Talk:What the Butler Saw (play)

Opening comment

This looks like someone's taken a program note from a production of the show, badly formatted it and pasted it into Wiki. I don't know enough about the play to correct it (hence why I'm reading the article!) but can anyone else tighten this up or at least get a proper mention of it into the Joe Orton article?163.1.155.48 16:37, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Move?

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. 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.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:50, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

What the Butler Saw (play) → What the Butler Saw —

• Play is overwhelmingly the principle usage and ought to occupy that namespace; have moved previous disambig page to What the Butler Saw (disambiguation) DionysosProteus (talk) 18:35, 13 April 2010 (UTC) DionysosProteus (talk) 18:35, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
• I reversed the disambig page move. If What the Butler Saw (play), is the dominant meaning, also move the disambig page again from What the Butler Saw to What the Butler Saw (disambiguation). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 20:26, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
• As the disambiguation page makes clear, this is an ancient catchphrase; I believe it was an Edwardian music-hall joke. There is (and can be) no primary usage in cases like this. Oppose. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:46, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. It's doubtful that the play is the primary topic. Three of the four films mentioned at the DAB page precede the play; Two of these are unrelated to it and relatively obscure, but the mutoscope reel is highly significant historically, and particularly to the usage of the term. It could even be argued that the play title is indirectly derived from the mutoscope reel title. Andrewa (talk) 07:26, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. The name of the play derives from the earlier uses of the phrase, in particular the mutoscope reel title. Cjc13 (talk) 15:15, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

The question is not which derives from which, but the most-common usage. If you consult the wikipedia page view statistics for each, for example, you will see that the play receives far more hits. DionysosProteus (talk) 01:29, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

The mutoscope article gets significant numbers of views, at times very similar to those for play's article. Cjc13 (talk) 14:51, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Could provide examples. Looks to me about 1,000 more per month for the play. DionysosProteus (talk) 16:23, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

So could I, it varies month by month. Cjc13 (talk) 19:03, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose as per Andrewa. The Mutoscope is the origin of the title, and indeed the influence on Orton;'s choice of it for this play. Current situation is more than satisfactory. Nick Cooper (talk) 13:10, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

The criteria is not origin but most-common use. DionysosProteus (talk) 16:23, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

No, the criterion for this move is ambiguity, or rather the claim that there isn't any. The proponents need to show that the term is not ambiguous, but instead that the play is the primary meaning. This doesn't just mean showing that this usage is more common than the other. It helps, of course. In fact if another usage were to be more common, it's very unlikely that the play would be the primary meaning. But just showing that it's more or most common isn't enough. Andrewa (talk) 04:34, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

In addition to the evidence provided by the respective hits on Wikipedia, a straight-forward google search demonstrates that the play is by far the most-common use. DionysosProteus (talk) 16:25, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

My Google search brought up two more uses of the phrase on the very first page of hits, both unrelated to the play... An episode of The Avengers, and a photographry and website design company. This is consistent with the phrase being far more widely used than just as the play title, and therefore ambiguous. Andrewa (talk) 07:47, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

The question is not whether or not it is used elsewhere, but what the most-common usage is. As a google search and a comparison of the Wikipedia article page statistics confirm, the play remains by far the most-common. DionysosProteus (talk) 13:46, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

No, they show that it's the most common usage on the WWW and in Wikipedia, not in English generally. Also, most common usage is not necessarily primary usage, even then. Andrewa (talk) 17:11, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose To my mind, the mutoscope reel is clearly the primary topic. The play was merely borrowing the title. Skinsmoke (talk) 03:01, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

On what evidence? DionysosProteus (talk) 22:57, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. 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.