Talk:Ricochet (dog)

Requested move 22 February 2018

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

Not moved. bd2412 T 12:52, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Surf Dog Ricochet → Ricochet (dog) – The dog's name is Ricochet. "Surf dog Ricochet" is not a proper name, just ungrammatical headlinese used in a few newspaper stories (by no means a majority of them – only about 10% of sources use the phrase at all, not always capitalized). Any capitalization it received in them is usually the title case of the headline. This is essentially over-disambiguation as well as over-capitalization and crappy telegraphic writing. If we needed to disambiguate this much, it would be as "Ricochet (surfing dog)" with proper grammar and and following our disambiguation conventions for individual animals. But there is no other subject vying for Ricochet (dog).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:50, 22 February 2018 (UTC); revised with stats: 23:09, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:NATURALDIS (and maybe a little WP:STAGENAME). Official website and related social media all use "Surf Dog Ricochet", so this isn't just simple "headlinese". Its used commonly enough to make it a reasonable option over the disambiguation. We do have precdent in Ace the Wonder Dog, Bob the Railway Dog, Doug the Pug, etc. -- Netoholic @ 08:53, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Reliable secondary sources don't support this. Most use simply "Ricochet", and the few that use the Slavic-style title do not consistently use uppercase. The precedents you cite would call for Ricochet the Surf Dog as the title. —  AjaxSmack  15:45, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

A survey of Surf Dog Ricochet#References gives a sufficient number of "Surf Dog Ricochet" usages to warrant leaving this page at is naturally disambiguated name, even if its not the "most" used. I dunno why you suggest "Ricochet the Surf Dog", its not "called for" just because other topics use that order of words - we use what sources about this topic use. Those examples were just to show other occasions where we use natural disambiguation. -- Netoholic @ 20:00, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

But:

1. The sources come nowhere even close to consistently using "Surf Dog Ricochet" at all. Mathematical proof: hits for Ricochet+surfing+dog [1] in Google News hits (from a US-based search) gives 738 results (after excluding mention of Wikipedia and surfdogricochet.com); if you also exclude the string "Surf Dog Ricochet" the number drops only to 669 [2], ergo only 69 of 738 news publishers (broadly defined, including popular blogs) indexed by Google use the phrase – that's under 10% (though allow a little wiggle room for false positives). Even those that do use it mostly do so in headlines, and not always capitalized (depends on their house style). (Individuals' Googling results may differ a little, especially if you are logged into Google and have search-affecting preferences set.)
2. You're making an argument that WP:OFFICIALNAME warns against. And the title of a website is not an official name for what the subject of the site is, but the title of a published work about the subject. Last I looked, the 37th US president's name is not actually Theodore Rex. The use of an appellation multiple times in a work, even an official one, doesn't establish a new proper name or affect WP article title analysis: if Lada Gaga's website starts promotionally calling her "America's Pop Goddess", WP would not use that in our own editorial voice, certainly not as the title.
3. http://surfdogricochet.com uses "Surf dog Ricochet" and "Surf Dog Ricochet" inconsistently right from its very first content (disproving the asserted-proper-name idea) as headers, then uses simply "Ricochet" thereafter by a wide margin. "Surf Dog Richocet" is almost exclusively found in three places on that site: headings, captions, and marketing blurbs which offer the dog as a dog-assisted therapy service for hire; none of this is normal English prose about the dog (and our article is about the dog, not about the human owner's therapy-dog business). It's definitely a promotional label, not the dog's actual name. Aside from the obvious, it's the same difference between me, a person with a human name, and the name of my d/b/a tech consultancy (which is just me, not a corporation or other legal entity). If I had an article here it would be a human bio, not an article on a consultancy.
4. In response to AjaxSmack's argument, you're pretending WP:CONSISTENCY policy doesn't exist when it actually applies (and "Ricochet the surf dog", capitalized or not, is attested despite your protest, including in a PSA video produced by the dog's owner [3]). Yet your argument tries to rely on the same policy when referencing Ace the Wonder Dog, which is not a comparable case. Category:Individual dogs consistently uses the "Foo (dog)" disambiguation pattern (same goes for other individual-animals categories).
5. Ace the Wonder Dog, etc., and some other cases you don't mention like Grumpy Cat, are overwhelmingly known in sources by the appellations we use as their article titles (they are the WP:COMMONNAME in each case), usually >90% of the time. That's very different from <10% of the time. And these are not disambiguations, they're simply long proper-noun-phrase names (which "Surf Dog Ricochet" could have been if it was used about 80% more consistently; it's just a marketing phrase sometimes receiving marketing-style and headline-style capitals).
6. "A survey of Surf Dog Ricochet#References" is not how WP:RM operates, or anyone could rapidly and easily WP:GAME / WP:WIN any RM by simply adding sources that agree with them and removing (or drowning out) ones that do not; we look at available RS in the aggregate, without regard to which ones random editors have selected for the article at any given moment.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:09, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Um, impressive. But unconvincing. First, unless you are accusing me or someone else of doctoring Surf Dog Ricochet#References, then your hypothetical "GAME"ing scenario is pointless casting of WP:ASPERSIONS. I am not an editor here and I trust that the sources in it have been included with proper editorial discretion, barring any evidence to the contrary. Despite your protestations, I am evaluating my vote here based on those References rather than guessing based on some arbitrary google hits. What can most assuredly be said is that the article's sources have almost no consistent way of referring to this dog/business. Those sources do describe this dog as a service, which is the key feature, after all, we wouldn't have this article if it was only about the dog and not the dog in his capacity as a service. This means it is a business based around this dog, and per WP:NCCORP, we should use the most common title it is called in the sources. Another interpretation is to view this dog as a performer, in which case WP:STAGENAME applies in the same way. Per WP:NATURALDIS: "Using an alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English reliable sources, albeit not as commonly as the preferred-but-ambiguous title", and since the sources use a wide variety of ways to refer to this subject, I am fine with using the business name/stagename/most common name among all the options presented in order to avoid the proposed parenthetical disambiguation. -- Netoholic @ 05:06, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Potential GAMING is a reason why we don't pretend that sources not used in the article don't exist. Has nothing to do with your personal reasons for participating or reading something. If you don't distinguish the difference between "there's a rationale for our process" and "someone is attacking me", I don't know what to say to you. I know you are evaluating this only on the basis of the sources presently in the article; you've made this very clear twice now. If you decline to absorb that RM discussions don't work that way, I also don't see any point continuing the discussion with you. Your approach strongly suggests that if I just take all the sources I can find that don't use the longer phrase and dump them into the article that you'll flip your !vote.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:15, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

