This is an archive of past discussions about New York. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Latest comment: 14 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:New York which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RM bot07:30, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Broad concept article proposal
Latest comment: 8 years ago34 comments8 people in discussion
Rather than start a page at Talk:New York, which might complicate future moves and/or get lost in them, I suggest we discuss that proposal here.
If we could form a strong consensus in favour of it, that would make much of the current tangled and heated discussion at MR and elsewhere irrelevant, of course. We could then invoke WP:SNOW and end those discussions.
Related questions are:
When should we actually start writing such an article? My feeling is, asap, but we need to avoid (more) hurt feelings from people who feel they should have been consulted first.
What to call it, if we start writing it before we have sufficient support to use the base name? Category:Broad-concept articles doesn't seem to have any suitable disambiguators.
I like the idea but I feel that it might trigger even more heated discussions… Meanwhile disambiguation of New York links in the encyclopedia needs full attention regardless of the outcome of the move review: a manual sampling of 147 such pages today revealed 61 articles meaning New York City, 67 meaning New York State and 19 which had both kinds (see my edits of the day for the full list), so there were 54% of New York links pointing the wrong way (incidentally proving the lack of a primary topic). We are looking for frequent patterns in the pages to deploy bots and help the cleanup. — JFGtalk00:22, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
To avoid allegations of canvassing, and also avoid both duplication of effort and (more important) omissions, just list any invitations you issue to join this discussion below. A link to a diff is ideal, or just make personal invites here. TIA. Andrewa (talk) 22:59, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
I appreciate the ping, but I just spent about eight hours on the road and am dead tired. One thing I'll quickly note is that this isn't exactly what I was thinking - I was more suggesting that the state article was already functioning somewhat as a "broad-concept article", due to the same-named city being a subset of the state and therefore covered within the state article. I realize that's a non-standard interpretation of the policy with much room for discussion (particularly since the entirety of the state topic is covered, while only a summary for the city is presented). This proposal is interesting, and I'll think about it, perhaps I'll join in a bit tomorrow evening after work. Thanks - Antepenultimate (talk) 01:29, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
Understood, and it's an excellent point. I wonder, would this also be true of all articles affected by the HLJC? Interesting thought? Andrewa (talk) 02:02, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
We could eventually have a poll, but I'd prefer to leave it informal for now. Of course that doesn't stop you from indicating whether you support or oppose the proposal, if you are ready to do that. Andrewa (talk) 23:39, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
I like the idea but I feel that it might trigger even more heated discussions… — JFGtalk 00:22, 5 July 2016 (UTC) Agree, but that's not a particularly strong reason to avoid this course, it could even be argued that it's a reason to weakly favour it, to avoid encouraging such unproductive debate. Andrewa (talk) 00:57, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
Meanwhile disambiguation of New York links in the encyclopedia needs full attention regardless of the outcome of the move review: a manual sampling of 147 such pages today revealed 61 articles meaning New York City, 67 meaning New York State and 19 which had both kinds (see my edits of the day for the full list), so there were 54% of New York links pointing the wrong way (incidentally proving the lack of a primary topic). We are looking for frequent patterns in the pages to deploy bots and help the cleanup. — JFGtalk 00:22, 5 July 2016 (UTC) This suggestion would immediately reduce the impact on readers of those mislinkings. Yes, incidentally the evidence against the state being primary has always been persuasive IMO, and is just growing. Andrewa (talk) 00:58, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
How precisely? (And don't fix it now, but see WP:thread: Each colon (or asterisk) represents one level of indentation. Excessive indents just make the discussion hard to follow.) Andrewa (talk) 02:09, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
From the MR: A broad concept page, while noble in proposal, would be impractical and likely just a glorified dab page. Castncoot (talk) 00:19, 5 July 2016 (UTC) Disagree, obviously! Other comments? Andrewa (talk) 01:49, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
No, it just shows that in this one case, New York means New York State. There are other instances where it means New York City of course. Taken together, these suggest that there may be no primary meaning. It can't be both!
Please show me those other instances. In the meantime, this is the ultimate hard evidence, as the subject of the WikiProject itself, that "New York" is and has been Wikipedia's representation of the State. I think it will be difficult for anyone to refute this evidence credibly. Castncoot (talk) 01:52, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
It's pretty unintelligible, that's for sure. I'm still confused as to what this "broad-concept" article would cover that the state article doesn't already. PowersT15:22, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
Part of the problem is that my post as copied doesn't follow logically from the post to which it now appears (wrongly) that I was answering. Add this to the messy italics and indenting and... well, it may not be deliberately disruptive but the effect is much the same.
The broad-concept article might not contain much (if anything) that isn't currently in the article on the state, but the information relating to meanings other than the state would be a lot more prominent. User:Castncoot is correct in a way that it's likely just a glorified dab page (see above). But it would contain a lot of important information not appropriate for a DAB, which is subject to some fairly tight restrictions - only one wikilink per topic, for example.
Probably the best way to answer this is to start it at draft:New York as suggested above. We would still need an article on the state (possibly a little more focused than the current article, but the state certainly needs an article), and a DAB that would still be the target for many hatnotes.
I have to say that I'm also not sure what the benefit of a separate broad concept article compared to the the state article on New York. Seems like just adding some coverage of New York City, along with a {{main article|New York City}} to the state article makes sense. PaleAqua (talk) 03:39, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
A broad-concept article won't have a lot of the state information currently and rightly in the New York (state) article.
The fact that the New York article has a section and fork leading to the New York City article also reflects that the City article is a progeny of the State article. You don't see the State article forked in section from the City article, because the State is the primary topic. Common sense. I think that a broad-concept article here is unnecessary and merely a distraction at this time. Castncoot (talk) 04:44, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Yes, and it is problematic. The city preceded either the province or subsequent state with the same name, so in terms of progeny (as per literal meaning), the city has priority. But it has already be established in several cases (e.g., Boston) that being the namesake for which other places are named does not automatically confer primary status. older ≠ wiser14:47, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
User:Bkonrad, that seems to be a different sense to the one used by User:Castncoot (a recent example, perhaps a better one). But I do like your phrasing... this new criterion, whatever it may be (and I'm trying hard to clarify that with the new page at WP:HLJC, we can't claim consensus if we're talking about different things) does not automatically confer primary status... contrary to what several (perhaps most) posts appealing to it have claimed. Andrewa (talk) 22:53, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I realize User:Castncoot was using the term in a sense that was not obvious from its dictionary definition. And regardless of whether something is a namesake or an encompassing area, I don't see how either can be assumed to confer primary topic status. older ≠ wiser01:10, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Agree. I think the HLJC could be workable if clearly expressed and consistently applied, and does have something going for it, to the point that if this were AndrewPedia I might even formalise and adopt it. But it's not, and we do have naming conventions, and they don't currently permit the article on New York State to be at the base name New York. But we also have some inherent conservatism in our procedures (rightly IMO), and so it's going to take some time to fix a long-standing glitch like this (still an unnecessarily long time IMO, but there you go).
I don't think the "New York" concept fits the WP:BROADCONCEPT criteria, and I happen to agree with Castncoot that A broad concept page, while noble in proposal, would be impractical and likely just a glorified dab page. The thing is, "New York" is not a particularly broad or complex concept. We use "broad concept" articles for several things (see #common examples therein), but I don't think that "New York" fits any class: It plausibly means only two things: the city and the state. There is not much to elaborate on the "broad concept" of New York, and frustrated readers would quickly run away to a page which contains, y'know, actual information. While I don't like too much a disambiguation page at New York, I must concede that it will effectively take care of mislinking, a broad problem. But that's an argument for another debate. No such user (talk) 12:02, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
Move discussion July 2016 in progress
Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 7 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Is most of the "Sports" section really necessary? The term "New York" here often refers only to the team's location; for example the New York Islanders aren't nicknamed or referred to as "New York" except, perhaps, in the specific instance of an announcer describing a contest between the Islanders and the Flyers as being between "New York and Philly", and such mentions are loaded with context (so I doubt this is a navigation issue for users). That made me wonder if other major city pages contained sections for their sports teams; sampling the remainder of the top ten US cities by population turned up that San Diego and Chicago do, however Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Dallas, and San José do not. Phoenix has a sports section, but teams from the city are notably absent. So only 30% of the top ten cites contain such sections; this leads me to believe it is not common practice.
This seems a slippery slope, if the term being merely a part of the name due to location is all that is needed, why not add the New York Botanical Gardens or New York Harbor, or regions such as Western New York? I don't think these are needed, it's all just bloat. I'm curious what others think; these sorts of terms are much better covered by the "All pages with titles containing New York" in the "See also" section, I think.
Note that teams/items that are fully known as New York, such as New York (World Series of Football) and New York Stadium, are pretty clear-cut for inclusion. Though I hasten to add that I do not consider myself a dab expert by any stretch.
Latest comment: 7 years ago66 comments11 people in discussion
As foreshadowed elsewhere, I think we still need to resolve whether the city is the primary topic of New York and/or whether that's where the base name should point long term. There are several reasons for not rushing this.
But what do we (globally) mean by the city called New York? We need to discuss IMO now that the air is clearing on NYS.
But so far as many people worldwide are concerned, New York means the "city" that contains MetLife Stadium. This to me sheds serious doubt on whether the current New York City article is the correct destination for the term New York.
Is your question whether the NYC article is appropriate, because there are things commonly associated with the city which aren't technically within the city limits? If so, I'm not convinced this is a massive problem. Yes the NYC article is technically about the strict city, which is the five boroughs, and does not include the NJ suburbs, Westchester County or suchlike. But the NYC article certainly discusses those things where they're relevant, and is undoubtedly a complete article on the global city of New York and its various aspects, including "administrative" aspects such as boundaries and governance, as well as more fuzzy aspects like economy. The infobox lists the metro population as a separate figure, so even that doesn't deal solely with the city proper.
If that is the case then the lede should change to reflect the article's true scope.
I'm not all that worried about the stadium specifically, but I think it indicates something about what people mean when they say New York. It's just the best example I can find. Andrewa (talk) 22:28, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
Now on the wider question of whether NYC is primary topic for New York, I remain undecided. On balance I don't actually think it is, I think the state has a claim to equal primacy... but I could probably be persuaded the other way, and I certainly don't feel as strongly about that as I did about the state *not* being primary topic. The debate, as and when it gets underway, will certainly be an interesting one. — Amakuru (talk) 22:20, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
I can't think of anyone who would think that MetLife stadium is in New York in any meaningful way. People would say it's in the New York region or area or metro area. But it's in East Rutherford, which is New Jersey. It is quite widely and completely understood to be near New York. But near is not in. I sleep near my wife. I do not sleep in her. --Jayron3218:11, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for your input. But that's easily answered... personally, I think that MetLife stadium is in New York. Now, I'm not the world, but I think it worth asking the question, am I the only one? The distinction between the city and the New York metropolitan area is lost on many of us. Agree that it's in East Rutherford, which is New Jersey. I live in Blayney. I do not live in Blayney. The claim It is quite widely and completely understood to be near New York (my emphasis on completely) is right on-topic. How widely? How completely?
Or to put it another way, if I said to you I've just visited the British Houses of Parliament in London and an Englishman overheard the remark and said It's not in London, it's quite widely and completely understood to be near London but not in it, what would you think? Andrewa (talk) 21:44, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
Actually, this is not quite the same thing because virtually nobody, in the UK or outside it, would assume you mean the City of London when you say "London". Indeed, the Wikipedia article London unequivocally covers the same area as the metropolitan county of Greater London, which includes pretty much everything that is generally considered London, and a few places that aren't really considered London (such as Biggin Hill for example). I guess that's similar to the Sydney / City of Sydney dichotomy that you guys have over in Australia.
A more illustrative British example (and nice too, because of the stadium parallel) would be Old Trafford, which is the home stadium of Manchester United F.C.. Now that isn't technically in Manchester, it's actually in the metropolitan borough of Trafford, which is a neighbour to the official city of Manchester. In that case, most people would regard it as in Manchester, but a few pedants might tell you that it is not. — Amakuru (talk) 22:10, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
Frankly, I'm surprised you're surprised. But again, I think that may have to do with differing usage and jurisdictional realities betwee the US and Australia. "Sydney" is assumed to include areas outside the City of Sydney, and is kinda fuzzy in what exactly it's boundaries are. Not the case with NYC or London, which have distinct political boundaries and a single mayor over the whole city.
Just as an aside, I wouldn't necessarily say that the NYC article is strictly limited in scope to the city proper, as it does mention many things that are in suburban locations. By "suburban"; I mean municipalities that are within the metro area but politically separate from the city at the municipal level, as is typical in American usage, as opposed to it being a catch-all term for residential areas, as I understand is the Australian usage. Likewise, Americans typically use a stricter definition of "city" to indicate municipal boundaries when describing the location of something, which likely has to do with mailing addresses as anything else.
So one wouldn't say MetLife Stadium is in New York as it doesn't have a New York mailing address. Conversely, one might say T-Mobile Arena is in Las Vegas, even though it's outside the incorporated with limits, because it has a Las Vegas mailing address (the Vegas mailing address includes all of the former Las Vegas Township, which included the city proper and now-unincorporated areas like Paradise, Nevada). Funnily enough, and to keep it in discussions about stadiums, when the Atlanta Braves opened their new ballpark, SunTrust Park, this year, they arranged for it to wind up with an Atlanta mailing address, even though it's actually a cross the county line in suburban DeKalb County. Mailing addresses have significant caché in the US. oknazevad (talk) 13:40, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
Neither Manchester or London is a good example because London is not New York and Manchester is not New York. Look, if you walked around the parking lot of a Giants game at Met Life Stadium and asked every person there "am I in New York right now, not a single person would say yes. It's not even ambiguous. The situation may be different in Manchester or London or Timbuktu. None of that matters. The OP asked if anyone knowledgeable would consider Met Life Stadium in New York. That's not even debatable, to the point where anyone who would argue otherwise has just marked themselves as not knowing how they local geography works.--Jayron3204:40, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
Jayron, there's no need to get annoyed about this, it's just a discussion. And FWIW, as part of this friendly discussion, I absolutely agree with you that New York City should cover exactly the topic it currently does, the five boroughs, but with some consideration and mention of the economy and population of the wider metro area. That is exactly what Manchester now covers as well, as it happens. However, although I don't think we need to change anything about the structure of our articles, there is still some validity to Andrew's point - I can't speak for New Yorkers or even Americans in general, but for a casual observer looking for Metlife Stadium, they might pull up a map - this one, say: [2] - and conclude that the stadium is in New York. They'd be technically wrong, but they wouldn't be philosophically wrong... particularly as the two teams that play there are the New York Jets/Giants, they are not called the New Jersey or East Rutherford Jets/Giants. And if a fan talked of going into "the city" for a drink after the game, they would be referring to Manhattan, would they not, not the city of East Rutherford? Nobody could deny that this location is at least in some ways connected to New York City. Thanks — Amakuru (talk) 08:49, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
I agree with most of this, but it misses the point completely, and in a way that I think is quite revealing. The articles on New York are of interest to people who will never set foot in New York (in any sense), let alone attend a Jets or Giants game. These people count too. I did a quick Google [3] on the text string MetLife Stadium in New York and got 209,000 ghits, which seems to me to scuttle the idea that nobody thinks that the stadium is in New York. The attendees at the stadium count, of course, but their numbers are miniscule compared to the number of English speakers worldwide. Andrewa (talk) 09:46, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
Should not our articles seek to educate people on reality, and not merely confirm their misconceptions, regardless of how many people hold those misconceptions? Reality is not subject to the results of polls... --Jayron3212:23, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
Indeed, and while it is good that there was finally some reference to sources, although no attention paid to reliable, the sources in that search do not support the claim, they explicitly and directly say it is in New Jersey. --Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:47, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
Agree and excellent point. But this discussion is about article titles, not about article content. Of course both title and content should reflect reality! But the reality our content (ideally!) reflects is that of the world, while our titles reflect current English usage, which is not always logical. Again see User talk:Andrewa/NYRM2018#Reality in article titles. Andrewa (talk) 18:48, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
I've put some heads-ups [4][5][6] but stress that I have no intention of any action soon, so if you're New-York-over-it-for-now do not stress. Andrewa (talk) 22:24, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
I am suffering from a severe case of discussion exhaustion, and would prefer to table this issue at least until the heat subsides. I mean the literal summer heat in my region, which is now regularly jumping into the high 90s. bd2412T23:04, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
Then it will be hot in the other hemisphere. Granted, probably 90% of English Wikipedia editors are in the Northern hemisphere. bd2412T23:37, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
Lucky you, BD2412. I'm off camping on Saturday and it's predicted to be thunderstorms. So much for summer! Christmas or later sounds good for onward discussions. We can then brejoin the debate. — Amakuru (talk) 13:50, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
Agree, I think we are all suffering from discussion exhaustion, and that we have consensus here that the next RM is best deferred for some months at least (I have suggested a year, fairly consistently I think). But I see no harm in informal discussion for those that wish it. If I were to raise an RM or RfC, that would be different. But one of my goals in this discussion is to defer any attempt at such decisions.
It is not too soon to start this informal discussion, for two more reasons.
Firstly, it may indicate the direction of the eventual decision on a PT for New York, which may be helpful to those doing follow-up work on the successful RM. As indicated, I do not think we can assume that this will be a simple yes/no on whether the current NYC article, which I think is currently scoped to the five boroughs, is PT. It may be, and/or I may be wrong about the scoping... that is not entirely clear to me.
Secondly, the year will go by sooner than some may think. This RM only succeeded IMO because of a lot of hard work leading up to it. A good result in the next RM will require thorough preparation IMO.
