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Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (languages)/Archive 4

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Latest comment: 10 years ago by G Purevdorj in topic Twodabs
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Twodabs

Latest comment: 10 years ago163 comments10 people in discussion

Hi, just saw the revert of the Makah redirect with cited WP:NCL as a reason for the revert; however, nowhere does Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages) advocate for disambiguation pages with only two links. If anyone did want these to exist, they would need to gain consensus to change WP:TWODABS. Likewise if one wanted to change how primary topics are determined, one would have to gain consensus to change WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. I believe User:Kwamikagami added an "ethnicity" parameter to the language infobox years ago, so each language article can link to corresponding ethnic group article and vice versa—to facilitate users actually finding the articles they want quickly. -Uyvsdi (talk) 23:20, 30 March 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi

True, only the language part is at the language guideline, but that's because the ethnicity part is at the ethnicity guideline. We debated whether one or the other should be the primary topic, and finally agreed that neither should be, which leaves a two-link dab in many cases. Sure, you can argue the consensus should be changed, and maybe it should, but that would require us to actually change the consensus. — kwami (talk) 06:07, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
The consensus for determining a primary topic would take place at wp:primarytopic. As the current NCL guidelines point out, sometimes the language is the primary topic (such as the given example, Latin); however, often it is not. Makah people is overwhelmingly the primary topic of Makah, considering it has over ten times the incoming links as Makah language. Current page view statistics wouldn't be helpful, since for more of the recent months, Makah had redirected to Makah people; however, in July 2010, the month following the establishment of the disambiguation page, the language got 369 hits, while the people got 1,957 hits. It would be a very unique extinct language that would attract more readers than a living people. All language and ethnic groups articles should link to each other; if they don't have infoboxes yet, then via a hatnote. -Uyvsdi (talk) 20:33, 31 March 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi
I do not understand the statement about changing WP:TWODABS. If there is no primary topic, the dab page goes at the base name, whether it disambiguates two topics or two hundred topics; WP:TWODABS addresses the ability to live without a disambiguation page at all if (and only if) there is a primary topic. A two-element list at Makah is fine, as long as neither is the primary topic. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:54, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
I don't personally want to change WP:twodabs WP:2DABS, but if anyone else does, that conversation would need to take place there. Currently WP:Twodabs explicitly states that a disambiguation page with only two links is undesirable and should be avoided. -Uyvsdi (talk) 20:33, 31 March 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi
No, it doesn't. -- JHunterJ (talk) 23:53, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
Oh brother, WP:2DABS and WP:Twodabs lead to two different places. Okay, so *WP:2DABS* reads "If there are only two topics to which a given title might refer, and one is the primary topic, then a disambiguation page is not needed—it is sufficient to use a hatnote on the primary topic article, pointing to the other article." The debate then is if there is a primary topic or not, which is determined through WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, which is through incoming links, traffic, and English reliable sources. In the case of Makah, there's clearly a primary topic, as there usually is in these cases. -Uyvsdi (talk) 00:06, 1 April 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi
They lead me to the same place, and that place says only that dabs are unnecessary when two conditions are met: there are only two topics, and one of them is the primary topic. That guidance does not need to be updated for this case -- disambiguation pages at the base name (i.e., where there is no primary topic) with only two links are perfectly fine. Whether or not there is a primary topic for "Makah" is a different discussion, but no change to WP:TWODABS is needed. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:43, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
Um, yes.... I'm agreeing that I don't want WP:2DABS changed. -Uyvsdi (talk) 15:57, 1 April 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi
The reason we decided against this last time was that trying to decide, based on coverage in the lit, whether the people or the language is the primary topic would be a nightmare. Another possibility is that, since the language is normally named after the people, would be to simply dictate that the people are the primary topic. (A language cannot exist without the people that speak it, and so is logically dependent on the people. On the other hand, ethnolinguistic groups are defined by the language they speak, and so are logically dependent on the language. And trying to decide whether an obscure nation or an obscure language has more coverage in the lit would cause no end of argument.) — kwami (talk) 06:12, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
What "lit" would that be - you mean your own field, of course. View stats and googles and incoming links are not all that hard to figure out re PRIMARYTOPIC. The "no end of argument" you speak of its your own circular argument(s), like we are seeing here once more; and re " trying to decide whether an obscure nation or an obscure language has more coverage in the lit" - you need to read outside your field, sounds like; the titles/peoples you are disputing so ardently are no "obscure", but living, breathing people and cultures you would do well to educate yourself about instead of presuming to call them "obscure". To you maybe, but not to people in regions where they are often the dominant population.Skookum1 (talk) 09:45, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Skookum's reworded the guideline to claim that aboriginal peoples follow a different naming convention than other people, with the root word used as the title for the article about the people. This may be true for the US and Canada, but not for the rest of the world. I tried saying that, and he reverted. Knowing Skookum, this means he feels he needs to defend against a racist conspiracy waged by perverters of Truth (i.e., everyone else), so this will need some watching. Personally, I don't care if this is the convention for all ethnic articles, but the guideline is supposed to reflect reality, and the reality is that, outside North America, we use "X people" etc. for the people, and "X language" etc. for the language, with no distinction between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people, AFAICT. Correct me if I'm wrong. — kwami (talk) 05:36, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

You were the one who wanted to separate indigenous usages in North America from the rest of the world; which is POV and OR and not what the consensus you cited said. As for "This may be true for the US and Canada, but not for the rest of the world" that's very wrong. And re "correct me if I'm wrong", There's no way to correct you, anything made in response to you will be called "nonsense" and "illogical" and worse.....you're very wrong about resisting the mandates of policy here as observed by Cuchallain and others and also in having ignored AT and more in the first place.Skookum1 (talk) 09:45, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
And you are corrected about the use of "X people" elsewhere in the world. Correct though about the non-distinction between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. See Germans, Russians, Danes, Bonans, Dongxiangs and Evenks. None of them are in North America. I suspect that there are more but I saw little need to look further. By the way I find this and the associated edits to be petty and petulant. CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 07:46, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
None of those are at the root, so they are not counter-examples. If you check German, Russian, Dane, Bonan, Dongxiang, or Evenk, you'll see they're all dabs except Bonan. What we are talking about here is something different: The root word being used for the people. There's very little of that outside North America.
They are not "petty". We appear to have two conventions here: The root being used for the people in North America, and some derivation of the root for the rest of the world. Now, we can move all the North American articles to match the rest of the world (that's what Skookum got so upset about), or we can move the rest of the world to match North America (that is, move "Germans" to "German", "Russians" to "Russian", etc), or we can note that we have two parallel conventions. But Skookum's tactic of denying reality is not helpful to other editors.
What you changed the guideline to, "[if] the people are decided to be the primary topic [or] if the language is the primary topic", is precisely what the consensus was not. We can change the consensus, of course, but that requires actually changing the consensus. I've reverted to the last stable version (before my or Skookum's edits) until we discuss this. — kwami (talk) 21:01, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
and not common practice either......since when is an obvious "basic" redirect deleted - other than to make way for a move? dishonesty of this kind I've seen lots of from him, it's very tiresome and also disruptive and obviously tendentious. I put in "aboriginal" peoples, saying "indigenous" in the edit comment by mistake; the point here that's referred to is the self-identification passage in NCET (and MOS and elsewhere) about "ethnicities and tribes"....so yes, European and other groups are also included; most Australian indigenous people articles, other than the ones that Kwami moved to "FOO people" are already standalone; a very few were started that way. Haven't looked at Africa or South America yet, but Europe is a mess - "FOO people" is used as an article title for "persons who are FOOian", for others as the ethnic group, same with catnames.....Category:Sorbs got deleted and was apparently used for "people who are Sorbs" rather than as an ethnic group title; Category:Sorbian people has in it "people who are Sorbs" and also general-topic titles on Sorbian history and culture......"FOO people" article titles there tend to be for "people who are FOO". Dabs should only be used when necessary. Some dab pages started out as ethnic group pages, e.g. Sami was moved to Sami peoples in 2004, then made a TWODABS in 2006, then after an amusing series of IP additions about some girl named Sami Page, had more added to the dab page. I don't have time to run view stats on all of these right now, but "Sami" I'm betting is the PT far and away above everything else there; if not for self-identification guidelines and good manners, this page would be a Lapp, Lapp people, or Lapp peoples.Skookum1 (talk) 08:11, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
Is there a point?
thanks for not signing your post, Mr Rubin. The point is that there is no separate category for the ethnic group there. There was, though its name also implies "people who are Sorbian" because it's in the FOOs format like Germans, Canadians etc. Because the current category is most accurate as "People who are Sorbian", the ethno category should be recreated at Category:Sorbs..... I note you didn't complain on that category that it doesn't have a description, which you took me to task for not having done elsewhere. Disputes as to which category should be what can follow; but there was no "Sorbia" (Germans called it Wendland however). The point is that "FOO people" is necessarily a flawed format for ethno article/category titles, unless it only refers to "people who are FOO"; the claim made here and by the reversionist at WP:NCET that it is "preferred" and "unambiguous" is not only fiction but very demonstrable false. I didn't even get your shot-in-the-dark here at first, thinking you were talking about the Sami titles..... Skookum1 (talk) 14:26, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
Please read more carefully. I changed [[Category:Sorbian people]] (which mistakenly put this talk page into Category:Sorbian people) into [[:Category:Sorbian people]] which properly mentions the category. "Is there a point?" (to what you are saying) may still be a good question, but I had nothing to do with it. You are welcome to delete your mistake and this comment, and make whatever substantive comment you want, but you are seriously confused. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:04, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
Me read more carefully? What about your mistake in not signing your comment, which where it was put was asking a question apparently in relation to the paragraph you were responding to; fine, you fixed a category that was mentioned, fine and dandy; but your question and your edit comment are both out of place here. I made no mistake, given what was asked, you were the one who made an unsigned comment for a question you apparently didn't even want answered, and an edit comment for that comment that had nothing to do with anything. It is not me who is mistaken, sir; you could have fixed that category link without making a comment/question but you did; that's not exactly a mistake, but it is more than a bit curious, since you didn't sign it and didn't even want an answer anyway.Skookum1 (talk) 15:19, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
Look at the edit history. I did not write "Is there a point?" Study of the edit history indicates that kwami added it here. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:37, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
My mistake, and I do apologize; it was yes from a misreading of the compare columns I thought you had added that, and yes, I should have recognized the style of comment as unmistakeably someone else's.Skookum1 (talk) 01:35, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
And what does "escape category from 12 April 2014" in your edit comment for your unsigned comment have to do with anything here? There's nothing there (in CFD archives).Skookum1 (talk) 14:33, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
In other words, I was converting an (improper) use of the category to a mention. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:37, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
As above, an apology; a removed colon is hard to see, and I didn't recognize that term; my own term for it is "blinding" a category. And it wasn't "improper", not putting colon in front of the category was a mistake; I certainly didn't mean this to show up in that category. It seems to late to revert now, unless someone else hasn't posted here yet maybe, in which case this whole exchange may be undone, with your permission/cooperation; in the meantime I'll strike-out my comments. That will still not restore the, um, "integrity" of Kwami's post. however; only a "mutual undo" will. The matter of there being no distinct ethno category for the Sorbs is relevant here - there is a point to what I had said, despite the rhetorical/usual challenge, though no easily solvable because both "Sorbs" and "Sorbian people" imply "individuals who are Sorb", but that can be restated again somewhere; like other confusions of this kind re ethno/people-ethno titles, it's not going to go away until resolved.Skookum1 (talk) 01:35, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
What about Russian? There we only have the people, language, and a comic-book character, so there is less need for a dab page than at Bonan (which doesn't have one, despite two articles on cities and four on people named "Bonan") or Sami. So, should the people or the language be moved to "Russian"? If we keep that as a dab, why is it different than North America? — kwami (talk) 21:26, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Being an encyclopedia, the sole purpose of article names should be to allow the reader (who in most cases has never read our MOS, 2dabs, NCL, etc., nor even knows they exist) to find the information they're looking for simply and easily. Logically, this means we have to present consistent predictable article titles. Having all people/language articles named "Foo people" and "Foo language", respectively, is simple, elegant and easy to understand. Furthermore it doesn't necessitate the hours of research and argument at each and every page in question to determine which is "primary" that will undoubtedly ensue. The lone singular adjective ("Foo") should be a dab page (yes, even if "Foo people" and "Foo language" are the only articles to be dab'ed). This convention of consistency is both quick and easy for us as contributors as well as simple and easy to understand for the reader.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 01:25, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

