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Review of Arpad Elo and others

Re the 17 November 2006 requested moves as discussed at Talk:Árpád Élő

• Árpád Élő → Arpad Elo
• István Fazekas → Stefan Fazekas
• Iossif Dorfman → Josif Dorfman
• Michał Waszyński → Michael Waszynski
• Stanisław Ulam → Stanislaw Ulam
• Povilas Tautvaišas → Paul Tautvaisas
• Elmārs Zemgalis → Elmars Zemgalis
• Kārlis Ozols → Karlis Ozols
• Géza Füster → Geza Fuster
• Lucijs Endzelins → Lucius Endzelins
• Luděk Pachman → Ludek Pachman
• Pál Benkő → Pal Benko
• Vladimir Vuković → Vladimir Vukovic
• Gedeon Barcza → Gideon Barcza

I request that the appropriateness of this closing be reviewed.

1. Arpad Elo was already closed by administrator Sjakkalle after more than five days of discussion with edit summaries "(moved Árpád Élő to Arpad Elo: Discussion on the talkpage. Consensus that Arpad Elo is frequently referred to by the simplified English spelling in English texts, hence Misplaced Pages should follow same standard.)" and "moved 'Talk:Árpád Élő to Talk:Arpad Elo: Ditt the Arpad Elo article"
   • Sjakkalle did not dot all his i's and cross all his t's in closing the nomination, not adding the proper templates on the talk page and not dealing with the entire set of nominations.
2. Administrator tariqabjotu improperly failed to consider part of discussion, because in discussion area Mibelz added a second level header (==, the highest level conventionally used on Misplaced Pages). It and the third level header below it were part of the discussion, but the "/div" was placed above them, so they are not included in the part identified as the closed discussion.
3. Administrator tariqabjotu improperly found a lack of consensus. See summary below.
4. After closing it, and at the urging of User:Husond here, tariqubjoto moved Arpad Elo previously closed by Sjakkalle to Árpád Élő with the edit summary "(moved Talk:Arpad Elo to Talk:Árpád Élő: per result of requested move on talk page (page started here and so "no consensus" should default to it being here))"
   • Since this nomination was an objection to recent moves made without consensus (and without discussion either, and contrary to already long-existing discussion in the case of Arpad Elo with ), the proper "default" should be the name prior to the moves objected to if there is no consensus.
5. N.B. In order for the procedure to make multiple nominations to be reasonable and to have any purpose at all, it cannot be proper to count objections to considering them together to be objections to the individual moves.

According to the discussion:

• Support: Gene Nygaard (nominator), Duk, Septentrionalis, Quale, Andrewa, Masterhatch, Endroit, Croctotheface
• Oppose: Husond (but see below), Mibelz (original mover, counting him there though he doesn't explicitly say so, but could be reasonably though not necessarily implied from comments he did made , some of which was part of the discussion though not considered to be so by tariqubjoto)
• Oppose considering all together: Valentinian, Kusma, Duja
• Support Arpad Elo and similar, oppose Luděk Pachman and similar, "So we should deal it on a case-by-case basis, I think": Ioannes Pragensis

I see that as at the least

• 8 support
• 2 oppose
• 4 consider separately

The opposition by Valentinian, Kusma, and Duja was also expressly stated to be objection to lumping all of them together, and Duja at least was specific in saying "No prejudice against some moves on individual basis."

For Arpad Elo, at least 9 (including Ioannes Pragensis) of the 14 editors (64%) involved supported the Arpad Elo name, vs. 3 opposed (21%), a 3:1 ratio of those addressing it favoring the Arpad Elo name actually used by this 80-year-long American.

Husond, in addition to his oppose vote, specifically identified his opposition as being to certain specific moves. Omitted from Husond's list were István Fazekas → Stefan Fazekas, Iossif Dorfman → Josif Dorfman, Lucijs Endzelins → Lucius Endzelins. Gedeon Barcza → Gideon Barcza

Ioannes Pragensis: "I support in some cases the English variant (Arpad Elo for example), In other cases I oppose (e.g. Luděk Pachman"

As pointed out by Croctotheface (agreed to by Stuff of Interest and expressed separately by me)

"my understanding is that one editor undertook all of these moves at roughly the same time and without discussion or establishing consensus. If they are all related in that way, i'm OK with putting them back where they were before and then placing the burden on those who wanted to move them to where they are now (with diacritics) to establish a consensus for a move."