If those sources are good for use in an RM, then why not add them to this article and improve it thereby? Instead, it feels like you are grasping around to use them as a WP:STICK. There might be very good reasons other sources aren't used by the regular editors here. -- Netoholic @ 04:23, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose per Netoholic and common name. The owners alternate between the one word and three word name on their website, so the surf dog moniker seems to be, as Netoholic points out, a stage name. Stage names are proper names, and this dog is known widely by the stage name, even if her legal owners call her Ricochet when in private. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:28, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

  If even the owners vacillate between one and the other then it's not consistently used (your "seems" is WP:OR). More to the point, the present name fails WP:COMMONNAME; the vast majority of sources do not use the longer phrase. There's no way around that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:15, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Its not vacillating to use a full name in a headline/title/introduction, and then use a shorter part of that name in the rest of the running text. Imagine how awkward it would be if literally every mention of the dog said "Surf Dog Ricochet". I wouldn't expect that of any source, and I wouldn't expect we do it, yet the article title and first mention in the lead should be full and complete. -- Netoholic @ 04:19, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

• Support getting away from the pretend proper name. The proposed Ricochet (dog) would be OK, but I prefer Ricochet (surf dog) or Surf dog Ricochet. The latter is used in various sources without capping dog, which as SMcCandlish says is essentially a headlinism that sometimes creeps into body text. Dicklyon (talk) 16:45, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. Perfectly good natural disambiguation, recognizable, concise, natural, precise, and consistent (WP:AT of course). The purpose of an article title is just to identify the article content and distinguish it from other articles with similar titles, so as to build the best possible encyclopedia in terms of reader experience, and the purpose of the rules is just to help us achieve that goal. The approach that promotes agendas of how English should work is out of date even in the most ivory of academic towers of linguistics. Andrewa (talk) 01:00, 2 March 2018 (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. No further edits should be made to this section.

