Talk:Crusader

Suggested move

The following discussion is an archived 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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. While valid points were raised on both sides, the result is no consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:15, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

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Crusader → Crusader (disambiguation) – The primary meaning of the term is "one who goes on a crusade". It should redirect to Crusades, just as "crusade" does. If an editor links to "crusader", or a reader searches for "crusader", what else could they be expecting but the articles on the Crusades? If they wanted the tank or the ship, they would add "tank" or "ship" to the search, no? If they were hoping for an article on crusaders, the best we can give them, for now, is Crusades. Srnec (talk) 00:37, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Oppose I usually think of the F-8 or the tank more than the Christian knight. Even the generic crusader (one who campaigns for a cause) is more likely than the Crusades. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 05:57, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support based on incoming links, which all relate to the Crusades. bd2412 T 15:36, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

• Thankyou. Srnec (talk) 23:11, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose Should be quite an easy distinction to make from the disambig page for those who do mean it...Brigade Piron (talk) 15:41, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose Even though I agree with the folks in the Crusades being the primary use, I can't see the need for renaming when the vanilla page would become a redirect to Crusades. Being a redirect pretty much takes the wind out of the sails of being the primary use for me.--Lineagegeek (talk) 22:07, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

• I have no idea what your last sentence means. Srnec (talk) 23:11, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose The medieval Crusaders are undoubtedly a significant topic, but not the first subject that comes to my mind when I hear the word. "Crusader" is such a broad term, the disambiguation deserves to stay where it is, on the primary page. Timothy Titus ^{Talk To TT} 01:00, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

• I think some are misconstruing my argument. I'm not suggesting that the Christian knight is the first subject to come to anybody's mind when the word is mentioned. I'm saying that nobody would expect crusader to link to any of the things on the disambiguation page besides Crusades, since Christian knight who goes on a crusade is a crusader, but the tank is a Crusader tank, and the ship is HMS Crusader and the F-8 is, well, the F-8 Crusader. An editor who links to "crusader" is expecting it to go to "Crusades", since no smart editor would expect a link to "crusader" to bring him to the page on the ship. This is what the incoming links show, as BD2412 has pointed out. A reader who searches for "crusader" is expecting to wind up here or at Crusades, since every smart reader knows that neither the tank, nor the ship(s), nor the jet is the primary meaning of "crusader". This is why it is no inconvenience to force the searcher who types just "crusader" when they're looking for a tank to click through a hatnote, which already exists at Crusades (and needs no modifying).
  I'd also like to ask these editors why, if "crusader" is such a broad term that it needs to be a dab page, "crusade" itself is not? Srnec (talk) 02:36, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

• Support. Sorry, but the primary meaning of the term is clearly the medieval soldiers and that is what will almost certainly be linked from the word. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:53, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
• The following appeared on the Main page today. Guess what word had to be pipe-linked? It is also unmodified, apparently with the expectation that the reader would know what it refers to: "... that Khawabi, a village and medieval castle in northwestern Syria, was captured in the early 12th century by the Crusaders, who assigned its governorship to a local lord?" Srnec (talk) 00:24, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment aren't people supposed to check the links on the main page before it goes live? -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 05:19, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
    • The link was fine. My point was that it was piped, because otherwise Crusaders would have brought readers here. Yet the blurb itself does not identify what a Crusader is. Could you imagine a blurb like that referring to the Crusaders tanks without using the word "tank"? Srnec (talk) 08:37, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
      • Yes, because I've seen that outside of Wikipedia, (and the airplane as well). And most of the time "crusader" refers to someone with a cause (like a guy with a lawsuit) so doesn't even refer to the Christian knights, outside of Wikipedia. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 00:56, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
        • I'm talking about a DYK blurb, not a book on World War II or on airplanes. Obviously, when the context is right, you can call the tank a Crusader without using the word "tank". But if the blurb had said, "a village in northwestern Lybia was captured in World War II by some Crusaders, assisted by infantry?", would this not be awfully oblique? In a way that the actual blurb about Crusaders was not? Srnec (talk) 07:20, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