William, adding "people" when the meaning might be "peoples" and also when "FOO people" quite commonly means - especially in category names - means "people who are FOO", is not in any way precise or consistent - or accurate in many cases. And TWODABS pages are "not allowed" when a hatnote will suffice; that "FOO" is a noun, and in "FOO people" and "FOO language" it is an adjective, underscore the PRIMARYTOPIC reality as adjectives are modifiers not noun-topics. The readers can find the information simply and accurately by following the hatnote or see alsos or in-text links at the PRIMARYTOPIC titles; and the reality is, as view stats after view stats have shown, that language is not a parallel PRIMARYTOPIC as is being claimed here; people looking up Makah or Haida or Mi'kmaq are primarily looking for the people....making them "jump through hoop" of a needless dab page is undesirable and cumbersome for the reader. The bulk of ethno articles do not have any dab at all (I know, I've been compiling a complete list), and never did; the "people" additions were mostly done without consensus or discussion (other than the semi-private one here) over a certain period of time; and about 80% of the ones in North America have now been reverted by consensus which invoked in the closes policy, not this one sole guideline which is at the moment out of step with policy, since reverted again by its OWNer.Skookum1 (talk) 09:15, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
From this guideline "Convention: Languages which share their names with some other thing should be suffixed with "language". If however the language is the primary topic for a title, there is no need for this." and from the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes), ""Elbonian people" , "Ethnic Elbonians", "Elbonians" and "Elbonian" are all acceptable. Generally speaking, the article title should use the common English language term for an ethnic group." Also of note is the wording that appears in the top of the box on all guideline pages, "though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply."
So the claimed consensus that it is mandated that all must be "Foo people" and "Foo language" is not actually in either of the guidelines. Now until recently we had Inuvialuk language and Inuvialuk people. The name of the language is Inuvialuktun and so, given that nothing else uses that name, this guideline is clear about where it should be. The people are Inuvialuit and again according to the ethnicities guideline that is acceptable as the article title. In fact having "Inuvialuk language" as the title went against this guideline.
In some cases the articles were at a stable name for almost 7 years and moved based on the claim of some consensus that was not in this guideline at the time. In addition the claimed consensus was not applied consistently. German people, Russian people, Danish people, Bonan people, Dongxiang people, Evenk people and Inuk people are either redirects or redlinks. However, according to the claimed consensus those should be where the articles are and not where they are currently. So why are they still at the so called "incorrect title"?
Finally, there is no need to change the guidelines, they are fine as they are. Nor is intended, and I've never made that claim, that "Foo" should apply to one particular area of the world. Each article should be looked at and a determination should be made. We should not be lazy and say "Foo" is to be a disambiguation to "Foo people" and "Foo language" and any other articles that are relevant. Some will end up with the people being the primary topic, some will end up with the language being the primary topic and some will end with neither being the primary topic. There is no rush for this and they don't all have to be dealt with tomorrow, next week, or even next year and no single person needs to comment on each one if they don't want to. Moving some of the articles from "Foo people" and "Foo language" also helps to cut down on original research (Inuvialuk people and Inuvialuk language for example). CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 08:56, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
Also, the existence of Latin and Esperanto at those titles instead of Latin language and Esperanto language shows that we can present titles logically without forcing more consistency than is needed. "the sole purpose of article names should be to allow the reader to find the information they're looking for simply and easily" is simply incorrect; instead "The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles." (WP:AT) Where the article (or redirect) "Foo people" doesn't exist, there's no reason not to have the language at "Foo" if it's known as "Foo". Where there article (or redirect) "Foo language" doesn't exist, there's no reason not to have the people at "Foo" if they're known as "Foo". -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:02, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
CBWeather, repeating a strawman doesn't make it a sound argument. No-one is making the claim you're arguing against. You've been told this before, so it's getting hard to believe that you aren't making false claims knowingly. — kwami (talk) 08:27, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
Denying that the claim has been made is a bit odd. JorisvS (never mind they call it a policy) has said exactly that. You said as much when you stated "No-one's arguing that they shouldn't be at FOOs, just that per the guideline they shouldn't be at FOO." Other statements you made that support it are "Our previous consensus, that neither should be accorded primary status, was an attempt to avoid such problems." and "There was a discussion once on whether the ethnicity should have precedence for the name, and it was decided it shouldn't.". Now I might have misunderstood some of your remarks, my remark was misunderstood and I should have been clearer, User talk:BrownHairedGirl#Wording use in a close, but like BHG I can only go by what I see. Added to that are moves like this and this. The second from the common name to one made up and, certainly at the time, did not exist outside of Wikipedia has no basis in any guideline. Anyway if you think I am deliberately lying then you best report it at WP:ANI. CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 01:45, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

As I've closed a number of these recent discussions, I figured I'd offer my observations. First, it seems clear that there's an emerging consensus that peoples should generally be considered the primary topic over their languages, and should generally be at the base name, barring there being other ambiguous articles or some other reason to disambiguate both. It's true that many or most articles on ethnicities (especially indigenous peoples in the Americas) conform to the current guidelines as written, but that's largely driven by editors making moves to conform to the guidelines. It seems to be quite rare that an article starting at "Nacirema" is moved to "Nacirema tribe" after a discussion or consensus.

Additionally, though many of these moves have been for Canadian peoples, it doesn't appear that Canada is an "exception" to the previous guideline, as some previous attempts at updates have said. RMs for American peoples have largely followed the same trend, and the practice has been established at any number of articles even before these new discussions. Some high profile examples I've seen from various parts of the country include Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Potawatomi, Sioux, Ojibwe, Shoshone, Comanche, and Hopi. Additionally, Muscogee was long a redirect to Muscogee people (I've since moved the article as unnecessary disambiguation), while others like Seminole and Apache as there is no competing language. The list at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes) and the guideline's wording indicate that this practice is widespread in other areas as well.
If my observations are correct and the consensus is shifting, it definitely needs to be addressed in the text of the guidelines.--Cúchullain t/c 19:13, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

I'd said Canada and the US, not just Canada. I don't see this happening elsewhere in the world, but Skookum denies that. It may be that we instead have a discrepancy between aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples, but you've denied that. If people agree that Russian should be about the people, and similarly other European and Asian nations, then I would agree, but so far we either seem to have separate conventions for Anglo-America and the rest of the world, or for aboriginal and non-aboriginal nations. But I agree that if we don't either move European nations to the root name, or undo your recent moves and move American nations back to a dab, and if people are good with this, then we should spell out in the guideline that we have two parallel conventions. I mean, compare
German
with
Cherokee (disambiguation)
That's clearly inconsistent. — kwami (talk) 00:22, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Pfffft. So undoing a few dozen RMs where consensus did not agree with your insistence that the "people" dab is mandatory, is what you want to do? What's inconsistent is you and your wordgames and equivocation about the "rest of the world" (where you also did a host of undiscussed moves as yet unaddressed by RM) is groundless; the "FOO people" problem is all over european titles and categories (not all of your doing, though many are). As Cuchulainn observes there is a consensus that the people are t he necessary primarytopic; your claim that language is equally primary as a topic have been shown to be comlpetely baseless, as view stats and google results in RM after RM after RM have shown (other than in Modoc where I did not have time to add them, and was blocked from doing so before I could). Skookum1 (talk) 05:44, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Quoting from Cuchulainn's close of Tlingit in moving it to its original title, which it had had for years until you messed with it:

"