Gene Nygaard 21:25, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't always agree with Gene; but I do here. I'm not sure no consensus describes the result; but its effect should be to restore them to where they were; anything else encourages move wars. Septentrionalis 22:44, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I do agree with Gene; he's correct that most of the opposes, now that I look at them more closely, are in opposition to having a mass move instead of in opposition to the move, period. I'm not sure how I missed that the first time, as I thought I had noticed a couple of those oppose votes. As for not dotting is and crossing ts from the previous admin... um... yes, that would have been nice: the move was still listed on WP:RM, the {{move}} template was still at the top, and the {{polltop}} and {{pollbottom}} templates were not used. Regardless, it appears the best course of action might be to do individual move requests. About the Árpád Élő article, I have no problem skipping an individual move request for that article and moving it back to the version without the accent marks (although I'm not going to do it now, because someone may object). Regarding doing what Husond asked, I don't want anyone to think that I was doing that just because he requested it; if the move should have been closed as no consensus rightfully, the article did belong at the version with the accents as that was the original state of the article, as the start of the move request. -- tariqabjotu 23:27, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Not to pile on but I've also seen some sloppy goings-on with move requests lately. Someone even forgot to move a talk page with the page itself recently, in addition to forgetting to remove the {{move}} tag. And of course I've been reminded (ever-so-nicely I might add) to fix category re-indexing, esp. when accent marks are involved. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:14, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Disagree with Tariqabjotu on the close because as Gene points out, no consensus should return pages to their names before Mibelz' mass renames and Mibelz should make his arguments for each move individually. Even more importantly I am very disappointed that he chose to ignore WP:V when rerenaming Arpad Elo. As repeatedly pointed out, there are no WP:RS sources supporting the Árpád Élő name so the page belongs at Arpad Elo, where I believe it was before he moved it at Husond's request. Add WP:ENGLISH ("If a native spelling uses different letters than the most common English spelling (eg, Wien vs. Vienna), only use the native spelling as an article title if it is more commonly used in English than the anglicized form.") to the WP:V problems, and this is beyond ridiculous. Admins refusing to follow established policy and guidelines make trying to improve Misplaced Pages an endurance contest against POV-pushers rather than an enjoyable activity. Quale 04:23, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

All I'll say is that when I close a move request, I evaluate consensus (or lack thereof) and act accordingly, even if that consensus is contrary to my opinion or a policy or guideline (see Talk:Yoghurt for a classic example). Now, in regards to this move, I feel this whole discussion has been blown out of proportion; as I said upfront, I admit I made a mistake – no one is perfect. Gene could have just pointed out the mistake on my talk page, much in the same way Husond did, instead of making it look like I had sinister motives. Quale, there is no need to pile on accusations of transgressions because it's not going to do anything. -- tariqabjotu 13:44, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't accuse you of having a sinister motive, just of doing a lousy job. Often following consensus against policy is a mistake, and following supposed lack of consensus against policy is, in my opinion, a really bad idea. Quale 17:13, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it was a lousy job, although I know what you mean. There are some underlying logical problems with Misplaced Pages policy here - most of which I don't think we'll fix in a hurry. They may not even be fixable. What can't be cured must be endured, as one wild boar said to another in Asterix and the Black Gold.

My immediate question is, the result needs more attention so how do we fix it? Having done that, we can then look at how we could do better next time... without recriminations or blame. I'm doing this for fun. Andrewa 20:08, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I also noted this closure with some concern, but had not decided just how to proceed. As noted above I voted to move all the articles back to their previous names, without the diacritics, and I believe that we probably had consensus to do this. Be that as it may, we certainly had consensus to move Árpád Élő back. Andrewa 12:58, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I should also note, I think the presence of the diacritics in the titles, while still a hot topic in general, is fairly clearly contrary to Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines in all these instances. Andrewa 20:08, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to Tariq for reversing his decision on the Arpad Elo article and moving it back. Like I said in the close when I made the move, I felt there was sufficient consensus and arguments for keeping that article to the title with the simplified spelling based on the arguments that Elo had spent all his adult life in the United States and not Hungary. I think I also mentioned that this was not to be used as a precedent for the other articles listed in the same request, so I deliberately abstained from taking any action on those. I saw there were several "opposes" on the straw poll, but many of them were opposes to mass moves rather than a move of Arpad Elo. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:14, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Tariq. I made the request here, then spent the weekend without my internet connection working, have it back again now. Gene Nygaard 14:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Incomplete requests (2)

