Misplaced Pages

Yesterday (Beatles song) (talk|edit|history|logs|links|archive|watch) (RM)

In my judgment, the closer of this requested move, although acting in good faith, did not follow the spirit and intent of WP:RMCI. It appears to me that the closer failed to follow these important Misplaced Pages guidelines:

Consensus is determined not just by considering the preferences of the participants in a given discussion, but also by evaluating their arguments, assigning due weight accordingly, and giving due consideration to . . . applicable policy, guidelines and naming conventions.

— WP:Requested moves/Closing instructions#Determining consensus

The closer is there to judge the consensus of the community, after discarding irrelevant arguments: those that flatly contradict established policy, those based on personal opinion only, those that are logically fallacious, those that show no understanding of the matter of issue. . . . is expected to know policy sufficiently to know what arguments are to be excluded as irrelevant.

— WP:Closing discussions#How to determine the outcome

Most (but not all) of the discussion of this RM revolved around whether the subject article is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC of the term "Yesterday". Many editors expressed views on this point, but almost all of these were based on arbitrary personal opinion, rather than specific reference to the actual text of the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC policy and supporting empirical evidence. In assessing all views expressed, the closer failed to discount those that were incongruent with Misplaced Pages policy and/or unsupported by evidence, and instead reached a conclusion based largely on a headcount of votes.

Before opening this move review, I discussed the matter on the closer's User Talk page (here). The closer maintained that the discussion of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC was "editorial" in nature, as opposed to being about how any particular guideline or policy should be applied. I find this claim difficult to understand; how can a discussion of how a WP policy applies to the situation at hand not be about how a WP policy applies to the situation at hand?

In the RM discussion, I presented a carefully-compiled table of pageview statistics covering the immediately preceding 90 days, and including all articles and redirects whose titles were either "Yesterday" by itself, or "Yesterday" followed by a disambiguator. These statistics showed that the article at "Yesterday" (which, at the time of the discussion, was the title of the article about the Beatles song) was by far the most frequently viewed by Misplaced Pages readers of all the "Yesterday"-related topics, even after accounting for the disambiguation page. This is the very definition of what constitutes a primary topic at Misplaced Pages:

A topic is primary for a term, with respect to usage, if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term.

— WP:PRIMARYTOPIC

However, in the subsequent User Talk discussion, the closer rejected this empirical evidence out of hand, making the rather astonishing claim that "statistics" (by which the closer apparently meant "empirical data") are "rarely . . . unbiased" and therefore of little value. The closer asked, "Where is your control group to show what normal counts are like?" as if the concept of a "control group" was somehow pertinent to the discussion of a move request. The closer then stated that these data "had no on my interpretation of the consensus of the discussion", even claiming that the data were so irrelevant that "it wasn't worth mentioning in the close". I find the closer's position baffling, to say the least.

I am concerned that allowing this closing to stand would have broadly negative implications for the application of the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC guideline across Misplaced Pages.

Lest anyone misjudge, I want to emphasize that I do not object to the outcome of the closing in this case; I believe the article in question is better named with the disambiguator "(Beatles song)" than without it (though for reasons unrelated to WP:PRIMARYTOPIC). Rather, my concern here is with the way the discussion was closed.

In my opinion, the best outcome of this move review would be:

1. to affirm that, although the closer acted in good faith, the discussion was closed improperly;
2. to affirm that the article in question is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC of the term "Yesterday"; and
3. either of the following:

• to relist the RM so that discussion may proceed regarding the merits of adding the disambiguator "(Beatles song)" to the article title even though it is the primary topic of the term "Yesterday"; or
• to implement the compromise proposal (presented during the original RM discussion) of leaving the subject article at "Yesterday (Beatles song)"; leaving the disambiguation page at "Yesterday (disambiguation)"; and making "Yesterday" a redirect to "Yesterday (Beatles song)", in respect of the fact that the latter is the primary topic of the term "Yesterday".

– – –
Respectfully submitted,

— Jaydiem (talk) 00:24, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

• Endorse close It would have been nice to some mention of the statistics in the close, but I still feel the close is valid. Given that many of the other comments still argued against primary topic even with the page view information I can see the closer as discounting it. Slightly off topic as this drifts towards rearguing, concerning the statistics. First page view statistics is that they are inherently biased in that they are highly influenced by existing links to the pages. Since the song was at the title Yesterday a lot of existing links would have lead directly there. Also ~65% is not really what I would consider primary topic. A primary topic needs to be much more likely the intended target than all the other topics combined, I actually think that those page views stats could be used as an argument that the song is not the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. PaleAqua (talk) 02:04, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

• Response: Respectfully, I would like to call your attention to the explicit conditions stated in the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC policy. To be primary, a topic must be:

(1) more likely than all the other topics combined, and

(2) much more likely than any other topic.

