then bring it in as a justification later.  That seems both illegitimate and pointless to me.  Both the burden and the opportunity of the constructed titles lie in that we're making up whatever we can come up with that has the best descriptive merits -- so decide based on those, not a halfassed appeal to sources. —chaos5023 (talk) 20:27, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * From another angle: the point of the sourcing sections isn't just some kind of vague support, it's specifically for the purpose of illuminating how we should apply WP:COMMONNAME, one of the weightiest policies to be considered here, to the title in question. The option of using a constructed title simply ignores WP:COMMONNAME in hopes that the benefits that are available from arbitrary construction are more valuable.  So analyzing which constructed title comes closest to meeting that policy is ridiculous because if you're going to follow it at all, you should choose one of the options that actually has any justification under it. —chaos5023 (talk) 20:36, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I don’t necessarily agree with that way of looking at things. Bending the rules might be better than breaking them.
 * However, if we are going to go that way, then we need to be more stringent about how we use sources for the common-name-type titles. For example, should we place any significance on the fact that The Guardian once said “Anti-abortion movement tramples on US women again”?  Isn’t it more important to work out whether they have used that term a lot and whether or not it is in their style guide?
 * Yaris678 (talk) 09:08, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Constructing a title isn't bending the rules, it is breaking them. Trotting in sourcing afterward is like murdering somebody and then beaming with pride about what a good citizen you are because you had a license for the gun.
 * I don't disagree about the sourcing; frequency analysis and style guide support would be a lot more interesting and useful than a forest of "oh hey this happened once" links. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:04, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Archival of arguments regarding Pro-choice / Pro-life
As volunteered by BlueMoonlet, who originally added it, I have removed the Pro-choice / Pro-life option from the main page. I'm archiving it here so that people can easily see why it was discarded and why various arguments centering around those terms are specific to using them as bare titles without the word "movement". —chaos5023 (talk) 21:45, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * One of the objections to Pro-choice movement / Pro-life movement is that is falsely implies that each is a single movement. Removing the word movement from their titles is an obvious solution.  Some people might think that this introduces more problems than it solves, others may not.  This is not the time to decide if it introduces more problems than it solves.  We can decide that in the next phase (currently due to start on the 23rd of March).  Yaris678 (talk) 08:53, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * No, it's not. Or not on the record, anyway.  That's an objection to Abortion-rights movement / Anti-abortion movement.  Pro-choice movement / Pro-life movement scope to the US movements by those names, so there's nothing invalid about the implication of a single movement; they're each identifiably and coherently about a single movement.  The problem with Abortion-rights movement / Anti-abortion movement is that it's unclear what they're talking about and they use the terminology that's preferred in talking about abortion advocacy movements worldwide, which winds up making it sound like we're scoping to some kind of global abortion advocacy movements that don't exist.  Anyway, this is a perfectly fine time to trim options because they're useless, probably the best possible. —chaos5023 (talk) 14:46, 15 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm not understanding why these terms cannot be used when modified by an appropriate adjective.
 * No we shouldn't have a page merely called pro-life or pro-choice per the concerns lusted below and elsewhere, However, when adding the modifiers: United States and movement, that eliminates quite a bit of the problems noted below. And would then, bring us back in line with WP:COMMONNAME.
 * This would, in my opinion, be a decent compromise between those who was a single article (Abortion debate), and those who do not.
 * We would have an over view article, with the US movements split out for better explanations of those topics. This all being per WP:SS. - jc37 22:36, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * There is, in fact, nothing wrong with using these words (which are adjectives) attached to appropriate nouns. The removed option below is that of using the bare adjectives as titles, which, as you say, we shouldn't do. —chaos5023 (talk) 13:10, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

For

 * Believed to be the original names of the articles.
 * Parallel naming insofar as the terms are politically laden to comparable degrees.
 * Very concise.

Against

 * Poor job of setting a coherent scope for the articles' topics, as WP:TITLE prescribes; it isn't clear whether these titles scope the articles to the United States pro-choice and pro-life movements, some kind of pro-choice and pro-life philosophical positions, general platforms of advocacy on abortion, or something else. (It can be argued that scope vagueness, creep and drift resulting from this exact issue are a root cause of the contention this RFC arises from.)
 * It may be problematic that the term "pro-life" can be more wide-ranging. It might also refer to opposition to embryonic stem cell research (source) or euthanasia (source), or opposition to killing in any form including war and capital punishment (source).
 * Sourcing-based WP:COMMONNAME arguments for these titles are undermined by the lack of clarity to what is being named; the fact that Bill occurs in sources much more frequently than Bill Clinton is not an argument for using the former as the title for the article on the latter.
 * WP:TITLE indicates a preference for nouns as titles. These are adjectives.
 * These terms are activism buzzwords loaded with emotional baggage and relating to morality and ethics, as well as between-the-lines attacks on the opposition (as fascists or murderers, respectively); as such, they can be and often are viewed (especially by politically-active readers) not as "vague" in scope, but specifically and only descriptors of political positions and movements, vs. more general philosophical and legal viewpoints. This is a major driver of contention, as people who recognize the articles as obviously about the political movements concerned edit very differently from those who do not make the same connection.
 * Lack of clear scope leads to confusion as to whether these articles should be addressing global perspective, which then becomes problematic in that the articles are titled using heavily laden terms predominantly relevant to United States politics.
 * It may be problematic that these names are sometimes used outside the United States to refer to topics other than abortion, e.g. a gym in Glasgow, a recruitment firm in Nottingham.
 * These terms date to the 1970s, so cannot properly be applied to earlier abortion activism, writings, etc., per WP:NOR.

Evaluating brainstorming options
Okay, having arbitrarily declared brainstorming done, let's move on to evaluating options. I don't think there's any need to generate massive walls of text by conducting arguments around everything brainstormed; instead, let's proceed by having participants pick out whatever options they personally think are potentially good enough to close this RFC with and add them, with at least a beginning to arguments, below, using the same basic format as the main page. Arguments against any particular option or group of options can wait until somebody is willing to nominate them. —chaos5023 (talk) 22:03, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

United States abortion-rights movement / United States anti-abortion movement
Presumably any info that is generally applicable (and not US-specific) would be moved to Abortion debate.

