Talk:Julius (name)

Latest comment: 2 years ago by TheAafi in topic Requested move 17 November 2022

Requested move 17 November 2022

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

The result of the move request was: No consensus. There have been a number of arguments made in the last thirty days and I feel there is sense in some arguments from either sides and that makes me discern no consensus. A new and fresh RM may be started immediately to decide what is the best primary topic and which page should go to which title. I have no objections to that. ─ The Aafī (talk) 18:32, 17 December 2022 (UTC)Reply



Julius (name)Julius – AFAIK the Julia gens isn't referred to as Julius. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:05, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply

This is a contested technical request (permalink). Happily888 (talk) 02:57, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Clarityfiend: queried move request Happily888 (talk) 02:58, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • Lean oppose. "Julia (gens)" is the article covering all notable Romans with this name—in this case something over a hundred, and potentially many more. The majority of Roman nomina should redirect to the corresponding gens articles, unless there's a compelling reason for them to direct elsewhere; gens articles are not, strictly speaking, disambiguation pages, but they serve a similar purpose by sorting out and summarizing all Romans with the name. Obviously where a name is well-known in English, there is a valid competing interest; but "Julius" by itself is rather ambiguous; the article about the name as applied to non-Roman persons is not an obvious search target, although users familiar with Wikipedia article titling conventions might well think of looking under "Julius (name)". It doesn't really make sense to move this article to an ambiguous title, as if it cleared the field, when at best it covers only a fraction of the page views. The current title is more helpful. P Aculeius (talk) 03:29, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
    Hmm, I'm confused by this argument. If "Julius" by itself is in fact rather ambiguous, it's hard to argue that it should point to any single article that doesn't cover the entire field. If the anthroponymy article isn't good enough if it doesn't include a list of all Romans with the name, the Roman gens article also isn't good enough as it doesn't include a list of all non-Romans with the name. If we point "Julius" at the latter, people looking for a non-Roman "Julius" person need to click 2 times - once on the hatnote, and then on the link to the anthroponymy article. If we point "Julius" at the former, people looking for a Roman "Julius" person need to click 1 time - on the mention of the Roman family in the lead section. The latter scenario seems more helpful. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 21:11, 21 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per nom, no PRIMARY.--Ortizesp (talk) 04:20, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
If there's no primary topic, then why promote this article to primary? That doesn't make sense. It should stay where it is. P Aculeius (talk) 05:22, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
Very, very few people (pretty much just historians) would associate Julius with the gens. So the redirect should be replaced with either the name list (which I believe is the primary topic) or, at the very worst, to the dab page. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:33, 17 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
Anthroponymy lists are often considered disambiguation, hence suitable as navigation aids when there's no primary topic. I will say that @Ortizesp's statement is quite imprecise here since there also exists a separate disambiguation page as well in this case. They should probably clarify. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 21:28, 21 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
What is the rationale for the assertion that most do mainly associate it that way? You've linked to a partial comparison of page views of just the two navigation pages, which is not really proof of anything, since it doesn't even include the traffic to the redirect in question, let alone the long tail of traffic, where users might be navigating after they go through either of these pages. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 21:00, 21 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
I checked https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=%22Julius%22&pws=0 and there the output is mostly about people named Julius, with Caesar the most common one (but not more than all others combined).
I think it's fair to try switching to this anthroponymy article as "Julius", because it should accomplish the navigation function better than the article that's specific to the ancient Roman use. Support. (If not, support full disambiguation Julius (disambiguation) → Julius) --Joy [shallot] (talk) 20:54, 21 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
I've also had a look at https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews/?platform=all-access&agent=user&source=wikilinks&range=latest-20&sort=views&direction=1&view=list&target=https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Julia_gens where Julius Caesar is clearly the most common Julius (~9k views per day). Far behind there's Julius Nepos (450 views/day), Drusus Julius Caesar (210), Gnaeus Julius Agricola (165), Nero Julius Caesar (145), Pope Julius I (85).
