Coherent reply policy

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Who benefits from title policy? Users? Editors? Both?[edit]

Hi @SmokeyJoe,

Instead of responding at the RM or even on your talk page, I though I’d do it on my own talk page and tag you. Hope that’s okay. At Talk:List of leaders of Georgia (country)#Requested move 11 July 2023 you recently submitted a comment that I think exemplifies the main difference in our perspectives about title decision-making on WP. You wrote:

Unless I’m mistaken, you’re the only editor on WP with an antipathy of hatnotes as demonstrated by the uniquely-held view that a user merely seeing “a hatnote to something they didn’t want” is an inconvenience. The WP community’s embracing of hatnotes is made obvious by their ubiquitous presence in myriads of articles, not to mention explicit endorsement in policy.

Asserting there is no PT without anchoring such a claim to PT determination criteria is meaningless. Do you have a policy-based argument to oppose this proposal?

In a follow-up comment you reveal an apparent disagreement with policy, which may explain why your arguments are not based in policy:

Title policy is established for us to have titles that are most helpful to readers.
Theres your flaw. Title policy was established to help editors with wikilinking. There was no reference to what serves readers, and there still isn’t. Fortunately, many things naturally align, but one thing that doesn’t is forcing PrimaryTopic where they does exist, or title minimalism in general. SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:55, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What I see here is a rationalization to IAR title policy rules, especially primary topic, because (you believe) they favor ease of wiki-linking for editors over serving readers.

What you seem to ignore, repeatedly and consistently, is that the primary topic usage criteria is based on what users are most likely seeking when they search with the title in question. In this case we are asked to consider a hypothetical user who searches with “List of leaders of Georgia”. What is the likelihood they’re looking for governors of the US state of Georgia vs leaders of the country named Georgia? Perhaps you saw @Amakuru’s recent !vote? where they addressed this question directly: “The governor of Georgia is never referred to as the ‘leader of Georgia’”.

Of course, technically the governor is the leader, but the point here is that in normal English usage governors are not referred to as “leaders” and therefore the likelihood that anyone searching with “List of leaders of Georgia” is looking for the list of governors is practically nil. Do you not agree with that? Why?

So how is this not a clear primary topic? How are users not helped by being taken directly to the page they’re seeking rather than to a dab page? In what scenario is a user inconvenienced by having this article at the undisambiguated base name?

I’m tagging @Huwmanbeing because I’m similarly genuinely perplexed by their similar position on this title and PT in general as well.

Thx, В²C ☎ 13:51, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I did notice and respond to Amakuru's claim; it's false. For my own part, I'm genuinely perplexed why you accept such claims without verifying them. ╠╣uw [talk] 11:45, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oh please. Language usage isn’t math. There are always exceptions. Absolute declarations about usage always (see what I did there) have an implied usually, or rarely. Finding an exception doesn’t make an absolute usage claim false. —-В²C ☎ 14:21, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Nor does saying "oh please" make it true — and it's clearly not. My point is simply that we can't depend on those few who search for "list of leaders of Georgia" to be seeking one polity or the other, so I don't think it makes sense to consider it a primary topic for the article about the nation. It's not complicated. ╠╣uw [talk] 17:13, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Why don’t you be honest and admit you reject PRIMARYTOPIC for any article? I mean, by your logic “we can't depend on those who search for any PRIMARYTOPIC article title (which are all ambiguous by definition) to be seeking that topic or any other use of it.” In other words, you and the other opposers have not distinguished this primary topic case from any other. В²C ☎ 13:44, 14 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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US state capitals[edit]

What do you make of the following recent RM discussions on US state capitals?

Which ones would you have supported? Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:37, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

At first glance I think it's clear the state capitals for each of those names are not the primary topic. --В²C ☎ 22:48, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My objection to USSTATE is only as it applies to cases where it allows CITYNAME to be a primary redirect to the clearly less concise CITYNAME, STATENAME. In no other case that I know of do we tolerate redirecting from a concise basename to a less concise longer title, unless that longer title is clearly the more commonly used name. In that sense USSTATE is uniquely out of step with our policies and guidelines. --В²C ☎ 23:04, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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