Talk:Samuel Ashe (North Carolina governor)

Move

This page should be moved to one named "Samuel Ashe". I've never seen dates in a Wikipedia article before. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.227.193.16 (talk) 05:26, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Requested move 14 December 2023

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

The result of the move request was: no consensus. (closed by non-admin page mover) Vanderwaalforces (talk) 22:38, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

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Samuel Ashe (North Carolina governor) → Samuel Ashe (governor) – Excessive detail for disambiguation. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 05:22, 14 December 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 22:48, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

• Move to Samuel Ashe (North Carolina politician, born 1725). Usual disambiguation. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:07, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

  We seem to have some difference of opinion about the use of birth dates versus position-specific dismbiguation. See the comments by Hameltion and Station1 at Talk:Dave Hall (politician)#Requested move 25 December 2023. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:06, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

  (pinged) Not wanting to leave a bold !vote to look like canvassing, but yes, neither (North Carolina politician, born 1725) nor (politician, born 1725) seem more helpful to readers seeking the subject than (governor) [or (North Carolina governor), I should add], per WP:NCPDAB. Hameltion (talk | contribs) 18:17, 29 December 2023 (UTC) [Hameltion (talk | contribs) 00:39, 30 December 2023 (UTC)]

  Just to clarify, I don't have a strong personal preference between the two, so I don't think that was canvassing – it was just inviting a diversity of opinions because I want to know which approach is generally preferred on Wikipedia. I also note there was opposition to removing state names in the discussion of Talk:Paul Anderson (Minnesota state senator)#Requested move 21 October 2023. I had forgotten about that. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:24, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

  In the spirit of inviting a diversity of opinions, this edit should result in a ping for P Aculeius and Steel1943, who opposed the Paul Anderson RM. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:37, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. I don't actually remember weighing in on this specific instance before, but perhaps this was part of a larger discussion I remember concerning state politicians. "Governor" by itself would be ambiguous; there have been thousands of governors, just in modern times, and no doubt many with similar names; "North Carolina governor" places him in context and makes it easy to figure out. I'm going to assume that "North Carolina politician, born 1725" is a facetious suggestion; that level of detail shouldn't be necessary to distinguish him from other Samuel Ashes, or other governors named Samuel or Ashe, or other politicians named Samuel Ashe. The current title seems ideally suited to disambiguate the subject; removing the state creates unnecessary ambiguity to no-one's benefit. P Aculeius (talk) 19:31, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
• Move to Samuel Ashe (North Carolina politician, born 1725) per Necrothesp. This currently seems to be the preferred de facto way of disambiguating politicians ("most ambiguous region" politician, born "YEAR"), though yes, usually for other professions, we prefer to specify a more precise profession than slap on a birth year, but it is what it is. (@BarrelProof: Thanks for the ping. On a related note, maybe a WP:NCP-related policy needs to be created for politicians, possibly titled Wikipedia:Naming conventions (politicians), with consensus of course; the closest guideline I could find is Wikipedia:Naming conventions (government and legislation), but it does not include any information about naming articles about people in "government and legislation".) Steel1943 (talk) 19:41, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
• Comment: my "oppose" vote above was based on common sense, not WP:NCPDAB. Having just reread that policy, I can't believe that either this proposal or the alternative are receiving serious consideration! You really have to misread the policy to take away the idea that because "politician" is used as an example of a disambiguator, that it should be preferred to the highest or most significant office that the person served in, even though the office will nearly always be more recognizable than the generic "politician". The policy also clearly states that years of birth are unlikely to be helpful to readers when other forms of disambiguation are available: readers are more likely to be looking for this information than to already know it. The proposed titles simply do not help readers identify the subject of an article; they are less useful than the current title, and it makes no sense whatever to move the article to either of them. P Aculeius (talk) 23:27, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

  +1 Hameltion (talk | contribs) 00:39, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

  It does say to use "standard, commonly used tags" such as "(politician)", unless we "need to be more specific", as with using "(musician)" being an example of a more general term and "(drummer)" being a more specific one, with "(Queen drummer)" if further necessary. It has a "(congressman)" with no state or country identified as another example. If it's not intended to express a preference for "(politician)" over "(governor)" or "(governor)" over "(North Carolina governor)", then it needs some serious rewriting. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 02:02, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

No, it would be absurd to read the two or three examples provided as a comprehensive list of everything it considers acceptable, absent a "need to be more specific". "Governor", "senator", "mayor" are all "standard, commonly used" terms that provide a degree of specificity which helps readers recognize topics in a way that "politician" does not. The notion that "politician" is supposed to be the preferred term merely because it's used as an example is nonsensical. P Aculeius (talk) 22:12, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

"Governor", "senator", and "mayor" are not as common as you might think. I have only found 64 "senator" articles on the English Wikipedia, and a few hundred "governor" and "mayor" (and "guitarist" and "drummer") articles. That's a very small percentage of the articles on such topics. I think the spirit is also clear in the "musician" and "drummer" discussion. More general tags seem pretty clearly preferred over more specific ones. If you think that is absurd, I suggest starting a conversation at WP:NCP. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 13:02, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Why would you read "standard, commonly used" to refer only to the titles of Wikipedia articles, not to what people are generally called or known for? You're just making up rules that aren't in the policy to make it say what you want it to say. It doesn't say "politician is the preferred term and must be used unless there's a compelling reason for anything else", and it doesn't say "commonly used as a disambiguator in Wikipedia article titles". And if there are a "few hundred" governors, then how can you possibly still be arguing that it's not a "standard, commonly used" term? This argument is becoming increasingly ludicrous. P Aculeius (talk) 16:20, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

I think further responding to this would involve repeating points I have already made. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 04:07, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

• Move to Samuel Ashe per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. See pageviews. That way we don't have to worry about the parenthetical dab. Station1 (talk) 01:21, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

How would making him the primary topic serve readers? If this were someone most—even a significant number—of people not from North Carolina would have heard of, perhaps there would be an argument. Granted he gets more page views than the alternatives, but 26 average daily page views over the last 90 days is not that many. He's in a dozen categories besides "North Carolina governors", and in none of them would one be able to guess which person was a governor without the parenthetical disambiguation. Let's not make it harder for readers to find articles. P Aculeius (talk) 22:12, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Frankly, it would make virtually no difference to readers. That's true of most of these types of RMs. The vast majority of WP readers find the article they are looking for on the first try, no matter how sensibly or nonsensically we may title them. Samuel Ashe averages zero hits per day. That means every 3 days one person lands there and has to make one extra click. Statistics indicate there's about an 8:1 chance that person wants the governor, but it's still a tiny number and a tiny inconvenience for that tiny number. As to categories, they also average 0 hits per day (with the exception of American slave owners), and he's the only Samuel Ashe in all but one of those. Station1 (talk) 18:34, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

• Comment. I should point out that "politician" being the standard disambiguator rather than specific office has been established by consensus over many, many RMs. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:24, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
• Support per Wikipedia:Article titles: recognisable, precise and concise ("no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects"). Consistent with Nathaniel Alexander (governor), William Hawkins (governor), and Jonathan Worth (governor), etc. Per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Disambiguating, "The disambiguator is usually a noun indicating what the person is noted for being in their own right. In most cases, these nouns are standard, commonly used tags such as "(musician)" and "(politician)". ... If possible, limit the tag to a single, recognizable and highly applicable term. Sometimes disambiguators need to be more specific. For example, "Engelbert Humperdinck (musician)" could still refer to two different people, so Engelbert Humperdinck (composer) and Engelbert Humperdinck (singer) are used." Celia Homeford (talk) 12:45, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.