In comparison, in the aforementioned mass views list there's Julius Caesar (ditto), Julius Erving (1,750 views/day), Julius Evola (790), Julius Randle (735), Julius Nyerere (575), Julius Streicher (525), Julius Malema (455), Julius Fučík (325) and several others before we get down to the level of 165/day.
It seems apparent to me that a prominent link to Julius Caesar is critical, and maintaining one to the Julii as well, but beyond that they're not generally more commonly sought after topics compared to other people named Julius. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 21:20, 21 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
And for completeness, let's note that in https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews/?platform=all-access&agent=user&source=wikilinks&range=latest-20&sort=views&direction=1&view=list&target=https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Julius%20(disambiguation) the only comparable entries are Orange Julius (225) and Julius Baer Group (180), both of which are actually in the see also section as they're merely partial title matches (both of which are derived from the non-Roman-time given name). --Joy [shallot] (talk) 21:24, 21 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
Very few people are likely to be searching for most of those people without knowing their full names, or at least something like them. But for those who do, we have the page at this title—which is pretty obviously one place to go if you can't remember the person's name—as well as "Julius (disambiguation)", which also helps direct people to different pages covering different topics. What I don't see is a reason to make a fairly helpful title more ambiguous, or why a disambiguation page needs to clear the field of other possible titles, taking away part of the redirection scheme of other articles. The current setup should get people where they need to go, even if the first article they go to isn't the one they wanted in every case (and nothing we can do will ever prevent that). And if it works pretty well, why make it work less well by moving the article to a more ambiguous title? P Aculeius (talk) 00:41, 22 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
@P Aculeius what do you mean a faily helpful title, "Julia gens" or "Julius"? Only the former is an actual article title, while the latter is a redirect, which was demoted to a navigational aid because Julia gens is its primary topic. The contention here is that the current setup doesn't get people where they need to go efficiently enough. They all need to see information about Julia gens before they get to Juliuses, and if less than 50% search for "Julius" and actually want to read about the Roman family, that's not right according to the guideline. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 07:16, 22 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
This is a proposal to move "Julius (name)" to "Julius", and that's counterproductive—"Julius (name)" gives people some idea what to expect when they choose it from the drop-down list; "Julius" does not. There are several plausible targets for "Julius", of which "Julia gens" was chosen because A) its topic was the original subject of "Julius"; B) most other Roman nomina are redirects to their respective gentes (although a few such pages with substantial subsets thereof have never been merged); C) there are a great many notable Romans with this name, who are not easily distinguished from one another due to the homonymous tendencies of Roman nomenclature, whereas most famous non-Romans named "Julius" are easily distinguished by their surnames, and much less likely to be searched for without them.
I'm not sure what you mean by the current arrangement not directing readers "efficiently enough". Only a small fraction of readers are likely to search for "Julius" without a surname, and expect to wind up on the page of a particular person; of the three plausible targets for "Julius", "Julia gens" is probably the best choice, because its members account for far more page views than all of the other Julii combined. But even if you felt that "Julius" would be better targeted at "Julius (name)" or "Julius (disambiguation)", it still would not make sense to move "Julius (name)" to "Julius". The current title is much less ambiguous; if you want to maximize the chances of people finding the article they want in one click, you should be opposing this page move, instead of supporting it. But please bear in mind that there's no perfect solution: no matter what the title, some users will still not be sure what page to visit in order to find the information they want. That's why we have hatnotes and "see also" sections pointing to articles with similar names or topics. In the end, that might just be more helpful than arguing over the best target for "Julius". P Aculeius (talk) 08:01, 22 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
I don't understand the claim that Julia gens members account for far more page views than all the other Julii combined - Julii is a redirect to Julia gens, hence these are synonyms, no? Or are you using Julii as the plural of the word Julius through the present day? That seems to betray a bias towards Latin usage, don't you think? :)
Anyway, the only Julius who can tip the scale in the way you describe is Julius Caesar, as no other member of the Julia gens is viewed as commonly as his article(s) - I've linked the stats above, the difference between 8807 (Caesar) and 452 (Nepos) is almost 20 times, while the difference between 8807 (Caesar) and 1728 (Erving) is 5 times. I've also shown how the long tail on the side of non-Roman Julius articles is actually much more substantial, which makes any claim that Caesar is more likely to be searched for than all others combined moot at best. That is the benchmark set forth by WP:PTOPIC in deciding on primary topics with respect to usage.
