Talk:Mahas bombings

Title

One of the criteria for article titles is that they be recognizable. The naming conventions for events is that the title of the article should contain the following three descriptors:

• When the incident happened.
• Where the incident happened.
• What happened.

In this article, the When is the year 2023 the Where is Somalia and the What is car bombings. Even the BBC source article calls this "Somalia car bombings" at the start of its headline, before getting more geographically specific. Most Wikipedia readers will recognize that Somalia is a country, but they probably have little or no idea of the names of its provinces or towns. So, I would put the reader first and call it 2023 Somalia car bombings. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 22:54, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Definitely not. Car bombings are very common in Somalia & they'll certainly be several more this year, making the suggested title ambiguous & hence needing to be moved again. Mahas District is little-known outside Somalia, so of course the international media put Somalia rather than Mahas in their titles. We have dozens of articles about car bombings in Somalia; they're named after their locations (city, town, area or building); none have their location simply as the country. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 02:57, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

@Jim Michael 2: Nevertheless, I think if you are going to write an article about this event, you still need to include both the year and the location in the article. Whether you use Mahas (town) or Hiran (province), I am not too fussed, but as you say, there are a lot of car bombings in Somalia so you still need to justify why no year should be included in the article title. If these sorts of events occur as often as you claim there is a good possibility this sort of event should reoccur, so a year is needed and, to be precise, the word car should also be included. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 04:56, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

The title needs to include Mahas rather than the broader Hiran, because we should be more precise about its location - especially because bombings are very common in Somalia. This appears to be the only notable bombing in Mahas & has a high death toll, so I think it fits NOYEAR. It's rare for us to include car in our titles about bombings. There are 8 articles in Category:Car and truck bombings in Somalia and 22 more in its suicide subcat. None of those 30 have car in their titles. Jim Michael 2 (talk) 11:19, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining your thoughts about how you arrived at the title of this article. However, when you say "we" are you referring to the consensus of all Wikipedia editors, or a smaller group who have achieved a different consensus for naming this type of article, as I am trying to reconcile the disparity between the naming conventions for events and the naming convention you articulate. This leaves me confused and I am wondering where your convention has been documented, so would be grateful if you could point me in the direction of any applicable documentation. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 03:43, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't know how much discussion there's been in regard to this - or where. Articles about car bombings rarely have car in their titles - regardless of where or when they happened. No articles about attacks in Somalia have Somalia or or a region of it in their titles. They all include the city/town &/or the target (such as a hotel or embassy). Some articles about attacks in Somalia don't have the year in the title because it's unambiguous (such as Muna Hotel attack & Garowe attack). If they need disambiguation, some have the year (such as 2011 Mogadishu bombing & 2013 Beledweyne attacks). Some need the month as well as the year (such as May 2010 Mogadishu bombings & January 2016 Mogadishu attack). Some need the day, month & year (such as 2 January 2017 Mogadishu bombings & 14 October 2017 Mogadishu bombings). Jim Michael 2 (talk) 06:56, 13 January 2023 (UTC)