I see this has been covered above under #Incomplete requests, but I'd like to bring it up again. When we receive incomplete requests, either because they used the {{WP:RM}} template instead of the {{WP:RM2}} template, or because they failed to set up the discussion on a page, do you all think it would be reasonable to reject the request? It's extremely hard to sift through opinions, and it certainly seems people are less willing to give our opinion (I know I am one). I am even ready to take the extraordinary step of stating at the top (if your request is not finished, it may be removed as incomplete) or something like that. I know it's not a vote, but the request headers are set up the way they are for a reason. Thoughts? -Patstuart 10:50, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree; my opinion is that the admins managing the RM have more than enough job to be able to monitor whether the RMs were properly filled in. The procedure for setting up the RM debate is simple enough that it takes only a bit of basic RTFM and minimal effort for the interested editor. If the user doesn't care about the subject enough to spend 5 minutes to do the job properly, why should we care then? For my part, I routinely remove the malformed requests from the backlog. Duja► 10:25, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

How to report non-consensus controversial moves

I've got a situation where a group of editors are carrying out hundreds of controversial page moves, even though a guideline page is clearly in dispute, and there's an upcoming mediation. What is the proper venue to report these moves, so that articles can be restored to original names, or a "freeze" can be put on things until consensus is established? Should I take this to WP:ANI, or is there a better venue? --Elonka 18:02, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Your characterization of the situation is misleading. Support of the guideline as it stands has been broad with only a handful of people dissenting. The default position is that the guideline should not be changed until the consensus changes. While a case could be made that a "true" consensus to keep the guideline has not yet emerged (though I and others believe it has), there is certainly no consensus to change it to support Elonka's position. Further, the upcoming mediation is only tangentially related to the specific naming issues and may not result in a decision on that matter directly.

The moves pertaining to Lost specifically were ratified by consensus at a requested move which received a full debate. Other WikiProjects which had an previously established consensus to use the dab tags (WikiProject Star Trek and WikiProject Buffyverse) have been allowed to keep them in the short term. Minor series without a WikiProject or many active editors were moved unilaterally under the assumption that if move requests were held, the previous consensus evidenced by the Lost vote and discussion at WP:TV-NC would prevail. Since dozens of moves were involved, it would be a waste of everyone's time to hold a vote for each one. There has been no disruption as far as I am aware and no one, other the original dissenters at the guideline level, has protested. –  Anþony  talk  23:33, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Anþony is incorrect. There is considerable dispute about the moves, involving objections from multiple editors. The guideline page at Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (television) has been the subject of edit wars, and is currently clearly labeled as disputed. A few editors continue to insist that they have consensus, and are moving forward with hundreds of moves. I have been choosing not to engage in move wars with them, since I know that anything that's moved, can be moved back once the situation is resolved, but the longer this goes on, the more pages that are being moved (if allowed to continue unchecked, this will affect thousands of pages), which will take considerable damage control to reverse, so it's better to just stop the moves before they happen in the first place. An admin's assistance is requested. --Elonka 01:28, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

As an aside, at least five administrators have already examined and/or participated in the discussion at WT:TV-NC, and all five have agreed that a consensus exists for the current guideline (which Elonka opposes). For the record these five admins are myself, Chuq, Steve Block, Radiant! and wknight94(along with many other comments on the subject). This debate is not exactly unobserved by administrators. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 08:00, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Even if the guideline were changed the way you propose, reasonable exceptions would need to be agreed on for any given set of pages. Removing the unnecessary disambiguation would still be an acceptable course of action until such exceptions are agreed on. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:54, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

You say I'm incorrect, but provided nothing that contradicts anything I said. I do not deny that there is dispute, but I maintain that it is due to a minority group that has not come close to achieving consensus in their favor. Being in dispute does not negate the application of the guideline, otherwise we couldn't decide if something is notable either. In the case of the Lost moves, we do not claim that we have consensus, we have evidence of it in the form of a successful requested move. We could do a RM for every one of these hundreds of moves, but there's no reason to think they wouldn't succeed as well. If you disagree, I invite you to post a RM for an example article and prove me wrong. Vague charges of non-consensus and thinly-veiled threats on the other hand are not helpful. As far as admins go, four (or is it five?) of them have been directly involved in this debate and expressed no objections to the process being used to move articles. –  Anþony  talk  03:06, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Since both of you are already a party to this dispute, you're hardly neutral in this matter. I repeat: All page moves of this type should stop, until the dispute is resolved. --Elonka 03:10, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

And I repeat: Being in dispute does not negate the application of the guideline. I fail to see why your statement trumps mine, as you are hardly neutral yourself. –  Anþony  talk  03:30, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Can one of the "Move Admins/Closers" look at this?