Based on these statistics I just don't see the factual basis to agree with your claim that only a small fraction of readers are likely to search for Julius without a surname and expect to wind up on the page of a particular person. Looking up people in indices is a common reader activity, that's why Wikipedia maintains a large number of them. On the contrary, why would we think that they're more likely to look up the word Julius and expect to wind up on the page of a particular Roman family, one that certainly used the word often, but whose article is in fact called Julia gens, and which introduces the term as 'nomen Julius', which omits any mention of a given name Julius used beyond Roman times? Doesn't this break the principle of least astonishment?
The WP:D guideline advises exactly when to use hatnotes, redirects, primary topics, etc. I think we should apply its best practices and base our decisions on that. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:19, 22 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
You just said it—Caesar alone accounts for more page views than pretty much the entire contents of this page. And several other members of the Julia gens account for a significant fraction of the rest. You keep dodging the primary issue: this proposal is about moving this page to a less-clear title. Changing the redirect is a necessary part of that plan, because the proposal is to move this page to that title. Which is simply not a good idea, because it violates the very same principles you keep going on about. So is your argument really about helping people get where they want to go, or about claiming a redirect for what you regard as a more important topic? P Aculeius (talk) 15:19, 22 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
Caesar accounts for a lot, but not nearly the entire contents of this page. Just add the numbers I pasted above, and you already reach 5155, which is quite comparable to 8807; adding up all the others would likely approach and surpass his count. He's certainly the primary topic for "Julius Caesar", but to claim that he's the primary topic for "Julius" alone is a separate claim which would need far more evidence. And just because he's an exceedingly well-known application of Julius as a nomen that doesn't imply that all usage of Julius as a nomen is the primary topic over using Julius as a given name, and other usages.
With regard to the primary issue as you describe it - it's not less clear to refer to anthroponymy topics without any disambiguating suffixes in their names. They often use the suffixes when they distinguish between given names and surnames, but there's so many of them that are simply at the base title.
We could certainly decide where "Julius" points by keeping "Julius (name)" in place and just changing the redirect, but that would go against the practice described at WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT.
--Joy [shallot] (talk) 17:31, 22 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
Looking into the pageviews further—because this just won't end—this page clearly is not a significant search target. Over the last ninety days, it's had a daily average of 54 page views, compared with "Julia gens", which gets 155—almost three times as many. Your premise seems to be that people are astonished to find themselves there; yet the hatnote at the top of the page, directing viewers to other persons named "Julius", is hardly used: it points to "Julius (disambiguation)", which gets a daily average of 7 page views—some of whom presumably arrive there from other pages. The top entry under "people" sends readers here; but if the page only gets about 7 views a day, it can't be a significant source of traffic for this page.
I took the time to verify your contention that all of the persons (and in a few cases, things) listed here combined would equal and surpass Caesar's page views. You were correct. Counting average page views from the last 90 days, the sixty-one persons and things listed here that have their own articles ("Julius Bär" was a redirect to "Julius Baer Group", but I counted it anyway), I get 8,687 page views for all of them combined, compared with 8,669 for Caesar by himself. Very few of them got to those articles from here, however: that's approximately one hundred and sixty-one times the number of views this page receives.
