Talk:Douglas County Courthouse (Wisconsin)

Requested move 29 April 2017

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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. wbm1058 (talk) 19:42, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

---

Douglas County Courthouse (Wisconsin) → Douglas County Courthouse (Superior, Wisconsin) – procedural RM because of a request at WP:RM/TR for reversion based on move warring . I am neutral. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:23, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

• Huh, I don't know what to think. I'm kind of in the dark about what's going on here. But at face value, no, we would not normally move an entity to "(Superior, Wisconsin)" from "(Wisconsin)" unless we needed to differentiate with another Wisconsin entity of the same name. And there aren't two Douglas County Courthouses in Wisconsin, which makes sense. So I mean WP:AT tells us to be WP:CONCISE, and "Wisconsin" is more concise than "Superior, Wisconsin". Regarding Precision, AT says "Usually, titles should be precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but no more precise than that". Recognizability and Naturalness, I dunno -- a wash I guess. There are many topic-specific naming conventions for article titles, but not one for buildings AFAIK. So that's as far as it goes.

So I mean, given that, it's clear that WP:AT, with Conciseness and Precision, wants us to name it "Douglas County Courthouse (Wisconsin)", unless someone wants to come up with a Recognizability and Naturalness argument, which I'm skeptical you could come up with a very good one.

But wait. I didn't cover Consistency. WP:AT also valorizes Consistency with other article titles. And take a gander at Douglas County Courthouse, where all the other five articles are named ""Douglas County Courthouse (Town, State)". What happened? Why did this occur in the face of Conciseness and Precision?

But wait! Other courthouses in Wisconsin don't do this. Pierce County Courthouse (Wisconsin). Polk County Courthouse (Wisconsin). Taylor County Courthouse (Wisconsin). Grant County Courthouse (Wisconsin). But wait! Some do: Green County Courthouse (Monroe, Wisconsin), Iowa County Courthouse (Dodgeville, Wisconsin). Well, that's four that use just the state and two that use the town and the state.

What a dog's breakfast. This is a mess. What's going on here?

Anyway, on the proximate question. Two of the Five Virtues (Conciseness, Precision) militate for "Douglas County Courthouse (Wisconsin)". Two (Recognizability, Naturalness) are pretty much a wash. And the fifth, Consistency, is a wash too, since other courthouses seem to use a mix.

So on that basis, yes, it has to be "Douglas County Courthouse (Wisconsin)" as a matter of policy. We apparently need a written-down rule for building name disambiguation though, and I'll put out a call for papers presently. Herostratus (talk) 02:58, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

To answer your question "What's going on here?": All of the cases using "(city, state)" you cite were moved within the past year by the same editor, despite his being asked not to on his talk page by several other editors. The usual qualifier for County Courthouses is simply "(state)" for the reasons you mention. Station1 (talk) 05:33, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Do you speak of User:Doncram? Doncram is a Master Editor... I went to his talk page and laid out the reasons for doing a Requested Move for stuff like this, and told him to do so in future. So we'll see. Herostratus (talk) 16:37, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

• Opppose per above conversation. Herostratus (talk) 16:39, 30 April 2017 (UTC) Striking my vote, after thinking this over. My evolving thinking about this is here: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)#What are, or should be, the disambiguation guidelines for buildings?. I think what we need most is a guideline. Without a guideline, it's really impossible to say what the best or most correct title is. Herostratus (talk) 05:23, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

WP:AT covers this. While a guideline might be helpful, it is certainly possible to discuss the title based on current policy. Station1 (talk) 21:56, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

WP:AT doesn't really cover this very well, because 1) WP:AT does not get down into the weeds of fine details, and 2) WP:AT doesn't concern itself very much with disambiguation. WP:AT valorizes the Five Virtues. Of the these, Conciseness favors the shorter title, and Precision probably also ("titles should be precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but no more precise than that"), but then Recognizability possibly the longer name (tells the reader more exactly what he is looking at and where it is), Naturalness has little to say about most disambiguation questions because it seeks the common name. That leaves Consistency, which apparently is up in the air -- there is no consistency. But I daresay if Consistency could incarnate itself and ring your doorbell and grab you by the shoulders when you answered, it would say "For God's sake, man! Pick one format! Any one!". So the point being that WP:AT doesn't give us clear guidance at this level of detail. Herostratus (talk) 03:08, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

• Opppose: disambiguate only if necessary and only to the extent needed. Jonathunder (talk) 15:32, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

In that case, shouldn't it be moved to "Douglas County Courthouse (Superior)"? Herostratus (talk) 19:56, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

No, because (a) the town is unnecessarily overprecise when the state will do, especially since the courthouse served the entire county, not just the town in which it happened to be located; (b) Douglas County is in Wisconsin, not in Superior; (c) Wisconsin is more recognizable than Superior as a place name; (d) in this case Superior might be mistaken as disambiguating the type of court as opposed to the location, as if there were a Douglas County Courthouse (Probate). Station1 (talk) 21:56, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

That's grabbing the wrong end: at least nine U.S. states have a city named Superior, but there's only one Wisconsin which has exactly one county called Douglas. Jonathunder (talk) 22:44, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Good points. Herostratus (talk) 02:57, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.