Talk:Jimmy Herbert

Herbert/s?

I rather wish you'd have discussed this before the unilateral move, Alaney. For one thing, Total Hockey does list it without the "s" in the newer edition, but I'm not finding any provenance for the change, let alone your uncited statement of "After Herbert started his professional career, his name was misspelled from his birth name of Herbert to Herberts and he did not bother to correct it."

More to the point, WP:NAME holds that "Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it instead uses the name which is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources." "Herberts" was the spelling used throughout the player's career and throughout his later life, it's the spelling still used by the Hall of Fame, the NHL in its Official Guides and on its website, and is even the one used in Total Hockey 's first edition. This change should be reverted.  Ravenswing  20:16, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

What's the deal? The Jimmy Herberts redirects to Jimmy Herbert. I have two further cites that his name was spelled incorrectly and I am looking up the cite for the 'not correcting'. The article was a stub. It seems a little late to care - that is -after- an editor takes an interest in it. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 20:36, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Well he probably didn't notice until you changed it. To be fair if most sources use the S and papers of the time used the S. Then WP:COMMONNAME would apply for the title and the proper name in the lead sentence. I haven't looked into it so I don't know if it was or wasn't used commonly. -DJSasso (talk) 00:46, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

The deal is that you changed the name of the article against WP:COMMONNAME, is what; how his name is spelled on his birth records isn't at all the point. As far as the "not correcting" thing goes ... you didn't just assume Herberts' reaction towards any spelling discrepancy, did you?  Ravenswing  02:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

This is very bizarre. You guys really don't care that his name was misspelled. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 17:14, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

What does this have to do with "caring?" (Not that, come to that, I'm lying awake nights at the horrid injustice inflicted by some clueless sportswriter or official scorer 80+ years ago.) It is not our job here to right wrongs. It is our job to report fact. WP:COMMONNAME is quite explicit in that article names must be of the name most commonly associated with the subject, whether or not it's the subject's accurate and proper name ... much the same way as Stefani Germanotta, Ray Charles Leonard and Edison Arantes do Nascimento are all redirects. That's how this should be handled.  Ravenswing  22:34, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. You should care, though. Because you are being contradictory, then, when you say that it is our job to report fact. The fact is that his name was James Herbert. There is a mix of spellings on his name in newspaper reports and books. It was established in the sources that, his name was misspelled, not that he had a 'name for marketing purposes'. There is no similarity, for example, between Sugar Ray Leonard's case and this one. In Herbert's day, he did not participate in the marketing of himself or of the game, or of the reporting of the game. It was not reported in the newspapers that James Herbert, also known as Sailor Herberts. He went by two names, Jimmy and Sailor, but it was shown in the sources that Herbert is the correct spelling. Total Hockey accepted the correction. SIHR accepts the correction. Why can you not? This is a case of WP:COMMON, as in common sense. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 15:09, 18 April 2011 (UTC)