I note that "Julia gens" lists over one hundred and sixty individuals, many of whom were prominent politicians, generals, and authors, covering a period of nearly a thousand years; among them Caesar (8,600+), Augustus (6,000+), Tiberius (~3,000), and Caligula (4,000+), along with a host of lesser-known individuals who still receive between a few dozen and a few hundred daily page views. The top targets on this list are: "Julius and Ethel Rosenberg" (1,866) and "Julius Erving", (1,659).
Very few people type in "Julius" and stop there when searching for the people on any of the associated pages. How do I know that? Because the redirect gets an average of 19 views per day. That's compared with 216 for "Julia gens" (155), "Julius (name)" (54) and "Julius (disambiguation)" (7). That argues very persuasively that people have a better idea what they want to look at when these three possibilities pop up in the search window. The fact that very few users go from "Julia gens" to "Julius (name)" after arriving there despite the hatnote and other links suggests that most of them are not astonished to arrive there. I really don't see how moving this page to a less-informative title will help. P Aculeius (talk) 19:26, 22 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
Your baseline there is a fallacy, I believe - that people are looking for a term and expecting to read in detail about etymology etc, as opposed to simply looking for it while being comfortable seeing a navigational aid. I think the reason there's so few clicks on the hatnote is that people recognize Julius from Julius Caesar and then continue to read up about the nomen. While this can be seen as a net positive because we focus them and hopefully impart knowledge immediately :) we can also achieve the same result with the current lead section of the anthroponymy article already being rather informative about Julia gens. Certainly it wouldn't hurt to try - within two months WikiNav data should tell us if this just led to people clicking through to Julia gens anyway, and then we can revert based on clear information. (I would instead guessestimate that it's going to show people clicking on both that, Julius Caesar and other people in a rather proportional ratio.)
I don't think people are typically looking for Augustus, Tiberius or Caligula if they look for "Julius", that seems like a stretch - so those statistics shouldn't factor in with significant weight into this comparison. I'm not sure how we could prove or disprove that based on the available data, but one aspect we can examine is where is "Julius" mentioned in the said articles:
  • For Augustus (FA), it's within the Name section, after three different Latin names, and then later in the text in the Change to Augustus section it's explained how "[he] transformed Caesar, a cognomen for one branch of the Julian family, into a new family line that began with him."
  • For Tiberius (GA), it's never mentioned in the main text, and there's a note that says "Tiberius generally refrained from using the nomen Julius, but he never officially ruled it out, as evidenced by some inscriptions."
  • For Caligula (GA), it's mentioned in the lead sentence, and then in the lead section it says "Although Gaius was named after Gaius Julius Caesar," and then it's not mentioned again (nor is Julia gens mentioned beyond a single passing remark of "pro-Julian", which is not linked anywhere).
None of these things strike me as in any way reinforcing the idea that we should navigate people looking for Julius - to Julia gens.
We also know from [1], [2] and [3] that in none of these cases is Julia gens among the top 20 outgoing page views, but that's partial information - for all we know it could be in the top 30. Unlikely given the text, though.
One of the more obvious reasons why few people go to the name article right now is that it's stowed 2 clicks away, behind the hatnote going to generic disambiguation and then there's a link in the middle of that one. That scenario is just not going to produce a lot of traffic for the list, that is the result of this curious status quo.
