Talk:Telford (disambiguation)

Requested move 20 September 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The result of the move request was: Withdrawn, JMF appears to oppose and no one has supported except possibly me (which I don't really) so close as withdrawn even though involved (non-admin closure) Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:50, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

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• Telford (disambiguation) → Telford
• Telford → Telford, Shropshire

– The engineer Thomas Telford has such a substantial number of pageviews that it cannot be said that the town of Telford is the Primary Topic, especially bearing in mind that the pageviews for the town include everyone who has landed there looking for the engineer. It would be appropriate for a dab page to start with "Telford commonly refers to" and the town and the engineer, ahead of the list of other uses, as these two uses appear to be by far more commonly sought than any other uses.

Note that until a few minutes ago the dab page was not standardly formatted. I have reformatted it per MOS:DAB, to show the (current) primary topic at the top. PamD 08:12, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

• Move request withdrawn by requester, who has changed her mind after reading below and viewing WikiNav stats PamD 07:58, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Not convinced. Looking at the disambiguation page, there are seven six articles that are necessarily disambiguated forms of the word 'Telford'. Three of them are in the USA, where the form "city, state" is ubiquitous: even someone living in Tennessee would expect to write Telford, Tennessee. One is a tiny locality in Victoria (AU). One is a UK parliamentary constituency and follows the style of such articles: Name (UK Parliamentary constituency). The sixth is "Telford (surname), a list of people and fictional characters": such cases are always disambiguation articles. The last is "Telford (placename), an English place name", a complete waste of space, poorly sourced, non-article with no incoming links that should just be deleted. So that leaves us with people looking for the engineer but don't know his forename – but we have many such articles. So surely the need to serve such enquiries is met by the {{about}} hatnote at the head of the article. A contrary example is Washington but it reads to me that there are many significant Washingtons; there are only two significant Telfords. What have I missed? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:52, 20 September 2023 (UTC) (Revised following subsequent (effective) deletion of Telford (placename). --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:56, 20 September 2023 (UTC) )

@JMF I didn't make the case well. I think Telford, the engineer, is of such stature that he is commonly known just by his surname ("Telford's bridge" etc), on the lines of Brunel or Wordsworth. And most of the other entries on the dab page, including the town, are named in his honour. PamD 17:41, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

• "Thomas Telford" is a PTM for "Telford", see the Raleigh example at WP:NWFCTM and the town gets more views (6,796) than Thomas (4,182)[[1]] though possibly by long-term significance there may not be a primary topic. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:05, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

  But don't forget that at present anyone going for "Telford" gets to the town article whether they want it or the engineer, so the page views are inflated. PamD 22:52, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

  Since we can't easily tell which requests were for the town and which were just passing through, would it be practical (as in, provide the answer) if we made the disambiguation article primary for a month and see the effect on traffic? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 22:52, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, but there would be a lot of incoming links to the town which would need to be updated, even if the proposed move was only temporary.

  I've a feeling there is some way to see how many of the pageviews of Thomas Telford have come from the Telford page, but I don't know what it is. PamD 08:01, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  Maybe Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) can advise? Or just the Teahouse?

  Is there a a gotcha with my Cunning Plan? As soon as we make Telford be the disambiguation article, will a bot go round revising all the incoming links? What? With what effect? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 10:02, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

• Withdraw proposal: I have now found WikiNav which shows that only a very small proportion of the readers landing on Telford move on to Thomas Telford, contrary to my expectations. Now that I have added him to the hatnote on Telford (I think his place there is justified) and reformed the Telford (disambiguation) page to make it comply with MOS:DAB, I think all is well. Apologies for wasting editors' time. I cannot close this RM myself, as an involved party, so I don't know what the procedure is for when the proposer changes their mind. I'm sure someone will come along who knows what to do. PamD 07:58, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

  Well it certainly wasn't a waste of time. It was a reasonable and credible proposal. And it has had at least two useful outcomes (I for one didn't know about WikiNav, so will be filing that one away for future use). You win some, you lose some. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:24, 24 September 2023 (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.

"Thomas Telford" is a PTM for "Telford" JFTR I don't believe that is a correct reading of WP:PTM, which recognizes the concept of a specific and generic part of a name, and readers habitually refer to people just with surnames so there is a legitimate ambiguity there. --Joy (talk) 12:03, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

@Joy: Yes "Thomas Telford" is a PTM for just "Telford" as he would normally be called by his full name in a generic context but I can reopen if you want. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:11, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

That might be true of Brunel, who remembers the Isambard Kingdom and anyway there is no competition for the name. But in the case of Telford, a choice must be made and the numbers don't lie: most visitors are looking for the town. So I really can't see merit in relitigation. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 22:48, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

This is not a relitigation of the entire issue, I'm just adding a note to correct what I see as a persistent fallacy. Once a formal discussion is closed, we don't modify it, but the talk page continues to be available :) --Joy (talk) 06:59, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

No, people are habitually referred to by their last names, in generic context, and when there's a natural need to disambiguate a given name or any number of other characteristics are used as well. It's no different to a place, where in generic context you say the name, and when there's a natural need to disambiguate a more specific location or any number of other characteristics are used to clarify. The average English reader probably does not know where exactly is Shropshire nor do they know much about the Institution of Civil Engineers' leadership structure. --Joy (talk) 06:57, 26 September 2023 (UTC)