But I encourage any and all who feel New-York-over-it to take a break from the discussion. Neither the world nor Wikipedia will end as a result (despite some dire predictions of the past to which I don't think I need to link). Andrewa (talk) 13:46, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
PS but you might like to keep watching every few days just in case a move review is proposed. Unlikely now IMO but always possible. MRs do not repeat the move discussion but just decide whether the closer was in error to close as they did, and what to do about it if so (which may be to reopen the RM), and like RMs normally remain open for seven days minimum. And they are preceded by discussion with the closer, which does not appear to have started. Not yet at least. But there's no statutory minimum time for that preliminary discussion. Andrewa (talk) 14:23, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
Thanks to everyone who's participated in this useful RM in whatever capacity. I would welcome a further RM next year on making New York a primary redirect to NYC but I'm not yet sure which way I'd !vote. If it came up tomorrow I'd probably be a weak oppose. I'll also be busy offline for most of the next two weeks. Certes (talk) 14:33, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
I would like to propose that the NY basename linkings, other evidence, and community input into the question "Is NYC the PT of NY" be carefully considered not before January 2019. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:27, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
I think that's too long to wait, and too vague as to what the moratorium covers. But as you've proposed it, interested to see what support it gets. Andrewa (talk) 09:46, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
A year is probably more sensible. Say expiring 31 July 2018. It'll have to be voluntary anyway, if someone decides to fire up the RM right now, or in 3 months, there won't be too much we can do to stop them. The actual thrust of the RM would be to reverse the move we've just had - (I assume the RM will be New York -> New York (disambiguation) to make way for a WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT to NYC). — Amakuru (talk) 10:02, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
A shaky assumption but it may be correct... except it doesn't quite reverse this move. The issue has always been the destination of the term New York. We have just changed this from NYS to the DAB. The next RM will ask, should we now change it again, but this time to NYC. (And if people still think a Condorcet situation exists - I don't and never have - there should be a third to change it back to NYS, and we could ask a flying pig to close it.) A year is IMO sensible, in fact I have been gently but I think consistently suggesting it for quite some time.
IMO the best way to stop premature RMs and RfCs is to persuade those that might move them that we need a year to prepare the case. Which I think we do. There is a risk that gagging them (or me) may be counterproductive. Andrewa (talk) 10:26, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
I think 18 months is right. Plenty of time for editors to get used to the new, clear, arrangement, and then a full 12 months to observe any problems, and see what ordinary editors do with mislinking. This arrangement is no great problem. WP:TITLECHANGES applies. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:08, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
I agree with Joe on this. Waiting 18 months allows things to settle for some time and we can see how readers react to the arrangement. Any discussion, even this one here, is premature. oknazevad (talk) 13:40, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
I will of course respect any reasonable moratorium. I can't see any prospect of consensus on the vague ones several have now implied, but I could be wrong. I have suggested several myself over the course of this (long) discussion, and of course I unilaterally complied with the clear and definite one that led up to wp:NYRM2017. I read and consider all the criticism I receive, and I have had some recently, this is my favourite, which I'm afraid I rejected {"sour grapes" indeed!) as baseless. It's all in the history. I'll try to come up with a clear proposal myself for this moratorium, as I did last time, and I expect I will unilaterally respect it, as I did last time. Any other clear and definite proposal would be more than welcome (but I'm afraid we might need to discuss it). Andrewa (talk) 17:58, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
I like the change that has been made. That said, never in a million years (if I live that long) would I ever support changing the title of the current New York City article. In fact, I though that this was clearly agreed upon by both sides at the time that the recent move was being considered. Castncoot (talk) 04:58, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
Castncoot, I agree, and I think (hope) the only question on the table here regards the possibility of having the base name "New York" redirect to the article that will always stay at New York City. Currently, it is a DAB page. Some consider NYC to be the PT of NY. Some really dislike the DAB page being at "New York". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:43, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I think we can all agree there's little case for that. If this was the British English Wikipedia, we almost certainly would host the city at New York, as indeed the the French Wikipedia does. People outside the US generally say "New York" rather than "New York City". It's fairly clear, though, that Americans prefer to say "New York City" rather than plan "New York" for the city, so WP:TIES says that's the form we should use. Thanks — Amakuru (talk) 10:24, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
I don't want to predict how this will work out once the smoke clears. My current preference is to eventually either expand the DAB to an overview article, or replace it with one. I don't favour renaming the New York City article, but some may want to invoke the letter of the law if New York were to become a primary redirect, and claim that New York City is unnecessary disambiguation. I think there's a strong consensus that any decision on any further renaming should wait until things stabilise, and that this will probably take a year of more. I have proposed a year, but that is a guess and a plan, not an edict or even a proposed edict. Plans are to help not hinder. They need to change whenever new information requires it, and in this case it is a near-certainty that new information will arrive (or perhaps even a logical necessity, as a lack of (other) new information would itself be new information). (;-> Andrewa (talk) 15:53, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
I disagree on expanding to an overview article. One of the central premises of the recent move was that we don't want mobile users to download a long article that they aren't interested in. That applies all the more so to an overview article, since there's no evidence that there's any reader interested in such a thing. At least with New York (state), we had the advantage that one-third of readers were where they wanted to be! My preference is for exactly the status quo as it stands now. Although as I said, I could maybe be persuaded that NYC is a primary topic.
And yes, if and when it's decided that NYC is a primary topic, the letter of WP:CONCISE would suggest moving NYC to NY, although you'd still have to balance that off against WP:COMMONNAME, which might favour NYC in American English. Perhaps that final question is one to defer for yet another year or two after the NYC primary topic discussion! — Amakuru (talk) 16:45, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
Good points all. The overview would still be a lot smaller than the NYS or NYC articles, but larger than the DAB.
I would expect to support deferring the WP:CONCISE discussion for another year! And then probably plead IAR if needed to keep the NYC article name as it is on the voices... ie Wikipedia is better with the name as is, if we have a clear consensus on that, then end of story. And I'm still of the opinion that the NYC article as it stands is not the PT anyway, but rather a (perhaps subtly) different meaning probably is, and that this distinction is lost on the locals, which may even be the whole problem. Andrewa (talk) 22:22, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
There is no problem, only your machinations. New York City is a perfectly valid name. WP:COMMONNAME and WP:TIES will keep the City article there forever. No need to invoke IAR. You'll need as much luck as finding a needle in a haystack to ever change that status quo. Castncoot (talk) 04:47, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
I'm with Castncoot on this: New York City should and will remain the exact title of the city article. I also don't think the city is primary, and this question should not be addressed until Summer 2018 at the earliest. — JFGtalk09:04, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
Me too. NYC is a better title for the city article because it clarifies the scope to the reader and makes links-to-dab easier for editors to spot. I think this dab is the best destination for New York, but could be persuaded that it should become a primary redirect to NYC. I think we should discuss that change in 12 months but I won't complain if it's 18. Certes (talk) 12:34, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
Likewise agree. Another discussion is incredibly premature, and there is no reason to ever move the city's article.
With that said, I think, Andrew, that you're stuck on an ephemeral idea of "New York" meaning the broader metro area, when that is informal usage at most and hardly unique to New York. All articles on major cities describe to a certain extent how their influence extends into the nearby areas and how infrastructure and such in those areas are linked to the city as a hub. But they also strongly note the distinct legal and political identity of the city government, along with the physical geography and demographics within its boundaries. In short, I think you're trying to make a distinction without a difference for New York City, one that not only doesn't exist for NYC, but doesn't exist for any major city. In English it is common to refer to a metro area by the main city's name. But it's still informal usage. oknazevad (talk) 16:42, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
You are joking, I'm sure. Jersey City may like to consider itself a sixth borough, but it is not in fact. I'm finding it surreal that we're apparently in an environment where it's OK to make people believe that 2+2=6. There are these little inconvenient entities known as facts. Maybe in some future time warp this may change, but in the present time, 2+2=4. Period. End. of. story. Castncoot (talk) 05:12, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
Joking. New York is is divided into five boroughs. But what happens if a new island pops ou just on the outside, and then connects? Governors Island? Is see that the "New York is is divided into five boroughs" line is preserved by defining Governors Island as part of Manhatten Island. In 1700, New York was not divided into five boroughs. Yes I am joking. Your are talking about now. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:37, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
Actually, I need to take some of that back. New York, which means New York City, does not mean the five boroughs so much as it means Manhatten. Things on Manhatten are plain New York, the other four boroughs seem to need disambiguaton. Staten Island natives in particular I have experienced their need to specify Staten Island when someone remarks on them being from New York. Columbia University, though, no one specifies the borough. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:38, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
Sometimes, sometimes not. (And it's spelled "Manhattan", dang it! A personal pet peeve.) True, the "New York, NY" mailing address is just for the borough of Manhattan (which includes more than just Manahattan Island), but the official mailing addresses date to before the consolidation of the five-brought city in 1898. Someone saying they're in New York City when they're in Brooklyn is not incorrect, just not very specific. Being the city is pretty large in area, it's pretty common to specify a borough or even a neighborhood. It's not disambiguation as we use it here at Wikipedia, though. oknazevad (talk) 17:34, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
I'm appalled to be accused of machinations above, and more appalled that JFG and Certes have made comments that could be seen to support this charge. Can you both clarify this?
@Andrewa: For clarity, I do not condone any accusation of "machinations"; I was just expressing my agreement with the position of Castncoot that New York City should remain New York City and the primary discussion should not be opened until Summer 2018, if ever. Many other "regulars" of the New York Debates have expressed a similar stance, so that we seem to have consensus on this as of today. Relax and enjoy the pause. — JFGtalk09:48, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
(ec) Like JFG, I'm specifically with Castncoot on this: New York City should and will remain the exact title of the city article. I did not intend to comment on machinations; I feel that Andrewa and other contributors have behaved ethically throughout this process. Certes (talk) 10:00, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
I think "machinations" may be being used to refer to the bringing up of two awkward questions:
Should the article on NYC be broadened to include more about the metro area and less be less focused on 5 boroughs?
Now personally, I would say no to (1) and yes to (2), if there is ever a decision that NYC is primary over NYS. Andrewa may have a leaning towards yes to (1) and no to (2). If you ask the community for their opinion, they will currently (almost certainly) say no to both. But leaving aside people's own answers to those questions, is it acceptable to ask the questions? From some remarks above, "End. Of Story." and so on, I gather that Castncoot thinks it's not OK to even ask the questions. That surely runs counter to the collegiate and consensus building nature of Wikipedia. WP:DISCUSS things! If NYC becomes the primary topic in 2018/2019, then I may well subsequently, in 2020 or whenever, file an RM to move NYC to NY. It might not succeed, but I'm allowed to file it, aren't I? And if Andrewa wants to move the scope of the article away from the 5 boroughs, well he's allowed to ask the question isn't he, even if the community just says no thanks! — Amakuru (talk) 10:26, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
In the future, go immediately to discussing reliable sources - that would help elevate these discussions and is what Wikipedians are suppose to be discussing - the next person to bring up these issues (in a year or two) who does not reference reliable sources, and specifically references their personal view (or the view of their neighbors) of the world - should be met with a universal 'what are your reliable sources, and the pedia cannot run on personal view'. If one wishes to assert, 'everyone knows someone in the Poconos is in New York' bring your sources and convince with reference to reliable sources, please. If you actually have a genuine reference question, especially if it is a question that is a statement, the place to go is the reference desk, per NOTAFORUM. (As an aside, one should not base their comments on personal beliefs and views, and then wonder in surprise at why the discussion seems personal - short circuit all of that and go to RS). -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:43, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
Good advice IMO. Had it been heeded twelve years ago, or even just one year ago, it would have saved a lot of trouble. But we did get there eventually. Andrewa (talk) 05:05, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
Disagree with half of that, as you know (water under the bridge). As you think this is good advice, please, in the future explicitly cite reliable sources in your first post, if you ever revisit this. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:42, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
Which is exactly why it's important to know when to stop at what you all predicted would be Wiki-nirvana, Amakuru, Certes, and Andrewa. As bd2412 has warned, directing "New York" to New York City which simply revert the problem of ambiguity with new mislinks toward the opposite direction and give them and everyone else a recurrent headache to deal with. Why can't you all follow the proverbial Wikipedia "find something else to do" now? It's been great interacting with you all, but it's not necessary to be tied to this topic forever for our continued interaction on Wikipedia. Best, Castncoot (talk) 13:09, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
I agree with you actually, Castncoot, I'm perfectly happy with the present arrangement, now that the move has been made, and I would be perfectly happy to have no further requested moves and for the present situation to be still the case in ten years time. Others may differ, though, and perhaps there is a feeling in some quarters that NYC should be primary. I won't be initiating any such conversation, but if it does ever take place then I will active in engaging with it, since I still think I have a perspective to offer. Probably you do as well. So let's get on with other things, but be watchful and participate if anyone ever does come up with new suggestions! Thanks — Amakuru (talk) 13:24, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
Like Amakuru, I'm happy to keep the situation as it stands, once we've sorted out the categories etc. Job done. But if the significant minority who believe New York should take the reader to NYC speak up again later then I'll listen and consider contributing. Certes (talk) 13:36, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
Likewise. Except that I think that as a further RM is likely in the fullness of time, the opportunity for informal on-wiki discussion is helpful for those that want it, in an appropriate forum, to prepare for this possibility.
Good, let it rest, then. We've all done a good job and we all need a break. Unless objections are raised, I'll archive this thread in the next 24 hours. — JFGtalk22:08, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
Latest comment: 7 years ago315 comments64 people in discussion
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. No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the move request was: MOVED. This is a contentious issue with strong feelings on both sides, so though there is a clear mathematical weight on the side of move (41 to 15), I thought it worth fully considering all arguments before closing. I also noted that while !voting had stopped three days ago, there were three extra !votes yesterday so I wondered if this should be relisted, but as those !votes followed the general trend of of MOVE with two in favour and one against, I didn't see that prolonging this any further would be worthwhile. The move request was well set out, providing useful background to the issue, and helpful rationales on both sides, with links to policies, guidelines, and previous discussions. During the discussion there were useful comments on both sides. Pawnkingthree's "Having a dab page for such an ambiguous term is the most logical thing to do" seemed to be the essence of the rationale, and was echoed in other comments, such as Shenme's "When there is (or may be) confusion, a DAB page is the best destination". The oppose comments were either based on maintaining the status quo, such as Beyond My Ken's " This is a solution looking for a problem. This is nothing wrong with the status quo." and Czar's "The reams of July 2016 discussion appear clear enough that the (endorsed!) conclusion was "no consensus for move".", or felt that New York was the appropriate and official name for the state. The status quo argument was rebuffed by Andrewa who pointed out that "there is new evidence". While the official name argument was raised in the opening comments by citing WP:OFFICIAL and WP:COMMONNAME. There were a number of comments that New York should be the title for New York City, both among supporters and opposers, but that, as has been said, is a discussion for another time. SilkTork✔Tea time10:53, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
– An August 2016 RfC has concluded that the State of New York cannot be the primary topic for the term "New York", due to the prominence of New York City being often called "New York", and to a lesser extent due to the existence of numerous other topics titled "New York", including songs, books, films, ships, sports teams, the New York metropolitan area, New York County, the historical Province of New York and a bunch of eponymous cities.
Arguments and evidence in favor of the proposed move
New York State is not the primary topic for the term "New York"
Ever since the early days of Wikipedia, it has been repeatedly discussed whether New York State or New York City were dominant enough to claim the primary topic status for the term "New York". An August 2016 RfC concluded with an overwhelming majority that the state is definitely not a primary topic in the sense of Wikipedia guidelines, neither in terms of popularity nor in terms of long-term significance. Consequently, the current situation with the "New York" title pointing to the state article is untenable with regard to our WP:AT policy on article titles.
New York City cannot be considered primary topic either
While New York City receives roughly twice the traffic of New York State [7] – adding the visits for "New York" and "New York (state)" which are currently synonyms – we cannot conclude either that it is much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined, to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term, as would be required to become primary topic under our WP:PTOPIC guideline. New York City and New York State are the top two dominant topics for the term "New York", and they are accordingly given top billing in the dab page.
Over 10+ years, the encyclopedia had accumulated hundreds of thousands of ambiguous or incorrect links to the ambiguous "New York" title. Since last summer, a gigantic collective effort has been underway to correct the wrong links and vindicate the right ones; this involved a combination of manual labour, bot programming and editorial discussions. The situation is not solved, and requires constant maintenance and patrolling (hat tip to bd2412 who has volunteered to maintain things, but this is unsustainable).
When New York becomes a dab page, editors linking there will be warned and offered a choice between the potential meanings, and bots will assist in maintenance automatically, as they do for every ambiguous title in the project. Disambiguation of internal links has already helped people find directly the page they want to read instead of first going through the New York state page, which is quite bulky.
Clarify search results and educate readers
Sample search results for New York by typing "new y…" in the search box on the English Wikipedia. We can't readily find the State of New York because it's just called "New York"; it would be clearer to see "New York (state)" among the other listed items.
A reader looking for New York State does not see it clearly appear when typing "new y…" in the Wikipedia search box, because the state article is the only item that does not have a full "New York something" title. Foreign readers may also wrongly infer from this list that "New York City" and "New York" are just two names for the same article, if they are unaware that there is a U.S. state called New York – therefore the new title contributes to the educational goal of Wikipedia.
Results and page previews from external search engines will also be clearer with "New York (state)" appearing alongside "New York City"; see for example a search on Google.
Arguments and evidence against the proposed move
New York is the official name of the state
Indeed it is, and this is why the proposed title is "New York (state)", not "New York State" or "State of New York" (see prior discussion). Besides, Wikipedia does not necessarily follow WP:OFFICIAL names, and even the state's official site – http://www.ny.gov/ – takes care to show a prominent "NEW YORK STATE" logo on every page, surely to avoid confusion with New York City. The mention of "city" or "state" in each article title is healthy for both city and state.
The move would harm the New York state article
It has been suggested in the 2016 discussion that this change would harm the visibility of the New York state article and reduce its page views; this has not been confirmed by experience when the move was performed in July 2016. Since then, the traffic to the state and city pages has been relatively stable when we add visits to the "New York" title with visits via the "New York (state)" redirect put in place to correct internal links.[8]
Traffic may indeed decrease a little after the move, but the only traffic the state page will "lose" is traffic that was meant for the city page or another one among the dab entries. With regard to visibility, a clear "New York (state)" title in the search box will indeed make the state article more visible to casual readers.
New York State contains New York City
It has been argued that New York should have primacy over New York City as a higher-level jurisdiction. However, this consideration does not help readers, and the encyclopedia has several cases which go both ways. For example, Lagos (city) is primary topic against Lagos State although Lagos State is a higher-level jurisdiction; same for São Paulo vs São Paulo (state) in English, although we have the opposite situation in Portuguese, with the state considered primary pt:São Paulo vs pt:São Paulo (cidade).
Status quo is no problem
Some editors have argued that the long-standing status quo has proven stable and therefore should not be changed: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". The reality is that:
The status quo actually creates many problems: wrong links, surprise effect, loading of a large page, hatnote invisible on mobile app, search box unclear, etc.
