Talk:Fucking

Requested move 28 August 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Vpab15 (talk) 16:17, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

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Fucking → Fucking (disambiguation) – The obvious primary topic would be Fuck. Base name should redirect there. Sangdeboeuf (talk) 22:22, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. If there's going to be any primary topic by long-term significance that would be Sexual intercourse (though I'd still disagree with retargetting there). However, with respect to usage, there's clearly no primary topic. See the outgoing clicks from the dab page for the month of March (from the clickstream dataset):

Source	Destination	Type	Clicks
Fucking	Fukin	link	17
Fucking	Fuqing	link	12
Fucking	Fugging	link	23
Fucking	Hyphen-minus	other	35
Fucking	Fugging,_Upper_Austria	link	383
Fucking	Sex	other	13
Fucking	Main_Page	other	16
Fucking	Pornographic_film_actor	other	14
Fucking	Fuck	link	292
Fucking	Fugging,_Lower_Austria	link	140
Fucking	Sexual_intercourse	link	608

• The proposed primary topic gets less than 20% of the clicks. – Uanfala (talk) 22:47, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

  Sexual intercourse does not mention the term fucking, so that link does not help inform readers about the topic; see MOS:DABMENTION. The term is just as often used as an interjection without any literal meaning of sex. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:39, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

  If we only went by page traffic, then Fugging, Upper Austria would be a more likely primary topic than Fuck. I think we can use some common sense here and infer that the word fucking in English is more likely to be related to the verb fuck than a town formerly named Fucking in another language. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:46, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

  MOS:DABMENTION say that [i]f a topic does not have an article of its own, but is mentioned within another article, then a link to that article may be included. This is (and has always been) about topics, not terms. The act of fucking isn't some sort of obscure subtopic of sexual intercourse that will need to be treated in some of its subsections. Fucking is sexual intercourse and the whole article is about it. The relevant bit of the MOS, if you really need a quote, is MOS:DABSYN. – Uanfala (talk) 23:50, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

  Synonyms are generally mentioned at the target article, yet there is no mention of fucking at Sexual intercourse. Compare with Shit (disambiguation), where the primary topic line mentions feces, but Feces is not given a dedicated entry. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:57, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

  In fact Shitting is a nearly exact analogue for Fucking, grammatically speaking. Note that it redirects not to Defecation, but rather to Shit, and seems stable. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 00:46, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

  Shitting has targeted Shit only since 2019 (and before that also for a few months in 2007–2008). For the remaining 17 years of its existence, the redirect was pointing to Defecation. – Uanfala (talk) 01:04, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

  Yes, it originally pointed to Defecation, but was eventually redirected to Shit and has been stable since. Consensus on the proper target sometimes changes like that. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 01:12, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

  Sorry to go a bit off topic, but could anyone explain the significance of the entries of type "other"? Are those scenarios where the user landed at the disambiguation page and then immediately navigated to another article (like sex or -) via the search bar or by clicking one of the default links in the sidebar? Colin M (talk) 02:10, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

  The category of "other" is for referrals between the two pages when "the referrer and request are both articles but the referrer does not link to the request. This can happen when clients search or spoof their refer." So yeah, I believe it's readers using the search bar or clicking the sidebar links. – Uanfala (talk) 09:57, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose: The Fuck article is (currently) about the word "Fuck", not the act of fucking (i.e., Sexual intercourse). If someone is looking for the etymology and meanings of the word "fuck", searching for "fucking" is probably not what they would do. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:02, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

  Some undoubtedly will, though, and we should make navigation easy for them. According to Uanfala's chart above, Fuck is the third-most-common destination for clicks from this page. Making Fucking redirect there will assist those readers without seriously inconveniencing any others. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:24, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

  There are 1261 clicks in the table above which did end up going to the Fuck article, compared with only 292 who wanted to do to Fuck. That means that you actually will be inconveniencing a larger number of users, for no real discernible benefit.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:17, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  We can't infer from clickstream data what pages users wanted to go to, only the ones they clicked on first. They may have all ended up navigating back to Fuck for all we know. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 13:04, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  See Fuck § Modern usage for detailed description of fucking used as an intensifier, especially via expletive infixation (abso-fucking-lutely!). By contrast, Sexual intercourse does not mention the term at all. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:52, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: I've alerted the WikiProjects Disambiguation, English Language, and Sexology and sexuality to this discussion. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 01:03, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. Uanfala's data are NOT pageviews -- these are what readers click on after arriving at the disambiguation page. There is no primary topic -- and the only one even consider based on the clickstream data would be sexual intercourse. But for a variety of reasons a disambiguation page would be less surprising for most than a straight redirect to the expletive. older ≠ wiser 01:36, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

  This seems to imply that the literal definition of the verb fucking is more relevant than centuries of uses as a profane term with nigh-countless linguistic functions, about which entire books have been written. Given that fucking is derived from fuck, I don't think a redirect there would be that surprising. The principle of least astonishment is not the principle of no astonishment. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 02:07, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

