Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Abortion advocacy movement coverage

Tables of sourcing statistics

Class	Pro-life	Right-to-life	Fetal-rights	Anti-abortion	Favored	Pro-choice	Abortion Rights	Favored	Source
Google Books	320,000	772,000	20,600	199,000	Right-to-life	253,000	220,000	Pro-choice	[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Google Scholar	30,300	68,600	3,330	20,000	Right-to-life	23,500	20,900	Pro-choice	[7] [8] [9] [10] [11]
Google News Archive	27,500	6,700	10	15,000	Pro-life	8,680	12,700	Abortion-rights	[12] [13] [14] [15] [16]
Google Web Search	15,200,000	6,850,000	108,000	4,450,000	Pro-life	7,810,000	2,670,000	Pro-choice	[17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22]
NPR on air	used	?			Pro-life?	used		Pro-choice	First RFC
NPR website		?		used	Anti-abortion?		used	Abortion-rights	First RFC
AP/New York Times/Washington Post Stylebooks	Recommend anti-abortion/abortion-rights except in quotations/organisation titles				Anti-abortion			Abortion-rights	First RFC
Guardian/Chicago Tribune Stylebook	avoid	avoid			Anti-abortion				old revision of first RFC and First RFC
Explicit source list	7			17	Anti-abortion?	9	15	Abortion-rights	old revision of first RFC
Top ten US newspapers looked at by User:VsevolodKrolikov	0-2			8-10	Anti-abortion				diff
Google news between 2000 and 2011	99,200	?	?	59,200	Pro-life?				Mediation
User:Born2cycle's look at sources	Unclear	?	?	?	Pro-life?				talk page

Class	Pro-life movement	Right-to-life movement	Fetal-rights movement	Anti-abortion movement	Favored	Pro-choice movement	Abortion-rights movement	Favored	Source
Google Books	32,100	54,700	497	37,400	Right-to-life movement	15,800	11,500	Pro-choice movement	[23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28]
Google Scholar	3,470	1,540	77	2,010	Pro-life movement	2,330	571	Pro-choice movement	[29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34]
Google News Archive	817	81	0	323	Pro-life movement	64	1	Pro-choice movement	[35] [36] [37] [38] [39]
Google Web Search	686,000	972,000	211,000	498,000	Right-to-life movement	133,000	719,000	Abortion-rights movement	[40] [41] [42] [43] [44]

Comments

Can these be separated out (through sampling, I guess, as sorting through them all would be impossible) to make sure that the numbers we're looking at are actually the sources' use of the phrases, and not them quoting people using the phrases? The fact that all the stylebooks (BBC as well if I recall correctly, though that isn't in the table) recommend eschewing the POV titles raises the question of how they are actually used in the sources where we're taking for granted that they're used. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:19, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

The idea was to just include the data that had already been gathered in previous dispute resolution steps and to add it to a table. I did redo books, scholar and search as I couldn't replicate the original figures.

The idea of the table was to see if POVTITLE plausibly only occurred for one of the two titles groups.

Feel free to add further data to the table. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 10:49, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

PS I would say currently that the table shows that it isn't legitimate to claim that pro-life, pro-choice, anti-abortion and abortion rights meet POVTITLE individually - but that they may do over all other titles (with voting between each pair to pick a title for the respective articles). -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 13:14, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

This doesn't really tell us much, for a lot of reasons. One is that it's mostly addressing the adjective stems pro-life/pro-choice/anti-abortion/abortion-rights, which is almost tangential to the point. (Unless, of course, the point were solely appending "movement" as an excuse to say "pro-life". Which I will not be tolerating.) A "common name" doesn't exist in a vacuum; the question isn't which of these adjectives occurs more frequently, the question is what is the most common name for the topic to be identified. Statistical frequency of "pro-life" isn't evidence for "pro-life movement" being the common name of the United States pro-life movement any more than statistical frequency of "Bill" is evidence for the common name of the topic Bill Clinton. This is probably why you couldn't replicate the results in WP:RFC/AAT, Eraserhead; they were probably the statistics I collected on "pro-life movement", "pro-choice movement", "anti-abortion movement" and "abortion-rights movement" -- the full phrases. Because those start to be relevant statistics to identify a coherent topic. (And to my point about international usage, any time they're being used in reference to a topic that is not the topic you're trying to identify, they aren't common name evidence. Which further complicates everything.) —chaos5023 (talk) 13:28, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't think movement is always used when it refers to abortion by any stretch. The hits for anti-abortion and abortion-rights are much higher than your data and they obviously don't refer to anything else (e.g gyms). -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 06:51, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

On balance this sounds far more complex than I thought so my arguments here aren't valid. Therefore I don't think my point is particularly meaningful.

I would still ideally think you should pick both options together but I don't think we have the data to enforce it. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 07:07, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I think the community has emphatically demonstrated that it won't stand for one of these groups getting its propaganda name and the other not, which the RFC reflects. No need to add title options that permit mismatching. On the issue of referentiality, though, that's the thing, the adjective stems do refer to other things. They refer to pro-choice advocacy and pro-life sentiment and pro-choice legislation and pro-life homicide (lol-to-keep-from-weeping) and what-have-you. This is the key to the whole thing: when we say "US pro-choice movement", we are not identifying US political advocacy in support of legal access to abortion as our topic, we are identifying the US pro-choice movement as our topic. This may seem like a subtle distinction but it makes all the difference in the world. —chaos5023 (talk) 03:20, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

• The first snippet on a Google search for "pro-life" returns, "Christian group that argues against abortion and premarital sex."  The pro-choice advocates are not "anti-Christian", and I'm not aware that as a group they favor premarital sex.  What can we do to liberate the "Pro-life" title (and "Pro-life movement") from the abortion discussion?  Unscintillating (talk) 00:33, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

While I don't particularly feel that a snippet from the first Google result demonstrates anything we need to be concerned with, and liberating anything from anything is a questionable focus for an encyclopedia maintenance discussion, it may surprise you that I consider identifying Pro-choice movement and Pro-choice movement as coherent topics in themselves to serve that goal. The key thing that's persistently eluding people is that by identifying these movements as coherent topics, we are identifying them as distinct topics from United States or global abortion-related advocacy. (This is an argument against United States abortion-rights movement and United States anti-abortion movement that I will probably add sometime.) Zealots for these movements would very much like it if their self-chosen propaganda labels were treated as synonyms for the relevant advocacy. But by identifying the regional movements that use these names for themselves as the topics, we implictly deny the assertion they would like to make, that taking a side in abortion politics (US or otherwise) means you are "pro-choice" or "pro-life". By explicitly and definitely scoping these articles to the movements, we make it clear that issue coverage belongs in unified, non-POVFORK articles like Abortion debate. —chaos5023 (talk) 03:12, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Closing procedure proposal: standard NOTVOTE for Conclusion, tallied vote for title options

The following discussion 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.