For

 * As Abortion-rights movement / Anti-abortion movement, but with WP:COMMONNAME support possibly reduced by the lesser frequency of these phrases in sources.
 * Reading reasonably strong WP:COMMONNAME support for this option may be justified by the "United States" prefix being a "natural disambiguation" per WP:PRECISION.
 * Provides a completely clear scope where Abortion-rights movement / Anti-abortion movement does not.
 * Therefore obtains all the same scoping-related benefits as Pro-choice movement / Pro-life movement.
 * Possibly does an even better job of clearly defining scope than Pro-choice movement / Pro-life movement, though given WP:PRIMARYTOPIC there is not a lot of ambiguity to resolve there.

Against

 * As Abortion-rights movement / Anti-abortion movement, without the scope difficulties.
 * Not very concise.

For

 * As Abortion-rights movement / Anti-abortion movement, but with WP:COMMONNAME support possibly reduced by the lesser frequency of these phrases in sources. It isn't clear whether would actually be the case, as the interaction of pluralization with WP:COMMONNAME isn't completely obvious.
 * Provides a completely clear scope (in this case, of global coverage of relevant movements) where Abortion-rights movement / Anti-abortion movement do not.
 * Therefore obtains most of the same scoping-related benefits as Pro-choice movement / Pro-life movement. Because this is a much broader scope, though, various of the details don't shake out the same way, and we wind up in a situation where, if material were to be refactored, it would be more likely to be moved from Abortion debate to these articles than the other way around, which may be undesirable.
 * Arguably beneficial in terms of global perspective because of covering related worldwide movements in each article.

Against

 * As Abortion-rights movement / Anti-abortion movement, without the scope difficulties.
 * Arguably sets an inappropriately broad scope that would call for a WP:SPLIT, since numerous regional abortion advocacy movements are likely to be discrete, notable topics capable of supporting independent articles (and the United States movements unquestionably are).
 * Arguably out of keeping with WP:PRESERVE because of rescoping articles originally about the US movements to global coverage.

For

 * As Pro-choice movement / Pro-life movement and Abortion-rights movements / Anti-abortion movements.
 * Seems okay in terms of WP:PRESERVE since we retain articles on the US movements.

Against

 * As Pro-choice movement / Pro-life movement and Abortion-rights movements / Anti-abortion movements, with the scope issues of the latter at least partially addressed by retaining articles specific to the US movements.
 * A strong case can be made that global perspective is better addressed by a single article, like Abortion debate, than by one article handling each side of the advocacy spectrum.
 * Possibly out of keeping with the intent of the RFC by specifying a refactor into four articles, not two.
 * Possibly superfluous to a resolution in favor of Pro-choice movement / Pro-life movement, provided that no finding was made prohibiting the creation of Abortion-rights movements / Anti-abortion movements.

====Refactor into Abortion debate as the main/central article. And have Abortion debate in The United States and Abortion debate in InsertCountryHere, splitting out country-specific (or region-specific) information from the main article as necessary per WP:SS.====

For

 * Removes the issue about the "movements" entirely from the article names.
 * Addresses the international vs. US bias concerns in naming.
 * Addresses concerns over framing and labelling by giving a space where the uses of the different terms can be described, rather than plumping for a specific term.
 * Easier to meet requirements of WP:NPOV (especially WP:CRITS) as both sides of each debate will be contained within each article.
 * "Creating separate articles with the sole purpose of grouping the criticisms or to elaborate individual points of criticism on a certain topic would usually be considered a POV fork, per Content forking"

Against

 * Possibly out of keeping with the intent of the RFC by specifying a merge and refactor.
 * Appears to counterindicate having separate articles on the US pro-choice and pro-life movements, which, as distinct topics of encyclopedic interest, are normally things we would cover in their own regard. Similarly for any other regional movements that may be notable in and of themselves.
 * This would be a fairly radical refactoring and so is recommended against by WP:PRESERVE.

For

 * As Support for legality of abortion / Opposition to legality of abortion, but probably easier to understand and a more natural form of words.
 * Consequently, easier to comply with "If possible, the page title should be the subject of the first sentence." in WP:LEADSENTENCE.

Against

 * As Support for legality of abortion / Opposition to legality of abortion, without the grammatical/style difficulties.
 * A bit awkward and in a more colloquial, unscholarly tone than Wikipedia typically adopts.

Arguments common to variations that construct opposition in terms of legality
Do the arguments in this section make sense to other editors? I suspect there's an intention that isn't coming across in the wording. It seems as if the "against" arguments imply that all those opposed to abortion are also opposed to free will. I'm reasonably sure that is not the case. LeadSongDog come howl!  20:07, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I do not understand at all how you get that. —chaos5023 (talk) 20:10, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Formal proposal to use instant-runoff voting
In the discussion section on the main page, several people have noted that, given the number of sometimes-very-similar options we're likely to be choosing between, some form of ranked voting system should be employed in order to avoid spoiler effects. Instant-runoff voting has been mentioned repeatedly in this connection, with no other specific systems yet nominated. To help ensure that this concern doesn't get lost in the shuffle and that we have documented process around the decisionmaking involved, I hereby propose that the voting phase of this RFC be conducted using instant-runoff voting.