The result of the move request was: Move. While support for this move was less clear than at other similar RMs recently, supporters were still more numerous, and had stronger arguments. The stronger oppose votes from JorisvS and In ictu oculi referred to the WP:NCL guideline, which has traditionally recommended disambiguating both ethnic groups and their languages. However, they did not address the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC concern, specifically the page view evidence and the fact that Tlingit already redirects to this article, and has for almost all of the three years since the page was moved to Tlingit people. As such, the invocations of the article titles policy (which trumps the guidelines) by several of the supporters become even more compelling. This, taken with what seems to be an emerging consensus that peoples are generally primary topics over their languages, leads me to find a consensus for this move. " He has said similar in other RMs; those like Haida people and Modoc people will eventually follow suit despite the shallow and hostile closures/not moveds there. Others who have closed similar RMs such as BDD have said similar things.Skookum1 (talk) 06:00, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Kwamikagami, the idea that there is consistency across Wikipedia for naming and that this is confined only to North America is easy to disprove. We have Russians, Germans, Danes (Eurasia), Bonans, Dongxiangs (China), Chagossians, Banyaruguru, Battakhin, Ganguela (Africa), Diaguita, Mapuche (South America), Alyawarre, Adnyamathanha, Amarak (Australia). I don't really see the need to try and force a "one size fits all" to every group and language. CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 19:37, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
CBW, you really don't seem to be paying attention. I've explained the error you're making to you several times now, and you still don't see it. You just gave several examples that support my point. In fact, I used two of those very examples (Russians, Germans) in making my point above! Please read things before responding to them.
As for not needing to be consistent in following the naming conventions, as you suggest, sure, if that's what people want. But we should make that explicit so we don't confuse people who think our naming conventions are meant to be followed. — kwami (talk) 04:50, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
the only person confused and/or trying to confuse, Kwami, is you. Attempts to fix the guideline to make it conform to TITLE and other policies were resisted by you with equivocation, and reversion. And note, the "FOOs" forms are often for "people who are German" and not for the ethnic group as a whole; also most indigenous ethnic group names are both singular and plural (e.g. there is no plural form of "St'at'imc" in English).Skookum1 (talk) 05:23, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
Kwamikagami, you seem to be missing the point that the guidelines are being followed. These are given as ""Elbonian people" , "Ethnic Elbonians", "Elbonians" and "Elbonian" are all acceptable. Generally speaking, the article title should use the common English language term for an ethnic group." (I've posted this before). So there is nothing wrong with having Russians, Amarak, Buno people or Ethnic Japanese (that's a disambiguation because most of the "Ethnic Foo" seem to be redirects). So the the guideline already allows for inconsistency. CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 05:41, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
But we're not talking about that guideline, we're talking about this one. This one says that both the people and the language should be disambiguated, with the root article being a dab. That is clearly not the same thing as only the language article being disambiguated, with the root article being used for the people.
We shouldn't say one thing and do another. That's simply dishonest, or at best incoherent. — kwami (talk) 07:51, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
Well, what this guideline should say and what you don't want it to say are two entirely different things.09:45, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
Speak for yourself, oh shuffler of hyphens and endashes and special apostrophes, about being "dishonest"....... and your ideas are not coherent, as so often in the past; "that guideline" unlike "yours" is based on TITLE which is a POLICY that your guideline has never been "coherent" in addressing....and dishonest in resisting change by "any means necessary".... using the royal "we" when you mean yourself and your creation of "This one says that both the people and the language should be disambiguated, with the root article being a dab.". That's WHY this guideline is wrong and must be brought into line with TITLE and the consensus that we all know now is that "the people are the primarytopic" and people articles do not take a dab unless absolutely necessary per CONCISISENESS and PRECISION (per WP:AT). Your insistence that languages are equally primary is just not borne out by sources of view stats or anything. Only your refusal to acknowledge consensus instead of constantly trying to overturn it by obfuscation and obstinacy is disruptive and t tendentious and also very, very, very boring.Skookum1 (talk) 14:06, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
The major difference I can see between North American peoples and European ones is that that "Cherokee", "Choctaw", etc. are also plural nouns in English, referring to the people as a whole, while "German" and "Russian" are not. Additionally, "German" and "Russian" material also appears in the articles on Germany and Russia. As such there may be greater ambiguity with "German" and "Russian" than with "Choctaw". At any rate it may be better to just remove the wording here that says disambiguating both is "preferred", since that doesn't appear to be the consensus. If necessary it could just say something along the lines of, "if there are articles on both an ethnic group and the language they speak, and neither is the primary topic, disambiguate both according to the disambiguation guidelines" and leave the prescriptive wording out of it entirely.--Cúchullain t/c 18:58, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Though there is also "Cherokees" and "Choctaws". Hey, they don't even set off my spell checker. And conflated singular/plural names like Spanish, French, Portuguese, Irish, Welsh, Chinese, Burmese, Thai, Nepali, Yoruba, Swahili, Zulu, Malay, Maori, etc. are all dab pages.

Your suggestion is actually the problem the guideline is intended to prevent. Last time we went over this, people didn't *want* to try to decide which was the primary topic. They expected that would lead to endless arguments and end up being a huge waste of time. And hey, look at this, an interminable argument and waste of time!
So, like it or not, we currently appear to have two parallel conventions: One for aboriginal America (and maybe Australia too, or something along those lines) and one for most of the rest of the world. We can formalize that, change it, or do what we have been, deny it. — kwami (talk) 06:15, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
"we currently appear to have two parallel conventions" That's purely an original research claim and not borne out by an examination of titles, and not asserted anywhere but by you.Skookum1 (talk) 10:14, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
"Cherokees", "Choctaws", etc. are usually uncontroversial redirects to the peoples' article, wherever it's located. In these cases the unpluralized group noun is preferred for reasons specific to the subject.
Again, with "German", "Russian", etc, I expect they're seen as additionally ambiguous as there are articles on the countries in addition to the nationality and the language. I just don't think that's a convincing reason to treat Cherokee as if it's not the primary topic when the evidence suggests it is.
And as I said, it's true many articles are arranged as the guideline (currently) recommends, but this is highly driven by editors like yourself moving them around to conform to the guidelines. I've rarely seen it happen through discussion. Even still, exceptions are easily found in ethnic/ethnolinguistic groups around the world. Anglo-Norman, Khoisan, Busoga, Aztec; in addition Arab, Tuareg, Vlach, Celt, Inca, Goidel, and Slav are redirects to the peoples' article. Consensus for the guideline's current wording isn't nearly as strong as it's being presented.--Cúchullain t/c 15:26, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
After several days with no response, I went ahead and made the change. The previous wording was out of step with WP:AT and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC anyway.--Cúchullain t/c 22:57, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Reverted, as contrary to the existing consensus and with no new consensus.

Your arguments may no sense. The countries are not called "Russian" and "German", and there is no "Arab", "Slav", "Inca", or "Goidel" language. — kwami (talk) 08:53, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

There is, however, consensus to use primary topics here. If the people is the primary topic for the base name (without "people"), it can be placed at the base name if that's otherwise the best title for it. If the language is the primary topic for the base name (without "language"), it can be placed at the base name if that's otherwise the best title for it. The examples in the description of that consensus might need to be changed. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:51, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
Please show me that consensus. Last time we discussed this, we had consensus for just the opposite. — kwami (talk) 23:44, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
It's this discussion. -- JHunterJ (talk) 00:39, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm seeing Uyvsdi, JHunterJ, CBWeather, Skookum1, WilliamThweatt and I in support of allowing for primary topics where they exist. Kwamikagami opposes. Sounds like a consensus.--Cúchullain t/c 02:07, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Cúchullain, please strike my name from your list. If you re-read my comments above, I am strongly against making either language or people articles primary and the weeks of further time-wasting arguing at each and every language/people article that could ensue. My position is that, for the sake of consistency, all people/language articles should be "Foo people" and "Foo language" with neither being primary and a dab page at "Foo". It's plain, simple, logical, and easy for both writer and reader.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 04:29, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
You don't *make* a language or people article primary; you follow the protocols set down at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC to determine which is primary. As someone who uses as well as edits Wikipedia, finding unnecessary dab pages is annoying, especially when every language article and every ethnic group article should link to each other. -Uyvsdi (talk) 04:38, 24 April 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi
And when the MOSTCOMMON use of the terms is the noun-form, having to type [[FOO people|FOO]] is a waste of time and bandwidth. The syntactical duality of "FOO people" and its two possible meanings (in BC and other areas, three as town/region names are often derived from the peoples) you are by now, um, well-acquainted with, huh?Skookum1 (talk) 09:45, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
If you frame it in a false dichotomy where one of two articles must, by default, be primary, then yes, that would be true. But there exists the third option wherein neither is primary. With that option on the table, then we would indeed be "making" one the primary topic on Wikipedia. As far as your "unnecessary dab pages.." comment, the dab page is necessary for consistency. If you find one extra mouse click and the fraction of a second it takes for a page to load "annoying", perhaps you are too easily annoyed (a friendly jest, no offense intended). Others may find it annoying to search "Khmu" and get the "Khmu people" article when they were looking for the Khmu language article and the have to either search again for Khmu language or look for a link on the people page (there's no guarantee that a hatnote will get placed on every "primary" article). Also annoying would be to search for Lao and get the Lao people page (assuming that would be made primary) and then click on hatnote that in all probability would end up pointing to the existing Lao dab page anyway and then clicking on the Lao language link to get what you wanted. All of these "annoying" possible permutations can be avoided by adopting a simple, consistent pattern across the whole of WP's language/people articles: "Foo language", "Foo people", "Foo" = dab.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 05:22, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
"If you frame it in a false dichotomy where one of two articles must, by default, be primary" - there is no such false dichotomy, other than the one fictionalized by the author of the passage in question; view stats and incoming links demonstrate PRIMARYTOPIC quite readily; "FOO [modifier]" titles are inherently derived from "FOO" titles and therefore are implicitly secondary as topics. being derivations named for the people(s).Skookum1 (talk) 10:14, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
Apologies, William.--Cúchullain t/c 04:48, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Thank you, Cuchullain, and no worries, mate.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 05:22, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
There certainly is a consensus that naming conventions should follow WP:AT and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, and we're now seeing a clear trend to prefer those over the wording of this guideline. When a lower-tier guideline disagrees with widely accepted policies and guidelines, guess which one is out of step?
Consensus that PRIMARYTOPIC matters for these articles has become very clear in the recent RMs, and it's come through already at articles like the ones I named. The point with "German", "Russian", "Chinese", etc. is that it's easy to see someone typing those words looking for info that's better covered at the article on Germany, Russia or China, and thus the terms are more ambiguous than "Cherokee". And there certainly are languages that people search for as "Arab", "Inca" and "Slav", and redirects exist. Not to mention articles on Celtic languages, Anglo-Norman language, Khoisan languages, Tuareg language, etc., which you seem to have missed.--Cúchullain t/c 16:32, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
People might look for "Germany language", "Africa language", or "Earth language" too, but does that mean that we should turn Germany, Africa, and Earth into dab pages?
Even if people did that, which they probably wouldn't, "Germany", "Africa" and "Earth" are obvious primary topics of those terms.--Cúchullain t/c 02:07, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Please stop edit warring over the guideline. It's supposed to show consensus, and that requires us to actually have consensus. Several people have expressed concerns about endless debates over whether the language or the people are the primary topic, and we don't care – languages can just be at "language" regardless, unless it's something obvious like Esperanto or proto-Indo-European. If the people at the ethnicity project want to have such debates, they can knock themselves out, but people here appear to want to be left out of it. — kwami (talk) 02:55, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