---

As some editors appear to strongly prefer a voting mechanic for resolution of this RFC over standard finding of consensus, I would like to propose the following closing structure:

1. A standard finding of consensus (WP:NOTVOTE) is used regarding the Conclusion. If the Conclusion does not have consensus, then there is no need to take action on the basis of this RFC, so using a voting system to guarantee a resolution is unnecessary.
2. If the Conclusion has consensus, then the question of which title option to adopt shall be determined using shall be determined considering both WP:CONSENSUS and the primary voting methodology recommendation detailed in User:Homunq/WP voting systems, using the 20% supermajority option, highest adjusted median under Continuous Majority Judgment wins. Closing administrators are still requested to vet votes according to guidelines laid out in the RFC and, if necessary, to counteract sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry.

(Note: strikeout/underline edit made after all/most votes below were registered, by Homunq (࿓) 16:55, 16 October 2012 (UTC))

• Support as proposer. —chaos5023 (talk) 13:41, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Switching to oppose. The feedback we've gotten on the WP:AN/RFC thread has convinced me that if we try to do this, it's going to be viewed as a delegitimizing factor for the RFC and increase the odds that administrators will refuse to implement an outcome if one results. Which, given the kind of pushback we're seeing on the most routine matters, concerns me quite a bit. And I do still hold out some hope that if people are answering a sensible question they'll give sensible answers. —chaos5023 (talk) 01:27, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Rather than switch !votes, which implies a changed opinion on which course of action is best, I might suggest simply adding a caveat that we can't possibly ignore WP:NOTVOTE without the explicit support of the higher-ups, particularly whoever is going to close this RFC. If we don't have that, then I'd say this question is moot. --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 04:59, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

• Support as essay writer. Except I don't understand what "plurality wins" means above; I'm assuming it's somehow intended to clarify (???) not change the meaning. Do you mean "Highest CMJ score wins" or something of the kind? Homunq (talk) 14:21, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

• Yeah, I mean "highest CMJ score wins". I've edited what I wrote to that effect. —chaos5023 (talk) 14:25, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

OK. I changed "score" to "adjusted median" above to make the rationale clearer. Homunq (talk) 14:31, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. —chaos5023 (talk) 14:33, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Is it time for me to think about moving that essay out of my userspace? Homunq (࿓) 16:07, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Haven't the foggiest; don't really know how the essay lifecycle goes. Possibly you should ask around somewhere off of the WP:Village pump. —chaos5023 (talk) 16:18, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Given that Chaos has switched votes, I'd like to suggest a compromise: change "shall be determined using" to "shall be determined considering both WP:CONSENSUS and". That is, use the CMJ process simply as one among various ways to read consensus, and not as something that overrides established procedures. Homunq (࿓) 15:36, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

The stuff for closers is already written that way, really. It commends CMJ to them as a method of gauging sentiment. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:47, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

OK. So I've now changed the proposal to reflect that. Consider changing your vote back? Homunq (࿓) 16:55, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Considered, but feeling no particular inclination to. I don't see what it helps relative to the current wording. It neuters the vote part of it (either the voting mechanics are advisory or binding, and in this formulation they're advisory), presumably pissing off Eraserhead1's side of the opinion spectrum, while making it sound enough like we're calling for a vote to piss off Jc37's side of the opinion spectrum. Seems like the worst of both worlds. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:09, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

As I understand this RFC currently, it is merely a chance to collectively ratify the current wording, rather than having that wording exist only because one editor felt like writing it that way. Homunq (࿓) 17:23, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Don't really need proposal structure for that, WP:BRD suffices, and there's kind of a problem in that none of the opinions registered were registered for the purpose of ratifying or expressing a lack of confidence in the current wording, they were registered on the topic of using a binding vote, so it's especially non-sense-making to seek that judgment right here. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:01, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

• Question Did Arbcom ever weigh in on whether their directive that AAT be an actual vote should also apply to this RFC? Or are you suggesting that such a thing is just not needed here? --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 14:52, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

• As far as I can tell, ArbCom wants to be involved only if the community absolutely cannot work it out on its own, and there seems to be some hope here of that happening so they don't want to do anything. :) —chaos5023 (talk) 14:56, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

So then we don't have a mandate for dispensing with WP:NOTVOTE in this case, correct? In which case something like you are proposing seems the obvious way to go. --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 15:10, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Correct. ArbCom didn't really even stick by its guns regarding a vote upon clarification requests to AAT, so I'm certain they wouldn't mandate a vote here. Really, they just want the community to do what it thinks is best, in general. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:12, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Okay, accordingly...