As I noted in the RM discussion, a topic obtaining even a simple majority of pageviews is, by definition, being viewed "more... than all the other topics combined". The data table documents that the subject article received 65.8% (roughly two-thirds) of the relevant pageviews during the 90-day sampling period—well above a simple majority. As for the second criterion above, the second-most-viewed topic received less than an 8% viewshare. It seems clear that 65% is "much more likely" than 8%. Therefore the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC definition is clearly satisfied. In light of this empirical evidence, to rule that the subject article is not the primary topic is tantamount to declaring that the current definition promulgated in the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC policy is invalid and should be disregarded throughout Misplaced Pages.

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In the post-closing discussion on the closer's User Talk page, the closer objected that the statistics I presented did not account for the possibility that readers who were seeking a "Yesterday"-related topic other than the Beatles song may have inadvertently visited that article first, then clicked to the disambiguation page, and finally clicked to their intended topic. But this objection does not withstand scrutiny: Even if we stipulate that every single one of the 3,061 views of the disambiguation page shown in the table was an instance of this scenario, and we therefore subtracted that number from the pageviews of the article about the Beatles song, that article's viewshare would be reduced by a mere 1.2 percentage points—a negligible amount that is inconsequential to any conclusions to be drawn from the data.

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Lastly, I must also reiterate that none of the other arguments presented in the RM discussion in regard to the primary-topic question were based on the actual WP:PRIMARYTOPIC policy definition, or on relevant empirical data, and therefore those arguments should have been disregarded by the closer. — Jaydiem (talk) 04:40, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

• Questionable close. Irrespective of the quality of the close, I'd like to have enough time to pass to have some page view data now that the move has occurred; more than enough time should pass for search engines to update. Then decide to reverse the close iff <sic> the stats support a reverse, as I'm willing to bet they will.

The stats shouldn't have been dismissed. They should have been weighted, but were NOT conclusive. We may find that Yesterday (Beatles song) gets far less traffic now.

I think that the poor quality of the DAB page also suggests the song is the primary topic; FCS, what is this nonsense? It's the day immediately before today, NOT the 24 hour day period before the Present. FS!

--{{U|Elvey}} 03:05, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

• Endorse closure. With due respect to User:Jaydiem for good intentions and basically sound reasoning here, I feel this RM is a bit too legalistic in nature. The results of consensus discussions on Misplaced Pages are of limited precendential value; hence, Jaydiem's contention that "allowing this closing to stand would have broadly negative implications for the application of the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC guideline across Misplaced Pages" is misguided. No single close has "broadly negative implications," because closures are generally narrowly limited to the article in question. If the right result is reached, there is usually no reason to fret over the particulars of the reasoning used to reach it.

Additionally, Jaydiem's argument fails to address the other important means by which PRIMARYTOPIC status may be declared: "A topic is primary for a term, with respect to long-term significance, if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term." Essentially, proponents of the move argued that Yesterday (time) was the PRIMARYTOPIC on this ground, irrespective of pageview statistics. By discounting statistics, the closer affirmed the basis of this argument. Perhaps the closer was inartful and too harsh in his talk page elaboration; however, the key conclusion -- that, in this case, the consensus discussion decided that the "long-term significance" ground outweighed the "usage" ground -- was consistent with policy and practice. It is common for RM discussions to decide, in any given case, that one basis for PRIMARYTOPIC status is more relevant or germane than the other. The arguments that Jaydiem would have preferred to see discounted -- those he refers to as "personal opinion" -- were in fact mostly expressions of the "long-term significance" type, a basis for PRIMARYTOPIC status that is inherently less empirical (but no less valid) than the usage ground. Xoloz (talk) 15:46, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

• Response: I acknowledge that Misplaced Pages is "not a court", but the essential theme of the section to which you refer is, I believe, to remind us that established policies and guidelines should not be followed to the letter in a manner that controverts them in spirit, and that they should not be used as an impediment to genuinely "improving the encyclopedia". I don't believe the present case involves either of those missteps.

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I also acknowledge that the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC policy has two parts—primacy with respect to usage and with respect to long-term significance—and that my arguments above address only the usage aspect. But that's because the long-term significance aspect was only a minor part of the original RM discussion. Most of those who expressed support of the RM either explicitly referred to the usage aspect of the policy (though in a way that was incongruent with what it says), or they presented no reasoning at all to support their opinion. I would submit that the long-term significance aspect of the policy is mainly intended to avoid designating as primary a topic which gains intense, but short-lived, notoriety. As was noted in the RM discussion, the fact that the Beatles song "Yesterday" continues to garner such a high level of interest more than 50 years after its release gives us no reason to expect that it will be forgotten about anytime soon.