An anon user put up a merge tag on Violence against women back on Nov 21st but didn't complete the process with a request here. On the talk page, we have established users opposing the move with a few anons (potentially SPA or even duplicate users) voicing POV-based support. Considering the length of time, it seems like the request should be "closed" but since it was incomplete, did it really even start and thus need to be listed? Agne 12:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Merges are handled less formally than moves and not here in any event. Misplaced Pages:Proposed mergers is a place to optionally advertise a proposed merge. Misplaced Pages:Merging and moving pages#Proposing a merger outlines the steps involved with suggesting a merge, but basically all you have to do is come to a consensus on the talk page. It seems the discussion has gone on long enough with enough participation. As an uninvolved party, I've closed the debate with the result of no consensus. –  Anþony  talk  13:47, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Timeliness of RM notifications

Yesterday I put up a RM for seventeen pages. I put up the talk notice first, followed by the post here at RM three minutes later, then the first proposed move notice on an individual page three minutes later (a total of six minutes after the inital RM post). Although I had edit windows of all pages open before starting the move, it still took a few minutes (less than 20 minutes total) to complete all of them, particluarly since I was double checking and verifying wikilinks. One user is now continuing to complain that I failed to post notification, particularly on one article where he got there before I did (three minutes after my first RM post) and insists that he had to post notification himself since in his opinion, I had failed to do so. Is there a reasonable timeframe in which the multiple posts of an RM (particularly one of multiple articles) should be completed? --Milo H Minderbinder 15:24, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

(as the editor refered to as "one user") - Notify prior to "opening the polls", especially in such a controversially and hotly disputed situation (see the talk page of WP:TV-NC) - You have all the time in the word to add the needed notification, as a sign of good faith to show that the poll (since when was it a poll anyway?) is indeed legitimate, especially as the opening to this page reads "Do not discuss moves on this page. Moves are discussed at the discussion page of the article to be moved." thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 16:05, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Matthew, thanks for sharing your side of the story. I'd appreciate input from RM regulars on this, thanks. --Milo H Minderbinder 17:21, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Moves via copy/paste instead of using the move feature

I have come across a situation where a user is using copy/paste to switch an article and redirect instead of actually moving either page. I've warned him/her and reverted, but they did it again. Any recommendations on how to handle this? I assume you're not supposed to do moves that way, although Help:Moving a page doesn't explicitly say you shouldn't. Moves are here: . --Milo H Minderbinder 23:30, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

If they continue to do it after they have been clearly told how to properly move a page, they should be blocked for disruption. Cut and paste moves are substantial burden because they need to be fixed by page history merge, and can also be a copyright problem with the GFDL. —Centrx→talk • 03:22, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

What happens when a consensus has been reached?

What happens to my requested move when several days have passed and a consensus has been reached? Do I just wait for a bored admin to come and do the move? I think this should also be documented on this article so that users will always know what to do or what to expect. -- intgr 17:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Personally I find acting as an admin anything but boring! But remember we're all volunteers here. Sometimes there is a bit of a backlog. Please don't blame the admins for this, that's just likely to discourage some of the requested moves team, and then the rest of us will then be even busier, and the backlog will increase.

I think you're probably referring to the current IBM token ring move. Yes, we do seem to have consensus IMO.

As to better documentation, suggestions and contributions are welcome. Good to talk here before doing anything too radical. And beware of instruction creep.

In my experience, many problems are caused (and a lot of my time wasted utilised) because people haven't read what we already have. If discussions could be kept to discussion sections (not the requested moves page itself or the survey section) that would be a big help for one thing. And that's already clearly documented.

And when these directions aren't followed, it doesn't need to be an admin who sorts it out, but it nearly always is. So another thing you could do is to fix things that don't need sysop powers, so those who do have them will have more time to use them. Andrewa 00:41, 15 December 2006 (UTC)