Arguing that several prior discussions have upheld the status quo is misleading: most of those discussions had identified substantive issues, and the change was not enforced because there was no sufficient consensus or because there were too many possibilities to choose from.
We are facing an absurd historical situation – dating from 2001 – of a non-primary topic occupying the subject name. "Old habits die hard: occupy New York!"
WP:ATDAB suggests a number of ways to qualify the title of the state article. The best choice is a matter of opinion. This proposal suggests New York (state) for five reasons:
retains the state's common name per WP:COMMONNAME, qualified as necessary
clarity: New York (state) appears to be the most concise unambiguous title
technical convenience: New York (state) is an existing redirect and is already used for most links to the state article
strong consensus in a prior discussion about the preferred title in case the New York article is moved
Survey on the proposed move
Please indicate your Support or Oppose opinion with a brief rationale. Longer arguments should go to the #Discussion of the proposed move section below.
Comment - I launched this move request following extensive discussions with numerous editors at Talk:New York/Proposed move. The main author of the above nomination text was not me, but User:JFG, so I am the nominator because I pushed the final launch button. I am in full support of the above rationale, however. If possible, I would like to request that this RM be closed by an uninvolved administrator rather than a page mover or non-admin, due to the contentious nature of this request and the history of RMs on this topic. Thanks! — Amakuru (talk) 11:45, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Please indicate support in this section, with a brief statement explaining your position. Please take care not to break the numbering of the section. Extended discussion, including responses to opinions noted here, should occur in the "discussion" section below. Editors may move improperly placed materials to that section, with an appropriate subhead.
Support based on evidence and rationale given in the nom. It's pretty clear that there is no overwhelming primary topic for the undisambiguated name, so pointing it to the disambiguation page is the most logical target. Meanwhile, the article on the state needs disambiguation, and the "(state)" form is a) consistent with other similar cases and b) has a technical advantage regarding piping of links. oknazevad (talk) 12:23, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Support. All I would add to the above at this point are two observations: first, to note that for nearly a year now, I have been fixing incoming links to "New York" pursuant to the consensus in discussion at Talk:New York#Proposed action to resolve incorrect incoming links, consistently finding that 20-30% of new links being made clearly intend the city (with about 1% of new links being made intending something else entirely, most commonly the magazine). Second, a person born in "New York City" in 1665 could have lived there until he was 108, without ever being in the state of New York, because although the city existed during that period, the state did not - which crops up as an issue from time to time with links referencing New York prior to the American Revolution. bd2412T12:33, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Support per nom. For the reader typing in New York, the disambiguation page provides the best destination, consistent with the several policies quoted and with other ambiguous titles in Wikipedia. It's good that editors are constantly mending links, but much better for everyone if they don't need to. Certes (talk) 12:54, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Support per nom. To be frank, I'd also support the city being the primary topic, but I think this is the best solution as both are significant topics in their own right. --Bermicourt (talk) 12:59, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Support per the reasons given in the nomination. The only reasons I can think of why people are against are because it is a change to the current state, and that it may make it inconsistencies with other states and cities. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 13:04, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Support per nom and the preceding comments. User:BD2412 identifies a common problem when there's no clear WP:PRIMARYTOPIC - bad links are created and no-one notices, which is bad both for the encyclopaedia and for its readers. As a similar example, Vinyl was recently converted from a redirect to Vinyl group into a DAB page. The change was unquestionably correct. It broke over 700 links - of which only about 50 related to the original target. Narky Blert (talk) 13:48, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Support. The question right now is not whether New York City is primary topic, but that New York State clearly is not. From a global perspective, New York Metropolitan Area may also have a claim, and serves at least as a spoiler for the New York City article which is currently scoped to the five boroughs. But the question here is just whether this RM will improve Wikipedia, and it clearly will, both with respect to reader experience and also with respect to compliance to policies and guidelines... which is not unexpected and just as well, as these policies and guidelines represent wide community consensus on the best way to produce good reader experience. Andrewa (talk) 13:49, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Support. For all the reasons stated in nom, but especially the reduction in creation of new links to "New York" that are not disambiguated by editors. Loopy30 (talk) 15:41, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Support, since any new links to New York are already being disambiguated. This would just make it easier to distinguish these links. I still think NY State is the primary topic, though. Like Mexico vs. Mexico City or Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma City, but disambiguation will help even more than the status quo. epicgenius (talk) 16:33, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Support. I'm persuaded by the excellent rationale, and I'd like to thank the nominators for taking the time to draft it. Mackensen(talk)17:15, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Support. The term "New York" is unquestionably ambiguous. Even the state government website disambiguates to clarify which is meant. older ≠ wiser17:17, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Support It is standard practice that when a term is ambiguous, we create a disambiguation page. "New York" is clearly so. Not a fan of "New York (state)" instead of "New York State" per WP:NATURALDIS, but it's still better than the current setup. – Train2104 (t • c) 22:49, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
A few billion people with slow or expensive data connections will indeed get there faster, by loading a 5-kilobyte dab page and reading its first two lines, rather than waiting for a 2.3-megabyte state page with images. They may even miss the light-grey hatnote, which is displayed after 3 or 4 screenfuls of the lead section when using Wikipedia's mobile app. See Talk:New York/July 2016 move request#Mobile app users can't see hatnotes. — JFGtalk01:36, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
We should not decide page titles based on flawed app design. The hatnote appears at the top on the mobile version. And as Station1 has shown below, it is not as if most users get to the city article by using Wikipedia's search function. Certainly we are not talking about billions of people here. Srnec (talk) 01:43, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
We should decide page titles based on all available data, all the facts, and of course on the consensus of the Wikipedia community, particularly the article titles policy and most particularly WP:ATDIS, which is a strong community consensus that supports these page renames. Paine Ellsworthput'r there02:54, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
This RM cannot solve the readers' current problem by changing the app, but it can solve it by moving the DAB. (And not convinced that the app design is flawed in any case... the results are not good but there may be constraints on the design which we have not considered. In my experience it's a sound principle of software support to fix the problem you understand, and the problems you don't understand often then just go away as a result.) Andrewa (talk) 14:09, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
If there's a software problem, it affects tens or hundreds of thousands of articles, not just this one. Changing this one article for the next ten years in order to benefit a small proportion of the 3% of readers who land on New York by mistake is not an effective way of dealing with the alleged problem. Station1 (talk) 07:32, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Agree that if there's a software problem that affects tens or hundreds of thousands of articles it should be fixed. But we're not going to fix it here, while we can fix the "alleged" problem (or rather, the several related problems) described in the rationale above, and should do so. Should it be "alleged" software problem? Andrewa (talk) 07:43, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Support for changing the title of the page "New York" to "New York (state)". The arguments make perfect sense to me. However, I am not in favor of changing the title of "New York (disambiguation)" to "New York". The disambiguation page should specifically state "disambiguation". "New York" should redirect to "New York (disambiguation)". Box99Tube (talk) 17:23, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
@Box99Tube:, per WP:MALPLACED, a "Foo" title can not redirect to a "Foo (disambiguation)" title, because too many elements of our system are set up to recognize and report erroneous links made to disambiguation pages at the base page name. bd2412T18:05, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Support. Both the city and state are widely popular and enduring topics, and neither is a clear primary topic. As a side note, please don't compare this with Oklahoma City. The city is never known as simply Oklahoma, and the two titles have their own primary topic status, without any title conflict. kennethaw88 • talk18:46, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Support New York state is not the primary topic, New York City has a much stronger claim to being PrimaryTopic for "New York". Much stronger. I strongly disagree with JFG's assertion "New York City cannot be considered primary topic either", but nevertheless the proposed move is a good thing to do right now. Supporting NYC as the PT is not a good reason to oppose this move. Evidence of the dominance of "New York" to mean the city to a wide audience will become available with the DAB page being placed temporarily at the base name "New York". Current data is confused due to "New York" being a valid target for the state. I agree with the utility of the DAB page being at the base name, for functionality of the search box suggestions, and for the relative small size and high utility of the DAB page for readers who are mis-searching. The status quo is definitely a problem, something that I didn't find clear last time. I have little preference for NYS at New York State, or New York state or State of New York or New York (state), but am satisfied with the argument that the last is best consistent with similar topics. As per Box99Tube, I would prefer to have New York redirect to the DAB page at "New York (disambiguation)", bugger "WP:MALPLACED", fix the system elements that arguably lock in place the silly practice that DAB pages must go to the base name when there is no PrimaryTopic. DAB pages are not real articles, and there are more reader-oriented advantages to having DAB pages suffixed "(disambiguation}". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:08, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Support I think this is an excellent suggestion to clear up any confusion that someone might have when searching for the term "New York". Cthomas3 (talk) 07:19, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Support Regardless of the title of the articles on either the state or the city, New York should be a dab because it is highly ambiguous. MB22:21, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Support - Neither New York City nor New York State can claim to be the primary topic, and turning New York into a dab page is the best course of action so readers can be directed to either the city or state without giving one primary status over the other. Dough487202:58, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Support Makes sense. Overall I still think readers will easily find what they're looking for no matter which route we go, and even with this one you're going to have people linking to the wrong page. It's true linking a disambiguation page is more likely to get fixed, though :) I truly wish good luck to all who intend on fixing those backlinks! It amazes me how much time and energy everyone is putting into these move discussions. I can only imagine how much we could improve New York-related content with the same amount of effort... — MusikAnimaltalk04:14, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Support. As Washington and Georgia are ambiguous in practice, taking a worldwide view, so too is New York (albeit not in many individuals' minds). The herculean task of disambiguation of links to New York has demonstrated this, as far too many were linking to the wrong target. The search-box drop-down top two suggestions will be New York City and New York (state) which will make it obvious which is which, hopefully allowing many, if not most readers to avoid actually landing on the disambiguation page at the base title. I think, when the dust settles the page views profile for New York will be very similar to these. Yes, hundreds of views of the dabs, but that's unavoidable – and still modest in relation to the two main topics' thousands. Currently there's only one link to Washington and two to Georgia, so the problem seems to be managed well with those. – wbm1058 (talk) 04:32, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Searching for "Washington" shows the state, the city and the dab page. New York will work the same. Note that search results will show "New York", "New York City" and "New York (state)", exactly like what happens for Washington. Readers who use the search box won't even hit the dab page, most of the time, as they can directly select their preferred destination. — JFGtalk16:02, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Support. New York State is simply not the primary topic. NYC has 3-4 times as many page views as NYS. If we do implement the change suggested here, it would then be interesting to track what percentage of people who land on the DAB page choose NYC (if this is possible to track). If this percentage is above some threshold -- 50%? 60%? 75? -- we should consider making New York City the main page for New York, with a dab notice at the top. But that would be a separate issue to take up at a later time. Clean Copytalk10:54, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Support per nom. I'm not normally a fan of dab pages, but the arguments put forth on the previous RM (and summarized above) swayed me that this is probably the best solution in the long run, as the title is genuinely ambiguous (the city being the primary topic coming close). I think that it has been amply demonstrated that the state is not the primary topic, and that the current setup creates issues both for readers and for editors. No such user (talk) 11:42, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Support per my many arguments the last time around. If anything, New York (the city!) is the primary topic, not New York State. ~ Rob13Talk15:08, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Support moving the article about New York State away from New York, strongly oppose the proposed title New York (state) – New York State isn't the primary topic of New York. This argument has been satisfactorily dealt with in this discussion and in the prior discussions that I've participated, and so I feel not strong compulsion to repeat it here. However, the proposed title is a nonsensical abomination. We favour WP:NATURAL disambiguation to parenthetical disambiguation, and there is a form of natural disambiguation that is perhaps the most common way to refer to this entity: New York State. Now, some people have said they oppose this because it is not 'official', but nor is New York City official; that's just 'New York' as well. When people talk about this state, they say 'New York State', not 'New York bracket state bracket'. There is no reason to add in unnecessary brackets and forgo the most common usage, which is 'New York State'. This is, of course, used by the relevant state government itself, so any further arguing about the 'officialness' of this name is an absolute waste of time, regardless of whether it appears in the state charter or not. I'm shocked by the density of this proposal. How would the reader be helped by having to type an extra two characters into the search bar? See WP:CONCISE. RGloucester — ☎15:42, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Personally, I happen to prefer the natural dab as well but that was opposed by most participants in last years's survey. By suggesting "New York (state)", we are following consensus; no prejudice against a followup move request from that title to "New York State" or "State of New York". Regarding the search engine, parentheses make no difference, so there is no inconvenience to readers on this front. — JFGtalk16:08, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Support. When there is (or may be) confusion, a DAB page is the best destination. When there is confusion, a qualified name (the shortest possible qualification) aka " (state)", is the quickest 'prefiguration' in the search list. As a previous resident of New York (the city), I am of course highly incensed that the city link is not the most obvious to y'all. Yet, I support this proposal. It is the most useful outcome. Why would anyone object, other than misplaced impulses? (see mine for example) Shenme (talk) 18:47, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Support the change as proposed, primarily because it will fix the problems described with respect to people arriving to the wrong page, and of editors having to review every new link created to the base name, even those intended to target the state. The people saying that "there is no problem with the current situation" have not provided alternatives nor solutions to these problems, which would continue to exist if the current situation is maintained. The proposed move has the property of being an elegant solution to both problems: most of the time, the link will be repaired by the editor writing it (either when noting the redirect or when being notified by the "you've created a link to a DAB page" bot), without needing the supervision of a second editor; or in case this supervision is needed, it will be easier for editors to find out which new links are in need of repair. And if some links are not repaired in a timely way, at least the readers following the link will be provided with a fallback -the DAB page- that allows them to recover from the error and be shown a navigation page that drives them to their desired target article - i.e. putting the reader in charge of fulfilling their own needs, rather than arbitrarily sending them to the article that by chance happens to have been longer in Wikipedia. The Oppose votes are basically of two forms, neither of which provides a thorough and solid argument; and frankly, they are not very convincing, being full of logic holes. The first form is something like New York is the name of the state, and New York City is the name of the city, so there's no need to disambiguate. This argument ignores the fact that "New York" is also very commonly used as the name of the city. We have the DAB policy establishing that, when a name is used for two different topics and neither is overwhelmingly more prominent than the other, a disambiguation page should be regarded as the best possible solution for readers to find their way to their intended target; this policy recognizes that placing a non-primary topic under an ambiguous name is making readers a disservice, even in cases like this when either article is also known by other non-ambiguous names. The second argument goes There has never been a consensus against the current situation, so it's impossible to find a consensus to move. This circular argument is directly against WP:Consensus can change, which states that a rough consensus of solid arguments supported by policy is enough to overcome a local consensus, no matter how long it lasted. This half-argument also ignores that the previous results did not end in a consensus to keep the current status quo, but in a lack of consensus either way (primarily by the difficulty of having a discussion based on detached reasoning and policy-based arguments, and the easiness by which the discussions were derailed into emotional wrecks of crossed accusations and side-tracked topics). There are also some concerns regarding the convenience and/or style of the request move, either for being too soon after previous discussion (it has been almost a year after the previous RfC about the primary topic, and more than a year from the previous Move Request), or even for how people are participating in the current discussion, with more or less emphasis and time devoted to it. Those could at worst be the basis for an ANI investigation on the behavior of editors who carelessly tried to beat a dead horse, but they shouldn't derail a good-faith attempt at discussion by editors willing to revisit the status quo, again per WP:CCC. There is a third Oppose argument regarding the consistency of this situation similarly named topics that point to the larger entity (state or country) when it shares the name with its constituent city; but it's easy to disprove such claimed consistency by pointing to numerous examples of topics where either the city is primary over the eponym state, or where a disambiguation page holds the base name. There are some legit concerns regarding some aspects of the move request - namely the name to be used for the article on the State using natural or parenthetical disambiguation; or whether the City article should be regarded as the primary topic instead. Those are reasonable doubts regarding the specifics of this proposed move. And the people who worked to draft the text of the move request agreed that a successful move should not prevent them from being revisited; so, a success in this request should be interpreted with no prejudice to reopen those concerns in further RfC discussions. However, in the absence of a strong emerging consensus on those topics in the current discussion, I'd recommend using the exact terms proposed in the current request - in order to gain a much needed improvement to Wikipedia over the current status, and letting the details be sorted out at a later step. Diego (talk) 22:17, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
P.S. I'll add that I've noticed a trend, that the motivation after many Oppose votes seems to be a general dislike of disambiguation in general; and that's what prompts their rational arguments. By that sentiment, we would never have disambiguation under a base name, as disambiguation pages are never articles on their own. I'd like to point out here that the policy establishes the strong community consensus that disambiguation pages are the preferred target for situations where no topic is the primary subject for the term, no matter how some people may feel about it. Diego (talk) 12:49, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
Note that opposition to a disambiguation page at New York does not equal a general dislike of disambiguation pages at base names. In my case for example while I think that while not there is not a unique primary name for New York that the issue needs to be looked at as a whole where the city and state are vastly more common than any other name and also the case that one is fully contained in the other. To me this is different from most disambiguation pages located at the base name such as surface. I don't think it should be made a general exception, but it seems reasonable to make one here. It's stuff like this where WP:IAR and WP:CONLEVEL come into play as well considering the reasoning and motivation behind the policies and guidelines. PaleAqua (talk) 01:36, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Note that opposition to a disambiguation page at New York does not equal a general dislike of disambiguation pages at base names. I agree, and I wasn't referring to your comment, which is a partial oppose after all. But comments like "No one wants to land on a dab page" or "the obvious disadvantage of sending an enormous number of readers to a disambiguation" do not express any characteristics specific to the current situation, but a dislike of disambiguation as a tool in general.