 * Support as proposer. —chaos5023 (talk) 19:43, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment Would it not also be possible, this being a structured discussion, to first decide upon which route we want to take as a community (e.g. restructure into U.S. pro-choice / pro-life articles, one article on all issues concerning abortion, one article on abortion, two for pro/contra abortion, etc.). And only then decide upon which title we should use? That way we would also avoid the spoiler effect. JHS nl (talk) 10:17, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Interesting point JHSnl. I think you are saying that we should do some kind of runoff voting but that it doesn't have to be instant-runoff voting.  I agree with that.  Your specific idea of having one round where we decide the broad approach and another where we decide the specific article titles could work.  However, I can see someone saying "My preferred option is to use the terms pro-life and pro-choice, but I hate saying Pro-choice movement so I'd rather have some boring phrase like Support for abortion being legal than end up with that".  Fortunately a WP:NOTVOTE doesn't have to work the same way as a vote.  We have admins whose job it is to work out the consensus.  I would like to propose the following:
 * When people comment, they should be encouraged to give their prefered option and the reasons for it, as usual.
 * They should also be encouraged to state if they have any second-best or third-best options, or more if they want. Preferably indicating a reason for these too.
 * The closing admins should be encouraged to see if they can determine a consensus, as usual.
 * This time they should also take people's second and later options into account, in a way roughly equivalent to instant-runoff voting.
 * If a consensus can't be determined, closing admins have the option of asking for a further round of comments from a reduced set of options. Preferably there will be only two specific options, but admins should use their discretion.
 * Yaris678 (talk) 11:12, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that the March 23 comment phase and the vote are actually the same thing. The RFC header says "comments from the community and a vote will take place", and the hatnote for the comment section says "This discussion is not a vote, and as per all discussions, comments will be weighed based on strength of argument".  Either the hatnote is just wrong, or the vote phase is separate. —chaos5023 (talk) 11:19, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, either the RFC header is using completely inappropriate language, or ArbCom didn't specify a WP:NOTVOTE, they specified an actual vote. —chaos5023 (talk) 11:22, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I have requested clarification from Steven Zhang at User talk:Steven Zhang. Yaris678 (talk) 11:44, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Clarification not being apparently forthcoming in any regard whatsoever, I'd suggest that it's better to use a well-known and well-established voting methodology whose mathematical properties have been studied and explored than to use one that was invented on the spot. —chaos5023 (talk) 02:48, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * (note: this was in response to JHSnl above, not Yaris678) As far as I can tell, that creates spoiler effects rather than eliminating them.  Forcing resolution at the broad-abstraction level before individual options come into play blocks proper consideration of those individual options and particularly interferes with people whose preference order skips around between the broad abstractions.  It's like saying, first we'll decide whether we want a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian or Green president, then we'll decide on the individual.  It doesn't help. —chaos5023 (talk) 11:14, 21 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree that it seems sensible to use something more flexible than yes/no voting. AGK  [•] 19:59, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your feed back AGK. For the benefit of those who don't know, AGK is on the arbitration committee.
 * AGK, do you think we should go for instant-runoff voting, or something more flexible still, like what I suggested above at 11:12, 21 March 2012 (UTC)? Or would you prefer us to discuss it here and agree something between ourselves?
 * Yaris678 (talk) 12:45, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose instant-runoff voting. I'll repeat my comments from the Ireland debate ("Alternative Vote" is a different name for it):
 * The Alternative Vote is often mistakenly believed to be a voting system that is biased in favour of middle of the road compromise positions and produces the most consensual outcome. In actual fact it is closer to a "last person standing" contest and tends to first show which are the two or three most popular positions and then transfers votes from other positions to determine which of the most popular prevails. Middle of the road compromises are frequently very few people's first choice and often drop out early on before they can benefit from later preference transfers. In an election between candidates the candidates themselves may move towards the compromise position as part of a preference friendly strategy, which contributes to the impression AV is compromise friendly, but that is a product of how candidates react to the system rather than the system itself. In a vote between several predefined options with some quite polarised positions it is not going to produce a compromise but rather it will show which popular option prevails over another.
 * If there is to be another multi-option poll to seek a compromise then it needs to be run with a system that is favourable to compromise options and allows them a chance even if few have them as their first option. But that needs to be balanced with being a system that's easy to grasp for the layperson who can look at the count sheet and simply understand how the outcome is produced. I think the Borda count comes closest to these in a way that AV doesn't. (For that matter Condorcet fails because it's just too complicated to explain and make the count sheet comprehensible.)
 * Timrollpickering (talk) 14:03, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the response! Your points against IRV/AV are well taken, and I'd be entirely happy to use Borda count instead.  For that matter, since I'm the only actual support listed in this proposal, I think I'll just close it and open a new one for Borda count. —chaos5023 (talk) 14:33, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Promoting evaluated options to the main page
So we've had some time to chew on the options under ; let's start looking at promoting them to the main RFC. As matters stand, I'm inclined to immediately promote United States abortion-rights movement / United States anti-abortion movement, Abortion-rights movements / Anti-abortion movements, and Support for abortion being legal / Opposition to abortion being legal. The first two I'd add by expanding the current Abortion-rights movement / Anti-abortion movement to an overarching section that would encompass the new options; the third fits into the constructed titles section easily. The two refactoring options I'm on the fence about and I'm not inclined to promote them unless someone speaks up and says they strongly feel they should be included. If that happens, my thought would be to make a new section titled "Arguments and policies regarding refactoring-based options" to encompass them. Please let me know what thoughts you have about this. —chaos5023 (talk) 20:01, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I strongly believe that the option of refactoring into a single article should be there. Several people have already suggested it as a solution.  If we go on to a !vote, some people will probably say “The best option is to just have a single article”... but it will be harder to judge the support for that idea because it won't be stated as an option up front.  This could leave the closing admins in a bit of a quandary.  Yaris678 (talk) 10:49, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay, fair enough. I'll bring it in, then.  I don't think it's accurate to speak of it as a "single article" option at all, though, since considered that way it's a completely inadvisable merge that immediately calls for at least one split.  At best it's "merge and refactor by region". —chaos5023 (talk) 15:14, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅. Whew. —chaos5023 (talk) 16:29, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Ethics vs. Law: pro-choice movement / pro-life movement
I may well be out of my depth here (and definitely new to the WP discussion), only having come in via the link at the top of my watchlist, and likewise may have nothing new to add. Assuming that I am right in that this is about the choice of two titles: Am I right in assuming that everything to do with the ethics of abortion, and the relevant debates on the ethics of abortion are NOT to be included in the 'legalization' articles? Likewise the history of political lobbyists/activists such as the 'pro-life' ethico-political lobby (and their antagonists) are being dealt with elsewhere (outside of any mention concerning their lobbying activities?
 * "Support for the legalization of abortion"
 * "Opposition to the legalization of abortion"

I am still not really sure I understand if this is about depicting a popular debate or a legislative one (even within democracies, the two are surely different?).

I guess I am missing something here. What is the content meant for? For instance the current article at Support for the legalization of abortion appears to be conflating a load of different ideas, even though the lede specifies that the page is an article about the 'pro-choice' ethico-political lobby, by the time it gets to the UK it has nothing to do with the presence (or absence) of a 'pro-choice' movement, and instead talks about the legislative status of abortion.