• Support We have no mandate to dispense with the usual finding of consensus on the general questions, so go with that. Incidentally, I think chaos and the others have formulated the questions well enough that it may happen. The question of which title, though, has a history of contentious deadlock and a mandate (if a slightly stale one) from Arbcom to decide it by vote, so do that. I'm afraid the voting mechanism is TLDR, but if chaos and Homunq can agree on this one, then it must be sensible. --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 16:41, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

As noted above, caveat that we can't possibly ignore WP:NOTVOTE without the explicit support of the higher-ups, particularly whoever is going to close this RFC. If we don't have that, then this question is moot. --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 04:59, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

• Strong oppose #2 Wikipedia is not a vote - Voting systems were part of what caused problems with the last RfC. Just drop the voting system, and let the closers determine consensus. And incidentally, this is according to policy and common practice. The only time "voting" is involved on Wikipedia is when granting extra tools/responsibilities to an individual. As this is a content-related discussion, it clearly should follow the consensus policy. - jc37 22:21, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Voting systems were only part of the problem because there were a lot of arguments about which voting system to use after the start of the debate and a lot of comments saying the vote shouldn't be binding. Both of these issues look highly unlikely to happen again given this proposal. There is also no way the first discussion could have been closed with a standard consensus as anything other than no consensus so I'm not really clear how not voting would have been an improvement. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 06:34, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
    • No. And there have been several large discussions closed recently, which disproves your presumption. Regardless, consensus is not a vote. And no matter how many "supports" are listed here, it's contrary to very long established wikipedia policy. - jc37 03:28, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
      • I would love to see examples of these recent controversial cases which were closed as something other than no consensus. There are examples like this CFD which I closed, however there are substantial differences, in that case those in support of deletion were arguing that simply describing an organisation as opposing gay rights was "POV" without providing a suitable alternative name. This was then backed up at ANI for that reason. In contrast in this case it would be very difficult to similarly dismiss the POV concerns, pro-life/pro-choice are considered POV by a number of reliable sources, and anti-abortion/abortion-rights were made up by the mainstream media and are basically by definition going to be considered POV by everyone on the right in the United States. You could use a similar argument to the one I used above in the CFD closure with regards to the current titles if you wished, but I don't think they are likely to be considered a solution in this case at this point.
      • Secondly controversial topics are sometimes closed as a vote - Ireland being a prominent example. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 17:42, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
• Support a vote is going to be the only way to break the deadlock on the titles but I agree we should use it as sparingly as we can. Good work chaos for turning my ramblings into a more sensible overall proposal. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 06:31, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
• Note I've requested neutral-party closure of this proposal at WP:AN/RFC. I don't recommend reviewing the thread if the response (and non-response) we got to requesting watchlist notification irritated you. —chaos5023 (talk) 22:18, 12 October 2012 (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.

Watchlist notification?

Any thoughts on whether we should seek watchlist notification for this RFC like AAT had? —chaos5023 (talk) 13:59, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

I believe we should but I have no idea how to do that. Homunq (talk) 14:19, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Okay. I think Yaris worked out who to talk to and it's in AAT's archives somewhere. I'll dig it up. —chaos5023 (talk) 14:20, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Found it; notification requested. —chaos5023 (talk) 14:45, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

I've now followed up at the admin noticeboard to try to get any feedback whatsoever on the request. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:13, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

WTFRFC

I appreciate the attempt to be Vulcan-like in the drafting of this RfC, but I doubt many are going to wade through several pages of formal logic to try to figure out what the questions actually are. Gigs (talk) 20:02, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Yup. JJL (talk) 02:02, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

I've removed some stuff we can probably do without and reworked the main points to use collapse boxes for their arguments, so the overall structure of the RFC can be easily seen and then details drilled down to. Better? —chaos5023 (talk) 02:48, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

I suggest you take this back off CENT and other advertising until it can be redrafted in a more user-friendly form. Gigs (talk) 20:03, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome to propose that the RFC be shut down, but six months in I don't see that happening on one person's say-so. It's also as user-friendly as I, for my part, know how to make it without destroying what it's trying to express, so any progress that way is going to be a matter of collaboration. Unless you cared to express some direction of improvement other than an unspecified notion of user-friendliness. —chaos5023 (talk) 20:18, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Abortion_advocacy_movement_coverage/redraft Here you go. Gigs (talk) 20:25, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that would be a great example of making it "user-friendly" at the cost of destroying what it's trying to express. The point of having this RFC is to determine whether we can use a compelling policy case to narrow the scope of what we're talking about (a measure well-known for making the difference between an RFC that can accomplish anything useful and one that can't), not to toss out a "hey let's decide on some article titles for any reason we feel like or none!" reading-of-no-consensus-guaranteed stench-bomb. WP:RFC/AAT failed because it tried to do what your redraft does, ask questions about titling without first resolving the question of what topic these titles are supposed to identify, but at least it contained policy-based arguments instead of being a context-free referendum. Wow. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:51, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Your attitude (and the attitude of the current draft) is very condescending toward the eventual participants in this RfC. You aren't giving them any credit. We know the policies for the most part. We don't need to be told what arguments are irrelevant or not, and I seriously doubt many will read all of what's there now. It's like the guy that pastes half of a policy page into an AfD discussion. To appeal to your logical side however, I will give you more detailed feedback on the current draft.

• Premise 1 has no arguments against it. There's no reason to even mention it. BTW- WP:GLOBAL doesn't link where you think it does.
• Premise 2 suffers from poor presentation. The "for" arguments aren't really arguments in favor of the premise, they are more background information that just assumes the premise, and if they are to be presented, they should probably be presented in prose form as background information, since again, the "premise" isn't controversial, it's factual.
• Conclusion: I don't know why WP:PRESERVE is cited repeatedly, it has absolutely nothing to do with the scope or titling of articles, or anything at all to do with this RfC. If you follow my recommendation to drop "premise 1" and rephrase "premise 2" into background information, then the conclusion should be untangled as well. There should be a separate question as to whether non-US abortion advocacy movements should get new articles.
• Title issue 1, Title issue 2... These sections are redundant, unnecessary, and contradictory. People won't vote for the names if they believe the POV in the titles are a problem. Relevant statistical data should be merged into the name proposals. Contradiction in title issue 1 dismissing COMMONNAME as irrelevant, yet it is cited in arguments for Title option 1.
• Title options: I'm not going to go through each of these, but pretty much all of the arguments dismissed as irrelevant are not irrelevant at all. Gigs (talk) 03:12, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Okay, point by point.