"Please stop edit warring over the guideline"..... if I had coffee going, I would have spat it out, and am too tired in today's heat here to guffaw. "people here appear to want to be left out of it." - meaning you and those who are here other than the few who endorsed your changes to NCL want to be left out of policy-related decision-making; and there are not "endless debates over whether the language or the people are the primary topic" other than the ones you keep on making; who are those "several people"? What about the people who commented on the RMs you tried to shut down or delay or otherwise mess with? They don't count? Of course not, you just want to "be left out of it", and not have to account with or reckon for AT or any other policy or guideline, while at the same time inveigling on people articles even though this guideline is not about peoples but only languages.Skookum1 (talk) 09:45, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
Given that you have reverted twice and me once I think it would be you that is edit warring. Currently there is no consensus that "Where a common name exists in English for both a people and their language, a title based on that term, with explicit disambiguation, is preferred for both articles, as with Chinese people and Chinese language." By the way I like your "we don't care" remark. You do understand that anybody is allowed to use the talk pages not just the few people that came up with the older consensus? If you don't care then why are you so insistent on that particular wording? Frankly it is totally ridiculous to have a guideline that conflicts not only with the polices already mentioned but also with Wikipedia#Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes). CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 03:09, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Read WP:BOLD if you're not clear on how to establish consensus when your proposals are rejected. It's not up to the rejecter to to disprove your argument. William Thweatt has summed it up well above. Others have said the same thing in recent discussions. You simply don't have consensus to implement your POV. BTW, we agreed with ethnicities and tribes until that was changed recently. — kwami (talk) 06:22, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
One editor reverting all changes isn't consensus. I suppose we could start an RfC, but that shouldn't be necessary when the consensus is already clear and the current wording conflicts with more established policies and guidelines.--Cúchullain t/c 14:01, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
And conflicts with its own lede. -- JHunterJ (talk) 15:12, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
I believe there is a consensus that agrees with the introductory paragraph of this convention for naming languages (the extent of the scope of this convention). This convention does not govern how ethnic groups are named and has to comply with the established Wikipedia-wide guidelines at wp:primarytopic and wp:twodabs. Any suggestions about naming of ethnic groups needs to take place at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes), not here. -Uyvsdi (talk) 17:41, 24 April 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi
As for the lead, that's meant to be clarified in the body. As we've practiced it, the consensus is that language articles are only at FOO when the name is practically unambiguous, as Esperanto, or so predominantly about the language that there's little likelihood of confusion, as Latin. We precisely do not want to start arguing over whether the primary topic of "Russian" is the language or the people, despite the fact that the dab at that page fails TWODABS as much as many of the dabs we've recently been arguing over. — kwami (talk) 17:56, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
And the shorthand for that practice is: when there's no primary topic, put a dab at the base name. When there's a primary topic (language, ethnic group, or other), put it at the base name and link the other article or the dab page in a hatnote. Two-item dabs at the base name when there's no primary topic do not fail WP:TWODABS (although some members of the dab project have misinterpreted or misapplied it in those instances). If their error is what's caused consternation here in the past, we can try to address that here too. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:11, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Yes, people trying to force a decision has been the main problem. If we can clarify here that a dab is acceptable with just the people and their language, that would be wonderful. — kwami (talk) 18:28, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Except that is isn't acceptable, because it goes against WP:Twodabs. Between two articles, there is almost always a primary topic. Russian has 14 links, so that disambiguation page serves a real purpose for actual Wikipedia users trying to find information. -Uyvsdi (talk) 20:01, 24 April 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi
That's the misreading of WP:TWODABS. Between two articles, there may or may not be a primary topic. WP:TWODABS has been used to justify a "pick one, it doesn't matter which" approach to avoid having a base-name dab with only two entries, but it doesn't actually say that. The primary topic criteria isn't changed based on the number of ambiguous entries, two or two hundred. When there's no Wikipedia coverage for an ethnic group (and no other topics), there's no reason for "Base name" to redirect to "Base name language". When there's no Wikipedia coverage for a language (and no other topics), there's no reason for "Base name" to redirect to "Base name people". When there is Wikipedia coverage for both a language and an ethnic group, if one of them is the primary topic it should get the base name, and if neither is the primary topic, the base name should be a disambiguation page, even for just the two entries. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:21, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

break

No one has the "pick one, it doesn't matter which" approach. The protocols for selecting a primary topic are based on the following (directly cut-and-pasted from WP:Primarytopic):

If these were perfectly equal or even close, there would be an argument for a dab page, but those instances are extremely rare.

Looking at "Makah," which triggered this discussion, I have to go through nine screens of Google Book results referring to Makah people to find a single reference to Makah language. In the March (prior to the move that prompted many page lookers), Makah people was viewed 4,232 times and has 123 incoming links from articles (not user or other talk pages), while Makah language had 412 views and has 30 incoming articles. So there is very clearly a primary topic. -Uyvsdi (talk) 20:27, 24 April 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi

Editors have had the "pick one, it doesn't matter which" approach. As I said (and you seem to be agreeing here), the criteria for determining if there's a primary topic don't change for two topics. The only thing we might disagree on is w*doeshether the instances of there being no primary topic among two ambiguous topics are "extremely rare". But it shouldn't matter for this discussion -- the rarity of one result or another doesn't need to be referenced in the guidelines. A two-element dab for a language and ethnic group is acceptable if there is no primary topic, as is a language at the base name if it's the primary (or only) topic, as is the ethnic group at the base name if it's the primary (or only) topic. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:51, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm saying the determination for choosing primary topic are the protocols explicitly spelled out in WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. It *does* matter; the goal is to get users the information for which they are searching. Regarding language being the base name when it's the primary and only topic, yes, that already happens, i.e. Wichí Lhamtés Nocten or Ayapa Zoque. -Uyvsdi (talk) 20:59, 24 April 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi
Why does the rarity (or lack of rarity) of primary topics matter in getting users to the articles sought? -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:20, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
It doesn't, and fact of the matter is that most articles were begun without dabs, and most still are undabbed; this was the case even before the en masse no-consenus/discussion moves to add "people" to them, which are now in most cases reverted.Skookum1 (talk) 09:45, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
Re. your Russian example, sure, there are 14 links, but most of them are irrelevant, because they either aren't called "Russian", or not something someone would expect to find under "Russian". I could make a dab page for Makah that has nearly as many links:
Now, why is it that Russian should be a dab page, but Makah shouldn't? Why are we treating tribal/aboriginal peoples differently than Europeans? Is it because they aren't as important?
Or take Cherokee (disambiguation), which has almost 50 links. This has nothing to do with TWODABS. — kwami (talk) 20:58, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
You manage to avoid admitting that Cherokee is a standalone title and, other than starting off in the plural form, always has been.....like hundreds of others you never got time to add "people" to.Skookum1 (talk) 09:45, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps we're treating them differently because the Makah people are the primary topic of "Makah", while the Russian people aren't the primary topic of "Russian".
I'd be happy if we could just remove the prescriptivist language from this guideline. As with any article it should be clear that if there's a primary topic, it can go at the base name; if there's no primary topic, all ambiguous titles are disambiguated. I'd even be fine throwing in the bone that if there's no primary topic, a dab page is preferable, though this is already covered at WP:DAB, even at WP:TWODABS. But we definitely shouldn't be acting like there's never a primary topic in these articles just to force consistency.--Cúchullain t/c 21:16, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
To reiterate the view stats that were on the Makah RM, which you closed
I haven't time to run through Kwami's list of dab topics, but other than those derived from the name of this people, or terms from foreign languages, there is no other possible PRIMARYTOPIC... the Makah (disambiguation) page exists, though with only a few items at this point.Skookum1 (talk) 09:53, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
Russians are just as much the primary topic of Russian as the Makah people are the primary topic of Makah. Arguing that Europeans are somehow fundamentally different than Americans strikes me as being obtuse.
The precedent established by the high-traffic articles of the Old World, such as English, French, Japanese, etc, is that we don't pick one over the other. The proposal here is that, for the Americas (or perhaps for aboriginal or tribal peoples the world over), we need to fight it out over which gets top billing. That makes very little sense to me, and several editors have stated that they don't want to waste their time with such debates. There is such thing as common sense in applying our guidelines, and it's common sense that people should be treated as people. — kwami (talk) 21:28, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
There is a Makah (disambiguation), and Makah people is still the primary topic for Makah (as determined by quantifiable criteria). I would love to stop wasting time by having this discussion conclude. WP:Primarytopic protocols are Wikipedia-wide, so this convention doesn't get to override them, and there is no consensus to attempt to do so. -Uyvsdi (talk) 22:18, 24 April 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi
Right. Primary topic-ness isn't an award for importance, and it's not an award to the best fighting editor. It's a navigational tool, to assist reader in getting to the article(s) they seek. It's possible for Russian to be a dab page and Makah not to be. The several editors who don't want to waste their time debating primary topic-ness would not be compelled to debate it when it comes up. No violations of common sense occur. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:20, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
I find the argument pretty strange that prescriptive disambiguation for all ethnic groups protects the Makah et al from being treated differently, as it just forces their articles to conform to standards set by "high-traffic articles of the Old World". Especially as we've established that exceptions exist even among high traffic articles of the Old World. Forcing readers through hoops to find articles isn't common sense.--Cúchullain t/c 14:46, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
No-one is saying that Makah can't be treated differently, only that we shouldn't demand that it be treated differently. And no, you have not established exceptions among high-traffic articles of the Old World, as your claimed "exceptions" are not exceptions at all. And yes, I agree: Forcing readers through hoops, such as by not providing a dab page for the article they're looking for, isn't common sense. — kwami (talk) 19:17, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
No one's "demanding" Makah or any other article being treated differently. We're saying we shouldn't demand it be treated in only one specific way against typical policy and common sense.--Cúchullain t/c 16:45, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Okay, as we're at a bit of a standstill I'm going to take a stab at some new wording, as the majority of editors who've weighed in deem it necessary. How about:

Where a common name exists in English for both a people and their language, and neither is the primary topic, disambiguate both according to the disambiguation guidelines. The language's article should be disambiguated by adding "language" as a suffix, as in English language. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes) on disambiguating articles on peoples and ethnic groups. A disambiguation page containing both articles (and other ambiguous articles) should be placed at the base name.

