The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: move JaGa^talk 06:04, 17 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

---

Welland → Welland (disambiguation) — Per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, the Ontario city (and by extension, the canal) is the most famous use of "Welland". Since the River and Canal are not simply referred to as "Welland", it only comes down to either the English... crossroads?... or the Ontario city. Certainly the city is more important than an indescernible village, yes? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 16:25, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Welland, Ontario → Welland

• Support per nomination. Clearly more notable than the English village and the Australian neighbourhood. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 22:23, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment this appears to be incorrectly formatted. 184.144.164.14 (talk) 00:33, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  How so? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 01:06, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  It appeared as "Welland, Ontario → [[:]]", with the reason missing, on Wikipedia:Requested moves. I think I've fixed it now. Peter E. James (talk) 14:54, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Mild oppose. Surely the Welland in Canada is named after the Welland in England? And it's not a very big city. Deb (talk) 12:26, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Being named after something doesn't make the original something the primary topic. The place in England is barely notable. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 17:19, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• "Welland" can refer to the river, just as "Thames" can refer to the River Thames, which is the primary topic for that title. However, the city appears to be the primary topic (and as it's a city, this is sufficient according to naming conventions) so I support the proposed move. Peter E. James (talk) 14:13, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose for now at least. While it seems that this is the most notable Welland, that's not enough. It's a small enough city that it's unlikely to be widely known outside of Canada, with others listed in the DAB similarly known locally. Assuming that's true this would be a classic case of no primary meaning. If the guidelines say otherwise, they should be changed. Andrewa (talk) 16:14, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Its also the central hub of an international shipping canal, that is certainly known around the world (maybe not commonly, but anyone who works around ships would be aware of it). How is being the most notable Welland not enough to be the primary topic? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 17:19, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I seem to be repeating myself, but the answer to your question is: If there is no primary topic. See WP:DAB#Is there a primary topic?. Andrewa (talk) 17:41, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The village in Worcestershire may be the primary meaning in some of the neighbouring villages and towns. In the UK, Welland is likely to refer to the River Welland, but the full name is more likely to be used. Welland in Australia appears to be only a small area of a large city, so is unlikely to be the primary topic outside of the city. Internationally, the main topics are probably the canal (not usually abbreviated to "Welland") and the city in Ontario, so the city is probably primary topic. Peter E. James (talk) 17:38, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Again, this seems to assume that there must always be a primary topic. This is not the case, see above. Andrewa (talk) 17:41, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The issue is that the English village and Australian neighbourhood are definitely no contest to Welland, Ontario, as the primary topic. The river in England is probably very notable, but it is still River Welland, which incidentally isn't a redirect. Likewise, the Welland River in Ontario occupies its own title. Welland wouldn't link to these rivers or the canal unless they were simply referred to as "Welland". - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 17:51, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All that is true, but it's not enough. It establishes that if there is a primary topic, then it is the Canadian city. But we still need to ask, is the Canadian city notable enough that appreciable numbers of people in the English-speaking world generally would even know of it? It seems borderline at best, despite the association with the similarly named canal. I'd certainly heard of the canal, but I had no idea whether it was named after a city, or a river, or perhaps after a Mr Welland who built it. The city would have been my last guess. Andrewa (talk) 02:12, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I live a few hours away in Ontario and I've never heard of the city, only the canal. Srnec (talk) 18:05, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I actually read WP:PRIMARYTOPIC differently. I don't see any notability qualification there. The guideline says that it is often the case that one of these [ambiguous] topics is highly likely — much more likely than any other, and more likely than all the others combined — to be the subject being sought when a reader enters that ambiguous term in the Search box. If there is such a topic, then it is called the primary topic for that term. It's a relative inquiry, not an absolute. WP:Notability is a separate question. But if a topic is notable enough to have its own article, then it can be the primary topic, as long as 50+% of readers are looking for that topic.

In this case, it seems that most people agree that this city would be the primary topic for "Welland". So, I'm in support. Dohn joe (talk) 19:14, 14 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I know it's not entirely reliable, but Google Hits don't support that view. Deb (talk) 10:00, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Google hits turn up local results. So if you live in Wales (an assumption based on the wikiproject banner on your userpage), you're going to get more results that are British in context. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 13:36, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming you're not British, what do you get? Deb (talk) 16:26, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I live in Toronto, about 100 km from Welland. The results I get when I type "Welland" in are:

1. Official City of Welland page
2. Tourism Welland
3. This wikipedia article
4. The Welland Tribune (local paper)
5. Welland Canal website
6. Tourism Niagara entry for Welland
7. Niagara College, in Welland
8. Seaway Mall, in Welland
9. Welland / Pelham Chamber of Commerce