• It's regrettable that my attitude and that reflected in the draft are unpleasant, but they didn't just happen because I felt like being a dick. I'm giving the participants as little credit as I can manage because my experience with the overall years-long process is that, in a significant proportion of instances, giving said participants credit is unwarranted and will be punished. Lots of participants are perfectly competent, of course, but the median isn't doing so well. I know this is a horrible and undemocratic and unwikipedian thing to say or feel, but unfortunately my ability to push through all the immense reasons not to engage with this process does not leave me enough spare resources to pretend to be an enlightened bastion of love for the common man on top of it.
• It has no arguments against it because it's a no-brainer for which no valid counterargument is possible, yes. It's still a fundamental underpinning of the policy case for determining the scope of the articles, and trust me, just because it's obviously true doesn't mean people won't wave their hands as if it weren't there if it isn't shoved in their faces.
• Enh. They're a collection of circumstantial evidence that points at the premise being the case. And again, just because you and I are aware it's factual doesn't mean much, and in this case at least I don't think it's impossible that somebody could disagree in good faith. The premises also serve a purpose in, if the RFC fails, collecting data on why -- if the community can't agree on the points here, we need as much to go on as we can get for next time.
• I probably felt that WP:PRESERVE's call to not destroy things for no good reason was broader than you read in it or possibly broader than it contains, encompassing things like article history. It isn't super obvious in its applicability so I went ahead and took it out. Thanks for raising the issue. As to the non-US movements, that's one place I do want to give editors credit. I don't think it needs to be part of this RFC, since it's a perfectly ordinary issue covered by WP:N and WP:SAL, and while it is probably actually expecting too much to assume people will do the obviously correct thing and refactor however we normally would, I absolutely dread expanding the scope of the questions this RFC is asking. One question is almost too many.
• You're right. I did away with the title issue sections and remerged their arguments into the title options. The contradiction is just people adding arguments without synthesis; I resolved some of that.
• Hopefully some of that has been cleared up by removal of some if-and-only-if-claused bits.

Thanks for the collaboration, it's been quite helpful. :) —chaos5023 (talk) 17:09, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Overall article structure

Are people clear that this RFC is about the naming of two articles on the US-specific pro- and anti- movements? It has been agreed elsewhere, that the existing articles carry the history of these two articles and so should be re-named, and that new articles will be created, after the re-naming, to cover the rest of the worldwide picture of support and opposition to the legalization of abortion. In that discussion, chaos5023 (talk · contribs) kindly offered, "I would be happy to, myself, refactor them [relevant non-US movements presently covered in these articles] into Abortion-rights movements and Anti-abortion movements the second the US articles were moved." And also said, that this is not formally mentioned in this RFC so as not to present too many "layers of encyclopedia maintenance decisions for the community", but that people should "ask and have answered questions about what would happen afterward, on the talk page". I hope that's a fair summary of the previous discussion, and that people are happy about it here. --Nigelj (talk) 13:37, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that issue should be in this RfC at all, at least not framed the way it is now, as per my detailed feedback above. Gigs (talk) 23:03, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Obviously I'm also of that position. :) Basically, my thought is that once this specific issue is resolved, we should go back to just doing the encyclopedia maintenance we do every day and fighting about it like we normally do. If we can't make that work, then it comes back to the RFC level, but let's burn that bridge when we come to it. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:26, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Asymmetric POV in "abortion-rights movement" and "anti-abortion movement"

"Rights" has positive connotations while "anti" has negative ones. A more balanced set along these lines would be "United States abortion-rights movement" and "United States right-to-life movement", since both of those invoke the concept of "rights", and both of those are lesser used self-identifications. Gigs (talk) 23:07, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

That seems worth considering. Apparently some people think the right-to-life and pro-life movements are different things (and none of them produce sources), which if true would mean this would fail the identification requirement, but that's highly debatable (and I've read some source, at least, that described "pro-life" as a label invented by the right-to-life movement as a response to "pro-choice"). I do think the POV in them remains asymmetric, since "right-to-life" is still a rah-rah go-team slogan while "abortion-rights" is more of a yeah-whatever-that's-accurate label, but if the slightly asymmetric POV in abortion-rights/anti-abortion could be considered acceptable, then a slightly asymmetric POV in the other direction should be too. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:17, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I personally don't agree with Gigs's logic; I believe that "anti-abortion/abortion rights" is more symmetrical than "right-to-life/abortion rights" because "right-to-life" contains more assumptions than either of the others. But I certainly accept that some people feel as Gigs does and their position (as well as arguments against it; I could go on much further than half a sentence) should not be excluded from this RFC. Homunq (࿓) 15:27, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I am in favor of Gigs' proposal. It seems a perfectly logical solution to me. --Nouniquenames 15:51, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

 Done. I've added this as a title option. Since, if the pro-life and right-to-life movements are the same thing, Pro-choice movement / Right-to-life movement and United States pro-choice movement / United States right-to-life movement are also valid options, I've added those as well. See the expanded and updated sourcing statistics above for the interesting information that "right-to-life" variations have excellent sourcing statistical support. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:17, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't know if we need those extra ones. Be careful not to add too many choices. Gigs (talk) 19:31, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

They seem super legit to me, what with "right-to-life movement" thoroughly trouncing "pro-life movement" in significant areas of sourcing statistics. Talk to Homunq about the fetal-rights one. :) —chaos5023 (talk) 19:46, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Go/no go

So we're in the last day of the structure phase as currently written; it's go/no go time. By which I mean, if anyone wants to extend the structure phase, propose it real fast, otherwise we're rolling into community feedback time. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:44, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I propose we extend the structure phase for another 3 weeks, or until it's been visible in watchlist notification for 2 weeks, whichever comes first. Homunq (࿓) 18:13, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Okay, timeframe-affecting proposal on deck, guys. Please register opinions quickly. :) —chaos5023 (talk) 18:20, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

That includes you :) Homunq (࿓) 18:34, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Okay, well, I oppose changing the timeframe. I just want to get it over with, and I don't think we're going to ever get any institutional support, for this phase of the RFC anyway, so the watchlist isn't even in it. I am not registering a strong oppose because I recognize that my perspective is very likely to be distorted by my extreme fatigue with things like fighting to get any help without ArbCom telling people what to do. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:39, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

It's 22:20 on the 15th. Somebody say something. :) —chaos5023 (talk) 22:23, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

 Done. Never mind. I pushed the community feedback phase to the 6th, and extended it a little to dodge Thanksgiving. Obviously we aren't done working here, and we've seen an encouraging ramp-up in collaboration in the last few days, so let's give it a chance to happen. —chaos5023 (talk) 22:51, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

That seems excessive to me, how about Friday? Gigs (talk) 23:02, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Gaaaah. You two fight it out. Five rounds, no gloves cage match, GO. —chaos5023 (talk) 23:08, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

You could make it Friday for now and then we can see where we are at on Friday. I am afraid that people will start ignoring the advertisements if it's advertised for too long without being open for comment. Gigs (talk) 23:19, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh, sure, why not.  Done. It's not like we're going to get the watchlist notification for this phase that Homunq wants anyway. —chaos5023 (talk) 23:25, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Title option based on "fetal-right-to-life"?

