Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (events)

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1 Initial section
2 UCLA Taser incident
3 Disasters & rewrite & rename

[edit] Initial section

Discussion on these guidelines took place here: Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions#Proposal_for_articles_on_events_and_activities. When the page is archived, it will probably be in archive 9 or 10. Kla'quot 03:01, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conflict seems to cover this topic adequately, and I do not see what value this page has except introducing the possibility of confusion. As it stands, this page clearly contradicts the following text.:

Choose a descriptive name for an article that does not carry POV implications.

For instance, what do we call the controversy over Qur'an handling at Guantanamo Bay? The article is located at Qur'an desecration controversy of 2005. Note that the title makes no statement about who is the (more) guilty party: it does not "give away" that conclusion; in fact the article itself draws no conclusion. Similarly, the article on the September 11, 2001 attacks does not assign responsibility for the attacks in the article name.

There is not in fact any conflict between "use the most common name" and "use a non-POV name", because Wikipedia:Naming conflict does not apply the former principle to "descriptive names" such as those of events. The arbitration committee has contradicted itself on this issue ([1][2]), but in the absence of a clarification from them that is no reason to change the existing guideline. – Smyth\^talk 18:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Mmm, where's the contradiction? This page also calls for editors to "use a descriptive name that does not carry POV implications". The point is to clarify how the "most common name" principle applies to event names—in this case, by taking precedence over artificially constructed descriptive names—rather than to discuss the proper construction of descriptive names in general. Kirill Lokshin 18:41, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

My problem is that this page gives the common name priority over the POV implications, by saying: "If there is a particular common name for the event, it should be used even if it implies a controversial point of view". As NPOV is the most important of Wikipedia's policies, this seems quite wrong. – Smyth\^talk 20:49, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Keep in mind that NPOV does not stand for "No point of view". As it explicitly calls for views to be represented in proportion to how widely held they are, it's quite reasonable to use the most commonly used name for an event as the title of the article. Kirill Lokshin 21:20, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

It's worth noting that a "neutral name" is often anything but. In many cases, these supposedly "neutral names" are more or less euphemisms that conceal unpleasant facts. It is just as much a POV to call the Armenian Genocide the "Armenian Unpleasantness" as it is to call it a genocide. The latter just happens to be the dominant POV, while the former is a POV limited to a few Turks. We should be really wary of supposedly "neutral" names that actually advance one side's POV. john k 00:00, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

These guidelines were written to clarify the ambiguity that SimonP pointed out in his ArbCom decision. These guidelines were originally discussed on Wikipedia talk:Naming conflict. I asked SimonP for his opinion on the proposedd guidelines [3] and he provided it here: [4]. The intro of the Wikipedia:Naming conflict page says it is to resolve conflicts over "what to call a topic or a geopolitical/ethnic entity;" from what I see there it looks like it is mostly written with topics on geographical locations and ethnic entities in mind. Kla'quot 05:55, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

The fact that it discusses the "Quran desecration controversy" is a fairly obvious counterexample to that. – Smyth\^talk 20:49, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The definition of "common name" provided here seems very strange to me, in that it suggests that only if one name is in universal use is there a common name, and that otherwise we have to come up with a "descriptive name that does not carry POV implications." There doesn't have to be one single name that is always used for there to be a common name. For instance, the Austro-Prussian War is sometimes also called the Seven Weeks War. That doesn't mean that Austro-Prussian War is not a common name, does it? One could presumably come up with other instances where the common name would be clearly POV. Yom Kippur War certainly isn't a "common name" as defined by this convention, in that there's numerous different names commonly used to describe it. I think the definition of "common name" here needs to be changed. (C.f. the way this convention has been cited at Talk:The Indian Rebellion of 1857. john k 21:08, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, these guidelines were written mostly to address the question of when to use loaded words. If an event has several names that are all free of loaded words, usually one name predominates. However, as you point out that isn't always the case. Can you suggest how to further clarify the definition of "common name"? Kla'quot 06:53, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, an issue is what counts as a "loaded word". Yom Kippur War might be considered loaded, since it emphasizes that the attack was on a Jewish holiday. Indian Mutiny (which hasn't been the location of our article for two years, unfortunately) is arguably loaded, in implying that the rebellion was a mutiny. It was that, in part, but some might (and have, if you look at the talk page I cited) say that because it was more than that, to call it a mutiny (or a "Sepoy Rebellion") is to diminish it. There are all kinds of examples like that. I would suggest that a "common name" be defined in the normal wikipedia sense of "the name most commonly used in English to refer to that event, if there is one." Some events don't have a clear "common name," (the 1859 War in which France and Piedmont-Sardinia fought against Austria, for instance, is a good example, in that there's no name that is commonly used), but that's not the same thing as an event which has several different common names in use. john k 13:37, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Kla'quot 01:22, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I have added some tentative definition of military conflicts in the Military Conflict page based primarily on organizational level of troops involved in a conflict event. Comments are welcome

