 | This is an essay on Wikipedia:Article Titles, Wikipedia:Disambiguation and WP:RMCI policy/guideline pages. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: RM closers: If there are strong policy-based reasons to move to the proposed title, and the move would result in a situation where there are no strong policy-based reasons to move the article back, community consensus favors the move even if there is no consensus among the RM participants to move. Go ahead and move it accordingly. |
The eight year saga of discussions and repeated proposals on the titling of Yoghurt, ultimately resolved simply by restoring the original title, Yogurt, inspired the writing of this essay to remind WP:RM discussion closers of the following:
- The closer's duty is to determine community consensus regarding the title of the article in question, not just the WP:LOCALCONSENSUS of the participants.
- Though there may be no WP:LOCALCONSENSUS among those that happen to be participating in the discussion, that doesn't mean there is no community consensus regarding the title.
- Community consensus about the title in question is not determined by counting !votes, but by an analysis of the arguments presented in the discussion, especially by evaluating the arguments based on how well they are based in policy, guidelines and conventions (because those reflect community consensus).
This is especially important to consider in situations where there has been a history of "no consensus" closes, as was the case with Yogurt. There, the title, Yogurt vs. Yoghurt, was disputed for seven years involving no less than eight RM discussions, most closed as no consensus. Arguably, in all of these discussions, the support (move to Yogurt) side was supported by stronger policy-based arguments, particularly arguments based on what is now known as WP:RETAIN, and WP:COMMONNAME, but closing admins seemed reluctant to find consensus because of large numbers of weak opposing !votes. With the notable exceptions of RM #2 (which was reversed by RM #3 by dubious reasoning), and RM #8 (which finally ended the saga), they closed the discussions as "no consensus". See #Yogurt title history.
In all eight of the Yogurt vs. Yoghurt RM discussions, the main support arguments were, essentially:
- the original established title of the article was Yogurt, and it had been moved, without sufficiently broad input, contrary to WP:ENGVAR and WP:RETAIN, to Yoghurt, and
- the spelling without the h complied better with WP:COMMONNAME because it was more commonly used overall, and because it was commonly used even in those English speaking regions where the h variant was more common.
Further, it was argued, repeatedly[1] [2] [3] [4] [5], that if the article was moved to Yogurt, there would be no equally strong policy-based argument to move it back to Yoghurt. Indeed, since the move was finally made at the end of 2011, the eight-year-long dispute about the title of that article was finally resolved.
Once the article was moved from Yoghurt to Yogurt all discussion about the title simply ended, because, as had been predicted for years, once moved there was nothing to discuss: no serious grounds on which to propose a move. Had the closing admins found in favor of the move because of the substantially stronger policy-based arguments, and lack of strong counter arguments that would support a reverse move, that dispute would likely have been resolved much sooner. Years sooner.
Contentious title conflicts could and should be resolved sooner if RM discussion closers would take their duty to determine community consensus seriously, and to not be dissuaded from doing so just because there is no consensus among discussion participants.
- ^ May 16, 2007 reason,
Once the title is "yogurt", there will be no clear reason to change back to "yoghurt", and the article name will stabilize.
- ^ January 28, 2009 reply,
You can disagree all you want, but the fact is that since this article was originally at yogurt, and because by every reasonable measure yogurt is the more commonly used name, people will justifiably seek to have this article moved back to yogurt, until it is moved back, or forever, whichever comes first. Mark. My. Words.
- ^ June 23, 2009 comment,
Because of all of the above, this move will continue to be proposed, sooner or later, over and over, as long as this article remains at yoghurt.
Because of the dearth of arguments in favor of having this article be at yoghurt in the first place (the only arguments presented are against change, not in favor of yoghurt over yogurt), if the article is moved to yogurt it will be stable there.
- ^ July 8 2009 Support,
Keeping this page at Yoghurt has not resulted in a ceasefire. There is a lot of reason to believe that moving this article to Yogurt will finally achieve an end to this simply because there are no strong objective arguments that support Yoghurt over Yogurt as there are supporting Yogurt over Yoghurt.
- ^ 27 May 2011 problematic,
Despite WP:LAME#Yogurt, moves based on WP:COMMONNAME are quite normal. What's problematic with the current title is that it is regularly challenged because it so blatantly violates WP:COMMONNAME. That would not be the case if the title was changed, because there would no longer be a WP:COMMONNAME violation if the article was at Yogurt.