So, yeah, Homunq, I object to this. On the one hand, it's basically an invented title that statistically doesn't exist in sources (one hit on Google Books, for example). On the other hand, you seem to be raising philosophical-validity issues with applying "right-to-life" to abortion, which we don't need to be concerned with for the same reason we don't need to be concerned with the philosophical validity of "pro-life", and you're otherwise treating it as a semantic descriptor rather than the branding label it is; see over here. And in US politics, it's a completely recognizable brand, differing only from "pro-life" in that it sounds more old-fashioned. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:17, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Including bad options is not bad. It may make other options look better by contrast, which encourages consensus. Homunq (࿓) 18:22, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Hrm. Conceivably, but I am dubious. I think there should be some minimum threshold of how decent an option is before we include it, and this one falls below it. Not that I know what that threshold is made of, but sourcing support seems like a strong contender for at least part of it. Anyone else have thoughts? —chaos5023 (talk) 18:26, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

In terms of why this option deserves to be included in its own right, and not just as a stalking horse: the idea is that nobody objects to "abortion rights" as a title, they object to the asymmetry of "anti-abortion". On the same basis, "right to life" is asymmetrical; it isn't unambiguous for those not versed in the US context. I would be OK with replacing "fetal" (16K google hits) with "unborn" (29K google hits), although that raises the problem of syntactic confusion. Homunq (࿓) 18:31, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Or how about just "fetal rights movement"? Could be argued that it's too specific, but with 210K google hits for the phrase, it's not a neologism. And the abstract symmetry is pretty good. I'll change the option on the page... Homunq (࿓) 18:45, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, it would be an improvement. I tend to use Google Books + Scholar + News Archive rather than web search, because we're concerned with reliable sources and those engines have a vastly higher proportion of those, but "fetal-rights movement" isn't nearly as nonexistent as "fetal-right-to-life movement" there in any event. Still barely exists compared to other options, and still seems pretty poor, but it's better than what's there now. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:48, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I added the stats to the tables up there. It exists enough that I wouldn't call it an invented title, so that's something. —chaos5023 (talk) 19:00, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Interesting to note that "fetal rights movement" supposedly is on more pages than "fetal rights", which is of course impossible. But google's counts are often screwy that way; not very reliable. Homunq (࿓) 19:02, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

First conclusion

I still think the first set of premises and conclusion needs to be refactored into more specific questions. The question is whether we want to fork out the international information and restore these original articles to US scope, creating new articles for international movements. A "no" vote on that question doesn't mean that the current names are OK, and a yes vote leaves the open question as to what neutral names would be for the international articles. As far as I can tell this RfC won't provide clarity in important ways the way it's currently framed. Gigs (talk) 23:08, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. Okay. This is sounding more sensible to me than previously. Gonna chew on it a bit. —chaos5023 (talk) 23:12, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Y'know, there are basically only two directions to go from where we are that make any sense (both are ways of avoiding the way to go that the current titles feed into and that doesn't make sense -- the one where we wind up merging these articles to Abortion debate and destroying their article history). One is the current Conclusion and refactoring non-US material to Abortion-rights movements / Anti-abortion movements or something like that; the other is moving these articles to Abortion-rights movements / Anti-abortion movements or whatever so their article history lives there, and making new articles for the US movements. Maybe we could include everybody better and reduce the likelihood of needing more rounds of RFC by presenting both options and their title possibilities at the same time. —chaos5023 (talk) 23:19, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

I would not worry too much about the edit history. Merges and non-trivial moves and forks leave edit histories a little weird all the time. The relevant guidance is WP:CWW BTW. WP:PRESERVE has nothing to do with this and shouldn't be cited. Gigs (talk) 23:57, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, I kind of suffer from the inability to ignore sunk costs on that topic, because the edit history is actually the only reason to give a damn what happens to these exact articles. If it weren't a concern, sure, blow them away with a merge to Abortion debate like the current brain-damaged titles overwhelming call for and then write new articles on the pro-choice and pro-life movements, overviews of abortion-rights and anti-abortion movements, what-have-you, who cares. I'm very nearly only doing any of this because it offends me to think of a perfectly decent resource getting thrown in the trash solely because we as a community can't be bothered to think shit through. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:06, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Two procedural bits

1. Do we really want to have the possibility of these articles ending up at "United States...movement"? Shouldn't options 4-7 be "...movement in the United States"?
2. If this RFC conclude without clear consensus, one page or the other will still need to be moved; if we use descriptive titles like the current "Support for the legalization of abortion" and "Opposition to legal abortion", they should be the same except for "support" and "opposition" — one should be moved to "support for legal abortion" or the other should be moved to "opposition to the legalization of abortion".

No comments on anything else. Nyttend (talk) 02:59, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Arbcom did ask for a vote specifically. Is it even possible to have a no-consensus outcome? I agree that the titles should change to be equivalent even if no other consensus comes out of this. Gigs (talk) 16:12, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

1. Well... why? Formulations in the style "Abortion-rights movement in the United States" and "Anti-abortion movement in the United States" are more verbose and sound like we're talking about the local chapter of a unitary international movement, which has seriously Unfortunate Implications in this situation, and I don't see what they buy us for the price. I'm entirely open to having what they buy us pointed out, though.
2. Yeah, that's true, but it may be best to leave that to subsequent process in the event it's necessary.

