Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mozart's name

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was KEEP. (If you want to merge, that's fine, but the point is the article lived) --Golbez 20:04, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mozart's name

Mozart's name is a short article on just the history of Mozart's variable name, barely notable in itself, names were far more flexible back then. Should be merged with Mozart article. Rmrfstar 23:36, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

• Please Keep as a separate article. The reason we do this, and continue to do it, is to spin off excessive detail from the articles on major composers where it is off-putting to a reader to be immediately bogged down in a morass of detail on the composer's name, the controversy over his birthdate, the controversy over his nationality, and other minor issues which detract from the flow of the main biographical article. There is a respectable precedent established on other composer articles for this practice (see for example the satellite articles around Beethoven). Antandrus 23:48, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
• Weak Keep pretty minor topic, but agree with Antandrus that it would clutter up Mozart article. I see you've removed the info from Mozart again. —Wahoofive (talk) 00:02, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Perfectly good article. Nobody who doesn't want to read it is forced to do so. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 00:05, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep separate, so people who aren't very interested can avoid it. Kappa 03:31, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect: As the nominator points out, and as I pointed out on the takpage months ago, the article shows several clear anachronistic misconceptions about names in the 18th century, such as the idea that a certain (Latin) form of a name in a baptismal record would be "decisive for its purpose", i.e. determine the exact form of a person's name for life, or that composers were exceptional in changing the form or spelling of their name according to language and other circumstances. Take out these unsupported assumptions, and whatever is left fits into the biographical article and really does not warrant an article of its own. Uppland 06:02, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep Good idea to have remove some rather dull info from main article, which will probably grow and grow. Gillian Tipson 06:24, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep but rename to Mozart family or Mozart genealogy or something. "Mozart's name" is simply "Wolfgang". Radiant_* 08:37, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect back into the Mozart article. It's not bogging down the reader if it's in a separate section. Let's not start a genealogy page on him, his relatives are nn. RickK 21:01, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
• strong keep Very good device to organize the quite long Mozart page terse and succinct.
• Merge, this is all about Mozart.--Prem 03:14, May 14, 2005 (UTC)
• The Mozart article in its current state is hardly unweildy and the addition of a section devoted to Mozart's name would not significantly detract from it's readability. If the Mozart's name article held a large amount of information, or showed potential to have, it would be a different story. This, however, is not the case. Uppland is correct in that the information is not worthy of it's own article and needs to be shortened dramatically even if not merged. As RickK pointed out, a small section on Mozart's name inside the main Mozart article would not bog down anyone looking for other information. No one is forced to read anything on any article, (except maybe the first sentence), especially if the information were put in it's own section. If properly integrated, the information on the name of Mozart would not "detract from the flow" of the main article. In it's current form, the information is not easy to find, even if you're looking specifically for it. Rmrfstar 16:00, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep to avoid cluttering up Mozart as stated above. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 15:45, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. I'm responsible for the existence of this article, though not most of its content. It put it as a separate article because people kept putting little anecdotes about Mozart's name right at the top of the Mozart article, where it seriously disrupted the expository flow and sounded amateurish. Rmrfstar, who wants simply to have a short discussion in the main article, is not taking into account a widespread phenomenon in the Wikipedia composer bios: people are always putting in little anecdotes without regard to whether their contribution is disrupting the organization of the article. Satellite articles provide a way of accommodating these little anecdotes without making the main article incoherent. If we actually delete information, as Rmrfstar is proposing, it will all come back sooner or later, re-disrupting the main article. Opus33 16:05, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

I am not saying we should in any way delete valid information just for the sake of merging the two articles. Rather I think we should simply address the issues brought up by Uppland concerning the article's misrepresentations of the importance of some name changes. I do, though, believe that some information may be added concerning Mozart's chosen name Amadeus, and the multiple interpretations of it's meaning, (especially relating to his competition with Salieri). Such information could be, I think, incorporated into the main article very well. Rmrfstar 16:22, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.