[edit] UCLA Taser incident

We made up a name that was short, unique, and descriptive, and everyone agrees that it should be the title of the article.

But it isn't found anywhere in newspapers or reports; there is no common name. Should the name we decided for the article also be written out and bolded in the first sentence of the article, or should the first sentence just be a description of the event? I think it's inappropriate to bold it, as if it were an official name or terminology, where none previously existed. — Omegatron 04:30, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree; I always find it irritating when people give so much emphasis to an arbitrary and Wikipedia-local title. – Smyth\^talk 14:17, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Can we make a policy or guideline about it? — Omegatron 15:04, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I suggest you post at Wikipedia talk:Lead section. – Smyth\^talk 15:54, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disasters & rewrite & rename

[edit] Disasters addition

I've just added text that was recently added to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates) following discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions#Disaster article names as adopted by the Disaster management WikiProject and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disaster management#Naming conventions?. Akradecki 18:50, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite of guideline

I attempted a rewrite here. The intention is to have the guideline cover events in general, rather than just controversial events. Carcharoth 21:54, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

The change was reverted. Per WP:BRD, I await the discussion here. I would appreciate comments on precisely what is wrong with what I feel is rather a minor, organisational rewrite. Carcharoth 22:54, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

The change looks fairly uncontroversial to me. I must agree that this policy is far too narrow, and am sorely tempted to tag it for complete rewrite. Blood Red Sandman Open Up Your Heart - Receive My EviLove 07:21, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Update. I discovered yesterday that a naming convention does exist for elections, which are events, so should that be a section of this guideline? If not, then the title really needs clarification, because people looking for guidance on how to name election articles may come here, expecting an 'events' naming convention to cover elections, much as I expected it to cover earthquakes (and other disaster events). At the very least, if there is no guidance, enquirers should be directed back to the main naming conventions page, and to the talk page of that page, so seek guidance there. I really do think that it needs to be made clear that this is an incomplete guideline, and one way of making that clear is to narrow the focus of (ironically) the title. For now, I am going to link to the elections bit from here, to help people find what they want. I really can't see a problem with that. Carcharoth 11:23, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Renaming of guideline

My feeling is that if no expansion is possible, then the page here needs to be moved to something like Wikipedia:Naming conventions (controversial events) or Wikipedia:Naming conventions (controversial event names), as it focuses soley on controversial events at the moment, and not on matters of title style and format. One of the reasons for this is that the title is genuinely misleading. I was looking to see if guidance on earthquake names existed, and I spotted a link to this and thought "wonderful, that will cover all sorts of events". I was very disappointed to find that it was just a short guideline covering controversial event names. I've read lots of very lengthy discussions on event and other names including the words 'massacre', 'terrorist', 'war criminal', etc, and this guideline is currently just a response to those controversies, not a consideration of the wider issues surrounding event names. Carcharoth 22:51, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure we can rewrite/expand the present guidline into something suitable, and that this should not be nescescary. This is the sort of guidline that may get too long in the future and need split off, but for now we have the oposite problem. Blood Red Sandman Open Up Your Heart - Receive My EviLove 07:23, 23 January 2007 (UTC)