Gigs: ArbCom appears to have asked for a vote and then immediately lost the will to sustain that requirement. Nor is this the same RFC as the one they asked for a vote on, and it isn't clear that any of their mandates carry over to here. I communicated with them for a couple months asking whether they wanted to extend the three-year binding thing to this RFC, and while there may have been activity on arbcom-l about it, all I got was silence so I gave up. Long story short, they don't want to be GovCom and we're on our own. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:17, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Go/no go II, the sequel

Okay, it's Friday. It's been a quiet week hereabouts. Are we going to let community feedback start, or hold off for more development? —chaos5023 (talk) 20:13, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Let's go, I guess. Homunq (࿓) 23:04, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

'Kay. I'll mark us as in community feedback phase and see about some publicity. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:38, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

I registered my position, but I hope you can see from my lack of following the voting instructions where I think the deficiencies were in your RfC structure. Gigs (talk) 20:33, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Nuance in pro-choice vs. abortion-rights

refactored from community feedback section because it isn't an opinion on any of the points of the RFC —chaos5023 (talk) 20:29, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

• Comment. I think there is a subtle difference between a "pro-choice" position and an "abortion rights" position, the former advocating laws that make it possible to have an abortion whether a fundamental "right" to the procedure exists at all, and the latter advocating that such a fundamental right indeed exists. One could, in theory, be vehemently opposed to the practice of abortion, and yet at the same time believe that people have a fundamental right to engage in that practice if they so choose, with opposition being focused on convincing people not to exercise this right. Similarly, one could firmly believe that there is no fundamental right to have an abortion, and still believe that the law should allow people to have them. bd2412 T 19:16, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

  All of these things are possible. But I don't think they describe the movement in question, whose primary catchphrase is "the right to choose". --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 19:39, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

  This is basically nothing to do with anything that's our concern. The inane philosophical nuances of all the labels concerned have been hashed out endlessly, there is probably nothing new to say about them and there is definitely nothing interesting or relevant to say about them. Our task is not to philosophize about this nonsense, it's to identify topics in the way that is most useful to readers of an encyclopedia. —chaos5023 (talk) 20:32, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Meta discussion refactored from community feedback section

creating this as a general holding tank for material refactored from the community feedback section of the RFC because it consists of meta discussion of the RFC itself, not responsive participation —chaos5023 (talk) 16:27, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

• This is a total waste of time. The previous 3 discussions on this issue have proven that there is NO CONSENSUS. The only way this issue will be resolved is a binding vote with a pre-determined vote tallying method. Also, it should be noted that the previous RfC is still in progress (although hopelessly gridlocked). Kaldari (talk) 18:48, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

  Right. Because coming into a process that, so far, is showing a strong development of consensus for its core conclusions and a decent evolution of support for specific options, and waving around a crystal ball that says no consensus will ever happen until certain measures are followed that are massively out of keeping with how the Wikipedia community ever does anything -- that makes sense. Except my crystal ball says that the reason no consensus was found in previous discussions is that the terms of those discussions were hopelessly poorly defined, which is not the case here. Whose crystal ball will be right? Such exciting dramatic tension. Also? That RFC is not in progress, it has been closed with a result of no consensus, with said closing not having been challenged in any way. And furthermore being obviously accurate. So why don't you help develop consensus here instead of playing Chicken Little? —chaos5023 (talk) 19:03, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

  Because I've already wasted too much of my life on this never-ending Kafkaesque insanity. Kaldari (talk) 00:22, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

  So pointless naysaying isn't a waste of your time, but registering a productive opinion is. Great, thanks for that. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:48, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

• If the articles get too long because there is so much on each topic, then it would make sense. Right now they are not very long articles so makes sense to keep as is. If you want to split them so much, just make them both REALLY long with lots of info on world and USA and then they'd be split. Otherwise you are wasting our time. CarolMooreDC 20:52, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

  It really doesn't make sense to "keep as is" under any circumstances, for reasons which are extensively discussed in the RFC and on the talk pages of the articles. Most significantly, that to adhere to the current titles would mean an unacceptable situation of having dueling WP:POVFORKs that should be immediately merged to Abortion debate for the sake of WP:NPOV. It is only because we have been indefinitely holding off actually using those titles because they're so wrong that there's anything in this situation left to preserve. Incidentally, it also is not necessary to have any particular length in order to refactor content to articles which identify their topics appropriately. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:51, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

• (Quoting above): This is a total waste of time. The previous 3 discussions on this issue have proven that there is NO CONSENSUS. And there's an ongoing RfC too? CarolMooreDC 18:07, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

  Is there something I should be saying in response to this quotation that I didn't already say in response to the original? tl;dr: no and no. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:59, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

• This is a total waste of time(Echo). We have gone through several of these and this is much too recent for any outcome to overrule the previous decisions. Most participants have ignored the most recent attempt because there were conditions set by ArbCom after the last discussion. This current attempt cannot interfere with the decisions that prior attempts have made. I have no further interest in commenting further. Thanks. Dave Dial (talk) 20:34, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
  • If you have decided to stay away, that is your problem. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 13:20, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Seem to be some awfully fundamental issues of understanding what happened, too. There isn't a question of overriding anything ArbCom had anything to do with because the RFC we tried to hold at ArbCom's prompting failed to resolve. There are no "decisions that prior attempts have made" to "interfere" with. —chaos5023 (talk) 23:30, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

CMJ analysis of community feedback

Okay, I've busted out OpenOffice Calc and attempted an analysis of the community feedback according to User:Homunq/WP voting systems. Please check my work and ask me any questions you might have (such as why I assigned particular numeric values). Some known points:

• Binksternet was almost impossible to score, having apparently changed his position but it's not clear what to, so I scored him as weakly supporting everything.
• When scoring option 8, if somebody didn't mention it at all (as for example by not going back and editing their !vote to accomodate its late addition), if they indicated both support and opposition to other options, I scored them as neutral on 8, but if they indicated only one direction of sentiment, I scored them in the opposite direction on 8, unless they said something that made another approach seem more in keeping with their intent. As with the rest of the scoring, I attempted to follow Homunq's essay's recommendations.
• I tallied up the sentiment on the premises and conclusion just for reference; it's not an alternate-vote situation, and it seems pretty clear that consensus supported the conclusion.
• For informational purposes, I tallied up both the 20%-supermajority and non-20%-supermajority values. There wasn't any meaningful disagreement between them.
• When people didn't mention a premise or the conclusion, I scored them as neutral on it. This probably under-scores some of them, as editors who are simply stating support for a title option without mentioning any of the premises or conclusion are probably tacitly supporting the premises and conclusion, but I thought it slightly better to err on the side of caution.
• Legend: 0 = strong oppose, 1 = oppose, 2 = neutral, 3 = support, 4 = strong support. Some of these have been remapped according to the methodology in User:Homunq/WP voting systems.