It's worth pointing out that this isn't the guideline that's meant to discuss whether and how to disambiguate peoples - that's at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes), and it doesn't claim mandatory disambiguation for ethnic groups is preferred, let alone required. A change like this will bring the language guideline into line with that one, with WP:AT, with WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, and with its own lead. If this wording is agreeable to most editors I'll add it in shortly.--Cúchullain t/c 13:54, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

  • Couple of points:
    • "Where a common name exists in English" - some clarity is needed, as that has two meanings/readings. Is it meant that they have a name in common in English, or that they have name that is common in English? It comes off as both, and can be used/read that way. When the people name is a noun and regularly occurs in English without "people" attached to it (in fact, such names get used in their Wikipedia articles and ones where they are linked/mentioned without the "people" modifier, as a read of any of the major ethno articles will readily show, and also the websites of the peoples themselves, and media coverage, and so on. How they use their names, and how the world around them (including governments and media and their neighbours) use it is what matters; not what a compromise forged over a wikipedia guideline says; that's not per self-identification/MOS:IDENTITY.
    • So if a people name is regularly used in English without the "people" disambiguation that is it's "common use"; imposing "people" can be both inaccurate as well as OR; and has that "people who are FOO" problem that I seem to be the only one addressing here. I think it's needed to state "disambiguation if necessary" directly, rather than suggest that the people article has to be disambiguated; and the state of NCET is what it is for now; there was a little edit war there too, y'know, and BHG indicated that she felt that my editing it was somehow a suspect activity, rather than a reflection of the consensus which you yourself observed (and was called a "paranoid conspiracy theory" on a CANVASS in WikiProject Languages - [1], [2]).
    • Many language names, such as Halkomelem, are common in English now; that happens to have had "language" dabbed on it since it was created, but it's really not needed; Lushootseed if it has a dab now, didn't used to; there's others, too many to list, of this kind of thing; in one discussion somewhere it seemed like one of the commentors thought Halkomelem was a people.....
    • the "new" consensus that you and CWB and I have observed, and others, is actually the "old" consensus that existed for years before a host of articles had, in the course of months, "people" added to their titles, often creating only a redirect back upon itself; and only partway through that was NCL changed, and lobbying to add "preferred" to what became NCET began at NCP, and the unproven and rather obviously wrong that the "people" dab was "unambiguous", which is most certainly is not. *The old, so-called, as it's really the original, consensus, "said" that if a dab was needed/necessary, then "people" was preferred over "tribe" or "nation" or "[other]", unless the title or cat name was for a federally-registered/recognized capital-T tribe in the US: that dab would not be used in Canada, though it does occur in some band government names e.g. Cowichan Tribes and as terminology for the subgroups of the Kwakwaka'wakw.
    • I'm almost done my notes on the "old" consensus, which to me is being restored by all those RMs, and by those people here who are advocating changes to fit policy, which this guideline had not done, not since it was changed to fit/justify moves that had already taken place without discussion, and would continue ... including imposing now-reverted "anglicisms" and "colonialist" names on long-standing "self-identification titles".
    • I really don't think this discussion is at a standstill at all; what we have is the person who changed this guideline to suit himself after a show of hands refusing to acknowledge that the guideline in its current state is not in line with policy, and who pretends people making very clear sense, here and in the RMs he tried to shut down, are talking nonsense. And he creates/fabricates interpolations about indigenous titles vs others and between North America than elsewhere, claiming others have said it, when they haven't said anything of the kind (including by inference yourself on more than one occasion). His comments in response to points by others are as if policy were nonsense, and his preference should trump policy, and he's even said we should just all go away and let him have this guideline to himself (or "us", as he puts it). This is not a personal attack, it's an account of what we've all ready, and what we've seen.
    • Our discussion, the one between yourself, me, CBW, JHunterJ, and Uyvsdi, has made on whole lot of a sense; the "standstill" is coming from someone who is point-blank claiming OWNership of this guideline, and is WP:NOTHERE. Denying and thwarting or resisting content goes back a long ways, as does the assertion of personal preferences over facts and citations, even in a close, as in here; which like last year's native RMs, took way to long to get done and never should have been necessary anyway; how it ended, as also with last year's St'at'imc and sister RMs, and this year's like Dakelh and Wuikinuxv and Shishalh, going to the official sources and the google results and view stats; time-delaying muddle, all to deal with needless changes by someone imposing a perception of a guideline across the board without thinking, and without real knowledge of the subject; in that case an endash over a hyphen, in this case about insisting that an ethno article has to have a "people" dab on it, even if that's not how the terms are commonly used in English.
    • I'd have liked to keep this short, but there are problems with your suggestion; one is that it's a needless compromise with someone who has said baldly he doesn't want to compromise, and that we can take our invocations of policy and go somewhere else and leave him alone here with what he seems to think is "his" guideline..... Really? Is that "how Wikipedia works"? I'll get back to work on the account of the "old" consensus' points, and get around to answer CJLippert at the other guideline.
    • There's a big difference between being at a standstill, and getting out of the car to move the rock that's blocking the road.Skookum1 (talk) 14:29, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
The "common name in English" bit is already in the current wording. Obviously, it refers to cases where there is one WP:COMMONNAME in English for both the people and their language. When neither is the primary topic, as in Chinese, Russian, etc., both need to be disambiguated. Mostly, my suggested wording is designed to remove the prescriptive claim that virtually all titles need to be disambiguated, even if there is a primary topic. If you have suggestions on how to make it clearer, I'm all ears.
If the language is the primary topic, like Latin, it doesn't need to be disambiguated. The first paragraph already makes this clear.
The wording may be a compromise, but it doesn't say anything that conflicts with the established policies and guidelines or the emerging consensus. It's a net benefit IMO.--Cúchullain t/c 16:00, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
There are parts I like, but I have some reservations.
"Where ... neither is the primary topic" is iffy, because of past petty and time-wasting arguments trying to establish a primary topic when the distinction is at best marginal. Could we say 'clear primary topic', or something along those lines?
"Disambiguate both according to the disambiguation guidelines": Could that mean turning both into dab pages for yet other names? I wonder how that would play out.
"The language's article should be disambiguated by adding 'language' as a suffix": First, 'language' is not a suffix. Second, 'language' is not always the appropriate disambiguator, just as 'people' isn't always the best disambiguator for ethnic articles.
— kwami (talk) 22:12, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
"Where ... neither is the primary topic" is necessary. "Clear primary topic" just relocates the discussion to what "counts" as clear, and that discussion is the same for all primary topics, not particular to peoples and languages. The only participants in the discussions on primary topics or clear primary topics are the ones who choose to be there, so no time is wasted of editors who don't want to waste it. If "Foo language" and "Foo people" are each ambiguous and neither has a primary topic, they would each be dabs, yes. "language" in "English language" is not a grammatical suffix, but is still a suffix. We can call it something else. I'd avoid calling it a disambiguator, since that's even less defined than the second definition of suffix. If there are other factors in choosing titles for non-primary-topic articles on languages, beyond appending "language", we should record those here. What are those? -- JHunterJ (talk) 22:35, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
"Language" is an ambiguous term. See the last section.
You said, The only participants in the discussions on primary topics .. are the ones who choose to be there, so no time is wasted of editors who don't want to waste it. That's sophistry. You may not want a page to be moved, but the only way to prevent it from being moved is to waste your time by engaging in a debate over whether 'Foo people' or 'Foo language' is marginally more primary. Several editors have already commented on this point, and this has been our consensus for years: Unless a language is obviously the primary topic, such as Esperanto or Latin, we have it as 'Foo language', except for cases where the word 'language' is problematic, such as varieties of Chinese. — kwami (talk) 01:35, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
Many terms are ambiguous and are still used in titles. There is no sophistry; if you don't care about the title of the article, you don't waste your time; if you do care, the time spent isn't wasted. That's how Wikipedia works. We don't skip discussions that some editors want to treat are foregone conclusions when they're not. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:32, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
Nor try to shut them down so they don't happen (need I link the bulk RMs and the dozens where this was attempted?), nor engage in non sequiturs and calling white black, alleging that others talking policy and statistics are "spouting nonsense" and any one of a half-dozen NPAs that have been used to that effect ("paranoid conspiracy theory" in a CANVASS about this discussion on WP:Languages, "no one would ever think to call you rational" etc); whatever it's all the same game; similar was tried on last year's endonym RMs and failed, just as (for the most part) it failed on this year's RMs 19 times out of 20. To hear someone who regularly engages in sophistry say others are using sophistry for talking about primarytopics, when the individual saying that claims primary topics without ever demonstrating even once his assertions are true....... is just all really repetitive. The edit/reversion war here is just 'more of the same'. In RMs, "consensus" has come to mean "majority of votes"; not really how it's supposed to be, but if the same method were applied here, there's already a consensus, with one very obstinate dissenter who has told us all out right to go away and leave him here alone with this guideline. Sure, he has a couple of supporters who espouse a preference, but preferences do not trump policy; nor should a "veto of one", when that veto of one engages in NPAs and AGFs and regularly twists what others are saying, or pretends it's "nonsense" or, now, perhaps having consulted a thesaurus realizing he's used "nonsense" a few times to many, "sophistry". What you said JHunterJ is NOT sophistry; I really don't think the person throwing that term around really understands what it means; yet it surely is an apt description for his own activities words here, on NCET, in last year's RMs, and also in this year's. I'm supposed to talk about issues/contents and not about editors, but that's very hard not to do when the same editor keeps on trotting out the same kind of useless non-argument to stonewall and bluster to prevent the proper application of policy to revert the changes he pretty much unilaterally made...."we made a decision" he says, as if a show of half-hearted hands on this guideline talkpage was "we" and he hadn't coached that proposal and the "vote" that took place......TITLE was voted on too, by a lot more people than those who "voted" here.Skookum1 (talk) 12:31, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
Not particularly helpful Skookum, please stay on topic. For my part, Like JHunterJ, I'd object to adding "clear primary topic"; there's either a primary topic or there's not. Folks can and do argue about that regardless of what this guideline says. I don't care about changing the word "suffix"; I chose it because that's what's used in the intro and it appears to be correctly used. It could just as easily be "disambiguated by adding 'language' after the name". And yes, if there are cases where something should be used besides "language" they should certainly listed (probably in a different paragraph from this one) and the introduction should be updated.--Cúchullain t/c 12:56, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
After no further comment for nearly a week I've added the new wording again per the discussion. I made slight changes to address the concerns that have been brought up. Specifically I avoided the term "suffix" and said that "language" is "typically" used; as J and I have said, if there are other methods they can and should be listed here, probably in the next paragraph.--Cúchullain t/c 15:01, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
I restored the wording mentioning WP:PRIMARYTOPIC as it's pretty clear that should be in there, and there's been no compelling argument against including it on the talk page. I also restored a few other minor changes to avoid WP:INTDAB problems; these should be uncontroversial and again, no reason for removing them has been offered on the talk page. I left the other material (and recent tags) in the wording, hopefully we'll get consensus on that and we can proceed with positive changes.--Cúchullain t/c 13:51, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
Just so it is quite clear. I am in full agreement with the changes made by Cuchullain (talk · contribs) despite what was insinuated on my talk page. I have also removed the disputed tag as I no longer disagree with the statements in the guideline. CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 19:28, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Another example