I just don't think that one can depict such ethico-political lobbies under the existing titles. I don't see anything wrong with using titles of the groups (as is done elsewhere) with eg pro-choice movement and pro-life movement (addendum:) 'legalisation' to me appears to reflect a small part of the movements activities. They appear to be very involved in promoting a shift in social consciousness, in a manner similar to groups such as the anti-fur movement. (further addendum:) If one takes out the 'the legalization of' phrase from the titles above - one ends up with 'support for abortion' vs. 'opposition to abortion' which also doesn't make sense, in that there is a spectrum of decision-making points (as indicated by global legislature) regarding the ethics of abortion. If the titles "pro-life / pro-choice" are not suitable, why not just have titles as: "movements that promote a loosening of abortion law" / "movements that promote a tightening of abortion law" ?

I'm sure that all of this has been discussed endlessly. I will stop my coffee-driven thoughts for the moment. (20040302 (talk) 10:19, 22 March 2012 (UTC))


 * Hi 20040302,
 * The whole thing can be baffling at times... but be bold, as they say.
 * "Support for the legalization of abortion" and "Opposition to the legalization of abortion" are the titles that two articles currently go under. These names come from a big debate that happened a while ago about names such as "Pro-choice movement".  It was decided that these names were more neutral than any of the common names out there.  However, there are a number of issues with them, as you correctly identify.  We are currently going through a process of determining what we want them to be called and you are more than welcome to join in.
 * Some of the issues with names relates to the scope of the article. Ideally, the title should describe the topic.  Therefore, in choosing names for these articles we are effectively choosing the topic they should cover.  Of course, how broadly to interpret the word topic is another question.  I don't think anyone has raised the issue of whether or not ethics should be included.  I would say that it should, because obviously ethics influences the law.
 * Some options for titles are already on Requests for comment/Abortion article titles and we recently brainstormed some other ideas. If you have any points to add to  then please do.
 * We haven’t considered "movements that promote a loosening of abortion law" / "movements that promote a tightening of abortion law" but I think there is something in that. Or maybe variants of that such as:
 * "Promotion of a loosening of abortion law" / "Promotion of a tightening of abortion law"
 * "Promotion of abortion law loosening" / "Promotion of abortion law tightening"
 * "Support for abortion law loosening" / "Support for abortion law tightening"
 * "Support for abortion law loosening" / "Opposition to abortion law loosening"
 * I can already think of some arguments for and against these ideas, but I’ll see what other people think.
 * Your point about ethics has made me think though... about broader names. Some have already been suggested but maybe we need a focus in this area.  How about something like:
 * "Support for the toleration of abortion" / "Opposition to the toleration of abortion".
 * Yaris678 (talk) 11:36, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * If we want to get any of those in, we should do it quick. It's almost the 23rd by Wikipedia's clock. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:15, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi there fellows, hey. Sorry for the last minute stuff - and then I get hit by a whammy load of work at the office. I'm just thinking about the separation of concerns (to borrow heavily from Dijkstra); it seems that there are popular activist movements, several of which may be organisations (federated, associated, or not). Some of them are involved in promoting an ethical stance, which may in turn entail some form of legislative impact. My thoughts earlier didn't really include those groups who are deeply involved but wish to maintain the current legal status quo, and my feeling is that neither of the current titles really help to include those groups also (which I guess could involve quite a few of the 'pro-choice' groups in the Northern hemisphere). It seems fine to me to choose another arbitrary bipartite division into "those who seek a change to abortion laws"  vs. "those who do not seek a change to abortion laws". Likewise, if we were to look at the ethics of abortion (for which there is an existing article) 'arguments for tightening abortion law' vs. 'arguments for loosening abortion law' seems to be a better way of handling (and centralising) the various ethical angles,  while e.g. the 'Pro-life movement' would be about the history, organisation and activities of said groups, with links to policy pages, and yet more links to related ethics pages.  I may be wrong, but I believe that any lack of clarity here (the rfc) is to do with conflation. I will think more on this. I may well be too late for the deadline; sobeit. (20040302 (talk) 18:35, 22 March 2012 (UTC))
 * Some interesting points. Is it possible to quickly turn them into options for a vote?  I'm setting out below what I think about the two most promising new sets of titles.  20040302/Chaos/everyone feel free to change these and add them to WP:RFC/AAT as you see fit.  Unless someone thinks of a really strong reason against the toleration ones, then I really think those ones need to but put on to WP:RFC/AAT. Yaris678 (talk) 19:14, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

For

 * Same as Support for abortion legality / Opposition to abortion legality but probably gets at the nuance better by allowing for opinions other than pure "it should be legal" and "it should be illegal".

Against

 * Similar to Opposition to abortion legality in that you are still going to get some saying "I'm not opposed to the abortion law loosening. I'm opposed to abortion: period."
 * Nonsensical in jurisdictions where abortion law has always been loose.
 * Feels like slightly fluffy language.

For

 * Same as Support for abortion legality / Opposition to abortion legality but probably gets at the nuance better by allowing for opinions other than pure "it should be legal" and "it should be illegal".
 * Retains symmetricity but also provides a positive stance for both sides

Against

 * Similar to Opposition to abortion legality in that you are still going to get some saying "I'm not opposed to the abortion law tightening. I'm opposed to abortion: period." (Are there people like that? Even when a birth puts the mother's life at severe risk?)
 * Feels like slightly fluffy language.
 * Does not address those who wish to maintain the legal status quo.

For

 * Toleration can be interpreted in terms of law, ethics and specific actions, which is arguably the desired scope of the articles.
 * Therefore, arguably describes the desired topic of our articles more accurately than anything else suggested (describing the topic is key to titles, especially constructed ones, as per WP:TITLE)
 * Arguably neutral like the other constructed titles, but without any issues over whether legality is the right framing.

Against

 * Unusual choice of words.
 * Arguably not neutral because "toleration" implies that abortion is something that people would still rather avoid. Although arguably this is the point: virtually no one is in favour of abortion per se.  Some people argue that there is a right to an abortion, but virtually all of those people would prefer a situation where unwanted pregnancies didn't happen or were much rarer.