Editor	Premise 1	Premise 2	Conclusion	Title 1	Title 2	Title 3	Title 4	Title 5	Title 6	Title 7	Title 8
Gigs	2	2	3	4	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
David in DC	2	2	3	4	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
RGloucester	3	3	4	1	4	1	1	1	1	1	1
Piotrus	3	3	3	1	3	1	1	1	1	1	1
Chaos5023	3	3	4	3	4	1	1	3	1	0	0
20040302	3	3	3	0	4	0	4	4	4	4	2
Homunq	3	3	3	0	2	0	2	4	2	2	1
BlueMoonlet	3	3	3	4	4	1	1	0	1	1	1
Binksternet	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3
Cynwolfe	3	3	3	0	1	0	1	4	1	1	2
S Marshall	3	3	2	0	3	0	3	3	3	3	3
Light-jet pilot	3	3	4	3	4	3	4	0	1	1	1
PerEdman	3	3	3	3	0	0	0	4	0	0	0
Chris the speller	3	3	3	0	0	0	0	4	0	0	0
Lawrence King	3	3	4	0	4	0	3	0	4	3	4
Carlossuarez46	3	3	2	0	0	0	0	4	0	0	0
Wikishagnik	0	2	0	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2
Tyrol5	3	3	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4
Robofish	0	2	0	1	1	1	1	3	1	1	4
Nigelj	0	2	0	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2
JJL	3	2	2	1	1	1	1	4	1	1	1
ABCXYZ	0	0	0	4	0	3	0	0	0	0	0
Student7	2	2	2	0	0	0	0	0	4	0	0
BDD	2	2	2	4	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Anupam	2	2	2	4	3	4	3	0	1	0	1
20% supermajority				0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
20% supermajority				0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
20% supermajority				0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
20% supermajority				0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
20% supermajority				0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Total	56	61	58	40	47	25	35	48	35	28	35
Median with 20% Supermajority				1	1	0.5	1	1	1	1	1
Median without 20% Supermajority				1	2	1	1	2	1	1	1
CMJ with 20% Supermajority				0.67	1.25	0.50	0.83	1.17	0.86	0.63	0.83
CMJ without 20% Supermajority				1.43	1.60	0.69	1.23	1.67	1.20	0.91	1.23

So, unless I've done the math hideously incorrectly, it looks like title option 5, United States abortion-rights movement and United States anti-abortion movement, won both the "popular !vote" (highest raw total) and "electoral !vote" (Continuous Majority Judgment with 20% supermajority) outcomes. Unless a closer sees something very significant in regard to strength of argument, I would commend title option 5, loathe it though I might, to him or her as the outcome of this RFC.

I would also put in that since, as far as I can tell, consensus is very strongly in favor of the Conclusion, that the relatively narrow margin between title option 5 and title option 2 (the only other real contender) should be seen as no obstacle to implementing an outcome, since the community can agree that something should be done. (And if you see strength of argument and policy-grounding reasons to implement option 2 over that moderate head-count differential, great, since it's actually better. :) —chaos5023 (talk) 17:38, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

I can find no mistakes. You didn't actually have to add the extra neutral vote - you just take either the higher or the lower integer as the median, and the formula spits out the correct fractional (x.5) median. But that doesn't change any results in this case, so whatever. Homunq (࿓) 21:53, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

I also think that it is significant that option 5 is the only one with a better-than-neutral raw CMJ score (ie, without the supermajority adjustment). It is also the only option with a supermajority of votes at neutral-or-better (that is, supermajority CMJ score above 1.5). Homunq (࿓) 21:57, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

No, wait. You have Student7 supporting 5 instead of 6. Let me recalculate... ...yes, option 5 still wins, and my "significant" observations still hold, although barely so for the supermajority CMJ (it gets exactly 1.5). Homunq (࿓) 22:08, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

You shouldn't get any different numbers. The error was in my transcription of my spreadsheet to wikitable (now corrected), not the original. —chaos5023 (talk) 22:15, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

You included my original vote, but didn't mention my follow-up (immediately following my original vote) in which I strongly endorsed Title 8 ("Movement in favor of legal abortion in the United States" and "Movement to ban abortion in the United States"). Maybe that's because I didn't use the term "Title 8" in my vote. In my defense, I didn't use the name "Title 8" because when I cast my vote, that option hadn't been given a numeral yet! — Lawrence King ^(talk) 22:38, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Good catch, thanks! Fixed now. —chaos5023 (talk) 09:45, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I've updated the table with the fix for Lawrence King and to add BDD and Anupam's late entries (since I'm pretty sure the point is to get the community's feedback, not to be a hardass about the schedule). Somewhat distressingly, this changes the results, with a slight advantage for title option 2. More interestingly from a voting systems analysis point of view, it causes the 20% supermajority option to make the difference in the results, which if I understand the math correctly means that option 2 is being highlighted as being "less loved" than 5 but also "less hated", and to a slightly greater degree. So, yeah. The grand tradition of not making anything easy on closers continues. —chaos5023 (talk) 09:45, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Drat. Well, as someone who favors option 5, I have to say that, if you include Anupam's vote, then option 2 wins fair and square, according to the voting system as announced. And yes, chaos is correct about why the 20% option swung it; the 50% most-favorable votes for 5 are better than those for 2 (so 2 is "less-loved"), but the 40% least-favorable votes are worse (so 2 is "less-hated"). But I wish it had been cleaner. Homunq (࿓) 17:18, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Another update: I realized that with the participant count up to 24, the 20% supermajority option called for another row of zeroes to be added. This removed the need for the fractional-median-prevention row, which makes everything cleaner, I imagine. I've updated the table accordingly. Mercifully, the rankings didn't change, just the numbers. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:47, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

ps, the fractional-median-prevention was never necessary. You just round the median up or down, and get the same result (something point 5) either way. But in this case, it made no difference to the ranking, so I let you do it. I'm glad it's gone, though. Homunq (࿓) 17:51, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that was mostly me fighting with Calc. :) —chaos5023 (talk) 17:57, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

pps: in fact, the CMJ formula is perfectly capable of handling fractional votes, so the last zero row technically should only count as .8 of a vote. But again, it makes no difference to the rankings, so no big deal. Homunq (࿓) 17:53, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, that's interesting. I was contemplating making a version of the worksheet with entries weighted according to my personal subjective evaluation of strength of argument, but wasn't sure how happy the math would be. Nice to know it could handle it. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:57, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