"Oppose because the primary meaning of the term is not one who fought in the Crusades but an activist who fights for a cause. The Crusades happened hundreds of years before Modern English developed and the words crusade and crusader did not enter the English language until the 18th century.[1] If "crusader" was mentioned in conversation, I would think "activist" not "knight fighting in the Middle East". See Children's Crusade (civil rights). We also need to remember the various small-c crusades such as the Reconquista. The current strong connection between The Crusades and generic crusader is a post September-11th phenomena, at least in the West. --Iloilo Wanderer (talk) 04:52, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

What a bizarre idea. The medieval English word was "croiserie", but it was replaced in the early 16th century by "croisade" (from French), which gave us "croisader" (from croisadeur), then in the early 18th century, under the influence of Spanish cruzada, these became "crusade" and "crusader". It was Thomas Jefferson who first used it to refer to anything other than a Christian fighting a holy war. The Reconuista was very much a large-c crusade. If "crusader" is generic, why aren't crusade, crusades and crusaders? Srnec (talk) 23:45, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

• Support. This isn't Wiktionary. If we want to indicate that the term can be used generically as well, then "Crusader" should redirect to "Crusades", and "Crusades" should have, which it does already, a distinguishing template directing the reader to "Crusader (disambiguation)". This seems to be fairly textbook WP:PTOPIC. I think the point Srnec made is well-taken that prior to the very recent past, the term "Crusader", when used in a general context (ie: not a discussion about tanks or airplanes or whatever) almost exclusively referred to a christian knight fighting in the holy land, Spain, or Eastern Europe against non-Christians. I think if someone has concerns about the Reconquista, then the Reconquista needs to be more fully addressed in the "Crusades" article. Even when the term was used metaphorically (for instance, to describe Elizabeth Cady Stanton as a "crusader for women's rights), it was used only because it creates an immediate mental reference to the concept of a medieval knight fighting (ostensibly) for a religious cause rather than for dynastic (ie: personal) gain (again, in theory, if not in practice). Cdtew (talk) 14:23, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support, very much agree with the comment above - well put! --IIIraute (talk) 14:35, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. Someone looking for a specific topic called "crusader" is wanting something more specific than a search for "crusade" or "crusades". They should be taken straight to this disambiguation page. Incoming (external) links to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusader should go straight to the disambiguation page, as per the status quo. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:14, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

• What somebody looking specifically for "crusader" wants may be a disambiguation page, but if they don't know which crusader it is that they want when they conduct their search, what is the harm in making them click the dabnote atop the crusades article? And "as per the status quo" is the epitome of a non-argument. Srnec (talk) 23:46, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

• I think someone searching for "crusader" is more likely to be looking for an unusual usage, and so the DAB page is where they should turn up first. Also note that crusade contains very little information about individual crusaders. Category:People of the Crusades is probably want they want, giver that there is no article (or content that I find) on crusaders in general. I have added this link to the DAB page. "as per the status quo" was not intended as an argument. What I mean is that how I think things should be happens to be as they are now, in case it wasn't clear. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:19, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

• Support as primary topic for the single-word title, as proposed and well explained above. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:30, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
• Suppport. The question isn't what people think of when they hear the word "Crusader", it's which of the set number of ambiguous Wikipedia uses is the primary topic over the others. In this case, a fighter of the Crusades is clearly the primary topic by Wikipedia standards; the ambiguous uses can be found just as easily via a hatlink.--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:54, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose With so many entries on the dab, this isn't going to fit WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. I agree with SmokeyJoe; a reader specifically searching for "Crusader" probably isn't just looking for the Crusades. If I could conceive of a group of readers who would know the term "Crusader" but not "Crusades," I could see this move as helpful, but that just beggars belief. --BDD (talk) 19:53, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

• What about the reader trying find an article on the people who went on Crusade, i.e. the Crusaders? There are more than enough sources to support the creation of such an article in the future. What should it be called? Srnec (talk) 23:19, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

List of principal Crusaders. --BDD (talk) 23:38, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Not a list of Crusaders (which I created), an article about who they were. Where did they come from, why did they go, what social class did they belong to, how wealthy were they, were there crusading families or kin-groups? Srnec (talk) 00:02, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

(Didn't notice you created that article. Embarrassing.) Perhaps we could expand that article, then. Either way, until such an article exists, I'd prefer keeping this as a dab to redirecting it to Crusades. --BDD (talk) 00:50, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.