See Talk:Parnkala_language#Silliness for more applications of this problem. There's no ambiguity for "Parnkala", and before I moved it Parnkala didn't exist. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:42, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Of course there's ambiguity. The Parnkala are the people. Our article even speaks of the Parnkala community. The Parnkala language is the language of the Parnkala people. It's a common-enough pattern.
You spoke of primary topics above. I'd like to know how you determined that the language is the primary topic of the name. In your edit summary you ref'd this convention, when it's the opposite of this convention.
This is exactly the kind of thing people have said, again and again, that they want to avoid. It's an illustration of what I said above: That changing the naming conventions for languages against the old consensus is going to result in a huge waste of time for everyone involved.
However, since you insist this is not a waste of time, please provide a full review of the literature, showing this to be the primary topic. All spelling variants should be taken into account. — kwami (talk) 18:26, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
You're the one wasting time by turning everything anyone who doesn't see it your way as author (WP:OWNer) of the passage in question. A "full review of the literature" means fields wider than your own i.e. linguistics, when it comes to proper and normal usages for peoples. It was your "literature" that somehow told you, or led you to decide, that peoples and their languages were equally primary topics, which is not borne out by evidence or, in fact, by the simple noun/adjective comparison of FOO vs "FOO people/language". And I had to laugh when I saw " That changing the naming conventions for languages against the old consensus is going to result in a huge waste of time for everyone involved."..... the old consensus BEFORE you rewrote NCL in your own image was pretty much the same as what all the rest of us have arrived at through RMs based on policy. To whit, that the peoples were the primary topics, that native-preferred names (the ones you so abhor because they're not in your own narrow range of "literature") would be used, especially when at conflict with geographic adaptations of same (Lillooet/St'at'imc sound familiar to you??) and that if a language name exists in English that is different from a people name, it would be used; unnecessary disambiguation was unwanted. WE in the days of the REAL "old consensus" thought across a wide range of fields and concerns....not just linguistics.
Even before you used your personal rewrite of this guideline to foist hundreds (or as you put it in one RM oppose vote, "thousands") of titles without any discussion whatsoever (other than the little closed one here, but certainly not on any talkpage of any of the affected items, few of which you have done anything else with but fiddle with their names), you had already moved lots of them on your own say-so (I've been making a list, checking it twice...). As for "since you insist this is not a waste of time, please provide a full review of the literature, showing this to be the primary topic", where is YOUR citation that languages and peoples are equally primary topics, so often heard here and in RMs....WHERE??. And as for primary topics, RM after RM after RM have shown the people titles to be the PRIMARYTOPICs: it seems in the case of the language item JHunterJ raised here, that there is no other use for the name; i.e. no people-name. So what primary topic are you the blazes talking about? Laughable that you call other people's logics and guideline/policy readings/citations and actual examples "nonsense" and "sophistry" when that's all you ever do yourself.Skookum1 (talk) 19:16, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
  • A full review of the relevant literature showing all of the meanings of "Parnkala" on Wikipedia:[3]. Number of topics represented: 1. Amount of ambiguity: 0. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:34, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
    You do know that WP is not considered a RS for WP, don't you? Anyway, the number of topics represented is 2, ambiguity 100%. — kwami (talk) 07:49, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
    LOL, more nitpickery; such searches are often used in determining PRIMARYTOPIC.... you have yet to provide a source from the "full literature" yourself and ignore the points others make (see below). Not the first time you've engaged in such tactics, of course.....Skookum1 (talk) 08:00, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
    And actually, WP is exactly the source for WP ambiguity. You do know that (external) references aren't used in disambiguation, don't you? Anyway, the number of topics represented was 1, the language. There are no WP references to the people as "Parnkala". -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:38, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
That approach is unencyclopedic, and has been rejected more than once. Readers should find articles on the topics they're looking for, not something else just because we haven't gotten around to creating the appropriate articles yet. — kwami (talk) 02:51, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
That approach was used in the course of resolving the RMs that you still won't acknowledge as proof of the consensus you are trying to resist here; as were incoming links and view stats and other Wikipedia-based evidence. When are you going to stop claiming no one else is making sense and only you are (and you're not)?Skookum1 (talk) 03:14, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
  • Just curious but why are the people called the Parnkalla and the language Parnkala. If they are spelt differently then there is no need for the "language" and "people". CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 00:46, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
    Yep. -- JHunterJ (talk) 01:15, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
    There's no distinction. They're just variant transcriptions. — kwami (talk) 07:48, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
    So the solution is to use the same transcription for both, instead of using variant transcriptions? Fixed. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:38, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
Perfect. The page move was blocked by the existing rd. — kwami (talk) 02:48, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
    • The news that someone here speaks Parnkalla well enough to be able to state that there is no distinction between pronunciation between the two spellings is indeed remarkable. Or is there a citation from that? Or just say-so?Skookum1 (talk) 14:22, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
In the very least, it shows how broken the previous method was. Readers should expect to find information on Parnkala when they type in "Parnkala", or in the very least a helpful disambiguation page directing them to the right places if the name is ambiguous. This error would already have been discovered if editors were following the usual disambiguation guidelines.--Cúchullain t/c 15:01, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
It's not the previous method, it's the current method, and readers would find the article, as should be obvious to anyone who's ever looked for anything on WP. — kwami (talk) 02:47, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
It was you who didn't follow existing disambiguation guidelines and practices when you went whole-hog adding "language" and especially "people" to articles without even looking at them.Skookum1 (talk) 03:14, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

This change, which I reverted for what are obvious reasons to the rest of us (Cuchullain, CBW, JHunterJ) was not consensual and restored the wrong statement that people articles must be disambiguated, which is contrary to the dominant consensus here and which has been demonstrated by PRIMARYTOPIC and TITLE-based RMs beyond count (actually I'm working on the count and will post it shortly).Skookum1 (talk) 04:29, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I thought Skookum was contenting himself with trolling discussion pages, but now he's gumming up the guideline as well. Reverted to the last stable version. (Most of Cuchullain's changes were fine.) — kwami (talk) 04:34, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