--Joy [shallot] (talk) 16:18, 23 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
The more logical choice for me would be to merge "Julius (name)" and "Julius (disambiguation)", since the two overlap, and this article ("Julius (name)") isn't so much about the name as it is a list of people—and things—with the name, which is pretty much what the scope of "Julius (disambiguation)" should be. Given that the latter has only a few page views, it doesn't make sense to maintain it as a separate page, but it's got the more obvious title—"Julius" simply doesn't inform anyone of what it's about without disambiguation. So I would merge this article into "Julius (disambiguation)". P Aculeius (talk) 16:39, 23 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
That's a legit choice too that reduces the number of clicks towards non-nomen meanings. The disambiguation page could list Julius (nomen), Julius (name) and the other entries. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:29, 23 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
BTW we had people notice these kinds of issues a decade ago at Talk:Julius (disambiguation), but it wasn't formalized... --Joy [shallot] (talk) 09:01, 30 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
I'd also mention here that I went through https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=Julius&namespace=0 and cleaned up numerous links where it was fairly clear what was meant (a lot of instances of Julius piped behind the word Julia in the phrase 'gens Julia'). The word "Julian" actually seemed to be relatively more ambiguous and more commonly referencing gens Julia than "Julius", and I added a few more redirects to the list at https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=Julia+gens&namespace=&hidelinks=1 The few remaining articles left linking to just "Julius" is modern-day instances where I couldn't figure out what the article for the referenced topic is. This contributes to my impression that the word is more ambiguous and generic as time has gone on, so a more generic method of disambiguation should be used. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 15:59, 25 November 2022 (UTC)Reply
BTW When I actually got to the correct wikinav web interface and saw top 20, I noticed one of these articles has a reasonably commonly clicked link to Julii Caesares, and another to Julio-Claudian dynasty, which comes close, but that's still about it. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 13:24, 9 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
Still no. I could support merging "Julius (name)" into "Julius (disambiguation)", since the latter title would probably be more useful, and there's not really any content on this page that wouldn't belong there. But both titles are preferable to the proposed "Julius", which does nothing to alert anyone as to its contents. We can argue till the cows come home about whether "Julia gens" should be primary for the name—but if there's no primary topic, then placing the disambiguation page at that title increases the level of ambiguity, which helps no-one. P Aculeius (talk) 02:02, 5 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • Move the dab instead. Just a quick round-up: Julia gens, otherwise an encyclopedic article in its own right, is relevant here only because it contains a list of ancient Romans with the name Julius. The article Julius (name) lists the people with the name who are not Romans. From the lengthy discussion above it's become quite clear than neither the modern name, nor the ancient nomen are the primary topic. The gens article gets more total views than either the dab or the other name index, but that's only because as a proper article, it receives most of its incoming traffic from links in other articles (see Wikipedia:Pageviews and primary topics, this is also evident from Wikinav). The most directly relevant data I can see is a comparison of the views of the redirect Julius with the views for Julius (disambiguation): [4]: you see the huge dip in the views for the redirect after most links to it were retargeted around 25 Nov? Looking at the graph after that date, it becomes clear that the majority of readers who search for "Julius" aren't happy with the page they land on and instead follow the link in the hatnote. So, if there is no primary topic, then the primary title will need to be occupied by a dab page. I don't think any mergers would be appropriate: both name lists are pretty long. However, the dab page could get expanded with mentions of the handful of people most likely to be sought by readers, and its entry for the gens article needs to make it abundantly clear that a list of Romans with the name will be found there. – Uanfala (talk) 16:28, 5 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
    Some of this makes sense, but the claim that "the majority of readers who search for "Julius" aren't happy with the page they land on and instead follow the link in the hatnote" can't be true, because the page linked at the hatnote has far fewer page views than this article does—on the order of single digits each day. Now, maybe it should be getting more views, and that could be due to retargeting other incoming links—but it's clearly not due to "Julius" targeting "Julia gens". When a term is ambiguous, adding "(disambiguation)" to the title is what really helps people figure out where to go if they don't already know. That's why I don't think the original proposal here is a good idea. P Aculeius (talk) 00:39, 6 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