• I am definitely sympathetic to Sangdeboeuf's view. It's hard for me to imagine that many editors looking for dispassionate information about sexual intercourse would think first of "fucking" as the search term to get them there (and similarly in the case of wikilinks). It's much easier to believe that readers would use it when searching for information about the linguistic phenomenon of fucking as an intensifier. But the clickstream data contradicts my priors. However, it's possible that a lot of those clicks are from "unserious" users who are just looking for content that's titillating or taboo (hence why the data - if I'm understanding the "other" entries in the table above correctly - seems to show users searching for "sex" and "porn star" from the dab page). I'm leaning support, but it's a tricky case. Colin M (talk) 02:30, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
• Fuck may qualify as a WP:DABCONCEPT and the fact that the 2 places are now Fugging may help but given the views for the Upper Austria one in clickstream I'm not sure this is a good idea. Crouch, Swale (talk) 09:06, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

  Those pageviews were likely boosted by a short-term spike in interest when the town changed its name this year. I doubt they are an indication of long-term significance. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 11:19, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

  If it's pageviews you're interested in, then you can easily check them: [1] – there have been occasional brief spikes, but the overall popularity has remained at a stable level for years. However, the statistics discussed here are not for the pageviews, but for the clickthroughs from the dab page. The clicks for January 2019 (a year before the rename), paint a similar picture: 280 for this village (vs. 225 for Fuck and 548 for sexual intercourse). – Uanfala (talk) 12:00, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

  I guess because of the rename in the future the number of people wanting the places with "Fucking" will decline both because its publicity will go down when its had the new name for longer and the name change as you pointed out will have generated interest. As noted the Fuck article may qualify as a broad-concept article since sexual intercourse is mentioned there however when we have an unrelated usage (the Upper Austria place) keeping the DAB at the base name may be more helpful however if you combine views for both the Fuck and Sexual intercourse article and take into account the fact that the place names interest sterns from the word that may be enough to make it qualify as primary. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:57, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

  I don't think Fuck can be seen as a WP:DABCONCEPT article. Such "broad-concept articles" are articles about a group of related concepts, each with its own separate article, and they cover the shared ground between those separate topics; examples are Football or Particle. Fuck on the other hand, doesn't cover some broader topic that subsumes sexual intercourse, it's simply an article about an English word. – Uanfala (talk) 18:14, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Clear primary redirect. The commonest meaning of "fucking" is the intensifier rather than the act of sexual intercourse. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:03, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

  What evidence supports this conclusion? All the actual evidence presented does not support this. older ≠ wiser 15:52, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

  As I said above, the evidence presented suggests that Fugging, Upper Austria is a more likely primary topic than Fuck for the term fucking. Does that make sense? Or is it more likely that the evidence is skewed? --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 21:54, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

  I don't see any reason to presume to know better what readers are looking for than what they click upon reaching this page. older ≠ wiser 22:38, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

  I can think of one: a reader types in fucking in the search bar for a laugh. On landing at the DAB page, they see that there are a couple of towns formerly named Fucking. Thinking, "how odd, I never knew that", they click the first one in the list. Later they may return to the DAB page and click a different topic, or they may not. The pageviews statistics also show a large jump in views for Fugging, Upper Austria around the time of the renaming. Primary topics are not normally decided by click-through statistics because of scenarios just like this one, I think. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 02:47, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  Sorry, but that presumes an awful lot. The FACTS are that we can see what readers click on when arriving at the dab page, and most do not select the expletive. I see no reason to insert our high and mighty judgement as to what readers really want. older ≠ wiser 16:45, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  WP:DPT makes no mention of clickstream data as a measure of primary-ness. Also, we have no data on how many readers see the link to Fuck on the DAB page and then simply type it in after visiting one of the other topics. The idea that the first link clicked on represents what readers really want strikes me as a bit absurd. Clickbait exists, and a town that was once called Fucking seems like the sort of oddball topic that would generate curious clicks. That doesn't mean it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value (one of the actual criteria for determining a primary topic). --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 20:11, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  I think Necrothesp's point – that the commonest meaning of the word in English is the expletive – is obvious enough and shouldn't need demonstrating. What should be equally obvious, however, is that this point isn't of much relevance here. We're an encyclopedia, not a dictionary: readers don't come here looking up the meanings of everyday words, they come here looking for information on encyclopedic topics. The fact that only a few of them navigate to the article about the word is precisely what would be expected in any similar situation, and it doesn't need explaining away. – Uanfala (talk) 19:28, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  The word Fucking is an encyclopedic topic, covered extensively under Fuck. I agree that the meanings of everyday words are not relevant to choosing a primary topic, which is why it doesn't matter that Fucking is sexual intercourse and the whole article [Sexual intercourse] is about it. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 19:54, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  Yes, words can occasionally be encyclopedic topics by themselves. Still, I hope you'll appreciate the distinction between looking for information about a word on the one hand, and, on the other, using that word to look for information about the things that the word can refer to. – Uanfala (talk) 20:12, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  Fuck has a link to Sexual intercourse in the first line of text. The burden for readers looking for information about sexual intercourse by searching the word "fucking" (unlikely but not impossible) and are redirected to Fuck would be exactly the same as for those currently landing on the DAB page. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 20:24, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