And another update as I realized that David in DC appeared to mean to register an opinion echoing Gigs's. I used the magic of the TRUNC() function, per Homunq's advice, to avoid having to reinstate the fractional-median-avoidance row. :) No substantive change to final analysis. —chaos5023 (talk) 18:04, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, "no substantive change" isn't quite true. The raw (non-supermajority) median for option 5 dropped below 2, which means that now all options have more opposition than support. Which removes the last reasonable argument for ignoring the "verdict" and choosing option 5 (though you still have the supra-reasonable "just do what Homunq says" argument for option 5). Homunq (࿓) 18:24, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Ahh, gotcha. Well, the obviously cromulent do-what-Homunq-says argument aside, I still very much think a responsible closer could find in good faith that policy and guidelines speak sufficiently strongly for either 2 or 5 as to tilt against the fairly balanced head-count between them.

Possibly also of interest: I made that strength-of-argument-weighted version of my worksheet and put it up at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Abortion advocacy movement coverage/CMJ analysis with SoA. It's probably mostly demonstrative of my opinions about who bothered to participate meaningfully, but it could be helpful, and there's a link to the original spreadsheet document so people can download it and plug in their own subjective numbers. —chaos5023 (talk) 19:17, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Another update, if you can believe it. After experimenting with my strength-of-argument-weighted sheet, I found the CMJ formula to be incredibly sensitive to how the median is handled and easily provoked to give completely insane results. Homunq, you should download my worksheet and check that out, because either I'm doing something hideously wrong or calculating the median is absolutely not as arbitrary and results-neutral as you think it is, especially with fractional votes. What I'm currently doing is using the "non-simplified" CMJ formula, using the actual decimal-if-necessary median and dividing by 1 if there are no votes actually at the median (instead of the division by zero dictated by the unmodified CMJ formula if there are no votes at the median and the same number above and below it). This seems to give non-nuts output, and changes the numbers above slightly. —chaos5023 (talk) 21:50, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Woah. No, wait, stop, you're doing it completely wrong. You don't multiply the numeric grades, you weight them. So if there were 2 half-votes of "support", 1 quarter-vote of "neutral", and 1 vote of "oppose", the median would be "neutral". Since spreadsheets don't know how to do that, you basically have to make 5 cells which count the (weighted) votes at N or above for each N. I think that should be enough for you to figure it out; if not, I can help further. Also if something still looks crazy I'd be interested to hear.

But your unweighted results are still good. Homunq (࿓) 13:12, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure multiplicative exercises are mathematically equivalent to the sort of thing you're talking about. (It's actually the same equivalency as "squaring" a quantity n by drawing a square with sides of length n and counting the units in it to "squaring" n by multiplying it by itself.) Weighted distributions are one of the few bits of math I work with often enough to feel completely comfortable with them. After sleeping on it, I realized that the reason the formula was going nuts is that your basic proposition of how to handle split medians is right, but it requires you to choose either of the nearest actual vote values to the split median, which neither TRUNC() nor ROUND() will reliably do when handling decimal vote values. (But either will work fine with integer votes.) So yeah, it's just a problem with my weighted worksheet. I may see if I can talk my weighted sheet into doing the completely right thing later today, but it's obviously not that important. —chaos5023 (talk) 19:34, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure you're wrong. I think your mistake comes from the fact that your trick does work for averages. But medians are not about proporions, but about tallies. Anyway, this is only relevant for the SOA weighting, so I'm not going to fight about it. Homunq (࿓) 22:13, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Oh, okay, I see what you're saying. Weight their impact on the tally, not on the median calculation. So yeah, not directly equivalent. Seems like it'd give much more extreme changes that what I'm doing, but is certainly more intuitive. Worth checking out; thanks! —chaos5023 (talk) 22:35, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Closure

I've volunteered to close this, but before I do, can I just get some clarification here: Ya'all want me to close pass/fail on each premise and conclusion and then find which title has the most support/consensus to adopt? Is that how this is structured?--v/r - TP 13:49, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

The premises are only important insofar as they inform the conclusion, but otherwise, that's pretty much the structure, yeah. Whether the conclusion has consensus determines whether we should do what it says or not, and if it does, argument around the title options determines how we should do that. If you feel up to rendering a reading around each premise individually, that'd be informative, but it's not necessary to proceed. —chaos5023 (talk) 15:15, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes. And the suggested way to decide on which title has the most support/consensus is Continuous Majority Judgment, with a 20% supermajority; which, as chaos correctly finds in the previous section, makes 2 win over 5 in an annoyingly-close !vote. But of course you are free to discount any !votes that you find to be blatantly ignoring policy, and recount the result (though I wouldn't personally recommend it, even though I favored an outcome of 5 over 2 myself). Homunq (࿓) 17:23, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I'd further put in that, as we never resolved to conduct anything other than a standard WP:NOTVOTE, the CMJ result is strictly advisory and TParis and any other closer(s) are entirely right to use their standard judgment of consensus in finding a result here. So any compelling policy/guideline/strength-of-argument elements should definitely be weighed. That said, I do believe that the voting methodology you, Homunq, put together there does provide a good way of getting at a "Wikipedian", compromise-oriented analysis of participant sentiment, and its advice is worth taking seriously. —chaos5023 (talk) 17:33, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm glad to have closure on this matter even though I had preferred another title option. Thanks! JJL (talk) 21:30, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Second that (though we did wind up with my preferred option). Thanks for a thorough and responsible close, TParis! —chaos5023 (talk) 21:45, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Well done on coming to a conclusion. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:37, 14 November 2012 (UTC)