Thoughts on new proposals
I'm not sure that all three should be added, but I believe that there are enough nuanced differences to AR least include one or two of the above (Soz, not sure how vote works - count this as a vote) 20040302 (talk) 19:56, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Suggested delay to the proceedings
I think it would help if we delay going on to the next stage because:
 * 1) We're still looking for clarity at
 * 2) User:Steven Zhang, who is probably the best person to provide clarity, is on a wikibreak.
 * 3) It might help to think about some of the ideas at a bit longer

Yaris678 (talk) 13:57, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I am in the process of filing a request for clarification in re voting directly with ArbCom at Arbitration/Requests/Clarification. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:56, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Yaris678 (talk) 16:20, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * ArbCom's feedback has been that it's basically up to us, and that it seems useful to employ the general form of a vote but that, since there are closing admins and all, vetting input for consistency with policy and guidelines is still part of the process. They also suggested that we specifically solicit the feedback of the named closing admins, since they're the ones who actually have to make sense of the results.  Which seems awfully smart.  So I have done so.  I believe we'll see some forward motion soon. —chaos5023 (talk) 23:20, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Formal proposal to use Borda count
My proposal to use instant-runoff voting, above, resulted in the raising of some compelling arguments against that system and the suggestion of Borda count as an alternative. Finding that option considerably preferable, and my being the only registered support IRV/AV had, I have closed that proposal and now counterpropose that we utilize Borda count for the voting phase.