what a waste of time. Do we really need to debate which is PRIMARYTOPIC every time? Why can't we stick 'language' and 'people' to the titles of each when they're synonymous and be done with it? What's the harm in doing that? — lfdder 04:41, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't think that's Cuchullain's intent, but you know that some people will interpret it that way, as they did before we changed to the current/recent wording that makes it clear that we should only debate really obvious cases like Latin. — kwami (talk) 04:58, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
We don't need a debate on which is PRIMARYTOPIC every time; the mandate of the old/renewed consensus (the one being fought off so avidly here by the author of the disputed passage) was that the people are necessarily the primary topic in almost all cases (one that comes to mind that's not is Rusyn language, where Rusyn people doesn't get anywhere near the views, but "Ruthenian" is the more common English variant, though it means also other things). The problem here is that Kwami went through hundreds and hundreds of articles adding "people" to them willy-nilly without ever reading them, or even changing the text to match the new title ("nobody does that" he said when confronted about his lack of follow-up on all those moves, which he styled as "thousands" in the bulk RM at [[Talk:Chipewyan people#Requested move|Chipewyan people). The people names commonly appear in normal English without any disambiguation whatsoever, so the construction he's trying to force/defend here is WP:Original research and not reflective of COMMONUSE. He also created completely OR titles such as Inuvialuk people and Inuvialuk language vs Inuvialuktun, which is the MOSTCOMMON usage in English; the other two are not sourceable; they are "Kwami-isms". There is no reason to have to type, for example [[Sto:lo people|Sto:lo]] when Sto:lo works fine all by itself and is the normal usage. The conceit that "language and people are equally primary topics" a work of fiction and utterly original research, and not borne out by stats, views or incoming links. The resistance to what is needed on this guideline, which was abused to mandate controversial moves without wide discussion or any effort to fix links and more, is ongoing, and to me if no one else, obviously disruptive and contentious, especially given the number of discussions that that same editor has sought to defray or shut down in the course of reverting all the changes in question to their original titles, which stood for a long time before NCL was re-authored to mandate the needless change. @Cuchullain:, at what point does this endless reversion to the contested, faulty and non-consensual form of this guideline become considered officially disruptive and obstructionist? How many times have we seen this reversion, and confounding and more than a bit abstruse arguments and illogics fielded here to continue to insist that this guideline need not obey TITLE or other guidelines? I mean, when is enough enough?Skookum1 (talk) 05:07, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
You're quite the one to talk about Cuchullain's intent, when you claimed his intent when inserting a now-gone bit about there being different guidelines/practices re Canadian indigenous peoples vs everyone else, then rejigged that to talk about North America vs everyone else; your misrepresentations of what his comments were, and what others said variously, are highly notable in their lack of truth. "Obvious cases" for people-names as PRIMARYTOPIC abound, as they are nouns and not adjective as in "FOO people" and "FOO language" constructions. Here, once again, you are claiming someone else said something they did not, claiming their intent was not what it clearly was, and continuing your obstructionism.....`Skookum1 (talk) 05:10, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
lfdder (talk · contribs), there is nothing in the new consensus that says each one has to be discussed or that any given person has to participate in a discussion. The problem is that more than one editor is using the disputed wording to take it to mean that all languages and all people must be at "foo people" and "foo language" even when they don't share a common name. CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 08:25, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
The problem is the wording is out of step (slightly) with much better established policies and guidelines like WP:AT and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, as well as the parallel guideline at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes) and this guideline's own introduction. When a minor guideline is out of step with community-wide consensus, the minor guideline is what's out of line and needs to be updated. These (slight) changes just make it somewhat clearer that WP:PRIMARYTOPIC should be followed in cases where there's a primary topic. The Parnkala example shows what can happen when editors become more concerned with adding "language" and "people" after names than in getting readers where they need to go. --Cúchullain t/c 13:51, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
to mean that all languages and all people must be at "foo people" and "foo language". I don't think anyone who may have implied that meant it literally, or universally; I've pointed this out to you, and yet you keep repeating it as if it were an actual problem. It's not even the main point: The main point is the problem of name-warring that we used to have. Your solution – that if we don't want to spend a lot of time on renewed name warring, we should just close our eyes and ignore it, is not something you would follow yourself. I could just as easily say to you that if you don't like what I'm doing, you don't need to dispute it, just ignore it. What kind of answer is that?
In the lead we say, "if the language is the primary topic for a title, there is no need for [a suffix]". That says what you want, doesn't it? The problem is in the Languages and their speakers section, where you set up a primary-topic content between the language and its speakers. It's not necessary, as we've already covered that, and it's harmful, in that now there will be editors who insist on counting hits and WP, Google, or Google Books to detect margins that are too slight to bother with. That is a valid concern, and rather than dismissing it and instructing us not to care what happens to the articles of this project, you should work out a consensus, as they do on every other project when they debate their guidelines.
Besides myself, William Thweatt and lfdder have made this objection, and on related pages others have as well (though their comments are buried in Skookum's diatribes, so I can't find them off hand). These are good editors, and their concerns should be addressed with more than dismissal. — kwami (talk) 19:59, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
What you claim here belies the fact that you (and in some cases, User:JorisV did use it to mean "universally" and "literally", and you applied it that way extensively, and cited this guideline in doing so (though often you didn't cite it at all). Claiming one thing while doing another seems par for the course, and I don't mean Cuchullain, CBW, JHunterJ or myself. "Name-warring" has been resolved by dozens of RMS which you opposed and tried to shut down. As always you're being disingenous; there need be no "name-warring" we only still have because of your opposition to observing TITLE and PRIMARYTOPIC.Skookum1 (talk) 06:19, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
Once again you try to blame me for the problems faced by this discussion, and stylizing my longer style of response as a "diatribe" is trendy, but it's also WP:AGF and WP:NPA. WP:BAITing me I've seen before and it's really quite boring; and you lost the RMs that your penchant for that was pointed out in. "Concerns" meaning "preferences" as expressed by WilliamThweatt and Cnilep are not relevant when TITLE and other POLICY are properly observed; they are opinions only, and not helpful to proper discussion. Citations, sources, view stats, etc are what counts, not the opinions of editors who have not and do not address the policies concerning TITLE and PRIMARYTOPIC.Skookum1 (talk) 06:19, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
Kwamikagami, how is recognizing a primary topic (if there is one) between the language and its speakers harmful? Margins that are too slight to bother with don't yield primary topics (the primary topic must be "much more" than any other, not "too-slight-to-bother-with more"). When there is no Wikipedia ambiguity, use the name without "language" for the language article's title (unless "Language" is part of the language's name). When there is Wikipedia ambiguity, and the language is the primary topic (much more than any other topic, and more than all other's combined), use the name without "language" for the language article's title. When there is Wikipedia ambiguity, and the language is not the primary topic (perhaps even by a too-slight-to-bother-with margin), use the name with "language" for the language article's title. Those are the consensus guidelines for handling primary topics, and there's no reason to handle language topics differently. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:54, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for summarizing. In situations like this, it's almost impossible to have an intelligent discussion, but thank you for continuing to try. Basically the convention, as is, looks good and complies with larger Wikipedia policies. I haven't seen a concrete proposal for a wording change to the convention in quite a while. -Uyvsdi (talk) 16:03, 7 May 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi
Yes, there's nothing wrong with identifying the accepted Wiki-wide standards, and everything with trying to apply different standards to one walled garden of articles. Simply identifying the consensus guidelines isn't going to change anything drastically as far as these articles are concerned, it will just help head up future conflicts caused by the way this guideline has been used in the past.--Cúchullain t/c 17:22, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
If you're correct in your prediction that nothing is going to change drastically, then I have no problem with it. But I don't have much confidence in that, and if what people have said here is any indication, we'll soon be fighting over five thousand articles: moving them, moving them back, clogging up ANI with move requests, yadda yadda yadda. If people are clear that neither the ethno- or linguistic part of ethnolinguistic is inherently more notable than the other, and that there's no problem with a dab page that contains just two links, and that we shouldn't preempt the people by occupying that space with the language they speak, just because linguists have been more prolific on WP than anthropologists, then great. But I'd prefer to see that spelled out so we can prevent a potentially colossal waste of time. — kwami (talk) 02:20, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
JHunterJ, the problem isn't in the policies themselves, but in the way they've been interpreted – like TWODABS meaning we can't have a dab page w only two links. If people don't start trying to move language articles because of this change in wording, then there's no harm. What we had before the current wording, however, were ridiculous debates over whether restricting GBook searches to certain dates or subtopics favored one dab over the other as the primary topic. A second problem, though, is the idea of being ambiguous only on WP. Ethnolinguistic names are inherently ambiguous: they refer both to a people and to a language, and unlike the case of biographies on potentially hundreds of people who by chance happen to have the same name but are not similarly notable, ethnolinguistic articles are equally notable and interdependent. In some cases we cover both the people and the language in one article, in which case it's at FOO. But most of the time we cover just the language, and because our linguistic coverage is much more complete than our ethnic coverage, there is often no corresponding article on the people. Does that mean that the people get second billing? Or to we move a language article just to have to move it back when someone want to create the ethnic article? And then we'll need to go through and rd all the incoming links, because whoever moved the article will have forgotten to mark the rd as a potential article so the links don't get replaced, – remember, we're talking about thousands of articles, – and we'll need to police tens of thousands of links to revert anyone who tries linking to the new location directly. What a pain in the ass. I suppose we could just create thousands of unreferenced stubs at "FOO people" that say nothing more than "The FOO people speak the FOO language", and then fight over whether they should be deleted as unnotable – even more of a pain in the ass. Our policies are supposed to incorporate a bit of common sense. The system we have here has worked well for years, and you've had several editors now saying they don't want it changed. What benefit is there to changing it, except for blind adherence to a fundamentalist interpretation of a policy that wasn't meant to be blindly adhered to? — kwami (talk) 02:04, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
WP:TWODABS doesn't mean we can't have a dab page with only two links; editors who were misreading or misapplying it that way have been corrected at the disambiguation talk pages. Language articles that exist at "Foo language" when there is no article at "Foo" do indicate a problem; the fix is one of (a) move "Foo language" to "Foo", (b) create a disambiguation page at "Foo", or (c) redirect "Foo" to another article that should not have the title "Foo" but is still the primary topic for "Foo". Ethnolinguistic names are not inherently ambiguous on Wikipedia until Wikipedia has coverage of both the people and the language. This interpretation of "second billing" is problematic; primary topicness is not an award or reward, but a navigational device. If there is no corresponding article on the people, then the people currently have "no billing" on Wikipedia, not second billing. If "Foo" exists as the language article and an editor wants to create an article on the Foo people, they can (a) create "Foo people" and put a hatnote on "Foo"; (b) create "Foo people", move "Foo" to "Foo language", edit the "Foo" redirect to be a disambiguation page, and update all of the articles that link to "Foo" to link to the language (or the people, if that was what was intended); or (c) move "Foo" to "Foo language", edit the "Foo" redirect to be the article on the people with a hatnote to the people, and update all the links to "Foo" to link to the language (or the people, if that was what was intended). If, once Wikipedia ambiguity has been introduced, another editor disagrees with the first editor's bold selection (or not) of primary topic, they can use the Talk pages or WP:RM to determine if there's a different consensus for the primary topic -- this is not a waste of time. This is the common-sense policy, and it works as well for peoples and languages as it does for the rest of Wikipedia. The WP:LOCALCONSENSUS (if there was a local consensus) hasn't worked well, and has been a pain in the ass when editors unaware of the local consensus encounter some of the mis-arranged articles and improve the arrangement, and has apparently led some editors to put language articles at sub-optimal spellings in an attempt to avoid the WP:RM process. Recognizing local consensuses as local consensuses isn't blind adherence to a fundamentalist application of anything; that line is just spin. -- JHunterJ (talk) 10:41, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
The process you outline is precisely the problem. And the upset has not been here but with the ethnic articles, which are covered by a different guideline. A problem there should be fixed there, not here. — kwami (talk) 19:48, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
Guidelines are supposed to reflect common practice, and appending 'language' to ambiguous language names is common practice. Consider a parallel: Nearly all language families have 'languages' appended to them, but very few are ambiguous. By your argument we sould move Indo-European languages to Indo-European, Altaic languages to Altaic, and similarly a thousand others. But what's the point? As it is now, all language families end in "languages", and this consensus is a pattern that people find useful and have come to expect. Before moving 8,000 articles, we're going to need a broader "consensus" than a couple editors on this talk page saying their way is best. — kwami (talk) 21:17, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Really? Because that's exactly what happened here at NCL, and on thousands of articles (really more like several hundred) that you moved based on the changes you had done here, with fewer participants in the discussion than are currently here. And TITLE and PRIMARYTOPIC were created with even wider discussion with even more editors. Many, perhaps even most, "people articles" have always been at their undisambiguated titles.Skookum1 (talk) 03:27, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Kwamikagami said "By your argument we [should] move Indo-European languages to Indo-European...". Not by my argument. Indo-Europoean languages are not referred to as just "Indo-European"; language families always use "languages", and the first part is treated as an adjective. Yes, guidelines are supposed to reflect common practice, but you've been using them to append language to unambiguous (on Wikipedia) language names, which isn't common practice, just your practice. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:03, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Of course it is. language families always use "languages", and the first part is treated as an adjective. Well, I can just as easily say languages always use "language", and the first part is treated as an adjective. What possible logic could you use to justify different treatment for "Indo-European languages" and "Parnkalla language"? Neither has an article on the people, and neither needs to have "language(s)" appended for navigational purposes. (Or pick a family w/o a dab page, if that's an objection.) — kwami (talk) 17:42, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
What possible logic? How about the existence of Latin at Latin instead of Latin language? So if you say "languages always use 'language'", you'd simply be provable wrong. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:58, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
And I suppose that's really the crux of the matter. The wording has been used to justify adding "language" and "people" to article titles irrespective of potential primary topics for years, even though it conflicts with usual practice and policy. However, consensus we're seeing both here and at RM is that usual practice should be followed if there are primary topics. A number of different tactics have been tried to rationalize keeping the previous prescriptive wording, but it seems that the more typical practices described at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and WP:AT will prevail.--Cúchullain t/c 13:12, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Does that go for language families too? You said above that simply identifying the consensus guidelines isn't going to change anything drastically as far as these articles are concerned, it will just help head up future conflicts. But JHunterJ wants to move thousands of articles based on the wording you say won't change anything. Are you willing to modify the wording so that doesn't happen? — kwami (talk) 17:42, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
I don't think anyone, least of all JHunterJ, has registered any problem with the current wording in the language families section. In most cases "languages" is part of the common name of families, which isn't the case with most individual languages. I would not be willing to add any wording of any kind that conflicts with usual Wikipedia-wide policy or practice.--Cúchullain t/c 18:31, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
You've got it wrong. "Indo-European" is the name of the family, just as "French" is the name of the language. "Languages" is no more part of the former than "language" is part of the latter. A book entitled The Indo-European Languages is equivalent to a book entitled The French Language. If all language articles need to be moved when there is no in-universe ambiguity, then all family articles need to be moved too. You and JHunterJ may not want that, but what's to keep someone else from demanding it, if you're not willing to accept any wording that would head it off? — kwami (talk) 18:50, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
WP:COMMONNAME would probably prevent most language family articles from being moved. If thousands of articles aren't currently at their common name when it's available, then that's a much bigger problem than the wording of this guideline.--Cúchullain t/c 19:07, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Why would WP:COMMONNAME apply to families and not to languages? It's common to speak of "sound changes in Indo-European", just as it's common to speak of "mandating the French language". In both cases the second word is a disambiguator, not part of the name. They're logically equivalent, and more frequently omitted than, say, the word "the" in the Americas, which we omit. There are even books like Levin (2002) Semitic and Indo-European, and even if he had used the word 'languages' in the title, it would be only once (Semitic and Indo-European Languages), demonstrating that it is separate from the name of the families. (Besides, COMMONNAME is arguably irrelevant, because we're not choosing between different names: move "French language" to "French", and the name is still "French".) — kwami (talk) 19:27, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
WP:COMMONNAME affects all language families, languages, and all other articles.--Cúchullain t/c 20:03, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Exactly my point. If it applies to languages, it applies to families. If it would prevent families from being moved, it would prevent languages from being moved. Assuming it has anything to do with this question at all, since there's no difference in name. — kwami (talk) 20:34, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
And it prevents neither from being moved. It is perfectly possible for the "... languages" to be the common name for many language families and "..." (without language) to be the common name for many languages, though. -- JHunterJ (talk) 20:55, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
Except that it's the name of neither! The name of the family is "Indo-European". The name of the language is "French". Or are you telling me that COMMONNAME is not just about names, but about the context of names? None of the examples at COMMONNAME are concerned with such things, and the texts only speaks of names and terms, not disambiguators or context. — kwami (talk) 21:15, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
WP:COMMONNAME concerns itself with the title of the article, not the "true name" of the topic. But I've no objection to moving Indo-European languages to Indo-European, if that's its common name. I had no idea it could have been. -- JHunterJ (talk) 21:19, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
You're not understanding me. "Indo-European languages" is not the name, so it cannot be the COMMONNAME. A name is not the title, but COMMONNAME concerns itself with which name to use in the title: Should it be "Indo-European" or "Indo-Germanic", for example – appending "languages" to either has nothing to do with it.
It does suggest following other encyclopedias. The EB, for example, has both "Indo-European languages" and "French language" – despite the fact that it has no article on the French people, or indeed any article that it needs to be disambiguated from. That is, the EB judges "French" to be inadequate as a title, despite the fact that it would work perfectly well.
Our naming policy states, when titling articles in specific fields, or with respect to particular problems, there is often previous consensus that can be used as a precedent. As we had here before you started changing it. Also, consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. That's been evoked by opponents of your change several times now. It also notes that local guidelines may elaborate on such things, so the argument that we can't have a "walled garden" on consistent naming is directly contradicted by WP policy. — kwami (talk) 21:30, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