We have pages like All That Jazz or Loving You that are also proper nouns for several relevant topics, and the move requests to displace one non-primary target and place the dab page at the base name were faced with similar opposition that "it doesn't hurt anyone to send readers to the wrong article if you leave a hat note in place". Just for fun, I challenge anyone to guess which was the article that was placed at the base name in those examples, by picking one of the candidate entries in the list before reading the move discussions at their respective talk pages. Diego (talk) 13:11, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
The one "problem" here is merely a problem for editors and should be resolved "behind the scenes". This solution therefore fails. Links that are incorrect (i.e., do not point to the correct/intended target) are simply editorial mistakes. Common mistakes indeed. It is hardly only New York that is affected. But they are still mistakes by editors and changing page titles is a terrible way of getting editors to make less mistakes. Especially, when we are talking about a move that will inconvenience thousands more readers than will be inconvenienced by clicking on one of the dozen or so new bad links created daily. The other "problem" is equally chimeric. If the "wrong page" is simply one the reader wasn't looking for, this move will assure that any reader using our own search function will end up at the wrong page and not merely those looking for the city, since nobody is looking for a dab page. The NY situation is akin to a TWODABS situation. Srnec (talk) 00:33, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
The problem of following an inner link and arriving at the wrong article is very real for readers, not just editors. But every reader that lands in the disambiguation page will be served the information they need - an index to their desired article, perfectly laid out. This is better than a hat note in tiny type, hidden beneath the big title and page photos in a several-hundreds-of-kilobytes long page.
And this only applies to readers following links. The experience of those using the search function will be improved, as now it will clearly present its results as either New York state and New York City, removing any trace of the current ambiguity that could bring them to the wrong page.
And now that you bring WP:TWODABS to the table, please note that it only recommends using hatnotes instead of a DAB page when one of the articles is a primary topic. When there is no primary topic, TWODABS still says "where no topic is primary, the disambiguation page is placed at the base name."Diego (talk) 05:08, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Support. While I think New York City is the primary topic for New York, I'm not going to make perfect the enemy of good here. It is obvious that the state is not the primary topic. It would also be possible to run an experiment where any items on the DAB page have a special redirect to track uses of that link (e.g. New York (city disambiguation redirect), New York (state disambiguation redirect), etc.). The damage to readers arriving at the incorrect page is mitigated by this change. ---- Patar knight - chat/contributions01:23, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Support. From a global perspective, New York is the city. In most of the U.S., "I'm going to New York this weekend" means the city. Page traffic for the city is much higher and a lot of the "New York" traffic is looking for the city (see this previous move discussion for details). In addition, readers seeking the article on the state by using Wikipedia's search suggestions or another search engine are not given a result option including the word "state" (see, e.g., this screenshot), something very helpful for such an ambiguous topic. The harm of the current situation is that a) readers are not getting where they want and b) a lot of wikilinks are misdirected. Normally, I wouldn't care about b) so much, but on this scale, it's an important issue too. If the page is moved, I also endorse User:Patar knight's proposal (immediately above) for tracking of reader traffic from that page. — AjaxSmack02:12, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Unlikely. The initial cleanup of incoming links uncovered over 20,000 links to "New York" intended for the city. Continuing efforts since then have consistently yielded 20-33+% intended for the city, and an additional 1% intended for the various other meanings of the term. If up to one in three people writing about the city type "New York" alone, it seems implausible that people merely reading about it would be more specific. bd2412T03:40, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Relatively few readers get to articles through wikilinks, especially to well-known topics like New York. Fuller explanation at "WP:AT discussion" below.Station1 (talk) 04:14, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
I strongly doubt the assertion that relatively few readers get to articles through wikilinks. We don't have readily visible stats of the provenance of readers for each page view; this information could be inferred from the HTTP referer headers but I don't know if Wikimedia stores and aggregates them anywhere. According to my totally subjective gut feeling, most page views probably come from 1) Wikipedia search engine 2) external search engines 3) internal links 4) links from external sites 5) direct URL input. It would be very illuminating to have some concrete measurements on the provenance of readers. My hunch about dominance of the Wikipedia search engine stems from weekly stats recorded at WP:5000: the Wikipedia home page gets a massive 110 million page views, out of a total 370 million for the 5000 most visited articles. If wholly one third of Wikipedia traffic hits the home page first, it is very likely that a good chunk of the second third derives from the reader typing a search on said front page. Then #2 would be Google and friends, which often give Wikipedia articles top billing in their search results, and they are the default destination when searching for something on a mobile device. I place internal links as source #3 because people tend to follow up on a subject from within Wikipedia more often than from an external site other than a search engine. Finally direct URL input is a thing of 20th century geeks only… — JFGtalk08:35, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Support - "New York" is patently an ambiguous term. We can have little confidence that readers who type "New York" into the bar are looking for the state's article. This is what disambiguation is for and, in this case, it will be useful to both readers and editors. --LukeSurltc09:22, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
Support – Status quo is untenable per WP:AT policy, because it has been clearly established, in prior discussions and by RfC, that the State of New York is not the primary topic for the term "New York", according to any criterion listed at WP:PTOPIC and WP:DETERMINEPRIMARY. This leaves a choice of placing a dab page at this title or proving that New York City is the primary topic and applying WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT. The latter is arguable but does attract significant opposition in fact as well as in opinion (see walls of text in prior debates). The only compelling, reader-friendly, policy-compliant choice is the dab page. To supporters of the status quo, I would also point out that IF the "New York" title were a dab page already, there would not be any compelling reason to replace it by the New York State article; perhaps by New York City (although I doubt it), but that is not the question asked today. — JFGtalk14:35, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
Strong Support New York mostly refers to the city per views on the topic. English views of New York mostly think of the city, and this is an English Wikipedia. If you search "New York" in Google, what do you find? The city. There are lots of links and images named New York that refer to the city, not the state. The state is not the primary topic for the name, "New York". I believe this page about the state should redirect to "New York (state)", and then either redirect "New York" to "New York City" and put a hatnote, or rename "New York City" to "New York". - Prodigy55 (talk) 00:53, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
Support: It seems clear that there is no primary topic for the term "New York", so let's do what we ordinarily do in such situations. Putting the dab page at the name will also help to identify mislinked discussions in articles that link the term. —BarrelProof (talk) 02:33, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
Strong support – This is an international encyclopedia and it is clear that in most of the world, "New York" does not refer to the state. Moreover, there is no evidence that the state article meets WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. 142.160.131.202 (talk) 19:28, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
Oppose
Please indicate opposition in this section, with a brief statement explaining your position. Please take care not to break the numbering of the section. Extended discussion, including responses to opinions noted here, should occur in the "discussion" section below. Editors may move improperly placed materials to that section, with an appropriate subhead.
Oppose. (a) New York covers the entire history of New York, including the 150+ years before it became a state in 1776, so proposed title is less accurate.
(b) Proposed title is less natural, less concise, and less consistent than current title (policy at WP:AT).
(c) No one wants to land on a dab page. Only roughly 2.5% of readers landing on New York actually want New York City (based on 2010 hatnote experiment). Making New York a dab page does not benefit them (they have to click through either way), while inconveniencing those who really do want New York. Station1 (talk) 15:37, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Unfortunately, no. The experiment would have to be re-run. There's no reason to expect the results would be grossly different, though. Station1 (talk) 17:47, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
One of the arguments made in the previous discussion was that moving the disambiguation page to the base title would be a good way to assess how popular is each article nowadays (without the distortion introduced by having one of them at the base name), giving us real recent data of readers' expectations.
And if I remember correctly, during the previous move discussion there was a brief period while the disambiguation page was placed at New York; and it showed a large percentage of readers searching for the city, not the state. Could someone find those statistics and post them at the Discuss section below? Diego (talk) 18:13, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) There's no question that New York City gets significantly more pageviews than New York. Those numbers are easily obtainable[9]. The question is how the current set-up distorts those numbers and the answer is it raises New York's pageviews by a small percentage. Further discussion below. Station1 (talk) 18:41, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Oppose - This is a solution looking for a problem. This is nothing wrong with the status quo. which serves our readers well. Beyond My Ken (talk) 16:48, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
There is plenty wrong with the status quo! The status quo actually creates many problems: wrong links, surprise effect, loading of a large page, hatnote invisible on mobile app, search box unclear, etc. All this has been explained in the above proposal rationale. Please take the blinders off your race horse. Paine Ellsworthput'r there20:14, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
If you're attempting to get me to reconsider my opinion, insulting me is unlikely to achieve your goal, nor is treating me as if I'm a simpleton who can't properly evaluate a proposal. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:55, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
I know you are no simpleton, believe me. I have a good, healthy respect for you, BMK, please believe that also. That's why I thought it better to insult your horse. Paine Ellsworthput'r there23:07, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
@Beyond My Ken: In the 2010 debate, you supported exactly what is being proposed now, writing: *Support - "New York" should be a dab page, the state should be "New York (U.S. state)" and the city should be "New York City" Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:58, 3 November 2010 (UTC).[10] Why do you now think status quo is better? — JFGtalk22:13, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Now, you see, that's a good way to get someone to reconsider! Very good question, JFG, one I'll have to ponder a bit. Thanks for bringing my previous opinion to my attention. Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:55, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Opposeper BMK. We also have a very clear policy based reason to not disambiguate: New York City has the wonderful natural disambiguator of City. The State is the primary topic here, just as Quebec, Mexico, and Oklahoma are. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:18, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Just want to point out my change of opinion (if not change of !vote) above. Also, the reason that Quebec, Oklahoma, and Mexico are not good parallels to New York is that Quebec City, Oklahoma City, and Mexico City simply do not have the same world status that New York City does. (Of them, Mexico City comes closest, but I don't believe I've ever heard the city referred to as just "Mexico" in the way that New York City is very frequently referred to as "New York".) Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:49, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Beyond My Ken, thanks for the reply. I've struck my per. I think Quebec is analogous because it is referred to solely by that name. I'd agree with you on no other similarly patterned city having the world status of NYC, but I still think there is a case from consistency here. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:27, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Oppose. I do not think this will improve reader experience. I would prefer swapping the city for the state as primary topic to making a dab page primary. Our dab pages are ugly and often filled with articles that only a tiny proportion of users are looking for. This dab page will be among the worst for that, crowded with items when almost all its visitors are looking for one of two. The hatnote does the work much better and nobody (readers) loses. The problems with bad links are internal ones that should be fixed out of sight. Srnec (talk) 18:40, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Probably won't change your mind, Srnec, and yet I'm willing to try: Yes, this will improve reader experience. As an avid reader of Wikipedia myself, I can tell you that I'd much rather land on a useful, relatively short dab page than to land on a long, slow loading page that turns out to be the wrong page. The NYC page might very well be the primary topic, and that would be a useful discussion for a future Rfc or even RM. For now, all we know is that there is a strong community consensus that the state page is not the primary topic, so the policy's community consensus at WP:ATDIS supports titling the dab page with the raw NY title. The NY dab page does have several links, and all of them should be to the many notable things that may also be referred to as just "New York". Yet take note that the two articles that are most wanted by readers are right there at the top of the dab page. So it takes much less time to find what you want on the 5,190-byte dab page than it does on the 167,607-byte state page. I just noticed that the state page is 32.3 times as long as the dab page. Also, the problems with the bad links are definitely internal ones; however, thus far the only way to fix them is to monitor them almost daily. These page moves will fix those internal problems, so unless you have a better solution, then please support these page moves! Paine Ellsworthput'r there20:44, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Oppose. Why is this under discussion? The reams of July 2016 discussion appear clear enough that the (endorsed!) conclusion was "no consensus for move". That was a year ago, and a much less frequented discussion the next month says there is no primary topic? Note that I didn't participate in either, and that I find the larger discussion's endorsement of the status quo much more palatable than the smaller, follow-up pretense for this double jeopardy. With no new evidence/rationale since last year's discussion, I don't see what there is to discuss. I don't think our naming precedent should be set by new links to New York backtraced and tallied to the authors' intentions. "New York" in sources can be contextual, but when something is from "New York", it more often refers to the larger locale—the same as Luxembourg and Luxembourg City. The state, by its common name, is the primary topic for "New York". Further, on reader experience, if we are concerned about visitors to New York who indeed seek New York City, the hatnote atop the state article performs the same function as moving the dab to the primary topic (with the added benefit of the state page being far more informative on the main uses of "New York" than a cluttered dab page). So while it's only my opinion that I see no material benefit from this proposal, the undertones of crusade in this proposal are incontrovertible. It's misleading to have this discussion on this talk page rather than the other more populated page (like every prior discussion...), so we miss out on its (collapsed) FAQ and the nine previous move discussions it mentions. It's time to make that FAQ crystal clear, add a prominent {{Round in circles}} like the one at Talk:Sega Genesis, and "stop changing it". czar05:46, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
This is under discussion, czar, because it would be better to discuss it rather than just to go ahead and do the right thing and rename the pages sans discussion. So here we are, discussing it. It's okay for you to see this as some sort of pipe dream on the part of supporters – that is certainly a valid opinion; however, it's also okay to propose these page moves as little as six months after a "no consensus" decision, and this proposal waited a year. Are you unaware of those facts? Our naming precedent should be set by the facts, all the facts, and the fact that thousands and thousands of links were malplaced and therefore misled readers is an important fact among several other facts as depicted in the proposal rationale above. Whether the state or the city is the primary topic has been debated at length – these page moves have the very real potential to settle that argument. This talk page was chosen over the NY talk page so that all participating editors will not have to deal with the many other discussions that appear there. The notice left there by the bot suffices to let involved editors know about this proposal, doesn't it? Yes, it is most definitely time to stop going 'round in circles and finally, after sixteen years, finally do the right thing. Please help by being part of the solution. Paine Ellsworthput'r there06:52, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
The "right thing" has already been done. No, I don't think it's useful to relitigate a well-attended discussion without new evidence/rationale—not in a year, not in ten. No, I don't find the proposal compelling. czar06:57, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
If the previous RM had been closed as "don't move" then I could agree with Czar. However, it was never closed in the usual way, and what passed for closure had the panel split between "move" and "no consensus". No one saw a consensus for keeping the status quo. In these circumstances, I believe it is fair to revisit the matter a year later. Certes (talk) 08:38, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Czar, there is new evidence. There is the August 2016 RfC which found that New York State is not the primary topic. This information was not available to the closers of the second 2016 RM, two of whom were clearly in doubt as to this (the third found consensus to move but was outvoted it seems). Andrewa (talk) 09:36, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Sorry, but it smells like sour grapes to this outsider. The August "discussion" didn't have anywhere near the circulation as the behemoth July move discussion, and I had already expressed my views of its flaws in my original post above. It has no "new" information but instead attempts to circumvent the validity of the "no consensus" July close through a smaller, proxy discussion (indeed, look at how it was started). "No consensus" isn't something that needs to be fixed—it's a valid expression of will. I'm not surprised that the same editors in opposition to the current setup have continued to make opportunities to revisit the same discussion, the same way that I'm not surprised at the incorrigible tenaciousness of each oppose-pester thread on any divided discussion, the same arguments recurring endlessly, but that means it's up to the rest of us non-page-watching, occasional RfC participants to reiterate how the treatment is worse than the cure and reaffirm our less-imperfect-than-maligned status quo. I don't see anything further to discuss, but if need be, please split to a specific topical discussion below. czar14:43, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
User:Czar said, "when something is from "New York", it more often refers to the larger locale"
Not in UK it doesn't. In my 67 years of personal experience, in UK an unqualified "New York" invariably means the city. New York, New York looks distinctly weird to British eyes unless you know something about U.S. place-naming conventions. (NB I have voted "support" - setting my insular prejudices to one side, I most certainly do not think that the city is WP:PRIMARYTOPIC.) Narky Blert (talk) 20:39, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Oppose a biased poll. I'll elaborate on my position on the title when I actually have time, but I'd like to note that this vote is far biased by only presenting one viewpoint and bashing the other. I thought Wikipedians knew about objective and fair voting/consensus? Also, the first lines have inaccuracies, the votes mostly ended with no consensus/status quo. I highly object to such a slanted vote. Imagine if the US ballot sheets slandered Clinton and glorified Trump for all voters... ɱ(talk) · vbm · coi)12:38, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
I also oppose this on the very well-reasoned grounds Alanscottwalker describes below. I'll likewise strongly condemn the WP:Bludgeoning of every oppose vote here by the supporters, who have been barely touched in their votes. ɱ(talk) · vbm · coi)20:09, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Oppose: Joining the other opposes, New York is not ambiguous it is broad, and the New York article subject is broad, encompassing, as it does New York City, and the History of New York, including Province of New York, and things connected to it, like the New York Metropolitan Area. The proposal mistates that it is about "higher level jurisdiction", it is not, it is about the encyclopedic breadth of the article. This is consistent with the other articles where we have title X City and X: Quebec City, Quebec; Mexico City, Mexico; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Panama City, Panama; Kuwait City, Kuwait, etc. If any equivocation remains, it is also consistent, and resolved by WP:TWODAB.
We are not to give regard to the prejudices (policy says we do not pick titles based on what people think of first) and mistakes of people, we are to follow sources:
According to Oxford, the cardinal usage of New York is the state.[11]
The Encyclopedia Britannica has a bold title New York for the state and New York City, similar to ours.
The largest travel reference work publisher in the English language, Fodor's, has New York, the state, at "New York" [12], and New York City at "New York City" [13].
Moreover it is illogical to claim that people don't understand a common map of the United States (see right) or that common phrases like Buffalo, New York or Long Island, New York[16] make no sense, which is what the proposal assumes -- according to the proposal's rationale we are forced to pretend we don't understand that things like New York's Niagara Falls [17] are not in New York City. Whereas, the fact is, things like Buffalo are in New York, as is New York City.
