Talk:Peter Harvey (academic)

Requested move 9 February 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: Article has been relisted several times and multiple proposals have been made, but since no one is in favor of keeping at the current location I am going by WP:NOGOODOPTIONS and of the proposed names it seems that the one that is most supported is "academic". (non-admin closure) (t · c) buidhe 19:36, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

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Peter Harvey (Buddhism) → Peter Harvey (Buddhism scholar) – Since he's a person, and not a Buddhist concept, "Buddhism scholar" is more fitting. See Richard Robinson (Buddhism scholar). Wishwoshwish (talk) 05:06, 9 February 2021 (UTC) —Relisting. — Twassman [Talk·Contribs] 06:11, 17 February 2021 (UTC)—Relisting. Jerm (talk) 16:27, 25 February 2021 (UTC) —Relisting. JJP...MASTER!_{[talk to] JJP... master?} 23:37, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: How about just Peter Harvey (scholar), Peter Harvey (academic), or Peter Harvey (professor)? Wikipedia tends to use widely applicable broad category descriptors for disambiguation rather than more specific descriptions, such as "(politician)" rather than "(governor of Vermont)". See WP:NCPDAB. — BarrelProof (talk) 18:12, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
  • Note also that parenthesized disambiguation terms often only provide basic context rather than being complete descriptors. For example, many rugby union players are disambiguated with "(rugby union)" rather than "(rugby union player)" and many American football players are disambiguated with "(American football)" rather than "(American football player)". — BarrelProof (talk) 16:42, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
    • Generally this is only used for sportspeople, not for anyone else. For everyone else we use a descriptor of what they do, not what field they work in. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:59, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
• Support Peter Harvey (Buddhist studies scholar) per others in Category:British Buddhist scholars. For academics we generally try to be specific, rather than using academic, scholar or the awful "professor" (which is only the top academic rank in the UK, not an alternative word for academic as it is in the US). -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:59, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
  • @Necrothesp: I found about 200 articles on en-Wiki that use "(scholar)", 800 that use "(academic)", and 300 that use "(professor)". I'm not aware of any guidelines discouraging such usage. For politicians, we definitely tend toward the more general rather than the more specific, as noted above. — BarrelProof (talk) 01:43, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
    • Indeed we do. But one size, as ever, does not fit all. A politician is a politician, whatever their specific function, but an academic is generally primarily known for working in a specific field, not as a generic "academic" or "scholar". It is thus certainly true that the specific field is preferred for academics and always has been (e.g. we have 1,014 articles that use (historian), 369 that use (philosopher), 85 that use (geographer), 398 that use (physicist) and 323 that use (chemist), most of whom could also be classified as scholars or academics). And as I said, "professor" is completely inappropriate for British people, as it is only an academic rank and not a generic title as it is in America. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:05, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
      • I will also add that, as far as I can see, the vast majority of articles that use the generic titles seem to be either stubs (which have probably gone unnoticed) or academic administrators known more for being that than for their specific field or pre-modern people whose field can often be hard to assign as many were polymaths and didn't work in the specific fields that academics usually have today. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:16, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
      • Yes, but "Buddhist studies scholar" is much more lengthy than any of those other examples. — BarrelProof (talk) 20:04, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
        • Not really any sort of problem. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:35, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
          • WP:CONCISE indicates that using a long disambiguation phrase is somewhat of a problem. — BarrelProof (talk) 16:09, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
            • Actually, it doesn't. We often use disambiguators that are not as concise as they "could be". For instance, the most concise way of disambiguating someone would often be simply to add their nationality or their date of birth (e.g. John Smith (American) or John Smith (1925)). We don't because that's not particularly clear. Neither are "academic" or "scholar". They're far too generic. A "scholar" for instance can refer to anyone who went to school. -- Necrothesp (talk) 17:22, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
              • But if there was only one drummer named Roger Taylor, we wouldn't have Roger Taylor (Queen drummer). — BarrelProof (talk) 20:31, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
                • No, but if there was only one musician called Roger Taylor we would still title the article Roger Taylor (drummer), not Roger Taylor (musician). We always prefer the more specific term. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:31, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
                  • Yes, but "Buddhist studies scholar" is much more lengthy than "drummer", as previously discussed. As a multi-word phrase, it is much more akin to "Queen drummer". — BarrelProof (talk) 19:38, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
                    • Not really. It's more akin to "University of Sunderland academic", which I would never recommend using! It describes his allegiance, not his occupation. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:12, 5 March 2021 (UTC)
• Move to Peter Harvey (academic) per BarrelProof, or possibly (scholar). Oppose any of the longer titles proposed, as unnecessary and a breach of WP:CONCISE. The disambiguator exists purely to distinguish him from other entries at Peter Harvey (disambiguation) and the convention is for it to say what he is. It is not intended to be part of the title, otherwise everyone would have one. See also Marc Alexander (academic), John Darlington (academic) etc as precedent.  — Amakuru (talk) 20:39, 4 March 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.