All 10 results are related directly to this city. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 17:42, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, that's why you should be using a neutral google search, with &pws=0 in the url. See my Oppose comment below. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:36, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Support - The move meets the applicable naming convention at WP:CANSTYLE. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 21:37, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose (support one but not the other) Certainly Welland (db) page should be the search result. "Welland, Ontario" should stay as such though, as should "Welland, Worcetershire" as I do not think there is a primary here. Although the search parameters for google can be weighted, when using "UK" or "Canada" that sorts them out as roughly 4:1 against UK. Wiki page traffic (sampled three random months) also is slightly lower, though by far the highest traffic is on "Welland Canal" at almost 2:1 against "Welland, Ontario" - does this mean that "Welland Canal" should be the main?. Chaosdruid (talk) 16:26, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• The canal isn't referred to as just "Welland" though, the city is. The English junction barely deserves an article at all; I doubt it has any secondary sources discussing it. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 16:36, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. Searches on Google India (a "neutral" site) and on Google Books point to the Ontario city as the primary topic as well. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:42, 6 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Oppose I was about to comment in Support based on JHJ's comment, but then I did a neutral google search (using &pws=0 in the url) and discovered that while the Ontario use is most popular, it hardly meets WP:PRIMARYTOPIC criteria, which is, "much more likely than any other, and more likely than all the others combined—to be the subject being sought when a reader enters that ambiguous term in the Search box". Although the Ontario use is the first subject returned in the results, it hardly dominates even the first page of results, much less the subsequent pages, which is normally the case for primary topics. I just don't see it. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:32, 15 March 2011 (UTC) Floydian is correct (below). Though the Ontario use does not dominate the raw generic google search results, it does if you manually filter out uses that are not topics covered in Wikipedia. In terms of what people are likely to be searching for in Wikipedia when they enter "Welland", it does appear that the Ontario use is primary. --Born2cycle (talk) 16:39, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Could you remove the red please? Makes sense, but keep in mind that most of the results are irrelevant company names and websites which aren't notable and would never have an article on here. They don't exactly establish the likelihood of the other uses which we are currently considering. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 04:17, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is green better? Seriously, I'm experimenting with using Support and Oppose to see if the practice might catch on. --Born2cycle (talk) 16:39, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's more that it makes your comment stand out against the rest. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 17:29, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A temporary transitional setback, if the practice catches on. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:52, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. (Back on topic...) If you look at article traffic statistics (I chose to look at last November), "Welland, Worcestershire" had 170 visits, "Welland, South Australia" had 182 visits, and "Welland, Ontario" had 3,867 - more than ten times those two combined. So of the places named Welland, Ontario dominates Wikipedia usage. Of the other pages on the Welland disambiguation page, only "Welland Canal" had more visits than "Welland, Ontario", with 6,694. And has been said, there's no evidence that people call the canal simply "Welland". Thus, it seems that "Welland, Ontario" is indeed the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for plain "Welland", and this page should move there. Dohn joe (talk) 16:54, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. I think it's reasonable to assume that those searching for the canal are likely to be entering "Welland canal", not just "Welland", and, if they're entering just "Welland", it's out of laziness to reduce typing, most likely expecting to get to a page from which they are one click from the canal. That said, since the canal gets so many hits, it should probably be linked in a hatnote at the top of Welland. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:55, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose - Welland, Ontario does not appear large enough for the province name to be dropped from the title. Dough4872 23:03, 16 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But what is being considered is whether this Welland is the primary topic amongst the other uses. I can point out, for example, Coboconk, an unincorporated village with a population of 800 which doesn't have ", Ontario" at the end of the title (as per WP:CANSTYLE) - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 23:35, 16 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If Canada chooses to use this convention, then I am neutral to this move. Dough4872 00:00, 17 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No consensus that this isn't the primary topic, especially when comparing it to the other topics typically known simply as "Welland". Cúchullain ^t/c 15:06, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