It is also illogical to claim that page views force the decision. The readers who found New York City, found it at New York City which further means that there is no reason for disambiguation as under disambiguation title policy (AT), disambiguation only need arise when a title has "been already used for other articles." These articles have basically been in proper place since the founding of Wikipedia, thus there is no consensus to move. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:38, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
The only part of your informative opinion that addresses community consensus is your quote from the AT policy. That is a fine quote, because it shows that "New York", which has been used for many, many other articles (see this dab page for several non-partial-title matches, and the link near the bottom to all pages that begin with "New York" for a lot more partial-title matches – all those pages are evidence that "New York" has been used for many other articles), absolutely must be disambiguated. A little further down on that policy page it states, "If the topic is not primary, the ambiguous name cannot be used and so must be disambiguated." So if we truly follow the spirit and intent of the AT policy, and the community consensus that created and maintained it, then we should agree that "New York" is an ambiguous title that must be somehow qualified to set it apart from all other things "New York". Paine Ellsworthput'r there19:31, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Obviously New York has appropriately been used for the broad subject New York, at its current place, for basically forever, as it covers the broad subject, yes we have qualified songs and the like - that says nothing about the broad topic -- New York, suits the broad topic, according to the consensus way we title, as New York City suits its topic. And no, that is not alone where I address consensus considerations, so you are wrong there, too, but, really, there is no need for you to WP:Bludgeon the opposes. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:00, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
As in the past, we shall have to agree to disagree. I do not consider civil discussion to be "bludgeoning", nor do I consider the enormously long state article to be akin to any definition of "broad-concept" type article, which is generally quite short and not too dissimilar to a dab page. Unlike the "broad-topic" article, the state article is specifically about the entire great state of New York, to include as much of its history and contents as encyclopedically possible. It is in no way, shape nor form a broad-topic article. I forgive you for the "bludg..." remark. Paine Ellsworthput'r there10:41, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
As in the past, you make arguments that are patently incorrect. Southern United States is listed by Wikipedia guideline as just such a broad article - its readable prose size at 61kB is larger than New York's readable prose size at 59kB - in shape and form, they are alike. They are also alike in having geography topics, and in being broad. I am not seeking forgiveness but for you to stop making patently incorrect claims, at repeated redundancy on an issue that AT policy expressly advises 'find something better to do'. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:21, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
I don't remember saying BCAs are "always quite short" as you seem to suggest. I cannot fathom, as unquestionably great as is the state of New York, how you could possibly compare it to the SUS article, which actually does cover a "broad concept". What exactly is gained by disagreeing with community consensus in this case? Paine Ellsworthput'r there19:13, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
Yet more reason for you to stop bludgeoning the opposes. You cannot recall that you just said that broad articles are short like disambiguation pages and do not have the same form and shape of encyclopedia articles like New York does. The articles, Southern United States and New York, have the same form and shape. You have been shown to be patently wrong about Broad articles. Instead of admitting your incorrect argument, or stopping your bludgeoning, you claim you don't understand what I just said, "in shape and form, they are alike. They are also alike in having geography topics, and in being broad." Really, if you cannot understand ordinary English, you should not be here bludgeoning - I have already addressed what the community standards are and in my first paragraph demonstrated how the article broadly covers New York, thus fitting all the naming criteria - so, you should not keep bludgeoning with repetition and patently incorrect claims. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:13, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
Certainly sorry that you think I'm bludgeoning the opposes. I rather think I'm doing my obviously wanting level best to find out why opposers do not seem to want to go along with community consensus in this very important case. So I'll let it be and hope for the best. Be well. Paine Ellsworthput'r there19:48, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
Why anyone would think a dialogue, in which two parties are discussing equally, is "bludgeoning" I have no idea. People are welcome to comment on the "support" votes as well if they think there's something wrong with them. — Amakuru (talk) 22:03, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Ah, but why anyone would oppose moving the NYS article, or fail to assessconsensus that it should be moved, remain even deeper mysteries, do they not? Yet both have happened, and we just need to deal with it. Andrewa (talk) 22:37, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Oppose. I agree with the editor who said that this is a solution looking for a problem. I am unconvinced what tangible benefits occur. Mpen320 (talk) 11:01, 10 July 2017 (CT)
You had to do that so that there is no problem. As long as you don't stop, the rest of us are happy. (Ask a silly question, get a silly answer.) Clean Copytalk03:31, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
@BD2412: You do realize that no matter which way this goes there will still be editors who don't pay attention, don't preview, and don't bother checking their work. You're still going to have to clean up after them. Box99Tube (talk) 19:23, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
If the links are disambiguation links, then a) the person leaving the edit will get an automated talk page notice informing them of the error; b) the edit will show up on all of the various disambiguation project tools tracking generation of disambiguation links; and c) disambiguation tools like the dabsolver and the AWB disambiguation will recognize and offer solutions for the error. bd2412T19:27, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Partial Oppose. I support moving New York to New York (state), but oppose moving New York (disambiguation) there and support leaving a redirect to New York similar to what is done in the case of WP:TWODAB. In this case neither New York or New York City are clearly the primary topic for New York but the other topics for New York are nowhere near close to primariness. While this does not exactly meet TWODAB it is still a good comparison. Given the number of links to "city, New York" and from what I recall the New York correction process finding 2 to 1 of the links intending to be the state it seems like better service to the readers is done by having the links automatically go to the state until they can be fixed to either New York (state) or New York City. Having one of the articles between New York City and New York directly at the base name New York will reduce the number of clicks for readers to get the right page to be under 2, while a disambiguation page would ensure that the average would be closer to two. New York City is a slightly better natural disambiguation then New York State or the State of New York, check out the ngrams below to see examples. Further while there is no policy that larger geographic places should be primary to places with the same name ( the previous discussion did have a tangent that argued against that approach by attempting to generalize that to a guideline ), it is still a strong argument. Remember that the typical differences between the strength of policies vs. local consensus is based on the amount of input. Given the number of commenters in this and previous discussions WP:LOCALCON needs to be consider carefully when weighing arguments against existing policy. That said I still support moving New York to New York (state) as there is a not insignificant number links that linked to the wrong article and it makes the search boxes slightly better for readers. PaleAqua (talk) 00:05, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Yes I support leaving it a redirect to New York (state) after moving this page. While not exactly matching the conditions of twodab I believe that have New York redirect to either the state or city is better than the disambiguation page as it is extremely more likely that a reader visiting this page is interested in at least one of the two articles compared to any other possibility. PaleAqua (talk) 14:39, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
I'm now leaning towards full oppose based on the stats from ##2010 hatnote experiment. 3.8% ( vs total New York views ) or 13.1% ( after accounting for the links via redirects ) of clicks through the hat note seem to indicate that the pages might be fine as they are. PaleAqua (talk) 06:02, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
Oppose This proposal has the obvious disadvantage of sending an enormous number of readers to a disambiguation that very few of them to want to go to. I am hard pressed to see what the upside is. The city is at New York City because that is its name. The state is at New York because that is its name. The disambiguation guidelines are intended to resolved conflicts when two article require the same namespace. That's not the situation here. Whiff of greatness (talk) 06:40, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
From WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT: The title of the primary topic article may be different from the ambiguous term. [...] The fact that an article has a different title is not a factor in determining whether a topic is primary. Disambiguation concerns itself with ambiguous terms, not directly with article titles. The core question at DAB is does the term refer to more than one subject covered by Wikipedia? Diego (talk) 08:10, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
@Whiff of greatness: Re "I am hard pressed to see what the upside is" - there is a whole section at the top of this request detailing what the upsides are. Presumably you don't agree with them, but I'd be interested to know specifically why that is, because they seem like convincing upsides to me. Thanks — Amakuru (talk) 09:33, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
Disagree it's a disambiguation that very few of them to want to go to (my emphasis), no reader wants to end up at a DAB, this or any other. But they are still acceptable when a term is sufficiently ambiguous (in Brittanica every ambiguous term points to an automated DAB). Andrewa (talk) 23:37, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
As others have pointed out, Oxford, Britannica, and Fodor's have corresponding entries that give the name of the state as simply "New York." Let me add Columbia Encyclopedia to this list. You will search in vain for a published source that gives the name as "New York (state)". Because Wikimedia software does not allow two titles with the same name, Wikipedians have devised the kludgy workaround of adding a trailing parenthetical. This proposal misunderstands the guidelines and deifies a software glitch. Whiff of greatness (talk) 05:40, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
This proposal is based on the primary topic concept, which I think has been misunderstood. The guideline does not say a primary topic must have more page views and more long term significance than all others combined, although this is what many editors seem to think it says. These are given as two possible criteria for determining which of the topics is more deserving. If it is unclear which topic is primary by the criteria in the guideline, we have discretion. The nominator assumes a, "When in doubt, make the disambiguation page primary" rule. But there is nothing like this in the guideline. In this case, the two topics do not even have the same name. The idea is to get the reader to the desired article with as little fuss as possible. Whiff of greatness (talk) 10:25, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
In this case, the two topics do not even have the same name. Have you just denied that "New York" is a name used for the topic described in our New York City article?
Oh, I'd say people around here are well aware of the criteria to define a primary topic, and to what degree they are an optional part for building consensus. The nomination assumes "When in doubt, make the disambiguation page primary" because the guideline explicitly says"If no primary topic exists, then the term should be the title of a disambiguation page ".
So far, a majority of editors agree that 1) the New York state is not the primary topic for the term "New York", and 2) getting the reader to the desired article is best done with a disambiguation page (which was created specifically with that purpose), rather than a full article which may or may not be the one the reader wants. (Although, some editors have expressed that they would prever having New York City as the primary topic for the term New York). Diego (talk) 11:29, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
The default on Wikipedia is to continue with the last stable version, so I cannot agree with this interpretation. There seems to be some confusion regarding what a primary topic is. The primary topic is the topic that the base lemma directs the reader to, in this case the state. The nominator's claim that "New York State is not the primary topic for the term "New York"" is thus clearly wrong. I rarely if ever use disambiguation pages myself, so I am at a loss to understand your high opinion of them. If the disambiguation page is marked "(disambiguation)," it is out of the way of those who are not interested in such pages, which I believe to be the vast majority of readers. Whiff of greatness (talk) 05:50, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
Oppose Disambig, Support New York City - Well I opposed in the last RFC and I oppose here - Move this back to New York City and all our worries will be resolved, FWIW I do agree with the slow internet/huge page side of things however lets be honest here NYC is by far the primarytopic, If editors aren't looking for NYC then they'd get taken to a disambiguation by the hatnote. –Davey2010Talk13:07, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
I agree with your detail, but I think the proposal is decidedly a step in the right direction. It gets NYState off the basename, and once that is done, future mislinking will reveal whether or not the average editor thinks NYC is the primary topic. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:26, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
One support!voter observed above, While I think New York City is the primary topic for New York, I'm not going to make perfect the enemy of good here. You don't find that a good argument? Andrewa (talk) 23:46, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
STRONGLY OPPOSE ANY AND ALL CHANGES IN THE STRONGEST MOST POSSIBLE TERMS: New York is the state; New York City is the city. Simple as that; easy-peasy. Otherwise, why isn't the Great Britain article "Great Britain (island)"? – Illegitimate Barrister (talk • contribs), 19:30, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
Really? I live 40 minutes outside of NYC, and say all the time, "I am going into New York" or "I don't get into New York as often as I should". And if I hear someone say, "I love New York," I assume that they mean the city. You'd really have to specify the state in many situations where the assumed default would be the city. (Do most people assume that the New York Times and New York Post are state newspapers?) It is simply not so clear cut. Clean Copytalk20:16, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
Irrelevant, I have lived years about the same distance outside of NYC and I'd never hear people say "I am going into New York". Maybe your area wasn't in New York, which makes it slightly more understandable that you'd say NY instead of NYC, but still. Personal anecdotes are useless. ɱ(talk) · vbm · coi)15:30, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
I have never seen/heard of any entity called "Great Britain" other than the island until you mentioned this question here; note also that at the top of Great Britain (disambiguation), before the sections, the island is the only article mentioned. This is clearly different from New York, where the city is very well known, frequently refered to as an undisambiguated "New York", and is listed at the top of New York (disambiguation). עוד מישהוOd Mishehu12:49, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
User:Illegitimate Barrister said: "Otherwise, why isn't the Great Britain article "Great Britain (island)"?"
Because apart from the ship (known to a few), the play and the locomotive (known to hardly anyone) and the former kingdom (known to historians), the other main entries on Great Britain (disambiguation) are misnomers, most often it seems to me misused by Americans. Since Roman times, Great Britain has meant that lump of earth and rock between Europe and Ireland, just as it does in all other European languages.
Illegitimate Barrister said: "New York is the state".
No it isn't - in UK, it's 100% the city. Go ahead, disprove me. I defy you to find a WP:RS UK source where "New York" means the state rather than the city except where it's clear from the context. Narky Blert (talk) 21:59, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
Oppose per WP:NATURAL as we've got a natural disambiguation in place, which is better than parenthetical disambiguation. Also, if someone searches "New York" and wants the state, this set up works perfectly. If they happen to want the city, they're only one click away via hatnote, so it's not a big inconvenience overall. There's an additional bonus of learning about the state if they want. If the disambiguation is at "New York", no one arrives at want they want. Everyone becomes inconvinienced by the disambiguation page. --Tavix(talk)12:26, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
Please indicate neutrality in this section, with a brief statement explaining your position. Please take care not to break the numbering of the section. Extended discussion, including responses to opinions noted here, should occur in the "discussion" section below. Editors may move improperly placed materials to that section, with an appropriate subhead.
Neutral. Both opponents and supporters have made many valid points on both sides of the argument. The status quo has served readers well for the past 15 years, but maybe, just maybe, disambiguation could hold its merits. Castncoot (talk) 04:39, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Neutral Why not a disambig page including both? Sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere, I'm new to the discussion here. South Nashua (talk) 23:22, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
That is basically what the proposed move would result in. Readers following a link to "New York" would be taken to a disambiguation page with the city and state listed at the top, and other meanings below that. bd2412T23:51, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
@142.160.131.202: I think so. Sorry for my lack of understanding on the proposal. I think ultimately referring to the city would be best served with "New York, New York" or "New York City" and the state with "New York State." I think there's some precedent with Tokyo (disambiguation) that could be followed here to an extent. South Nashua (talk) 15:27, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
@South Nashua: we do already have a page that's similar to the Tokyo disambiguation page, and that is the one right here at New York (disambiguation). As you'll see, it covers the two main topics prominently at the top. The question we're asking is whether that should be moved to the plain title New York (i.e. with no text saying "disambiguation" in the title). Currently when you click New York you get to the state, rather than the city, because it was decided a long time ago that the state is the "primary topic" for New York. This discussion is asking whether we should change that, so that there would be no primary topic, and the city and state would be regarded equally, with neither of them occupying the base page New York, and instead having the disambiguation page there. Hope that makes things a bit clearer! — Amakuru (talk) 15:38, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
@Amakuru: Haha, I feel silly now! I guess I'm okay with the status quo for the most part then. Regardless of how many people are searching for one or the other, there's a definite possibility for confusion. Plus, I think standardization for comparable situations like with Tokyo would provide a durable and fair precedent can only help avoid consternation with a similar topic. In terms of the state and the city separately, I think specifics would definitely help to achieve that precedent versus giving "New York" to one or the other. South Nashua (talk) 15:43, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
@South Nashua: well, if you think that we should not "give New York to one or the other", then you probably support the move as its requested. Just to give a couple of examples of the two options to make this clear:
Washington, is currently a topic with *no primary topic*. That means that neither the state of Washington, the city of Washington DC, or indeed any of the other topics with that name have priority over each other. Washington is a disambiguation page. If you favour that arrangement for New York as well, then you'd say "Support" in this move request.
Tokyo, on the other hand (the example you mention) is a topic which *does have a primary topic*. The Japanese city is primary over any other meaning of the word. So Tokyo is a city, and Tokyo (disambiguation) is the equivalent disambiguation page. Currently the status quo is like this for New York - the state is effectively acting as a primary topic over other topics, because it's at New York rather than New York (state). If you favour that status quo, then you would vote for "Oppose" in the above move request. Thanks! — Amakuru (talk) 15:51, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
Comment - I've created Talk:New York (disambiguation)/Meta, a sub-page for ongoing off-topic discussions that don't directly address the merits for or against the move. I request all editors that if a discussion goes on a tangent you continue it there, and keep this discussion centered around the move request itself. Diego (talk) 12:10, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
2010 hatnote experiment
An experiment documented near the end of Talk:New York (state)/Archive 4#Perplexed counted clicks on the hatnote at the top of New York which links to New York City. During the only day when the experiment ran for the full 24 hours, New York had 13,586 views, New York City22,750 and the hatnote link just 473.
We don't know how many of the state's 13,586 views came as a result of a search for the term New York and how many from a wikilink or external link deliberately targeted at the state. We also don't know how many readers beyond those 473 wanted the city but failed to click the hatnote for some reason, especially on the mobile site where hatnotes are less prominent.
Passing this RM would allow a similar experiment on links from the dab page which could provide more useful information. Certes (talk) 18:35, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
The experiment actually ran two full days, 12 and 13 Nov. It's not really relevant where the views came from, the experiment was to show how many people were on the wrong page. It's true some people mistakenly on New York might not have clicked on the hatnote for some reason, but it's safe to assume they were an even smaller number than those who did click (and I'm not sure the mobile site even existed in 2010). It's also true some people might have clicked the hatnote just to get to NYC even though they were on the right page.