Edit: Per ArbCom's clarification in re voting, the results obtained by the proposed Borda count voting would be advisory to the closing admins, not binding. The benefit obtained is in helping clarify the relative degree of support editors intend to provide to varying options. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:54, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Support as proposer. —chaos5023 (talk) 14:36, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Support per my comments above. Borda combines a consensus friendly system with being reasonably easy for the layperson to understand a results sheet. Timrollpickering (talk) 15:02, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Support this proposal, now that we have clarified that Borda count is advisory to the closing admins, not binding. Crossing out previous conditional support.  Yaris678 (talk) 16:44, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Conditional support. This system looks fine to me if we are going for a strict voting system.  Wikipedia doesn't normally go for strict voting.  I would prefer something like I suggested earlier, where we rely on the closing admins to determine consensus and give them leyway to open a further round.  Obviously the admins could be asked to look at things in a Borda count way but then use there discretion.  If the intention of who got this thing going (Steven Zhang, I think) was to do strict voting and there was a good reason for that then I give this idea my full support.  Yaris678 (talk) 15:28, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * It's really ArbCom's show, not Steven's, and they did use the word "vote" (and phrase "community vote"), but I'm not completely sure they didn't mean the usual WP:NOTVOTE. (I mean, this is ArbCom, though, so I'd generally expect them to use their terminology precisely.)  Either way, the language is clear that people are requested to present the reasoning behind their choices. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:49, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes. The precise meaning of the word vote, in this context, is the issue here.  I'd be very happy to use something that looks like Borda count but I don't want us to inadvertently constrain the discretion available to the closing admin more than ArbCom originally intended... which is why it would be really helpful if someone from ArbCom could enlighten us at this point.  Yaris678 (talk) 16:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Completely agreed. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:01, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * If you're going to use a voting system to determine the result, why even bother having closing admins? Or are you suggesting we use the Borda count results as advisory when we determine consensus?  If so, I think you are effectively leaving us closers hamstrung, because can you imagine the problems if the "winner" via Borda count isn't determined to be the consensus choice? Black Kite (talk) 13:39, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Black Kite, someone else might give you a different answer to this, but the way I would like it to work is that you try to find a consensus, as you would with any other RfC. Borda count would only be a guide.  However, it is highly likely that you will conclude that there is no consensus, in which case the question is "what next?"  Possibly you could make a statement along the lines of "There was no clear consensus.  X was the most popular answer by Borda count." and then leave the community to discuss what happens next.  This sounds like a recipe for infinite delay, but of course we can do things like proposing in an RfC that the most popular name (by Borda count) be adopted and then take that to the arbitration committee if we get no consensus.  I would also like you to have the option of saying something like "There was no clear consensus.  By Borda count, X and Y were roughly equally popular.  Closing admins recommend that people discuss which of these two options would be preferable." I think some people would like you to say "There was no clear consensus.  X was the most popular by Borda count.  The current names were very unpopular. (Assuming that is the case.)  Therefore, the articles will be renamed to X."  However, I'll let others speak for themselves.  Yaris678 (talk) 18:24, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
 * If the result by Borda count is intended only for information purposes and not as the method by which the RfC will be determined, why bother with it in the first place?
 * If the RfC is set up as a vote, then that will discourage comment and discussion. Which is possibly fine, but only if comment and discussion are intended to be immaterial. FormerIP (talk) 18:31, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Several points:
 * We want to encourage people to list order of preference, rather than just a single preferred option.
 * There has already been a lot of discussion in generating the list of options.
 * I think some would say "that's enough discussion, let's vote and get the thing decided."
 * I still hold out some hope that something a little more consensual might be possible. I see the Borda count as a way to summarise which ideas have a reasonable level of support to help us to frame the next round of discussion, if, as seems likely, a firm consensus is not found in this round.
 * The closing admins are people that the community can trust to determine if any votes should be discounted and to add up the numbers correctly.
 * Yaris678 (talk) 21:44, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Black Kite, all we're trying to do is give ArbCom the RFC they asked for, and the wording they used called for a "community vote". Upon requesting clarification, the feedback we got seemed to indicate that a system like this would be useful so as to provide a clearer picture into where people's support lies than the usual support/oppose mechanics, but that reading consensus was a responsibility that still lay with the closing admins.  So what I suggest would be appropriate to do with something like Borda count results would be to use them in the obvious way of interpreting where the relative weight of support editors wish to provide options lies, while of course still relying on your own reading of their arguments and the collaborative analysis of the options provided.  I mean, doesn't this basically help you?  If not, what would? —chaos5023 (talk) 23:26, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, it helps, if it is clear that the Borda vote is advisory for the closing admins. The original post above gave the impression (or at least, didn't not give the impression) that it was being used as a method of determining a "result". Black Kite (talk) 14:02, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I think "Borda vote is advisory for the closing admins" summarises what I would like to see. Yaris678 (talk) 14:45, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, agreed. Both of the vote mechanic proposals were started before we'd gotten word from ArbCom regarding what they meant by a vote, so they were worded agnostically as to whether the actual tally would be binding or advisory.  I'll edit this one to improve it that way. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:52, 26 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Observation: This proposal may be somewhat moot, as the community seems to have settled into a pretty readable hybrid of Borda count with usual support/oppose sentiments. I'd be interested in any closing administrators' feedback as to whether explicitly calling for Borda count would be useful, or they're fine with matters just proceeding as they have been. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:05, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * By not settling the vote counting mechanics before the voting begins, I fear there is every chance that people will realise that each possible method produces a different result from the same raw vote data. At that point, who will voluntarily give up whichever obscure method they can find that definitely makes their preference win? --Nigelj (talk) 18:32, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Since vote counting is just a convenient consensus-surveying aid for the closing admins in this case, I don't think that's a concern. The consensus (including policy and guidelines) is what matters. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:47, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Ah, sorry. I misunderstood. I thought this was an exception to the usual !vote procedure, but an actual vote where "The vote's result shall be binding for a period of three years." I may have got it wrong, or things may have changed since I gleaned that impression. --Nigelj (talk) 19:18, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * No worries, that's what it sounded like to me too. ArbCom's clarification indicated otherwise. —chaos5023 (talk) 19:35, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * No closing admin input, opposition to Borda showing up in the voting (though not here, which is tedious), lots of hybrid support/oppose/Borda voting continuing. This proposal is looking more and more moot all the time.  I will probably close it as such soon unless somebody yells. —chaos5023 (talk) 01:38, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * See and .  Yaris678 (talk) 09:21, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose strict Borda, with alternate proposal As we all know, usual procedure per WP:VOTE would be that counting up all the responses in a Borda-like way, or in any other way that treats them as strict votes, will not by itself determine the outcome of this discussion. On the other hand, people want to have a conclusion to this issue and want to avoid a "no consensus" outcome, so I understand the inclination to bend the usual !vote rules.  Still, I am concerned about simply adding up the votes in Borda style.  For one thing, there is only one "pro-choice"/"pro-life" option, and nine "support"/"oppose" options, so a person who ranks the former first will still give a very high rank to the latter (or at least some versions of it), while a person who ranks the latter first will give a very low rank to the former.  Issues like this have a serious potential to give rise to unfairness if the vote is close.  Instead, I suggest that the closers weigh the rankings (and I think, in general, that the rankings were an inspired idea) carefully but without strictly counting votes.  Or, if strictly counting votes seems necessary, do it several different ways (such as including a four-option tally among "pro-choice/life", "anti-rights", "support/oppose", and "debate") and announce a consensus result only if several counting methods give you the same answer.  --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 17:25, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose Borda count as per Moonlet. St John Chrysostom ΔόξατωΘεώ 06:27, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * @BlueMoonlet, I agree that simply adding up votes (Borda style, or any other) is not what we want. That is why the proposal says Borda will be "advisory to the closing admins, not binding".  I agree that if you look at it as "common names vs constructed" it looks unfair because there are 4 common name options and 9 constructed ones.  It could be seen as even more unfair for the lone "merge" option.  However, I can't think of a better way to do it.  I agree with your basic point which, I think, is:
 * Ranking is good
 * Admins should be encouraged to look at it in several different ways.
 * I felt that this was adequately covered by Borda being "advisory to the closing admins, not binding". Arguably we should be more explicit with the closing admins that we want them to look at it in several different ways.
 * Yaris678 (talk) 13:22, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Comment: So far, besides the "support" comments we have: Which are these reasons? Yaris678 (talk) 14:32, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose Borda count for reasons already mentioned by others.--Canoe1967 (talk) 18:17, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * One "conditional support", since changed to support when it became apparent that the conditions would be met.
 * One "oppose strict Borda", which brought out some interesting ideas that are compatible with the proposal.
 * Two "oppose Borda", which are both supposedly for reasons already mentioned by others.
 * Oppose Borda count as per Moonlet. I'm a heavy editor on the Voting system article, so I am familiar with the ins and outs of the various systems. In this situation, I would strongly urge counting using multiple voting systems, as the role of voting is only advisory. Each voting system has its own advantages and disadvantages; but if a single option rises to the top in several voting systems, you can be confident that it's a good one. In particular: the results should be counted using Approval voting (counting as approvals all options mentioned in the preference listing, or all options mentioned positively in the text, whichever is closer to half of the options), Condorcet winner (matrix of results, with CW highlighted), and Borda. Specifically, since Borda is vulnerable to teaming, solo options like pro-life/pro-choice and refactor are almost guaranteed to do poorly. Other voting systems, such as Range voting or Majority judgment, are unfortunately not an option with the free-form balloting here. Homunq (talk) 18:41, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Some new ideas
Two other ideas that came to me: Yaris678 (talk) 17:05, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Support for acceptance of abortion / Opposition to acceptance of abortion
 * Acceptance is a more neutral word than toleration (in most contexts)... however I don't think this would gain any traction because it sounds a bit too much like "pro-abortion", which no one is.
 * Support for availability of abortion / Opposition to availability of abortion
 * This one sounds more promising to me. I think I will draft some quick for and against points.
 * Right. How about this?  Yaris678 (talk) 17:26, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

For

 * Title concentrates on the practical thing that differentiates the two sides, but leaves scope to discuss all the related points: legal, political, ethical etc.
 * Arguably neutral like the other constructed titles, but without any issues over whether legality is the right framing.

Against

 * Unusual choice of words (but arguably not as unusual as “toleration of abortion”).
 * Not concise.