---

• Welland → Welland, Ontario
• Welland (disambiguation) → Welland

– When Welland, Ontario was moved to Welland in March 2011, the number of daily hits on this city's article roughly quadrupled (see [1]). The logical explanation is that a large fraction of these hits were looking for one of the other Welland-named topics. Thus the primarytopic determination was essentially in error, and should be undone, letting the disambig page handle the ambiguous term. Dicklyon (talk) 05:18, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Support - ambiguous in Google Books. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:21, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment my assumption is that the canal is what should be primary. -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 07:34, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's not going to happen. A reasonable default is no primary topic when a term is ambiguous. Dicklyon (talk) 14:57, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. I really don't think there is a primary topic here. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:07, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. The Ontario city looks like it needs disambiguating. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 05:51, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - English River and Australian village have a fraction of the pageviews that this article had prior to the original move. The other topics are already at ambiguous titles and aren't known as "Welland". Also note that the corresponding increase in traffic to Welland (disambiguation) following the 2011 move was a fraction of the increase to this article;[2] it could be assumed that this means that the traffic was intending to reach this page... Regardless, the canal easily gets 50 times the combined hits of the other titles.[3] - Floydian ^τ _¢ 15:18, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - per Floydian. Of the topics called just Welland, this is clearly the primary use. --B2C 04:51, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. Obscure city to most readers. The name is used for multiple places and people. It is very likely that readers could be familiar with these other Wellands and have no conception of this unrelated Canadian city. It is obviously helpful to readers to give location information in the title of obscure towns. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:38, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Per policy, a title needs to be recognizable only to those familiar with the topic. Anyone familiar with this Welland will recognize Welland as a reference to it. IAR is not invoked here, at least not explicitly, but this argument that the title should be something recognizable to "most readers" rather than just those familiar with the topic is contrary to policy; policy strongly supported by community consensus. I suggest any !votes based on this argument be discounted/dismissed accordingly. --B2C 18:13, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• When B2C cites policy, what he says should be taken with a large grain of salt. Titling policy and guidelines are our most poorly written policies, disconnected from the wider community, redefining common words making policy opaque to the unencultured. It has even lead to a notion of "Wikipedia Titling Expert", something B2C considers himself to be, and something contrary to the future of the project. With effort, you can discover that B2C is a significant contributor to the state of titling policy, and this makes it particularly unpalatable when he argues that contributions to rename discussions not couched in terms of written policy should be discounted, downweighted or otherwise ignored with minimal attention. Any references by him to the more nuanced policies, IAR (which he here tries to box into a narrow definition so contrary to its spirit) and Consensus (which he tries to redefine according to objective formulae), should also viewed with suspicion. Most problematic in his apparent motivation is that titles should be short because the shorter they are the less scope there is for discussion on the best title. This is especially problematic because it pays absolutely no attention to concerns of Wikipedia readers.

The problem with recognizability is not to do with the few who recognize Welland as the name of a Canadian city. The problem is with the likelihood of people who recognize Welland as the name of one of the other places, or the name of a person. There are several Welland places in the world, and many readers will have an association with these other places and no conception of "Welland" alone being presumed to be familiar to all with familiarity of any Welland. These people would be astonished, on following an en.wikipedia.org/Welland link to find an article loading on an obscure, remote foreign city.

If is far better (for readers) if all obscure towns and cities have comma disambiguation to a relatively well known location, such as Ontario.

Page views are not particularly interesting because they probably do not reflect readers' familiarity of the several places and people. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:15, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What about WP:CANSTYLE? Dohn joe (talk) 16:18, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What about it? I assume you agree the name is not unique? Do you want to talk about "most significant"? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:18, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I thought it was clear that this was the most significant "Welland", and the only reason you were advocating "Welland, Ontario" was because you think that all "obscure" towns should be disambiguated. I only brought up CANSTYLE because it's our relevant guideline, and it says that such disambiguation is not generally required when WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is not an issue.

As to significance, pageviews are our most reliable metric for judging where our readers actually go. They show that of the four subjects actually called "Welland" (not partial title matches), this one got 2,923 views last month. Welland, Worcestershire got 187 views, Welland (electoral district) got 224 views, and Welland, South Australia got 180 views. So a total of 591 views, or five times fewer than the Ontario city. As for the dab page? Welland (disambiguation) got just 55 views last month. Very few people are being led astray. And as my oppose !vote lays out, more people were being taken unnecessarily to the dab page under the old (and proposed) scheme. Can you explain how the reader experience will be quantitatively improved by moving the dab page back to "Welland"? We've tried it before, and the current system works better. Dohn joe (talk) 21:45, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I dispute that WP:PT is not an issue. I dispute that "most significant" means that a topic is the PT for a term where the term has multiple disperate meanings (even different meanings to different readers). Suppose we measure "significance" as a number from 0 to 1, and Welland, Ontario measured 1E-3, while four other Wellands measured 4E-4, 2E-4 and 1E-4, with others summing to less than 1E-4. Is Welland, Ontario the most significant? Yes. But it is not very significant, there is a very high chance of readers recognizing other Wellands not recognizing the most significant, so I submit that "most significant" is not a defining determinant.