It's not necessary to pass this RM to conduct a similar experiment. That could be done whether or not this RM passes. Station1 (talk) 18:56, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
This experement has problems to being applied now: Firstly, the number of readers who followed internal links is probably significant; they would now be sent to a redirect, not to the article directly as they would have in 2010, and of we move the page, they will be unaffected. Secondly, the experiment was only for 2 days, and perhaps a longer one would have shown different results; and in the nearly 7 years since uit was done, readers' preferentces may have cahnged. And finally, many users may have navigated to the city's article by some means other than following the hatnote link - especially since the hatnote is less visible in the mobile view, and since the infobox has a link to the city's article. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu03:32, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Addressing those concerns in order: First, the number of readers who follow(ed) internal links is actually very insignificant; if anything, now that the wikilinks have been corrected, the number of readers winding up on New York today by mistake would be even lower than in 2010. Second, it's true that a longer experiment would be desirable for a more exact result, but if you're only trying to find out if the percentage is large, medium or small, the sample size was large enough for that. Readers' preferences have changed somewhat in 7 years; a larger percentage now want New York City, which might raise the result by a percentage point or two. The final point was addressed above: some users who really didn't want to be on New York might have navigated to the city by a link other than the hatnote, but it seems unlikely huge numbers would, and I'm not sure the mobile app was widely used, if it existed, in 2010. Conversely, some people might have clicked the hatnote just to get to the city without first being on what they considered the wrong article. Bottom line is that 3% is a fuzzy number, an exact number is impossible, but it is possible to determine with a reasonable degree of confidence that the percentage of readers landing on New York by mistake is a small number, whether it is 1% or 8%. And if anyone believes the experiment is too old or too short, it's easy to re-run. Station1 (talk) 06:10, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
now that the wikilinks have been corrected, the number of readers winding up on New York today by mistake would be even lower than in 2010. You do realize that part of your argument is dependent on one (1) editor having fixed all of those links project-wide, right? If we maintain the current names, as soon as this unreasonable burden of work stops happening, that situation would degrade really fast. Diego (talk) 06:53, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
I do realize that one editor fixed all those links, which is highly commendable, but the argument in no way depends on that. You left out the first part of my sentence in your quote. The proportion of readers mistakenly landing on New York was very small before any of those links were fixed, and will remain small whether or not links are fixed in the future. People just don't use wikilinks to familiar topics much.Station1 (talk) 07:34, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
the number of readers who follow(ed) internal links is actually very insignificant What!? This is a pretty outlandish assertion. Page view stats [18] show a pronounced decline in views of New York as the wikiklinks have been corrected. Indicates the number of readers who followed internal links is not at all insignificant. older ≠ wiser08:11, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
What's interesting is that it is still only 13.1% when compared to the links to New York after subtracting the links through New York (state). [20] 147 / ( 3871 - 2750 ). PaleAqua (talk) 05:56, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
Of course, we have no way of knowing (or checking) how many of the accesses to New York are through external links which are likely to be updated in the days or weeks after we rename the page (such as Google). עוד מישהוOd Mishehu12:52, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
New York covers the entire history of New York, including the 150+ years before it became a state in 1776, so proposed title is less accurate. Not really, the topic of the current New York article is the State. We could rescope the New York article to a BCA and then create a new article on the state, but it's far less trouble and causes less disruption to the article history to do this move and convert the DAB if that is the intention. Andrewa (talk) 20:48, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
New York is already a broad-concept article, covering its entire history (including its pre-statehood history) and entire territory (including NYC). That's another reason its title should retain the broadest possible meaning. Station1 (talk) 21:17, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
A broad-concept article is about a general topic, and the state of New York article is specifically about the state, its history, its contents, everything that is known and can be included in an article that is so much longer than any broad-concept article. Writing a broad-concept article and titling it with the bare "New York" name was discussed in the 2016 requested move, but nobody seemed to like the idea. I seem to remember one editor stating that the state article had served well as an "impromptu" broad-concept article, but that was soundly rebutted. Broad-concept articles are general and concise, and the state article is neither. Paine Ellsworthput'r there23:38, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
But it's not currently "the state of New York article" "specifically about the state". It's the "New York" article, primarily about the state, certainly, but covering aspects that are not about the "state" per se. The change would move the topic of "New York" from its best possible title (New York) to a less accurate title. Station1 (talk) 06:38, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
The title change would not be more nor less accurate, because the title would not change. The title of the article would still be "New York". The only difference is that the ambiguous "New York" would have a qualifier, (state), that eliminates its ambiguity. Paine Ellsworthput'r there07:09, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Accuracy does not change, because both the history and the city are integral parts and aspects of the state. The state of New York, just like the state of all of us, is an outcome of our histories and of our distinct parts. Where would you be without your heart? Where would you be if you had made a different choice many years ago and your personal history were different? Where would the state of New York be without its heart, the City? and its history of Classic Distinction? Paine Ellsworthput'r there09:41, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Proposed title is less natural, less concise, and less consistent than current title (policy at WP:AT)
Reply: That is not the spirit or intention of WP:AT. I suppose it could be similarly argued that any disambiguator makes the title less natural, less concise. Andrewa (talk) 20:43, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Yes, any parenthetical disambiguator is less natural and less concise. That's why they should be used only when necessary. In this case it's not necessary. Station1 (talk) 20:59, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
It is necessary because the current title is ambiguous and so cannot be used for the article on the state. This clear policy is of course supported by the practical considerations... as one would hope. The guidelines are normally correct, and surely the onus of proof is on those who wish an exception to continue to be made. Andrewa (talk) 21:32, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
"Continue to be made". Why should the onus be on those who want the longstanding status quo? Doesn't the fact of its existence and longstanding show that, at the very least, there is consensus that the cited policy does not apply here and never did? The onus is on those who need to show that after all these years strictly applying the primary topic policy will improve the encyclopedia. Srnec (talk) 01:47, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
I think you're right in this case, that the onus is on all of us who want to improve this encyclopedia, not just on those who oppose this proposal. The status quo has not served Wikipedia well. There were thousands and thousands of malplaced links, links editors made to "New York" but they should have gone to the city article or some other "New York" – thousands and thousands of malplaced links over the last sixteen years or so. This is not even close to what can be called acceptable, especially when the malplaced links continue to be made. At least after this proposal passes consensus muster, DPL bot will notify users to fix their malplaced links so they won't have to be fixed by bd2412, as is happening right now, usually everyday. And those of us with dab scripts (mine turns links to dab pages the color orange) will find it easy to fix malplaced links that don't get fixed otherwise. There is no excuse to let this situation continue the way it is when it can be so easily fixed by these page renames! Paine Ellsworthput'r there02:20, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
All those malplaced links would have been equally malplaced under the current proposed setup and equally inconvenienced readers. I do not believe a change like this should happen in order to make it easier on editors to fix mistakes. What's more, making the city primary would also fix the problem. How does a dab page fix anything? It just makes one task easier for editors. That's not putting readers first. Srnec (talk) 03:43, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
All those malplaced links actually were malplaced under the current setup! The current setup is what caused the problem and continues to do so. And this is not a case of "Hey, let's make it easier on editors." All those malplaced links meant that READERS who wanted to read about the city or the sports team clicked on "New York" and landed on the wrong article, the article about the state! And if bd2412 weren't still fixing malplaced New York links on an almost daily basis, READERS would still be landing on the state page instead of on the article they really want to read! What's more, making the city the PT at this point would only make the problem worse. bd2412 has found that of the 15–20 new links to "New York" checked each day, about 2/3 (10–13) are meant for the state article and about 1/3 (5–7) are meant for the city (a small few of that 1/3 are meant for other things "New York"). So at this point in time, if NYC is made the PT, instead of having to fix 5–7 malplaced links everyday, twice that many would need to be fixed, because 2/3 of the links would take readers to the city article when they actually wanted to read about the state. The only thing that fixes this for the readers is to title the dab page with the bare NY title. Then DPL bot will take over the task of notifying editors who make a "New York" dab link to fix it. Paine Ellsworthput'r there05:29, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
I meant that all those links that bd2412 fixed would have been in need of fixing under the proposed setup. You only argue that they would be easier to fix, which is true, although not by much. I just think it is irrelevant. Note that in the scenario as you outline it, the same amount of work by editors needs to be done, it's just that DPL bot will also be doing work in order to spread that work around. If two thirds of all new links to New York are going to the right place, that suggests that our current setup is correct even for editors. Srnec (talk) 15:03, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
I hope you don't mind explaining a little more, Srnec, because I cannot fathom anyone thinking that 2/3 okay is as good as 3/3 okay. You're saying that the 1/3 that needs to be fixed on a daily basis manually by editor(s) rather than finding a way to fix that situation is "correct"? How the heck do you figure??? Paine Ellsworthput'r there16:38, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
We should not change the readers' experience—should not alter how Wikipedia presents—simply to make life easier for editors. Yes, those links are a problem for readers, but they are a problem created by editors making mistakes. What's more, they would still be a problem for readers under the proposed change. They would be still be incorrect links, only this time pointing to a dab page. In other words, the editorial mistakes are still being made, but only now they can be more easily identified and fixed—at the expense of the reader, who now has to go through a dab page to get anywhere. As I said, no improvement. Srnec (talk) 19:05, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
I think this is a good place to note that a change of page names from "New York" to "New York (state)" is not actually a title change. The state article will still be titled "New York" – the sole difference is that it will be disambiguated by the "(state)" qualifier. The title doesn't change, just the ambiguity, which is eliminated. Paine Ellsworthput'r there02:48, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Of course it's a title change. It changes the article's title from New York, the name of the topic, to New York (state), a less concise, less natural, less consistent and less accurate title, for the sake of unnecessary title disambiguation. Station1 (talk) 06:48, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
The first paragraph of WP:AT: "An article title is the large heading displayed above the article's content and the basis for the article's page name and URL. The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles." Station1 (talk) 11:16, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Thank you, because you have just shown to us all why the qualifier is needed. The present title of the state page does not unambiguously indicate what the article is about, nor does it distinguish it from other articles. That quote is not just from a policy, it represents the policy-strong consensus of the Wikipedia community. Paine Ellsworthput'r there12:46, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
No trouble found
This is a solution looking for a problem. This is nothing wrong with the status quo. which serves our readers well: This !vote should simply be discarded in terms of wp:closing as offering no valid rationale. Both practicality and policy support the move. Andrewa (talk) 20:55, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
@Andrewa: Please do not go into tangents about which opinions should be valid or discarded: this is the prerogative of the eventual closer of the discussion. This particular "nothing wrong" objection is addressed in the move rationale, it should be sufficient to point this out and ask for a refutation of said rationale. — JFGtalk22:19, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
It is worthy to note that the policy you cite, WP:AT, has a section about disambiguation that shows that the community consensus represented by the "Article titles" policy fully supports these page renames. "No one wants to land on a dab page." All it takes is one reader to disprove this statement. I am an avid reader of Wikipedia, and I would prefer to land on a dab page rather than the wrong page! Paine Ellsworthput'r there20:07, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Do you really want to land on a dab page, or would you rather land on the correct article? The proposed move would force some people who land on the correct page for them (New York) to wind up on a dab page instead, with no countervailing benefit to those landing on the incorrect article. Station1 (talk) 20:34, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Do you really want to land on a dab page, or would you rather land on the correct article? I would greatly prefer landing on a dab page rather than a ~167,000 byte or ~323,000 byte (not counting images and transclusions) WRONG article. older ≠ wiser20:43, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I understand you would rather land on a dab page than the wrong article, but the move would force some people to land on the dab page rather than the right article. Why are they less important? Station1 (talk) 20:49, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Interesting perspective; however please think again about that. Because what you're saying is that it's okay to make a significant number of readers land on a 167,000+ byte wrong page, but it's not okay to make another significant number of readers land on the dab page that will get them to the page they seek with just one click. Paine Ellsworthput'r there21:10, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Yes, of course readers would rather land on the correct article over a dab page. The problem here has been a problem with a lot of article titles on Wikipedia: they were all too ambiguous and might apply to other things, so there were a significant number of readers who would land on the wrong page. That is so easily fixed by following the community consensuses at WP:ATDIS and WP:PTOPIC. An ambiguous title like "New York", which can refer to so many different things, really should be the title of the dab page. Paine Ellsworthput'r there20:59, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
We agree on the theory but not how it applies to this article. You say "the problem here..." is that there are "a significant number of readers who would land on the wrong page." I say 3% is not significant when we consider the downside of people who really want New York being forced to a dab page. Station1 (talk) 21:07, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Glad we can agree. Don't know what you mean by "3%" when it has already been established that the city article gets about twice as many page views as the state? Paine Ellsworthput'r there21:14, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Forgive me, but that's incredible. What that means is that of the twice as many readers who view the city article, fully 97% landed on that city page without first having to view the state page. Since in view of the fact that about 2/3 of the links that editors make to "New York" are actually meant for the state article, and about 1/3 of those links are malplaced and must be fixed, because their context reveals that they were meant to link to the city article, perhaps you would show where that 3% figure comes from? How was it derived? Paine Ellsworthput'r there22:36, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Incredible but true! Yes, 97% of readers of New York City get there without first viewing New York, and that won't change whatever the outcome of this proposal. That's one reason why this move is so unimportant. It will only adversely affect viewers of New York, while helping no viewers of New York City. The methodology is explained in the "2010 hatnote experiment" section above. The large majority of readers get to the right article through search engines and other external links. A smaller number[Some people] get to articles from the search box and its dropdown menu. Those people, who want the city, would have to type "New York" and enter before the dropdown menu appears in order to wind up on the wrong article. Wikilinks to New York but that intended NYC might be the least likely method to get to the wrong page. Just as I know what London, Paris, and even Melbourne are without clicking on a wikilink, relatively few people will click on a link to New York because they already know what NYC is.[might not be accurate] New York City is probably one of the most WP:OVERLINKED places on WP. Station1 (talk) 23:52, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Do you have some reason to believe the results would be significantly different if a longer experiment were done today? Double, triple, or even quadruple the results if you like. The point still holds. Station1 (talk) 00:29, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
I do find it intriguing. While I have no reason to believe the results would be different, there is also no reason to believe they might not be significantly more than 3%. Seven years is a significant period of time, and two days hardly seems long enough to yield conclusive results. Paine Ellsworthput'r there01:02, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
If you're saying the results might be 4, 5, or 6%, yes, that's possible. They might also be 1 or 2%. But 25 or 30%, no. Station1 (talk) 06:20, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
I believe the results may be significantly different if we conducted a different experiment, to count clicks from the dab page New York to the state and city pages. Certes (talk) 01:05, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Side note: I've been fixing incoming links to New York for nearly a year now. Over the course of that time, I have fixed over 20,000 links clearly intended to point to the city. bd2412T21:15, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
No need for nastiness. Of course bd2412's work is for the benefit of readers. I was sincere in my commendation, fwiw. What I was referring to was your repeated assertion that the move will make it easier for editors to fix links in the future, and I don't think making editors' work easier at the expense of readers can ever justify a move. Station1 (talk) 09:51, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Agree that making editors' work easier at the expense of readers does not justify a move. Nobody is suggesting that it does. Andrewa (talk) 10:14, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
It's the third of the four "Arguments and evidence in favor of the proposed move" and mentioned in more than one Support !vote, as well as by Paine Ellsworth above and below and bd2412, briefly, below. Station1 (talk) 10:46, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
It's mentioned because it is one factor among several weighty factors that have been submitted to support this proposal. And if this proposal succeeds, the readers will benefit by not landing on the state when they wanted the city or a sports team. The fact is that these page moves will mean that readers will be so benefitted while at the same time their benefits will be automatic rather than overseen and manually ensured by editors. To repeat, nobody has ever suggested that the work of editors should be made easier at the expense of readers – indeed the suggestion is to benefit readers without the need for EXTRA work by editors. Do you think it's right that an editor must almost daily check and fix those links when it would be so simple to eliminate that just by moving a couple of pages? Paine Ellsworthput'r there12:19, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
@Station1: I for one really want to land on a dab page when I don't know what may exist. I happened to know that there is a state called New York besides this city but I didn't know there was a state called São Paulo besides that city. A dab page educates me in 1/10th of a second, whereas a content page which has a 50/50 chance of not being what I want is disappointing at best, misleading at worst. If I read Wikipedia on a recycled 5-year-old phone over my metered, pay-by-the-kilobyte-with-a-scratch-card Internet access in upstate Lagos, I really really do want to load a 5k dab page rather than a 2.3-megabyte article about New York state (that's how much it weighs including pictures). Think of the 5 billion people who do not have the luxury of a fast or cheap data connection: we must do our best to help all readers. — JFGtalk22:36, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Respectfully, I believe you're in the minority on that score. Otherwise, it would be our policy to always have dab pages, not just when they are necessary. Station1 (talk) 06:20, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
100% absolutely agree with User:JFG's perspective here. I do want to land on a dab page if there is one, to see what's there, to see how we disambiguate the different topic titles, and to save on data if I'm on my phone. This does seem to be the minority opinion in this discussion but JFG is not alone in holding it. Snuge purveyor (talk) 07:18, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
Discussion ensuing from the Oppose !vote of TonyBallioni
(Reminder) Opposeper BMK. We also have a very clear policy based reason to not disambiguate: New York City has the wonderful natural disambiguator of City. The State is the primary topic here, just as Quebec, Mexico, and Oklahoma are. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:18, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
We have a particularly recent consensus establishing that the state is not the primary topic for this title, as explained first thing in the nomination. The WP:Disambiguation requires not only that other articles have a different title, but that they are much less likely to be named with the ambiguous name; and "New York" is quite often used to refer to the city.
WP:Consensus can change in this respect of course, but this would require that roughly all the strong arguments in this discussion favored seeing the state as the primary topic; given how recently we dediced the opposite, it doesn't seem likely. Diego (talk) 18:06, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
We also have a very clear policy based reason to not disambiguate:
WP:NATURAL has nothing to do with these page moves. Yes "City" is a natural disambiguator; however, "New York" has no disambiguation, natural or otherwise. If the proposed move were to "New York State" (which is not the actual name of the state) or to the "State of New York", that would be covered by WP:NATURAL. This proposed move is covered by WP:PARENDIS and WP:ATDIS.
