Talk:Jim Ellis (politics)

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[edit] Name

Question for Jerzy: Why did you rename this page from "James W. Ellis"? What advantage do you see in the name "Jim Ellis (politics)"? (Sorry, I could not find an argument in your reply on my talk page.)

My arguments for the old name are as follows:

1. "James W. Ellis" is at least used in some cases.
2. "Jim Ellis (politics)" is a name no one ever called him.
3. "Jim Ellis (politics)" doesn't distinguish him from the other political activist (See Talk:Jim Ellis#Ambiguity).
4. Your renaming introduced a number of indirect redirects. I was just in the process of changing existing links from Jim Ellis to James W. Ellis when I noticed you had changed the target to "Jim Ellis (politics)", which stopped me short. It would not make sense to work on this now as long as we have not reached agreement on how we name the target page. I'm writing this here primarily as an alert that we still have a problem here, but also a small argument for keeping the old name, because there would be much less rework necessary.

Regarding your proposal to use "Jim Ellis" as the name for the JWE page: This is an interesting idea which has some merit since JWE is currently the only Jim Ellis with a Wikipedia article. However, we know how fast that can change, and I would rather stay with "James W. Ellis" for the arguments pointed out above.
Common Man 02:00, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
_ _ If you think i "proposed" that, perhaps i have confused you, and i need to be blunt.

1. You have made a prima facie case that "Jim Ellis" is the natural title for the bio of JWE.
2. Only someone who contests that can consistently advocate within the framework of our policies for James W. Ellis to be the title of that bio, rather than it being a rdr to that bio, as it now is.
3. In that light, re your two above questions for me
   • the answer to the first is that i accept your prima facie case, and support the policy, and
   • the second is a challenge to policy and should be addressed to the appropriate page in the

     Wikipedia talk:

   namespace, not here nor to me.

4. Your "arguments for the old name" also belong there rather than here.

_ _ As to the "interesting idea":

_ _ What i created is IIRC called an "equal dab'n".

_ _ IIRC the "interesting idea" is called a "main article" Dab, with the JWE bio as "main" "Jim Ellis" article, which would have within it a ToP Dab lk'g to Jim Ellis (disambiguation). I heartily oppose that under present circumstances.

_ _ As to the absence of a Jim Ellis (computing) article, i note that this UseNet co-designer has mentions (median age 6 months, maximum 18) that account for 5 current lks to Jim Ellis. (This is in contrast to one 6-week old lk for JWE (as JE) and 4 (as JWE) ranging 1 wk to 9 months; those refs' median age is 1 month.)

_ _ I expect that pressing a claim at this time that the JWE bio should take that "main article" role would result in a flurry of editing on the UseNet-JE topic and an article on it that would dwarf not only the current JWE single-sentence stub, but any JWE bio that was not artificially padded. (While i have no special interest in the topic, i would personally put together a UseNet-JE bio-stub and request its expansion, if no one else did so quickly.)

_ _ The circumstance where i would anticipate considering the JWE topic as the subject of the Jim Ellis article is his becoming star witness against an elected official. At such a time, it would be worth evaluating whether his notability might hold up long term, or whether he would be likely be a nine-days' wonder and become a footnote like (fairly random choices) Col. Oliver North or Adm. John Poindexter.

_ _ You said

The article name "Jim Ellis (politics)" is ambiguous because Jim Ellis (Seattle) was involved in politics as well.

and that you'd talk abt it here, which i guess was your #3. Everyone is -- well, 90% of Americans are -- involved in politics; it's all a matter of degree. Seattle Jim was an activist in some political contexts, but his notability (such as it is) is evidently not particularly abt the politics of what he did (tho i think i saw Greens admiring him) but abt his apparent sense of involvement in the life of one city and (in the governance of a university) an educational institution important to it and the development decisions affecting it and a professional career that is valuable in terms of opportunities to do politics, but is bound to be mostly about doing work that matters to one client, almost certainly largely in matters that were irrelevant to, or even in conflict with his politics. JWE's notability is the quintessence of politics, more political than the work of 95% of notable politicians: being a key player in fairly successfully effort to make a sea change in the politics of a whole country. But in any case, the job of the qualifier that goes in paren after a dab-requiring personal name doesn't have to go beyond what the titles "Jim Ellis (Mo)", "Jim Ellis (Curly)", and "Jim Ellis (Larry)", could do for these three (tho it's almost always easy to do better than that). (In the context of The boxers Davey Moore, i named the bios Davey Moore (1960s) and Davey Moore (1980s), and no one has seen any need to improve on either of them. IMO, "Davey Moore (welterweight)", e.g., would be worse, even though less likely to be controversial.) Jim Ellis (politics) is better than "Jim Ellis (Mo)", and maybe there's an option better still that i'm not creative enough to come up with. (BTW, it's hard to imagine anything with more than one word that would not be worse, if that's the direction you're headed here.) But there's no point cursing the darkness if you've got no candles to bring to the party: what would be better than "politics"? _ _ I have given this far more energy than it is inherantly worth; perhaps its instructional value is not wasted. I will feel no obligation to go further in explaining the edits i've made or will make here.
--Jerzy•t 23:16, 21 January 2006 (UTC)