Some new/old ideas
I'd like the following option to be included in the vote, if it's not too late: "Pro-life movement / Pro-choice movement, subject to the condition that the articles focus on those who identify themselves with those names (pro-life, pro-choice), with other information being moved to the Abortion debate article; and more generally that Wikipedia should avoid using "pro-life" and "pro-choice" as synonyms for "anti-abortion" and "pro-abortion-rights" or similar. If this is too long, then it could be phrased as "Pro-life movement/Pro-choice movement with conditions", and "conditions" could be linked to a page or section that spells out the conditions. Victor Yus (talk) 11:34, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Obviously there is Requests for comment/Abortion article titles, but I suppose your point is that you would be more hard-core about limiting the scope than people have been until now on these articles. That may be the way forward.  I can see problems with it... but then there are problems with all the options.  Arguably it should be put forward as an explicit separate option.
 * Perhaps, rather than having a separate page with the conditions, the best option would be to call the new option "Pro-life movement/Pro-choice movement with a tight scope" and then put the conditions immediatetly below the sub-heading, in a similar fashion to the explanation added at Requests for comment/Abortion article titles.
 * When it comes to the numbered list of options for the vote, perhaps each option should link to the relevant section in the page above so that people can quickly see the explanations, sources, arguments etc.
 * Yaris678 (talk) 13:37, 26 March 2012 (UTC)


 * It is basically too late for this, and the RFC was never structured so that imposing interpretation of scope and ancillary considerations, beyond that implicit in choosing the title, was appropriate. If you'd brought this up at the end of February, we might have been able to do something with it.  We can't today. —chaos5023 (talk) 01:40, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * You could add it to the list. There's already one "refactoring" option there, and this proposal is less radical than that one. And it's never too late for compromise, which is what this proposal might turn out to serve as. Victor Yus (talk) 07:00, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Victor, it's a bit odd that you are objecting to the whole process now, on the basis that an option you suggested only yesterday wasn't added to a list. Especially when you explicitly said "If it's not too late" yesterday.  I actually quite like your idea.  It is certainly worth considering that we should have more strictly limited scopes in this area.  Maybe the consensus will head in that direction, but it's still worth asking people what they think about the titles suggested.  08:45, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not objecting to the "whole process", just a couple aspects of it: the use of a numerical algorithm (though if it's understood that it's only advisory, as said below, then I don't care so much), and the apparently arbitrary decision that a particular proposal isn't allowed on the list (particularly since I don't think it was ever communicated that such a list was being drawn up formally and to a deadline).--Victor Yus (talk) 08:57, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that I would call the process of creating the list formal... but I know what you mean. I actually think we should have been more flexible about the deadline than we were. I agree that various things weren't clear.  This is similar to The pending changes fiasco.  I think on these large-scale community consultations it would help if someone was given authority to define exactly what is going on and especially to decide when a next stage starts and how that is to be communicated.  I thought that Steven Zhang might play that role here... but apparently not.  Yaris678 (talk) 09:31, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The RFC has always had those sidebars at the top of it that clearly delineated the intended phases by date, and Steven Zhang went to considerable lengths to get the March 23rd transition across. I mean, you seriously thought it was reasonable that we could start a comment and voting phase, let a bunch of people vote/!vote/whatever, and then start making radical revisions to the RFC structure?  That said, nobody has been draconian about the "deadline", either.  Multiple options were added to the main list after March 23rd (though significantly, before a lot of people had registered their positions), and I just edited them into the voting chart.  This one, however, isn't just an alternative set of titles, it requires fundamental revisions to the entire basis of the RFC and would ring massive changes to most or all of the existing options, and it's just not reasonable to do that to people well into a community vote.  Beyond that, though, it's also almost entirely superfluous in its extra requirements, because choosing an article's title chooses its scope.  Your problem seems to be mostly with the idea of having articles Pro-choice movement / Pro-life movement that, for no logical reason whatsoever, are covering abortion-related issues.  There is just no question of this.  If we choose those as titles, those are the topics, or what the hell do we even have WP:TITLE for?  Your fear of that outcome is literally the only validation it is receiving. —chaos5023 (talk) 13:06, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't be so sure. The dominant way of viewing this problem seems to be: "We have two articles about the two sides of the abortion debate. What are we going to call them?" Few people seem to recognize that it doesn't have to be that way, that we could decide to have more or fewer articles than that, or different articles with different scopes (option 12 is already a proposal along those lines, mine is another). I suspect that if 51% of people here vote for option 1, then the community will be deemed to have decided that Wikipedia should have an article on all anti-abortion sentiment called "Pro-life movement" (and the other one), and will thus appear to endorse the viewpoint that anti-abortionists are pro-life (as opposed to some of them calling themselves pro-life). Anyway, what you say about massive changes to other options (what changes? they would stay exactly as they are), or to the RFC structure (again, what changes? none at all), is entirely unfounded. As you say, options have been added to the list after the deadline; by allowing this to be done selectively for some proposals but not others, based only on your personal opinions about them, clearly isn't how a neutral organizer ought to be behaving.--Victor Yus (talk) 14:00, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I've noted that people are often coming in with the fuzzy idea that these articles are "our abortion articles" and that we're just choosing a label to go on the tin. It's my earnest hope that the "General points of policy relevant to all options" section helps break some of them out of that mindset, but regardless, they're just wrong and that view will not prevail.  There is no consensus in this project that articles can just get random titles and then have actual content scopes that are essentially unrelated to those titles, and there never will be.  People thinking that can happen is an irritating education problem, not a stumbling block of any kind.  Perhaps we can get the closing admins to include some language reinforcing this.  Your belief that your pet option can just be added in with no collateral damage is, however, also just wrong.  Once we expand the RFC so that it encompasses resolutions about scope beyond those directly implied by the titles, every existing option potentially calls for an unlimited number of sub-variations based on arbitrary scopes we might choose to impose.  At absolute minimum, Abortion-rights movement / Anti-abortion movement immediately acquires sub-variations of "scoped to international coverage of abortion advocacy movements" and "scoped to the United States movements", which completely screws up all the existing voting right there.  Even the suggestion that we can decouple scope from title turns this RFC into the clusterfuck to end all clusterfucks.  Therefore, I suggest that, instead of offering the "scope is whatever we feel like" position tacit support by pandering to it, you refocus on educating people that title implies scope.  As to the behavior of a neutral organizer, you know that I have no official capacity with regard to this RFC at all, right?  I'm just a random guy who's been taking care of a lot of shit work.  That said, I'm not against adding your option there because of bias, I'm against adding it because I'm capable of thinking through the implications of doing so, and so of noticing that the results would be spectacularly destructive. —chaos5023 (talk) 14:58, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Again, I hope you're right, and I'm sorry if I got the idea that you were more of a decision-maker here than you are. But if people were really clear about how titles imply scope, then the question would not even be as it is now. Because the proposals (at least, some of them) would not be mutually exclusive. It would be perfectly reasonable to have an article called "Pro-life movement" and an article about "Opposition to abortion" (or whatever). But most voters, and most people involved in the organization, and even ArbCom, seem to be viewing them as alternatives to be ranked and to lead to a choice of one. Even the way ArbCom's original question is phrased strongly implies this interpretation - that there is to be an overall anti-abortion article and an overall pro-abortion article (as the current titles already imply), and we're just choosing labels for them. You and I both seem to have realized that this is the wrong question, but I'm much less confident than you are that it isn't the question that people in fact think they're answering - or will be interpreted as having answered. --Victor Yus (talk) 15:49, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I have been making decisions about things, but to the extent that they haven't been reverted, it's probably because they've been good-ish decisions -- at least, it's definitely not because I have any authority here. The worst thing with adding a variation on Pro-choice movement / Pro-life movement with added scope clarification, I think, besides the fact that it invalidates all the existing voting, is that it implies that the "bare" version didn't require those scope interpretations.  What would you think about, instead, adding a Scope interpretation per WP:TITLE section to each option, explicitly clarifying what the expected scope of the articles would be under that option?  It's still very late to shoehorn that in, and may open up some really unpleasant cans of worms, but at least it wouldn't necessarily completely screw up the extant votes or imply that we can decide on scope separately from title. —chaos5023 (talk) 16:14, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