WP:CONSISTENCY? That doesn't seem to say anything at all about keeping the highest jurisdiction at the primary topic title. And even if it did, a 2016 RfC has already shown strong community consensus that the state is not the primary topic. The argument for "highest jurisdiction" is explained and rebutted above. Paine Ellsworthput'r there23:02, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
I doubt we will agree on this, but responding to clarify for the closer and anyone else who wishes to read: CONSISTENCY would apply because we consistently keep the higher jurisdiction without disambiguation when there is a city with the same name. Foo would be the state/province/country and Foo City the city. I've linked to several examples above and I think this pattern is best and I don't see a convincing reason to change it from the stable title when the hat note seems to be working fine. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:23, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
@TonyBallioni: Your premise is wrong: as pointed out in the nomination rationale, we have Lagos (city) primary vs Lagos State, São Paulo (city) primary vs São Paulo (state), Moscow (city) primary to Moscow Oblast and Zürich (city) primary to Zürich (canton). In the opposite arrangement, we have indeed Mexico (country) primary to Mexico City, Québec (province) primary to Québec (ville) and Oklahoma (state) primary to Oklahoma City, although I doubt that anybody who says "I live in Oklahoma" ever means the city. The most mind-boggling case I ever encountered is Luxembourg (country) which is primary to Luxembourg City (most often called simply Luxembourg), which itself belongs to Luxembourg (canton) embedded in Luxembourg District, all of those not to be confused with the neighboring Luxembourg province of Belgium. You're welcome. There is no overarching consistency; each case must be evaluated separately. — JFGtalk 01:14, 8 July 2017 (UTC) French speakers tend to disambiguate Luxembourg with a case of verbal WP:SMALLDETAILS: Je vais au Luxembourg = I'm going to the country, vs. Je vais à Luxembourg = I'm going to the city. Nobody ever goes to Belgian Luxembourg . Aren't languages swell? — JFGtalk01:43, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
By the way, in this case, Luxembourg the country seems very clearly to be the primary topic for the term. If we merely look at recent page views, it got 214,613 visits in the last 30 days, while the runner up is Luxembourg city with 23,265. Diego (talk) 10:18, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Yes, Luxembourg as a country is the primary topic and holds the plain title. In deference to the city's prominent status among other meanings, the hatnote mentions both Luxembourg City and Luxembourg (disambiguation). This is similar to the current New York hatnote, which would be fine and dandy if New York State were the primary topic. — JFGtalk13:18, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
You're probably right about us agreeing. All I'm asking is that you please consider agreeing with the community consensuses described in the nomination rationale above. That's all I'm asking. Paine Ellsworthput'r there02:34, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
I don't know about Québec (ville) and Oklahoma City, but Mexico City is not typically referred to as simply 'Mexico', except in cases where it is clear that you're talking about cities and not countries; otherwise, it is usually referred to as Mexico DF or simply 'DF'. So it isn't a case supporting the argument of consistency, as it's not in the same situation as 'New York'. Diego (talk) 09:48, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
I confess I'm confused by the above, TonyBallioni... You are still of the opinion that New York State is the primary topic of New York I understand. And that's fine. But we have now had an RfC that decided that it's not. We should not ignore that, surely? The discussion here can and should assume that the state is not the primary topic. Andrewa (talk) 14:22, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
In answer to the above bludgeoning, I'll simply say: yes we should ignore that consensus because it was wrong. This is now a community wide RM that has been posted at WP:CENT. We are free to ignore any local consensus we want to form a new one. Consensus can change after all and the attacking of anyone who disagrees with the RfC here is to be honest the worst I've seen in any discussion on Wikipedia.I am in complete agreement with Czar below. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:32, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for explaining that, although I think your accusation of bludgeoning is uncalled-for. I am seriously trying to understand your argument. The question of local consensus is a vexed one and cuts both ways. For my part, I also feel we should ignore much of the previous discussion because it is wrong... but obviously not the same bits you do! It doesn't make it go away. Andrewa (talk) 16:01, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Andrewa, yes, I appreciate your good faith here and I've crossed paths with you enough times that I know what you are up to :). I do think the general treatment of opposes here as a whole would qualify as bludgeoning (we are seeing longer comment threads than we do for troll !votes at RfA), and that was what I was intending to point out. As to your question and JFG's response (which was great, btw). I do think that having places where city is a part of the common name is distinct from places like Moscow that are not Moscow City, and where it still appears to me that we follow the practice of keeping the higher level of government as the de facto primary topic at least in terms of page names and I think that makes a lot of sense. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:10, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
It's sometimes a hard line to draw. Let us all try to keep comments on behaviour where they belong. We are seeing long discussions, but little if any rantstyle as yet, in my opinion... unlike last time.
I think New York specific proposals which do not appear to generate any form of consensus when widely posted are not as strong arguments as looking at what we do with analogous topics, where it looks to me that we have a consistent practice of letting city serve as a natural disambiguator if it is in common use to the higher jurisdiction which is the simple name. In terms of behavior: look at the opposes compared to the supports. Virtually everyone of them has a lengthy reply along with a subheading down here. That discourages dialogue because people don't want to feel like they need to defend every letter they type from nitpicking. I don't mind engaging in constructive dialogue, but simply saying you're ignoring past consensus when it has been decided to reopen the entire can of worms almost a year later is not engaging in actual discourse around the proposal. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:26, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Agree that "simply saying you're ignoring past consensus" is not constructive. I'm sure such arguments will be ignored, as they should be. Andrewa (talk) 06:43, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Should New York City be primary instead?
Discussion ensuing from the Oppose !vote of Beyond My Ken
(Reminder) Oppose - This is a solution looking for a problem. This is nothing wrong with the status quo. which serves our readers well. Beyond My Ken (talk) 16:48, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
@Beyond My Ken: In the 2010 debate, you supported exactly what is being proposed now, writing: *Support - "New York" should be a dab page, the state should be "New York (U.S. state)" and the city should be "New York City" Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:58, 3 November 2010 (UTC).[21] Why do you now think status quo is better? — JFGtalk22:13, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
My thanks again to JFG for bringing the disparity in my opinions to my attention. I've now had a good hard think about it, and I believe that I was incorrect both in 2010 and now. Let me explain.I've had decades of experience working in 6 7 countries outside the United States and 26 states outside of New York, and I am completely convinced -- based also on extensive instances in the reading I've done -- that in the vast majority of cases, when someone says "New York", they are referring to New York City, and not to New York State. I'd venture to say that outside of the U.S., the very existence of New York State is known to only a a relatively small segment of the population. If I say to a French person "I live in New York", they will take away that I live in the city -- if I want to convey that I live elsewhere in the state, I would need to say "I live outside of New York City", or "I live in upstate New York", or "I live in Buffalo, in New York State" or something of that sort. If I don't specify, the city is presumed. This is the case I've found in my reading as well -- unless the subject under discussion is clearly the state, any mention of "New York" almost always means the city.Now, one could say that I'm biased, because I've lived in New York City for 40 years, but, on the other hand, I've lived in New York State my entire 62 years, so I think that balances out. I have almost entirely no horse in this race. (OK, that's not completely true -- the idea of New York City splitting off from the state to become the 51st U.S. state intrigues me, as I believe the city has suffered economically, socially and politically from not having complete Home Rule, and the state legislature, which is controlled by upstate politicians, is more concerned with the less than half of the state's population who live outside the city then they are with the more than half that lives in the city.) However, I've tried to put that aside and simply think about what I've heard and experienced and read, and it's abundantly clear to me: the primary topic of "New York" should be the city. That, of course, means that I continue to oppose the proposed move, but for somewhat different reasons.Is my "evidence" WP:OR? Of course it is, but I'm not writing an article, I'm giving you the reasoning behind my opinion. You can disagree with me about "New York" being the proper primary topic, of course, but if you disagree that to the wider world "New York" means New York City -- well, not to put too fine a point on it, you'd be wrong. That's not hubris, that's 40+ years of experience.So, my !vote remains "Oppose". Do I think there's going to be a groundswell of support to make New York City the primary topic? No, I don't. Am I going to yell and pout and scream if this RM passes? No, of course not. (And I would suggest that some of the proponents of the move might like to take a step back and chill a bit -- this is not an earth-shattering issue, and hardly worth losing your cool over.) Can I live with the status quo, sure, I can live with anything -- except my ex-wife. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:39, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
I know you probably don't want to hear from the horse insulter again, but here's the thing. Those of us who actually think that NYC might be the PT would like to see this request pass the consensus muster. If the raw NY title is placed on the dab page, then after a few months we think we'll have a much better handle on whether or not NYC is the PT. And if it is, then more baby steps can be taken to make things "right" as concerns these articles. Hope you'll forgive any perceived bad-boy stuff on my part, because sincerely, none was meant. Paine Ellsworthput'r there00:03, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
No forgiveness necessary, it's water under the bridgeThat's an interesting way of going about things and, given the way the RM is going, you might have the chance to try it. However, I've noted that when an RM or RfC is passed, people generally don't want to revisit the subject again even after a number of months. Why didn't folks just go about it in a straight-forward manner? I think there's all sorts of real-world data that could be brought to the table showing that the city should be the primary topic. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:15, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Those of us who participated in the pre-move discussion agonized over whether or not to include NYC as the primary topic in this new RM. Through lots of discussion, I think we all eventually agreed to take "baby steps", since just the idea of any page move that takes the NY bare title away from the state article appears to be too unsettling for some. And some of us just didn't see a lot of community support for NYC as the PT. We also agreed to try this proposal to title the dab page with the bare title and then try to accumulate data that might incontrovertably show either that NYC is definitely the PT, or not the PT. I don't think any of us want this RM to be the very last step; however, many of us agree that it should be an important first step to make things right. Paine Ellsworthput'r there00:33, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Another reason has to do with the malplaced links. Presently, bd2412 is checking new links to NY and fixing those that were meant for NYC. bd2412 has found that about 2/3 of the new links are meant for the state, and about 1/3 are meant for the city. So if presently we either rename NYC to NY or redirect the NY title to the city article, all we will do is to compound the malplaced links challenge, in fact it would be twice as bad. So when this RM proposal is accepted, then we will have time to educate editors, so when and if the time comes to consider NYC as the PT, the malplaced links challenge would no longer exist. Paine Ellsworthput'r there00:55, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
It's unclear whether the city is the PT. We would be better informed after a period with New York as a dab, because we could see where readers go from that page. I see the proposal here as a less drastic step than making New York a primary redirect to NYC but I would welcome a further RM on that step after a suitable period. Certes (talk) 01:11, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Likewise. I was until recently convinced that the primary topic was NYC. Now I'm not so sure. But I am convinced that whether or not that is the case, this move as proposed will improve Wikipedia and so should go ahead. There are several reasons for not proposing the other move, to make the destination of New York the article on the city, at this point in time. One is that globally, New York doesn't mean the state, but neither does it mean just the five boroughs. Metlife Stadium is in New York so far as many of us are concerned. Another is that from a practical point of view, this move seems to give writers and those who clean up after them the most immediate help, and they seem to need it! And yet another is that even if it is later decided that the city is the primary topic, this move followed by a further RM to decide that gives a good route to that result. Andrewa (talk) 08:02, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
@Beyond My Ken: Thanks for your detailed rationale. In last year's debate, we have indeed collected many snippets of anecdotal evidence which tend to corroborate your own lifetime experience: New Yorkers usually call their state "New York", other Americans have varying habits depending on their personal circumstances, and the rest of the world sees "New York" as the skyscraper city, barely knowing the state even exists. As Wikipedia addresses a worldwide audience, we must take all points of view into account, and strive to educate the sizable fraction of readers who are unaware of New York as a state. The proposed move delivers on these two goals: the dab page addresses the intractable ambiguity of the name without making assumptions about where each reader comes from, while the search box improvement makes readers aware of a "New York" thing that is a state, distinct from the famous city. — JFGtalk02:16, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Well fish are not good references of what is wet, and I actually doubt you. You are saying that if a resident of Manhattan says "I'm just sick of New York, I don't want to live in New York anymore" or whatever, that his hearers will understand that he means the the state and will reply "What, so like move to Kansas?" rather than "What, you want to move to like New Rochelle?" Even if this is true, nobody else talks like that. If you tell your neighbor in Kansas "We're taking a vacation to New York next month" they are a lot more likely to say "Oh, jealous, I want to see the Statue of Liberty!" rather than "Oooh, are you gonna visit the Rochester Museum and Science Center?". Right? Herostratus (talk) 03:14, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
Personal experiences and feelings on New York are aggregated in the collective footprints of web wanderers lost in hypertext, and fortunately we can measure this dispassionately. Visitor stats of the English Wikipeida articles show a consistent 2:1 ratio for the city vs the state, all other meanings being way below their level. Google Trends paints a similar picture when we compare search trends for "New York City" vs "New York" + "state": the city attracts about twice as many searches as the state. However, that is not enough to declare the city primary topic; our guidelines state that the primary topic must be much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined, to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term (emphasis mine).
With years of experience at move requests, I have never seen a 2:1 ratio of reader interest be enough justification by itself for grabbing the primary topic crown. Quite the opposite: such a small ratio strongly points to a "this term has no primary topic" situation, so let's disambiguate it. Were the ratio 10:1, the primary topic would be obvious, at 5:1 it could be discussed, at 2:1 the numeric argument is far from sufficient, and we should examine the second criterion of WP:PTOPIC, viz. a topic enjoying substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term. It has been demonstrated that New York City does not trump New York state or province in this respect either.
The question of whether NYC is the primary topic remains open. The question of whether NYS is the primary topic has been decided and we should move on. Based on that and practical considerations, this proposed move will improve Wikipedia. Andrewa (talk) 14:30, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Yes, it perhaps remains open to those who have no experience or understanding of the way the phrase is used in the real world. To those who do, there is no doubt as to what the reality is. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:37, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
I am not terribly interested in the outcome of this discussion, but do we have evidence (in the form of sources) about how the city and the state are usually named and what "New York" is typically used for? Most the !votes - and apparently many of those in the big 2016 move request - appear to depend heavily on personal opinion which is going to vary from person to person as well as not being terribly representative. Chapter and verse of WP:AT are Article titles are based on how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject and Wikipedia generally prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable English-language sources) as such names will usually best fit the criteria listed above and of course WP:NOR. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:04, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
The fact that it varies from person to person across wide swaths of people suggests that the term is ambiguous, doesn't it? bd2412T23:03, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
When I did some digging through ngrams and other searches earlier, I found a very slight preference in the sources I checked for disambiguating New York City compared to disambiguations for the state. But that not disambiguating appeared to be the most common, but it's hard to tell if the uses without disambiguation where of the form "City, New York" which should be quite common. Doing automatic searches and being able to tell the exact meaning of New York in context is very hard. See this search for an example Google Books Ngram Viewer. PaleAqua (talk) 02:06, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
One important question, in my opinion: How much unwanted content do users who load the wrong page need to download before they can go to the correct page?
to download the article about the state, they must download 2.16 MB of data (the article and its images)
to load the disambiguation page, 408 KB.
This would mean that if fewer than 80% of viewers want the article on the state, we're wasting more of their bandwidth than we would be if we placed the dab page at New York, even if you add in the fact that many of the readers will need to load the state's article afterweards. The difference would be much higher if you assume that ther browsers will keep caches of any downloaded files, and use them for the next page they load - which would reduce both by 322KB, making the ratio much higher. (Note - the sizes stated above are as of May 6th, the current nubers would almost certainly be similar, although not necessarily identical.) עוד מישהוOd Mishehu03:07, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
I have always agreed with this line of reasoning with respect to DAB pages, even if it isn't actually encoded in policy. I never understood the argument of "but no one wants to read the disambiguation", as if we had to be ashamed of our disambiguation pages. DABs are merely navigational aids of curated content, usually much better than a raw search result from an automated search engine.
Apart that sometimes editors do want to read the disambiguation page (to see what topics Wikipedia covers with respect to some term), being presented with a listing of contents is useful and not surprising - certainly better than being presented with a full wrong article, with only a little hard-to-read clarification that the article might not be what one was looking for. Diego (talk) 15:28, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Surely NYS needs an article of its own
Alanscottwalker said above Obviously New York has appropriately been used for the broad subject New York, at its current place, for basically forever, as it covers the broad subject, yes we have qualified songs and the like - that says nothing about the broad topic -- New York, suits the broad topic,...[22]
I think what this is saying is that the scope of the current article at New York is not restricted to New York State, and never has been. (If this is incorrect please say so.) And that is a very important point if true.
But surely, we do want an article specifically on New York State? All other US states seem to have them. What's so special about NYS that the topic is not notable enough for its own article? And why haven't we had one, long ago?
I'm sorry if this is seen as more bludgeoning, but I really think that such a claim needs to be examined, I don't think that the Survey is the place to do it, and I don't think the lengthy discussion there has yet addressed the issue in any case. Andrewa (talk) 05:03, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
Articles covering most U.S. states also cover aspects relating to the broad topic that do not strictly relate directly to statehood. Texas covers Spanish and Mexican control as well as the Republic of Texas. Hawaii covers the Kingdom of Hawaii, Republic of Hawaii, and Territory of Hawaii, as well as the geography of the Hawaiian Islands, including the ambiguously named island of Hawaii. Virginia includes information about the Jamestown colony and what is now West Virginia. Many of those topics have articles of their own as well, but are nevertheless covered in the broader articles. No article that I've read is strictly about the state per se. Station1 (talk) 05:36, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
By "state", you seem to be thinking of Government of New York - New York, like all broad geographic topics, covers the history and people and places, including the government, etc. under the topic. It's not "special", as Station 1's examples show, it's natural. As further demonstrated in my ivote, it's the proposal that wants to make New York inconsistent -- or as you seem to call it, "special" -- not the opposition. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:00, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
With all due respect, this is entirely a red herring. Articles on a particular geographic entity always cover the history of that locality back to prehistoric times, even if the entity itself clearly didn't exist at that time. See United States#History for example. That does not take away from the fact that it is still an article on that geographic entity specifically. The article at New York is in no way a broad concept article, it is a focused article on the present day state of New York, one of exactly fifty such articles that we have here, which happens to provide some background information about what existed in that territory before the state came into existence. Genuine broad concept articles are actually comparatively rare, because often ambiguous topics with a common name are not sufficiently related to make it useful to have one. Football is probably the classic example, and it fits there because the various football codes, while separate sports now, and each deserving their own detailed article, do all spring from a common root and have various aspects in common with each other. Someone interested in American football or soccer specifically could still learn something from reading the broad football article. In the case of New York, the city and the state have relatively separate histories and reading about the article about the state does not provide much useful context for someone who specifically wanted to know about the city. — Amakuru (talk) 11:44, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
Your argument is nonsense, on top of misusing "red herring". (Although, perhaps you are saying AndrewA's OP is the "red herring"). New York has some eighty mentions of New York City in the body of the article, as well as discussion of New York City in its lead - and it covers all of New York -- we do not rely on the prejudices of editors, we rely on reliable sources. New York's and New York City's histories are intimately intertwined. All broad articles touch on several things as the New York article does -- which touches on not surprisingly all things New York -- but other than that, you have misrepresented broad articles, just as you have misrepresented New York, - broad articles are not all as you claim - according to Wikipedia guideline -- in fact, it says they crop up in geography, and are long form encyclopedia articles about encyclopedically what the title says -- just as New York does, including as it does, New York City. With regard to your emphasis on "50 articles", your emphasis is absurd - 50 articles are not what we are titling, here, but assuming we were, 50 articles is an infinitesimal, not just "very rare", less than 0.000009 % of articles - 1000s more articles and we would still not be to 1%. (You did say something interesting about broad articles, although perhaps you did not mean to, you suggested that all broad article titles are themselves ambiguous, which if true, would even if you view New York as ambiguous, as this proposal does, would mean the New York article is perfectly titled as it covers it all, explains connections, etc. -- broadly of course. I, of course do not view New York as ambiguous, just broad, according to sources, which also makes it perfectly titled - perhaps we have reached consensus :)). --Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:06, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
Alanscottwalker, none of the above seems to call into question that you think the scope of the current article at New York is not restricted to New York State, and never has been.
Perhaps I put this badly. Let me try again. An article has a title and a topic. The topic is its primary focus... what the article is basically about. It can be about, for example, New York State, or it can be about New York City, or it can be a broader article or DAB that covers both topics. But it can't be primarily about both the state and the city. Or, if it has a broader scope, then it's not primarily about either.
