Talk:Nabis of Sparta

Latest comment: 1 month ago by JML1148 in topic Requested move 2 March 2024

Internal links edit

There appears to be little to no internal links.EunuchOmerta 15:33, 3 October 2006 (UTC)Reply

Requested move 2 March 2024 edit

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: moved. There is a consensus to move the pages, although with the minor adjustment from Nabis (king of Sparta) to Nabis of Sparta, as multiple editors raised this as a more natural disambiguation. A discussion about moving Les Nabis to another title should also be considered. (non-admin closure) JML1148 (talk | contribs) 06:38, 10 March 2024 (UTC)Reply


– No primary topic between this and the Nabis art group (which I expected to find at this title) by pageviews or long-term significance (Google Books for nabis gives only the artists; Scholar's a mixed bag even after ruling out authors with the name). Hameltion (talk | contribs) 04:46, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

  • Comment: the other article is at Les Nabis, which has natural disambiguation. Presumably hatnotes are sufficient to distinguish them. P Aculeius (talk) 12:12, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • The group article mentions, also has the redirect, The Nabis.
    Google Books Ngrams for all three forms still indicates the base form is by far the most common, yet it's mostly from the 19th century works, so it's hard to tell what that really means...? In more recent times, since the art movement came into existence, it seems at least comparable. Because of the singular and plural distinction, maybe we can also glean some insight from Google Books Ngrams for was and were forms - it looks like the plural form has been at least comparable for decades now, if we exclude the 19th century the graph becomes much more indicative of ambiguity. I also wanted to check Google Search Trends but that one doesn't recognize the Spartan king as an individual topic so it's virtually impossible to compare.
    There's also the possibility that readers form a plural from the word Nabi by appending the "s". Could this plausibly happen for the meaning of Islamic prophets?
    We can also have a look at https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Nabis where there's a total monthly incoming traffic of 2.4k (2375) and total outgoing 729, and the hatnote registers in the top list with 23. This is too close to the clickstream anonymization threshold (<10 per pair) to be entirely reliable, but let's note for the record the ratios of ~1% and ~3% (because we don't really know what these should be).
    All-time total monthly page views indicate generally comparable interest.
    Something seems to have happened around June of 2022 that caused a one-time spike in interest for the "The" form (??) and then the pattern of traffic to "Nabis" changed significantly. The history of this article indicates no spike in edits, in fact there was a single edit that whole year and it wasn't in that month. If we don't know a reason that the Spartan king baseline traffic would receive more interest, this might also indicate a need to experiment with reorganizing navigation.
    We should go ahead with the move and try to analyze the same statistics measurements afterwards, to try to figure out if the average reader actually recognizes this as primary topic. Naturally, the previous presumed primary topic should stay on top of the list per MOS:DABCOMMON, so even if we made a mistake, there wouldn't be a serious impact. --Joy (talk) 16:44, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per nom. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:11, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment I think we should also be discussing a move of Les Nabis here. English-language sources predominantly use "Nabis", not the French-language "les Nabis" (the Nabis.) WP:NATURAL does specify that an alternative name should commonly be used in English-language sources, which I'm not convinced is the case here. I'd be in favour of Nabis (art), Nabis (art movement), or similar. Note that this would also affect Category:Les Nabis. 162 etc. (talk) 21:02, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
    I only alluded earlier, but yes I'd support moving Les Nabis here. Hameltion (talk | contribs) 03:22, 3 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
    I don't think we should go for the full switch of primary topics based on so little information - per WP:PTOPIC we need a more coherent argument why the art movement in turn would overshadow all other uses. As the ancient history article has been here since 2004, and Nabis (art) content was added and moved out in March 2005 - if nobody did anything to this effect in two decades, it stands to reason we don't have to do anything so drastic. (Moving that article to The Nabis instead seems like it's easily supported by observable evidence.) --Joy (talk) 11:54, 3 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
    It should be noted that this term apparently has a lot of uses in biology, All pages with titles beginning with Nabis shows over fifty of those already. --Joy (talk) 11:59, 3 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
    That's not a convincing argument, considering that it's a genus of damselfly. Taxonomists, especially entomologists, seem to have scoured classical literature looking for names to give various critters. But most of these bugs have very few page views, since there's a very limited group of people looking for information about them on Wikipedia. Your list also includes "Nabisco", which while it also "begins with Nabis", isn't at risk of confusion with a Spartan king. *Grabs Oreos and munches on the sidelines* P Aculeius (talk) 12:40, 3 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
    All I'm saying is that all this (and disregarding Nabisco obviously) makes it improbable that the average English reader strongly associates the term with any of these topics, IOW that it's unlikely that the standard of primary topic is met either way. --Joy (talk) 13:30, 3 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment I'm neutral on whether or not the king of Sparta should remain the primary topic. However, if a move is found to be needed, Nabis of Sparta would be a more standard disambiguation format (per WP:SOVEREIGN even though that primarily refers to modern monarchs), and also appears to be a WP:COMMONNAME for the Spartan king. Rosbif73 (talk) 09:02, 4 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
    I don't really like this policy for ancient people, because the addition of "of [city]" in the title can also apply to common people, not necessarily royalty; for example, Aristarchus of Sparta. "(king of Sparta)" clears the possible confusion. T8612 (talk) 16:03, 4 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. I'm generally favourable to longer titles that clear confusion even though it's not WP's policy. As an aside, Nabis was not his real name. In all likelihood it was a nom de guerre acquired during military service in the Near East, as it comes from nabi, meaning prophet in Hebrew (someone above alluded to it). T8612 (talk) 16:09, 4 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
  • Move to Nabis of Sparta. Natural disambiguation. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:34, 5 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
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.