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By the way: During the last 14 days before the move began being implemented (namely, June 13 through June 26), the article about the Beatles song was viewed 8,337 times, whereas the "Yesterday (time)" article was viewed 71 times. Even after subtracting all the views (335) of the disambiguation page from the Beatles song article's total, the latter outweighed the "(time)" article by a factor of well over 100-to-1.

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What I had in mind during the RM discussion was that once it was acknowledged that the Beatles song is the primary topic, we could then move on to why this is a special case in which it would be helpful to add a disambiguator to the article title even though it's primary for the base term "Yesterday". The reasoning would be that the term is a commonly used word or phrase in the English language, but the primary topic uses the term as the arbitrary title of a creative work, not as the word or phrase's normal denotation in English; therefore, adding a disambiguator makes this clear even before a reader looks at the content of the article. Because the topic is primary, it would then be appropriate to establish a redirect from the base term to the disambiguated primary topic, and to add a hatnote pointing to the related disambiguation page. Once this principle were established in this case, it could be applied to other similar cases across Misplaced Pages, perhaps being added to the WP:Disambiguation guidelines. — Jaydiem (talk) 20:45, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

• As you know, you may make your proposal regarding "special PRIMARYTOPICs that still require disambiguation" at the Village pump. You may even reference Yesterday (Beatles song) as an example. You need not seek the overturn of the RM to do this. Of course, one might argue that an RM close in support of your idea would lend the proposal weight; on the other hand, one might counterargue that energy expended on this Move Review might be better spent in shaping the proposal at the Village Pump. Xoloz (talk) 16:54, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

• I acknowledge your point about "energy expended on this Move Review", but I want to emphasize that I called for this review mainly because I felt that the closer failed to disregard certain arguments that the applicable closure guidelines indicate should have been disregarded. In other words, I'm objecting to a procedural error in the closing. (In a scenario where arguments that enjoy decisively strong support from both established WP policies and empirical evidence are overruled in favor of views that have a few more "votes" but are far less supported by evidence and established policy, what is an editor to do?) In any case, I intend to propose a modification to the article titling/disambiguation guidelines after this review is resolved. — Jaydiem (talk) 03:52, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

• Endorse close. This was a scrappy discussion on both sides (including my contributions) with neither side making much headway. In the light of that, it seems a little churlish to complain about the closure. I would like to emphasis a point I made, but not very successfully:- There are 78 guidelines authorised and supported by the policy document WP:AT, one of which is WP:SONGDAB which clearly states that if there are 2 or more songs with the same name then all should be disambiguated, which effectively was the result. However, if the argument is that WP:PRIMARYTOPIC won the day, then the 78 naming conventions (and 80 proposed) at Category:Misplaced Pages naming conventions should be considered for deletion. --Richhoncho (talk) 22:54, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

• Response: While I don't agree that this move review is "churlish", I definitely agree that WP:SONGDAB provides an excellent rationale to add the "(Beatles song)" disambiguator to the article title even though the article is the primary topic for "Yesterday". This would provide further justification (in addition to the arbitrary-title/common-word conflict mentioned above) to make "Yesterday" a redirect to "Yesterday (Beatles song)", rather than a disambiguation page. — Jaydiem (talk) 04:00, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

• Disagree. That then becomes a back door way to circumvent a RM consensus. Your question should be whether the concept should be moved from Yesterday (time) to Yesterday and Yesterday moved to Yesterday (disambiguation) which does not affect this close, but could be construed as the general agreement of those supporting this move. --Richhoncho (talk) 09:19, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

• Sorry, I'm not following you here. Speaking in general, the fact that a topic is judged by consensus to be primary for a potentially ambiguous term is not, by itself, necessarily determinative of what the article title for that topic should be. There's nothing "back door" about it; it's simply a multi-step procedure. The first question is, "Is this topic primary?"; if the answer is yes, then the second question is, "Should this topic's article title be disambiguated anyway?" – Based on what you said about WP:SONGDAB, I would've expected that you'd agree with this. Regarding the "Yesterday" discussion in particular: please consider the possibility that many of those who favored the addition of the "(Beatles song)" disambiguator may have couched their support in terms of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC only because they couldn't think of another way to achieve their desired result—not because the topic truly failed to meet the specific criteria of that policy. — Jaydiem (talk) 04:35, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

@Jaydiem. I am not going to respond here, as our discussion is beyond the scope of a move review. Happy to respond on my talk page if you want to continue the discussion. --Richhoncho (talk) 21:06, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

• Endorse closure - the closer made a completely reasonable and well stated close, a better quality close than content of the RM deserved in fact. In ictu oculi (talk) 06:09, 19 July 2014 (UTC)