  What "burden"? The whole point of disambiguation is that we're supposed to not burden our readers. Forcing 80% of them to click away from a page that they didn't want to view is clearly burdening them, and it simply makes no sense to propose that line.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:46, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

  I'm skeptical that the available data shows what readers actually want, as explained above. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 20:30, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support. Leaning that way due to the nom's opening rationale and very good rebuttals. As one sort-of supporter points out, this is a tricky situation, so we're treading lightly here. Don't want to stomp all over Austria, nor do we want to leap too high and land too hard on the expletive. It does appear imho that the expletive should rise to the top in this case, as it has already done so on the dab page. Good reason for that. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 10:45, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose per Uanfala. If anything, the primary redirect should go to sexual intercourse, which is the primary meaning of "fucking" in day-to-day usage.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:13, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  To reiterate Uanfala's point, readers don't come here looking up the meanings of everyday words. What information relevant to the term fucking is found at Sexual intercourse anyway? --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 13:07, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  Uanfala's point tells us precisely why we should not be sending readers to the Fuck article, as that is pretty much a discussion of an everyday word, and although it has some encyclopaedic interest due to its unusual nature, it's still ultimately just a word. It's far more likely, as indeed the onward links suggest, that readers come here either because they're interested in actual fucking (i.e. sex) or because they're interested in the Austrian town which formerly bore this name.  — Amakuru (talk) 15:40, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  Sorry, but I think you have it backwards. Discussion of the history, etymology, and social impact of the word Fuck is far more than the meaning of an everyday word. The meaning itself would be 'sexual intercourse'. Or are we now saying that 'sexual intercourse' is not the primary meaning of "fucking" in day-to-day usage? --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 19:48, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  Sangdeboeuf, I wish you could put your time to more productive uses than coming up with ever more creative ways to misinterpret the people who've disagreed with you here. I really do. So, to restate the obvious again: when people look up the meaning of a word in a dictionary, they want to find out what that word means. They didn't know what the word meant, they looked it up, and now they do. They aren't interested in reading more about the things in the world that the word refers to: what are they, what's their history, what people do with them, etc. That's what encyclopedias are for. When people look up a topic in an encyclopedia, they expect to find about all those things, and in order to get there, they'll use a search term. The meaning of that search term will be the topic. Oh look, the word meaning again! Yes, it's the same word as before, but it means something slightly different. Yes, Sangdeboeuf, people use words in different ways in different contexts.

  The very basic and obvious distinction here that you're apparently hell-bent on continuing to fudge is that between content about a word (yes, also the etymology, history and social impact of that word) and content about the things that the word refers to. – Uanfala (talk) 20:33, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  So what exactly do you mean when you say readers don't come here looking up the meanings of everyday words? --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 21:03, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  That most readers don't use Wikipedia as a dictionary. That they don't normally come here looking for information about everyday words. – Uanfala (talk) 21:31, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  So content about a word (yes, also the etymology, history and social impact of that word) does not belong in an encyclopedia? What information do you mean exactly? --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 21:34, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  Yes, of course it belongs if it's notable. And it is precisely what some (20%, to be exact) of the users of the dab page are looking for. I was arguing against the proposal to gear the topic structure solely towards those 20% and the perceived need to come up with explanations to conjure away the remaining 80%. I believe that by this stage I've said all that I had to say and in an as clear way as I could, and I'm not interested in restating that any more. – Uanfala (talk) 21:45, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  As I've said, the clickstream data tells us the first link readers click on, nothing more. Equating that with what readers are actually looking for is rather myopic IMO. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 21:50, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  Assuming that it means anything other than that is an act of extraordinary arrogance. older ≠ wiser 22:46, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  Does that mean I'm wrong? If so, can you explain why clickbait exists? --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 06:54, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

  Yes. And are you really suggesting that this disambiguation page can be compared with clickbait? Ridiculous. 09:08, 17 September 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bkonrad (talk • contribs)

  Since that's merely an opinion, well have to agree to disagree. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 20:30, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

  You can disagree as much as you like, nobody can stop you doing that, but when one view is based on actual empirical data while the other is based on supposition and personal opinion, it's not hard to see which one should be taken more seriously by the closer of this discussion.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:17, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. The question asked by WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is not "How is this word most commonly used in English" but "What topic is most commonly sought when a user searches for this term". If somebody says, "Tell me about fucking" (which is what a user effectively asks by typing a word into our search bar), they might want to know about the use of 'fucking' as an intensifier, but they are more likely to want to know about the act of fucking, i.e. sexual intercourse. This is exactly what the clickstream data shows. While it is true that the page a user arrives at from the DAB page is not necessarily the page they wanted, it is highly implausible that a significant number of users who are looking for Fuck are accidentally ending up up at Sexual intercourse or Fugging, Upper Austria. Havelock Jones (talk) 09:25, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.