Followup discussion

We would not use Ricochet (surf dog) per WP:CONCISE and the WP:AT#DAB and WP:DAB disambiguation rules. I.e., we do not use a longer disambiguation when a shorter one is sufficient (which would be the case here; there is no other notable dog named Ricochet would would be vying for the Ricochet (dog)). It's okay for it to exist as a {{R from alternative disambiguation}}, though, since "redirects are cheap".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:55, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 16 November 2018

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

The result of the move request was: moved (page mover nac) Flooded with them hundreds 10:59, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

---

Surf Dog Ricochet → Ricochet (dog) – Per WP:COMMONNAME, WP:CONCISE, WP:AT#DAB, and WP:DAB; and WP:CONSISTENCY with everything else in Category:Individual dogs and similar categories. A thinly-attended previous RM on this failed to come to consensus, somehow, despite only <10% of reliable and independent sources using the longer, marketing phrase (often in lower case) that the dog's owner sometimes uses. WP:OFFICIALNAME and MOS:TM are also rationales, though less central ones. The previous RM seemed to falter on the idea that we "must" use a natural disambiguation, but this is not correct; we only do that when it best fits the criteria, which "Surf Dog Ricochet" does not (fails WP:CONCISE).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:57, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose per very recent prior move request above. Nothing new has been brought to this discussion. CONCISE does not automatically override the other WP:CRITERIA. These two titles are so close in size, that CONCISE is largely irrelevant vs. making the subject of the article very clear. The proposed (dog) disambiguator is not clear enough to tell if this is meant to be about a dog breed or a specific dog. The current title is fully clear. -- Netoholic @ 07:43, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Nope; breeds use natural disambiguation; see WP:BREEDDAB. There are a handful left to move, but even a recent-ish (more recent than the 9-month-old RM above) discussion at WT:DOGS agreed it was the way to go. And it's not just dogs. At this point we're about 99.9% of the way to total site-wide consistency with all breed articles (that don't have no-DAB names like Zalawadi) in the form Siamese cat, Bolognese dog, Brazilian Terrier, American Quarter Horse, Connemara pony, Flemish Giant rabbit, Twente goose, etc., etc. (capitalization of the final word depends on whether it's part of the standardized breed name or just a natural disambiguator added on); meanwhile all the individual-animal articles that need disambiguation are at Buttermilk (horse), King Neptune (pig), Fidèle (dog), etc. (or more specific when required, e.g. Blue Peter (American horse)). That is what has changed. At this point, I'm only aware of something like 10 articles (out of several thousand) that need to be RMed to fit this system (e.g. Billy (dog) is a misnamed breed article). PS: WP:CONCISE does't just mean "count the characters"; it means the conceptual concision of the title. The dog's name is Ricochet. The "surf dog" is a prefixed description. There is no reason to expect any given reader who has heard of a dog named Ricochet being famous, or even heard of a surfing dog by this name, to come up with the exact string "Surf Dog" as a prefix (especially when it doesn't fit English writing norms both as to grammar and capitalization; it actually badly fails WP:NATDIS and WP:NATURAL). Anyone faintly familiar with our disambiguation system (who isn't by now?) will naturally guess at "Ricochet (dog)". At any rate, multiple prior RMs have concluded to move individual animal names to title of the form "Name (species)", so your assertion that it's not good enough is contradicted by the consensus record, and by hundreds of articles stably at these titles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:30, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

    I would say the average reader is FAR afield from being "faintly familiar with our disambiguation system". I stand by my vote rationale. The current name is even MORE of a "brand name" than it was in the prior discussion, if one looks at recent coverage and the updated official website. -- Netoholic @ 11:47, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

    This has actually been discussed before; logs of what pages people go to (and which bad names they guess at) show that readers do in fact pick up the basics of our disambiguation system. At this point, with en.WP being the 5th-or-so most used website in the world, we know that almost anyone fairly competent in English and with an Internet connection uses this site at least now and then. It's surely the no. 1 source people turn to for basic information on the typical topic that comes to their mind. We also know that a tremendous number of pages here are disambiguated, using rather consistent patterns. Ergo, most of our readers are in fact at least faintly familiar with our DAB system. This conclusion is not escapable. Even if they weren't, this article is still at the wrong title, since it doesn't fit the WP:CRITERIA. It's unncessarily wordy, the exact phrase used isn't the subject's name but one description (favored by the owner not the sources), everyone looking for this topic knows Ricochet is a dog, thus Ricochet (dog) is in fact precise and recognizable enough, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:18, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

• Support. The dog’s name is Ricochet. The proposed title is the standard one we’d use to disambiguate it from other uses. We have Jon Snow (character) not ASOIAF Jon Snow, for example. Calidum 18:14, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
• Support- The dog's name is Ricochet; "Surf Dog Ricochet" is just brand-name puffery. –dlthewave ☎ 21:22, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
• Support though I'd still prefer Surf dog Ricochet, which appears in sources this way without the excess caps. Could this be the compromise that could gain consensus? Dicklyon (talk) 17:53, 25 November 2018 (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.

Update: made Surf dog Ricochet a redirect; it was strange that it was still a redlink in the first place.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:28, 1 December 2018 (UTC)