    [T]he page linked at the hatnote has far fewer page views than this article does: that's because Julia gens as a proper article gets most of its traffic from incoming links from other articles (see the left-hand side of the first graph [5]). Also, the minority of views that come from readers searching directly for that article aren't all accounted for by searches specifically for "Julius" (as there are other plausible search strings that lede there). Disambiguation pages, on the other hand, have few, if any, incoming links from articles, and therefore tend to receive traffic that's orders of magnitude smaller than that for articles (that's further described in the last group of bullet points at Wikipedia:Pageviews and primary topics). As for my claim that most readers who search for "Julius" end up clicking on the hatnote, that follows from the data: in the last week [6], the redirect Julius got 91 views, while the dab page, the majority of whose traffic comes from the hatnote at Julia gens, got 68. Of course, the conclusion I draw from that is not a mathematical certainty, but the only confounding factor here are readers who didn't search for "Julius" but nevertheless got tempted to click on the hatnote, and it's improbable that this would have had a significant impact. – Uanfala (talk) 15:15, 6 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
    Alright, that makes sense—I'll drop my objection to changing the target of "Julius". But that still doesn't make it the best title for a disambiguation page listing people and things named "Julius". According to these charts, "Julius" and "Julius (disambiguation)" each get on average around ten page views per day—who according to your data are mostly the same readers—while "Julius (name)" gets over sixty. That might suggest that the current title is the best—but in fact "Julius (name)" isn't about the name. It's a list of people with the name, followed by a list of fictional characters and other things with the name. Meanwhile, "Julius (disambiguation)" is a list of people and things with the same name. There isn't any obvious reason to maintain them separately, since the scope of each article more-or-less completely overlaps the other. It would make more sense to combine them under the title of "Julius (disambiguation)", and make "Julius (name)" a redirect there. You could, I suppose, maintain an article titled "List of people named "Julius"," or perhaps "Julius (people)"—at least those titles would be less ambiguous the bare name, and less misleading than "Julius (name)", which suggests that it's about the etymology and development of the name—not a list of people named it. P Aculeius (talk) 03:52, 7 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
    I'm usually tend to be in favour of merging short name indexes with dab pages, but I don't think that would be helpful here. There's a bit of relevant advice at MOS:DABSUR, but for me there are two considerations here. One, the name article has a bit of encyclopedic content about the name, and that wouldn't belong on a dab page. Second, the list of people with the name contains over 70 entries, and that's pretty long already (the dab page itself may be currently quite short, with just a dozen items, but I think it should be expanded with a few of the more popular entries from the list of Romans). Yes, there is overlap between the dab page and the two name lists, but I don't think there's any elegant way to avoid it. – Uanfala (talk) 14:26, 7 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
    BTW one of the main reasons to maintain separate lists of people is the disambiguation guideline section at WP:NAMELIST. Basically if the entire list of people is directly in the disambiguation page, it hogs a lot of the space and makes navigation to non-people list entries that much harder. Now, I was also of the opinion that this is fine because those entries aren't really important, so they should stay separate behind a hatnote, but if this is too much, then let's at least have disambiguation at the base name. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 13:30, 9 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per P Aculeius. The gens is the clear primary topic here. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 13:02, 14 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
    @Amakuru can you clarify what you mean, since P Aculeius also said a week ago he doesn't mind changing the target of "Julius" (away from Julia gens)? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:04, 16 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
    In light of all this confusion and relative lack of interest in the convoluted discussion (it's been a month already), I recommend we close this one and start a clear new RM for the alternate solution. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:05, 16 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
    I'm referring to the "lean oppose" comment made by P Aculeius above, and also the similar comment made by Happily888. That page gets the most views of the competing topics, and it would not make sense to replace it with a not-very-informative article about the name Julius. I also don't think there's a call for moving the dab page to the base name; Julius (disambiguation) doesn't have anything that makes me think the gens is not the primary topic here by long-term significance.  — Amakuru (talk) 12:18, 16 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
    Just reiterating a point that was made somewhere deep in the nested discussion above: there doesn't appear to be a primary topic with respect to usage, while the pageviews are completely irrelevant here. – Uanfala (talk) 13:11, 16 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
    Yes, so after those initial comments we delved into statistics beyond the top line, and found that there is no actual primacy of Roman Juliuses over others. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 17:34, 16 December 2022 (UTC)Reply
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.