I reject your assumption that readers landing on a DAB page is a bad thing. Nobody is lead astray by being sent to a DAB page by a poor link or lazy search. I suggest to you that it is actually a very good thing. Readers familiar only with Welland, Ontario aught to be aware that "Welland" is not a unique name and that if they continue to assume it is, they could confuse others. Personally, I find that DAB pages often tell me what I needed. Readers are lead astray if they are sent to an article that matches what they mistakenly believed was a unique topic. Somebody attempting to find Mark Welland (do you call him insignificant?) is not well served by being taken to the city of little non-local significance. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:38, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's assuming that people looking for Mark Welland do so by typing "Welland" and hitting "enter". But views for Mark Welland actually went up with the current setup in place. That page was viewed 303 times in January 2011, and 367 times in January 2012. At the same time, views of the dab page dropped from 393 to 110. People looking for Mark Welland are as good or better off now as they were before. Dohn joe (talk) 22:07, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. In January 2011 (before the move), the article on the city got 4,337 views, while the dab page got 393 views. In January 2012, the article on the city got 4,127 views (3,011 from "Welland" and 1,116 from "Welland, Ontario"). The dab page got 110 views. So views of the city article did not in fact go up, while views of the dab page went down by 75%. That's a good thing, and shows that the current setup works well. Dohn joe (talk) 20:13, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. "Welland" scarcely communicates anything, and so is not truly concise; just adding "Ontario" communicates far more. Omnedon (talk) 12:45, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't understand this comment. "Welland" is clearly more concise than "Welland, Ontario". They are both relatively concise, but "Welland" tells you the name of the place, and is shorter. That's what concise is. Dohn joe (talk) 16:18, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:CANSTYLE also endorses the current titling; it isn't customary to add the province as it is with places in the United States. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 16:44, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  Dohn joe, a concise name is not necessarily the shortest possible name. A concise name is both short and comprehensive. Thus "Welland" is short but communicates nothing about the subject aside from the name "Welland", which could belong to a place, a person, or something else. "Welland, Ontario" is slightly longer but still quite short, and communicates that this is a place. That's what concise is. "Welland" is actually less concise than "Welland, Ontario". Omnedon (talk) 17:05, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  That makes no sense to me. The name of the town is "Welland." That one word conveys the name of the town succinctly and comprehensively. Adding ", Ontario" is extra information, just as "Welland, a steel, textile, and automobile town in southern Ontario" adds extra information. It may be a good thing to add such information in certain contexts, but it does not make "Welland" less concise than "Welland, Ontario". Dohn joe (talk) 17:25, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  Certainly it does. That one word conveys very little, so it doesn't meet the definition of "concise". "Ontario" isn't "extra information"; the addition of that information allows the title to be concise. We're talking about a title here, not about the name of the town. As a title "Welland" is not concise. Omnedon (talk) 18:18, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  Help me understand. Is "Toronto" more or less concise than "Toronto, Ontario"? Dohn joe (talk) 18:23, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  If the goal of the title is to describe the topic of the article, then "Welland" arguably is not concise per Omnedon's argument. However, we rarely use descriptions for titles when the topic in question has a name. In those cases, we almost always use the name, or, when necessary, the name with some disambiguation.

  I think the fact that we use descriptive titles for some articles, and because disambiguation can make other titles appear descriptive, confuses the situation, for some, in cases like this.

  Of course, we don't use descriptive titles when we can use names (or disambiguated names), because then we can avoid debates about whether to use a description or the name, and, if using a description, which description to use.

  Given that the goal of the title in such cases is to convey the name of the topic in question, of course "Welland" is concise. --B2C 23:11, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  See also, as a good example, Coboconk, an almost unheard of (even to Ontarians) cottage village of 800 people. Any article on a place in Canada is titled without the provincial identifier unless necessary. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 04:11, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Coboconk, Ontario might be more helpful to readers who are interested in Ontario places but unfamiliar with Coboconk. Helpful disambiguation might be nice for some, but it much less important than disambiguating Welland, because it is reasonable to assume that there is no significant proportion of potential readers who may expect "Coboconk" to mean something else. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:56, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirects are cheap. I also try not to assume, especially when there is good evidence that a significant majority of readers are landing correctly. A small minority follow the provided hatnote to find the Welland they were seeking. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 22:41, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose Dicklyon seems to make a good case, but it involves an assumption ("The logical explanation is that...") that seems to be refuted by the more detailed statistics provided by Dohn joe. Fewer readers ending up on a dab is generally a good thing. --BDD (talk) 21:41, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support, per Dicklyon, SmokeyJoe, etc. I agree that it's reasonable for the titles of small and non-uniquely named communities such as this to be clarified with the addition of a disambiguator, in this case the province. Also agree with Omnedon that the proposed title is still suitably concise, since (as pointed out) conciseness is not merely brevity. ╠╣uw [talk] 09:54, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.