POV concerns about the term "abortion rights"
A few of the presented options for titles contrast "anti-abortion" with "abortion rights" (notably #2, which is garnering significant support from the community thus far). In the POV of those who oppose abortion, using a term like "abortion rights" in this context would be akin to contrasting "anti-death penalty" with "death penalty rights". It doesn't sit well with me, it feels quite biased. The only NPOV contrasting term for "anti-abortion" is "pro-abortion". —  FoxCE   (talk • contribs) 16:59, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * You can support the right to something without supporting that something. I support people's right to smoke, but I would much prefer it if they didn't.--Victor Yus (talk) 07:06, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

A better way than Borda?
There is obviously some people objecting to using Borda. This is starting to remind me of The pending changes fiasco. If someone wants to suggest a better way, then please do. Bear in mind that a simple "Support X" system is much more likely to result in no consensus and people complaining about "split votes". Yaris678 (talk) 07:49, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I mentioned earlier that the decision should be a practicle one, not a democratic one. Admin should decide on points made in each camp not just a head count that may be weighted to one or more camps.--Canoe1967 (talk) 18:21, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Interpreting the votes of people who do not rank all options
Assuming that no better way can be found, I think admins should have a large degree of leyway in how they interpret the votes of people who do not rank all options. However, it may be worth discussing ways of doing it in advance. I think the most important point is that people should not be able to give additional weight to their prefered option by ignoring the other options. This can be achieved by giving 14 points to the prefered option, 13 to the second option etc. and ensuring that the total number of points is always 105 (for 14 options). The ombox at the top of the voting section says "If you do not rank all options, remaining Borda count points will be distributed equally between the remaining options." This obviously covers most cases such as:

"My vote is for 2, with 1 being my second choice."

Which can give points as follows:

This idea can be extended to cover for more complicated votes such as:

"1 is my clear first choice. If there is a consensus to reject those terms, I would view 2, 5, 6, and 10 as viable titles."

Where it gets more complicated it is still doable, but obviously requires more interpretation by the closing admins. For example, this:

"Support 2, 3, 4, 14. Tolerate 1 (a pathetic euphemism, but a common one). Oppose rest, particularly all phrased in terms of legality, since it is an inaccurate depiction of the belligerents. (At least in the US, where current debate is mostly between subsidizing it and making it inconvenient.)"

Could be interpreted as this:

Options 12 and 13 are given more points than 5 to 11 because they do not imply that legality is the main issue.

Yaris678 (talk) 07:49, 27 March 2012 (UTC)


 * My view is that, while such numerical calculations can be informative, we should not be bound by them (and certainly not by any single one of them). It might be, for example, that a generally acceptable compromise emerges quite late in the day (meaning that most votes already cast will not take it into account). Or just that whatever numerical method is chosen is found to skew the results in one direction or another.--Victor Yus (talk) 08:43, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree entirely and have already said similar things. This is why the  says "results obtained by the proposed Borda count voting would be advisory to the closing admins, not binding".  Yaris678 (talk) 08:48, 27 March 2012 (UTC)


 * As someone who gave two numbers in my vote, I have to say I would expect the others to get zero. If I had wanted them to get points, I would have listed them. FormerIP (talk) 23:57, 27 March 2012 (UTC)


 * That would be an unfair system. It would allow some people to give a stronger signal in favour of their prefered option than others.  The important thing is the difference between the mean score and the score for the prefered option.  Doing it as above ensures that this is the same for all people.  Yaris678 (talk) 07:51, 28 March 2012 (UTC)


 * This is a lot better than than forcing voters into pure Borda. The conversion of my vote as an example is not quite how I would have done it under e.g. normalized range voting (it gave above average scores to two options I opposed), but is within the range of discretionary interpretation usually granted to closing admins. It's still probably not clone-proof, but is clone-resistant enough that it's probably OK provided the closing admins are aware of its potential biases and treat it as advisory, not binding. Kilopi (talk) 16:41, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree. Yaris678 (talk) 17:51, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Um... this system has its advantages, but I have learned from long experience that any voting system has problems, and the more recently-invented, the less you can trust it. I think it was a big mistake to start the voting by saying "Borda"; this suggested system seems like an ugly and unreliable hack to fix Borda. I believe that any editor/administrator should be free to present their own method for tallying the votes and the results it gives. Homunq (talk) 04:18, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
 * To clarify the above: clearly, the neutral administrators will give the final verdict. However, I'd suggest that, as input to their considerations, any editor should be able to present a tally of the votes, through any means, and explain what it says about sentiment generally. This will leave the strengths and weaknesses of any particular tallying method clear to the administrators judging the matter. Homunq (talk) 15:25, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Let's be clear - the huge discussion about numerical counting and super duper voting systems are exactly why this vote is doomed to failure. You can't have a discussion when people are being asked to rank 14 choices based on some voting system that is used approximately nowhere. Further, Arrow's impossibility theorem means that you're doomed to failure anyway. That's why I didn't discuss in my vote, and why I'll protest any result I don't like - because you mucked it up with this nonsense. Hipocrite (talk) 20:14, 20 April 2012 (UTC)