The red herring here is that anyone is disputing that "language" is a needed dab on most language articles (in some cases, plainly not), the passage you are defending concerns the unnecessary "people" dab the disputed passage here was used to add, even though this is not a "people" guideline. As for consistency, you ignored prior consensus yourself when you launched that change (as documented in the diffs provided, along with your caustic and disputatious edit comments), as you moved things in categories where standalone titles were the norm; you also ignored modern and/or self-identifying endonyms which were consistent within their categories by changing them to now-obsolete forms e.g. Nlaka'pamux->Thompson, St'at'imc-Lillooet. Then fought their reversion in the RMs needed to revert your undiscussed changes.Skookum1 (talk) 02:13, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

re the history of the passage in question

This "wants to move thousands of articles" line also repeated here as elsehwere, aside from being another exaggeration, is just not the case; most already do not have the people dab....most need not be moved, it's the ones that were moved without discussion to redirects of themselves that are at issue; if it's "thousands" I haven't determined yet; if I hadn't taken the time to spell out the diffs on NCP and NCL that "caused" all this tonight, I might have had time/energy to finish the list I've been mentioning; in the morning, it's 1:41 am. here. So far I've only done North/Central America and the Caribbean, but it's a start.Skookum1 (talk) 18:44, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

As usual, you're not talking about what everyone else is. No language article is appended with the 'people' dab. — kwami (talk) 18:50, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
AGF/NPA per usual. I'm definitely talking about what Cuchullain and CambridgeBayWeather and JHunterJ and Uyvsdi are talking about; why do you always claim someone has said the opposite of what they have said, or that "you're not talking about what everyone else is. Oh, yes I am.....and nothing in what I said means anything like "No language article is appended with the 'people' dab. Distortion, evasion, and an insult "As usual etc". That you filed an ANI against me for breaking in between your own posts and yet separated my reply-comment to Cuchullain by your interjection is yet another example of the irregular conduct of this discussion, and reminiscent of the edit comments you made when making changes to NCP and NCL as recounted below.Skookum1 (talk) 15:47, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
[the following is in reply to Cuchullain, not Kwami; the above comment by Kwami was placed between my posts, albeit the above is newer than what was here; the new section break has broken the context of the indenting/dialogue]
  • The NCP talkpage discussions are archived starting here on November 21, 2011 until Jan 21, 2012, with four participants, then this related discussion which ended on the day when Onceinawhile created NCET by transferring the material. NB in the course of that move the term "preferred" was added to the table, and also to the accompany paragraph, it was not in previous versions of the table.
  • The addition of "people" to ethnonym titles by the author of the passage in question had indeed started before NCL was changed, sometime in 2010, I'd have to look back to see which and when exactly; some titles had always been that way, but most had not been (i.e. they were at standalone titles, the bulk of them still are; moreso now given the last 80-100 RMs and others in the last year to revert them back but there are many still out there that were moved unnecessarily and most are where the standalone title is a redirect to the FOO people title-format.Skookum1 (talk) 16:20, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm tempted to put WP:TLDR to this attempt to pull out all the stops to try to confound what Cuchullain and Uyvsdi have said, and won't bother responding to the many humorous uses of terms like "common sense". If there are articles that have both people and language in them, they're supposed to be separated, as was done long ago; and the b.s. that there will be "thousands of unrefeferenced stubs" at "FOO people" (at "FOO", really) is pure hogwash. The idea that "tens of thousands" of people articles are unnotable is only an expression of your ignorance about their notability. Your lack of knowledge of the titles you changed without so much as looking at the article or revising its phrasing to match I'm already too familiar with. And here you speak again of this guideline as if it were a "policy", which it is not. It's the "fundamentalist interpretation" of THIS guideline (NCL) with not just blind adherence but repetitive obstinacy in RMs to move them back to where they originally were that's been the problem. And no, it hasn't worked well over the years since 2010-2011 when you did the bulk of these using this guideline as a hammer and have since fought tooth and nail to resist all RMs to restore your handiwork, just as you are resisting kowtowing to the very obvious consensus evident here; and I haven't counted "several editors now saying they don't want it changed", only a few....and their reasons for not wanting it changed are not in line with POLICY, and are only opinion, like your own position. And geez, where is that citation for "language and people are equally primary topics" that you asserted here and in RMs? Somewhere in the OR universe?Skookum1 (talk) 02:20, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Here is clearly too much discussion to go through all of it. I don't see any form of broad consensus here, at any rate: just a handful of editors on the one hand, one editor on the other. The comment on our talk page that people from WPLANG probably already knew about this discussion before kwami's notification is clearly inappropriate. Then, it is fairly straightforward that given no context, you cannot know from an ethnonym whether it is applied to a language or not. The language name is usually secondary to the ethnonym, though languages are one of the most promising indicators of ethnicity in areal history. Articles on ethnonyms and languages will contain rather different information, and even if there is only one article on WP, its title will be ambiguous. Using a “classifier” such as “language” solves this problem and makes WP easier to use. G Purevdorj (talk) 14:29, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
The question might become tricky for peoples without an associated language (in reality, not on WIkipedia). If a people can be associated with a language (which is recognized by specialists as such or, as a linguistically insignificant dialect of another variety, has notable social reality), the use of classifiers for both the people and the language might be worthwhile. G Purevdorj (talk) 15:05, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
I struck out that line in my response to the CANVASS, which should have been neutral and not posted with such exaggeration and what comes off like panic about "thousands of articles", and remains "out of order" until reposted in neutral terms; lord knows WPLanguages should have been notified of the discussions diff/linked above within this guideline to make the Feb 2011 change that affected "thousands" of articles (several hundred anyway, and as noted most do not already, many never have, and that was the prevailing norm until Feb 2011.
Please note the posts here by JHunterJ, Uyvsdi, CambridgeBayWeather, Cuchullain and myself about TITLE and other guidelines which the passage that is under dispute/filibuster mandate should be changed per those guidelines and a large series of RMs that reverted the unnecessary addition of "people" to titles, using a language guideline irrespective of all other guidelines and policies (and claiming that it was policy).
My own position is that if a language is named for the people, and the name of the people is a noun, the noun is necessarily the primary topic, i.e. the people. Languages that have their own names do not need disambiguation, also; WP:NCDAB and WP:DAB and TITLE/CONCISENESS/PRECISION all mandate that, as is the same with people articles as with any other. Disambiguation only when necessary. The common usage of people-names in normal English, and also in the articles themselves, is in standalone form, without the artificial construction +people, which often enough has its own issues re some titles who are peoples, not one people, and also with the "FOO people"="people who are FOO" meaning, which is about individuals, and remains ambiguous when applied to the name of a people when it need not be. TWODAB pages have resulted from the wide application of NCL since its amendment; many have been made into redirects to the primary topics, i.e. the peoples; many were consensus moves on RMs fought against by quoting only this guideline, as if it had priority over TITLE and other guidelines, which it does not.Skookum1 (talk) 15:29, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for your clarification. I was indeed a bit confused, having read parts from the middle of your discussion. I agree with you that the people's name is primary, though I don't have any strong opinion about whether or not a disambiguator should be used. I'm not an expert on ethnographic issues. For language articles, the absence of "language" when unambiguous per se seems appropriate and even implemented, e.g. Esperanto or Southern Mongolian. Indo-European languages seems problematic on the first look, though, as the people would be "Indo-Europeans". Still, I guess "languages" is necessary here to avoid the notion of Proto-Indo-European which readers might think of else. I guess a slight overuse of the label "language(s)" is less likely to cause any damage than a slight underuse. G Purevdorj (talk) 17:37, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
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