The Hawaii article is about the state, not about the Island of Hawaii or any of the other associated topics. It has relevant information about these other topics, certainly, just as the article on the proton has information on electric charge. But the Island of Hawaii needs its own article too, just as electric charge does, and both topics have such articles. Both the Island of Hawaii and electric charge are notable topics in their own right, as is the state of Hawaii, and the state of New York, and the city of New York.
You seem to be saying that the current New York article is not the article for the topic of New York State. I think it is, but if not then we would need to create one IMO. Andrewa (talk) 03:36, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
We are not talking about something you have made up in your head, we are talking about an encyclopedia article, which yes, covers the state -- you cannot write a reliable sources encyclopedia article about New York, without extensively writing about the City of New York (if you do not write it that way, it becomes apparent that you either do not know what you are writing about encyclopedically or you are actively misrepresenting the topic). Your taxonomy of articles is useless -- we write articles from the very specific, though degrees to articles on the exceedingly broad - according to fact and sources, New York encompasses New York City, and encyclopedically extensive coverage of NYC is required -- that New York also covers all important things New York, detailing the connections, means it broadly and encyclopedically covers the topic. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:46, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
Of course an article about the New York state should provide information about the city, which is an important part of its history; that's the principle of summary style. This does not mean that New York City is a spin off of the state article, nor that readers looking for the city should be first sent to read about the state for context. The city has enough entity on its own to be directly what the readers are looking for. Diego (talk) 12:40, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
"Red herring" is exactly what this is. From the Wikipedia article: "A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue". This claim that New York is a broad concept article, and not an article focused on the State of New York, is exactly such a thing intended to mislead, and distract from the question we're asking here, which is to identify the primary topic between the state and the city. Of course the state article has material on NYC, as an important city within the state, just as California has information on the San Francisco Bay area. That does not in any way mean that the New York article is not the same as the redirect currently at New York (state) though, or that it is ipso facto primary topic over the city. — Amakuru (talk) 12:46, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
The only "red herring" is your nonsense claim (no one else's) that something is broad or it is a topic -- broad is an attribute of a topic, not an alternative to it. This article is about this state, which is broad, including as it does extensively New York City - not just some mention - and all things New York - making it perfectly titled, whether you view New York as ambiguous amongst several things, ambiguous between two things, or not ambigous, just broad - for people finding the more specific New York City article, they already do. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:41, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
I cannot see how anyone has claimed that something is broad or it is a topic, agree that to do so is nonsense. I think you have misunderstood.
But disagree that the article on the state should (or does) include all things New York. I think that is itself a nonsense claim.
Perhaps I misunderstand what you mean by including. It seems possible that you are using that term in two different senses here. The NYS article should certainly refer to NYC extensively, and does, and the NYC should similarly refer to NYS. But that does not mean that it covers the other topic.
The two topics NYS and NYC both need articles, agreed? I cannot see how that can be disputed.
Where we seem to disagree is that you think that the NYS article should cover both topics, am I correct there? I can't see any reason it should. We could certainly have a third article that does, with main links to each of NYC and NYS, and the pros and cons of this have been discussed extensively.
But regardless of whether or not we have this third article, NYC and NYS are both individually notable enough to need articles of their own. Andrewa (talk) 18:48, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
Here's the situation as I see it:
The state of New York is an important topic and deserves a substantial Wikipedia article.
The article currently titled New York, which begins New York is a state in the northeastern United States and has an infobox headed "State of New York", is Wikipedia's article on the state of New York.
That article prominently and correctly mentions New York City, just as Illinois mentions Chicago, England mentions London, etc., but New York City is not a topic of the article.
A broad concept article on the state, city, province, colony, metropolitan area, etc. all called New York would be a reasonable proposal but does not yet have consensus.
Agree. Well put (one possible quibble of phrasing which I won't even raise as it may not be relevant), and very interested in whether Station1, to whom that question is addressed, has any problem with that summary. Andrewa (talk) 23:10, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
Unless someone is arguing that Texas should be titled Texas (state), Hawaii should be at Hawaii (state), Virginia should be Virginia (state) and New South Wales should be titled New South Wales (state), there's no real disagreement. There's consensus that in each of those cases the former title is the better title, but the latter would not be "wrong" if it were necessary. If New York City did not exist, there would be similar consensus about New York. Because New York City does exist, some editors think that it's desirable to disambiguate the article title, while others think it's more desirable to continue to disambiguate with hatnotes and keep the better title. That's the only real disagreement. Station1 (talk) 21:44, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
With the exception of Mississippi and Missouri, I doubt that anyone could make a plausable claim that any entity with the same name as any of the other states is a plausable PRIMARYTOPIC for its name. The other 45 states are absolutely the PRIMARYTOPICs of their respectve names, and even Mississippi and Missouri would be stretching it to call the rivers by these names the PRIMARYTOPIC. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu18:22, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
We agree. That's why all those states are at their more concise and natural titles. The only reason to move any of them would be if disambiguating the title would be advantageous, and that's what this entire discussion is about. That's my only point in this thread. Station1 (talk) 18:56, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Agreed. But there are two arguments given above for moving the New York State article, that of practical advantage and that of compliance to policy and guidelines. Neither of these seems to support your hypothetical proposal to disambiguate the article on Texas. The only arguments so far presented are that people such as yourself want to make an exception to the guidelines, and/or ignore consensus on primary topic. And I am at a loss as to understand why. Andrewa (talk) 20:38, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
I have never heard anyone say Texas, meaning anything but the area which is now the US state, unless either the context explicitly disambiguates it or they disambiguate it immediately. Sameis true about Hawaii. This is not true about New York - I've heard people talking about flying to some US city and change flights in "New York", when they meant the Newark airport in New Jersey; of someone talking about traveling "from New York to the Niagra Falls" on the border of the state of New York. Neither of these people could have posibly meant the state when they said "New York". This is true about only 3 US states - Georgia, Washington, and New York. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu20:19, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
Well, Hawaii (island) is a thing too... and in Ireland, the island is primary over a whole nation state. Ireland is Ireland, though, it has its own issues, and you're absolutely right about the remaining states apart from NY, GA and WA all being clear primaries. — Amakuru (talk) 21:21, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
Don't be ridiculous, listing a discussion which potentially concerns a large number of editors at "Centralized discussions" can never be considered "canvassing". I suggest you read WP:CANVASS and learn a thing or two. Your understanding of Wikipedia processes and procedures would appear to need some brushing up. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:35, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
It's not so "ridiculous" when two experienced editors question it. In this case, I would have to agree with you, though, that it's not a bad thing any more than neutrally informing project members on their project talk pages is a bad thing. Paine Ellsworthput'r there08:57, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Sorry, but no matter who questions it, experienced editor or newbie, listing at CD cannot be considered to be canvassing. If anyone believe otherwise, I suggest they report me at AN/I and see what happens. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:00, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Agree that it would be ridiculous to take it to ANI as canvassing... just to reiterate, it is at worst borderline if that. It does appear to violate WP:CENTNOT and could be seen as forum shopping, but it doesn't do any significant damage IMO. Suggest we move on. Andrewa (talk) 09:24, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
No, there is nothing remotely "borderline" about it, which you would know if you actually understood what WP:CANVASS says. It violates nothing, and is perfectly legitimate. It doesn't require your largesse, it's within policy. Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:30, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
SmokeyJoe makes an interesting suggestion above regarding DAB names, one which was also previously suggested implicitly by Box99Tube. I don't think this RM is the place to decide this, but that rather we need to go with the current policy and practice for now. But it has merit IMO. Suggest we take it up in an appropriate forum after this RM closes. Andrewa (talk) 07:27, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
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.
Aftermath
Latest comment: 7 years ago94 comments13 people in discussion
I don't think NY often refers to the city. I would support simplifying the dab page by pointing only to the state. There is already a "see also" section for NYC. Then it might be worth running a proposed move per WP:MALPLACED as you suggest; I'm not sure New York state would be considered primary topic for the "NY"/"Ny" title, though. — JFGtalk11:37, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
Ok. As long as NY points to the state, that article needs a {{redirect}} hatnote to the disambiguation page. The New York City link in the hatnote is not needed anymore, since the ambiguity has been solved - all the incoming links are either NY or New York (state). Diego (talk) 11:43, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
I have dabbed all links to NY: most were for the state, a few for the city. Now what shall we do with NY, redirect or dab page? Would you launch a move request? — JFGtalk12:08, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
NY should redirect to the New York dab page. Either that or it should be its own dab page (to include things like New Year). I don't think it predominantly means New York state. — Amakuru (talk) 12:14, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
Y Deal with commons: strangely c:New York redirects to c:New York City, where is the commons category for the state? Discussion at Commons already underway, decisions and action will take place there regarding both galleries and categories
Y Update talk page FAQs
Y Update incoming links to talk page archives
Y Delete redirected talk page archives which are obsolete
That sounds like the task that BD2412 has kindly been carrying out for the past year or so, to disambiguate those links. That will continue into the future, but hopefully now that the dab page is there, and users will actually be notified if they do it, the number that need processing will go down. — Amakuru (talk) 11:52, 19 July 2017 (UTC) - oh, never mind, I misunderstood. I imagine some of those NY links will be intending the city, so it needs some care and attentiont. Thanks — Amakuru (talk) 11:58, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
All done. Most were for the state, mainly in addresses. A few were for the city. Now they are all dabbed. — JFGtalk12:00, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
Minor details: I'm not sure these redirects point to the right place. But I'm not convinced that they're wrong either! Please feel free to edit this subsection when fixed or to add similar cases.
What little use this term has seems to refer mainly to the city, so I'll redirect to the dab. Caveat lector. Certes (talk) 13:28, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
Categories
I have started to handle the categories - simply listing tem at CFDS, to be handled the normal way. This allows users to object to individual categories in case of doubt. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu14:04, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
About 500 categories such as Category:1868 establishments in New York use a template such as {{EstcatUSstate}} which assumes that the category title is a standard prefix plus the state article name, e.g. Category:Bridges in Georgia (U.S. state). We could complicate the templates to handle New York as a special case, but it would be easier to rename the categories to Prefix New York (state). None of the categories currently at CfD follow this pattern, so they could be called Prefix New York State or some other suffix, but it may be better to be consistent. Certes (talk) 21:00, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
We can probably use a temporary hack to deal with allowing the New York (state) categories to be renamed over time, but ultimately they should all be renamed. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu02:59, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
Od Mishehu, thank you for your excellent work on renaming categories. If my understanding is correct, after a category is moved from "X in New York" to "X in New York (state)", a number of the included articles should in turn point to the more precise "X in New York City" category and lose their "X in New York (state)" affiliation which is assumed by inheritance. Is that right? — JFGtalk13:25, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
The history tree is the hardest. In all other category suubtrees, all I need to watch out for is any proper name which includes the words "New York" (e.g "New York Mets", "New York City", "Roman Catholic Ecclesiastical Province of New York"); in the history tree, I also need to consider the fact that we don't generally use anachronistic names for categores. I keep checking what names are used in the Georgia tree as a guide. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu19:53, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
Very good question. My initial response is no and more reasoned response let us think a little longer on that.
We have two articles List of museums in New York and List of museums in New York City. But if we move the first, what do we do with the redirect? A two-way DAB seems overkill, any DAB in fact seems overkill. I'm inclined to the shorter title and pseudo-hatnote as currently, for now at least.
Works for me. Regarding extra dabs, that would be indeed overkill, we can just leave the redirects from "X in New York" to "X in New York State", so no existing links gets disrupted. — JFGtalk16:53, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
Hold on! We probably have hundreds of articles titled "X in New York" ,"X of New York" or "X from New York" (see Index of New York-related articles). A bunch of them have "X in New York City" counterparts. We may want to pause before adding dab pages everywhere. WP:TWODABS hatnotes are lighter and will not disrupt existing links. — JFGtalk23:26, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I saw that. New York is an unusually complicated case, and we are not to the bottom of it yet IMO. The latest RM is progress, but just progress. See #Which city for example! Andrewa (talk) 21:56, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
I think the museums list is a special case. It was too long, so parts were split off to separate lists, one of which covers NYC. Its scope is now "List of museums in New York (state) except the ones that didn't fit". Certes (talk) 22:12, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
I would suggest, rather than a disambiguation page, an index at Lists of museums in New York, including the two lists, for the city of New York, and for Upstate New York. Same function, but not inherently incorrect as a link target if you mean all museums in the state. bd2412T04:17, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
I'd recommentd leaving a list of pages to be renamed below here; post them in gropus of no more than a couple dozen at a time, at least an hour apart. Anything which goes unchallenged for 48 hours can be renamed. I'd recommend doing this for all non-category non-talk pages with a reference to the state in the names - primarily artiucles and templates. This is based on how CFDS works, although in CFDS we also tag the category. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu14:48, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
Hm, good question. On one hand, "New York (state)" does refer to the political entity, but it also refers to the land within its borders, so it isn't entirely incorrect to say what happened in 1773 in what's now New York State is part of the state. But that's not how we usually handle thing, as you note. Maybe a sub-category for "xxxx in the Province of New York" within the New York (state) category structure? oknazevad (talk) 18:10, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
How is it done with United States or France? Change of government is just change of government (royal to republic; dictator to imperial to republic; proprietary colony to royal colony; royal colony to republican unitary independent state; etc). At any rate, the United States and U.S. states category structure has to be set-up the same, whatever it is, if anyone is to find the structure. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:20, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
Fascinating question! Wikimedia Commons belongs to all of WikiMedia, not just English Wikipedia. But the category naming and discussion is most often (not always) in English, particularly in topics that have a strong connection to English-speaking areas, of which this is of course an example.
In view of comments below, it may be appropriate to raise it at commons. It's not our problem here, or our right to solve it. Andrewa (talk) 20:25, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
As an irregular but established contributor to Commons, I'll run with this one. Commons:Commons:Rename a category#Types of renames reads in part Controversial fixes: where a category name has been in use for a long time or a lot of items, or where the naming policy is unspecific. Any category that has a corresponding Wikipedia article which has had a naming controversy over that article definitely falls into this lot. This seems to fit our case so perfectly it could have been written with it in mind. Andrewa (talk) 10:17, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
I hesitate to ask, and my opinion is that Kensington High School (New York) for example is perfectly well disambiguated, despite NYRM2017. But interested in other opinions. Should we restrict the (New York) disambiguator to the state, or to the city, or avoid it completely? I think the answers are "no, no and no". It's obvious from the context which is intended, and so in this and most cases no further disambiguation is required. Andrewa (talk) 13:29, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
That sounds reasonable. But there are 2465 article titles of the form X (New York). I'd leave them alone as fit for purpose unless we spot a conflict, e.g. if we have X (New York) which is in NYC and X (Albany) then I'd move the first to X (New York City). Certes (talk) 14:10, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
Done Moved the schools as appropriate.
For other articles titled "X (New York)", unless they specifically refer to a state-wide subject, I suggest they should be disambiguated by city name, as seems to be the standard. Either "X (Anytown, New York)" or "X (New York City). — JFGtalk20:25, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
@Certes: How do you search for pages with this exact "(New York)" spelling in the title? The "intitle:" variant of search does not take parentheses into account. — JFGtalk20:28, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
I downloaded enwiki-latest-all-titles-in-ns0 and searched it. Most of the titles I found seem to be redirects, so that probably accounts for the difference. I wanted to try a few experiments such as "Find X and Y such that X (New York), X (Y) and Y, New York are articles", e.g. City Hall (New York), City Hall (Buffalo) and Buffalo, New York, the latter indicating that Buffalo may be a place in NY so City Hall (New York) might require attention. But I'm getting more false positives than genuine issues due to Texas, New York, Paris, New York, etc. Certes (talk) 21:02, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
Starting from Bkonrad's search, and removing all the mountains, lakes, creeks, rivers and interstate roads (which are all unambiguously part of the state), we have the following list of articles to check:
I would suggest that whenever someone has checked one of those articles, they should add a tick mark to the list. Soon enough, we'll have handled them all. — JFGtalk04:28, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
I would further suggest that articles referring to a New York City subject should be moved to the "(New York City)" disambiguator. For people, mostly politicians, "(New York)" is fine unless their job was specifically related to New York City. For schools, we should use their town or city name, e.g. "Lawrence High School (Cedarhurst, New York)", unless the city name is already in the school name, e.g. "Pleasantville High School (New York)". Comments and further ideas welcome. — JFGtalk04:41, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
I'm perfectly happy with that, although it's a lot more radical than what I first had in mind. It's logical and supportive of best reader experience. Andrewa (talk) 22:29, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
I think you can safely undo a bold move. If such an article has gone through a move request discussed by the community, then a new RM would be necessary. The reason to include the exact city in the title is that leaving just "(New York)" would make it ambiguous with a non-existent school in New York City. — JFGtalk07:50, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
Wallkill and Wayne
It's not the job we came to do, but while we're here: should we also be moving articles where "(New York)" would be the right qualifier but no disambiguation is actually necessary? Examples:
I think that we should be cautious, and should generally presume that if other cities or counties share the same name, they generally have police departments, often a sheriff's office, and other facilities, that are likely of equal notability to the existing article. bd2412T01:02, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
Thank you; that sounds very sensible. I've moved a few other cases which were more obvious than these but erred on the side of caution here. I'll probably move Wallkill, as its disambiguator doesn't help, but leave the others. Certes (talk) 10:31, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
I've stopped renaming colleges and universities for now, as I just spotted a conflict with WP:NC-UNI. As that's just an essay, I'll leave the articles I already renamed:
Now that the article has been moved, should we move all city and town articles in New York to append the state suffix after them? So "Buffalo, New York" becomes "Buffalo, New York (state)"? That way people won't be mistaken and think Buffalo is a neighborhood or borough of New York City. – Illegitimate Barrister (talk • contribs), 06:42, 25 August 2017 (UTC)
I'd say No. U.S. place names conventionally use the Town, State format, so New York disambiguates itself here because a state is expected. Certes (talk) 16:44, 26 August 2017 (UTC)
and apologies for bringing it up but my hope is that a few words now will save another descent into the abyss, or at least postpone it until 2018. Andrewa (talk) 23:03, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
The first person or band to perform a song
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
czar 05:46, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
Fixed
Move New York to New York (state) without leaving a redirect
Deal with categories Category:New York and derivatives
— Amakuru (talk) 13:21, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
Done Moved the schools as appropriate.
