Talk:US Senate career of Huey Long

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Requested move 2 November 2021[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: Strong consensus not to carry out the proposed move and Consensus to move all to US (etc.) - The need to identify the specific senate was considered important in the discussion for accuracy, the shorter form "senate" was preferred for conciseness, this militated against the originally-proposed moved of the nominator. SMcCandlish's subsequently-proposed move of all to "US" found support from the !voters who !voted subsequent to their proposal, based on conciseness.(non-admin closure) FOARP (talk) 09:53, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

– The use of the term senatorial or congressional substantially shortens the titles, the existing titles being between 23% and 35% longer than those proposed; article title criterion 4). Both terms are commonly used (criteria 1 and 2) and neither introduces any ambiguity (criterion 3: Usually, titles should unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but should be no more precise than that).

(Criterion 5 – consistency – doesn't really come into play here. There is no relevant topic-specific naming convention and these are the only five similarly named articles about specific politicians' tenure in a particular office where the politician didn't sit in two similarly named legislative bodies, except for those articles that begin with Chancellorship of, Chief Ministership of, Governorship of, Labour Party leadership of, Mayoralty of, Premiership of, or Presidency of. Theoretically, we could use Senatorship of for four of the articles, but I don't think this usage would meet the naturalness criterion.) 207.161.86.162 (talk) 05:19, 2 November 2021 (UTC) — Relisting. VR talk 00:15, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support - The proposed titles are clear improvements along the naturalness and concision criteria (especially so for the pre-2000 McCain article), and still preserve enough information to be unambiguous. ModernDayTrilobite (talk) 16:10, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Update: Based on the arguments by SMcCandlish and others below, I'm changing my !vote to support "United States Senate..." → "US Senate..." for the relevant articles. Wasted Time R points out that articles such as Illinois Senate career of Barack Obama make "Senatorial career..." ambiguous, and so "US Senate career..." helps bring about concision without introducing that ambiguity. ModernDayTrilobite (talk) 15:00, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – The title of these biographical subarticles isn't the problem. It's that readers either don't know they exist or don't want to read them if they do know. I've been tracking this for years and there is typically a several hundred-to-one up to thousand-to-one ratio in page views between a biographical main article and subarticles like these. For instance:
  • Huey Long · FA · 1/1/2021 - 11/1/2021 · 758,764 pageviews
  • United States Senate career of Huey Long · B · 1/1/2021 - 11/1/2021 · 2,351 pageviews
  • John McCain · FA · 1/1/2021 - 11/1/2021 · 1,480,076 pageviews
  • United States House and Senate career of John McCain (until 2000) · GA · 1/1/2021 - 11/1/2021 · 1,487 pageviews
I doubt that tweaking the subarticles' titles is going to change that much. Wasted Time R (talk) 21:38, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That may be a fair question but I don't know that it's germane. This proposal doesn't aim to address the issue you're raising and the outcome of this discussion doesn't really have any bearing on it one way or the other. Perhaps it would be worth opening a discussion separate from the RM either here or at another suitable venue (e.g., WT:POLITICS/US, WT:USG, WT:POLITICSBIO). 207.161.86.162 (talk) 00:17, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It would be relevant if the changed name fared better in search engine results. As it stands, when you do say this search, up pops the Wikipedia main bio article not the Wikipedia subarticle specific to that topic. Wasted Time R (talk) 10:30, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose "Congressional" might be acceptable, but "Senatorial" is an awkward term and rarely used. "Senate career" is more common and natural, e.g. a google search of the phrases "Kennedy's senatorial career" yields 98 hits, "Kennedy's congressional career" yields 257 hits, while "Kennedy's senate career" yields 2,040 hits. Precision may be warranted, as there are State Senates, and many politicians have careers there too. Walrasiad (talk) 05:41, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Walrasiad: The term senatorial career is much more common than senate career in scholarly sources and other sources written in an encyclopedic register. In line with the guidance at WP:TONE, Articles and other encyclopedic content should be written in a formal tone. ... Encyclopedic writing has a fairly academic approach, while remaining clear and understandable. Accordingly, citations of the number of Google Search hits a given term gets must be taken with more than a grain of salt as Google Search is indexing primarily popular (e.g., journalistic) sources. It seems like this argument is using the common-style fallacy, to borrow SMcCandlish's coinage. (And I'm not sure why we're including "Kennedy" in our search – for whatever reason, the numbers including "Kennedy" exaggerate the difference in the number of Google hits between "senatorial career" and "senate career".)
When we look at the Google Ngram Viewer, which indexes a variety of types of sources but is much less biased towards popular sources, we find that over the past 50 years the term senatorial career is used 14 times more frequently than senate career. Even over the past decade, the use of the term senate career in books is negligible in comparison to senatorial career. So if you feel that senatorial career sounds awkward, that would seem to be your personal disposition towards the term rather than anything reflecting common usage in an encyclopedic register.
Precision may be warranted, as there are State Senates, and many politicians have careers there too. I address this in my reply to Wasted Time R, but as our article titles policy provides at WP:PRECISE, Usually, titles should unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but should be no more precise than that. Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Huey Long, and John McCain never sat in state senates. For those who sat in the US Senate and a state senate, of course further disambiguation would be required for an article focused on either their federal or state senatorial career. (For the same reason our article about the Western Australian state politician Dan Sullivan is located at Dan Sullivan (Australian politician), whereas the titles of our articles about the American politicians named Dan Sullivan – Dan Sullivan (Anchorage mayor) and Dan Sullivan (U.S. senator) – require further disambiguation.) The only articles in this group are two articles about Barack Obama. They would remain at their existing titles, which serve as a form of natural disambiguation. 207.161.86.162 (talk) 02:34, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The readers of Wikipedia are a general audience, not academics or scholars. I am aiming for the principle of common name and recognizability. I used "Kennedy" to hook the phrase and ensure we are talking about the United States Senate (JFK, RFK and Edward Kennedy were well-known US senators, and are much written about), and not, say, the Roman Senate or other irrelevant ancient or medieval assemblies where archaic and obscure terms might find more usage. A quick search for "senatorial career" alone the results overwhelmingly refer to the Roman senate. Which is not the subject here. Walrasiad (talk) 02:48, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) @Walrasiad: The readers of Wikipedia are a general audience, not academics or scholars. That's obviously true. But how do you reconcile your position of deference to specifically popular sources with WP:TONE? Is this not an instance of the kind of original research discussed by Wikipedia:Common-style fallacy? And are you not arguing that if a particular typographic stylization turns up commonly in newspapers, blogs, and other popular publications with a less formal register of English usage than the precise language of encyclopedic writing, that the newsy or bloggy stylization is the best or only way to write about the topic in question, and must be used on Wikipedia?
I used "Kennedy" to hook the phrase and ensure we are talking about the United States Senate ... Given that popular sources skew overwhelmingly in favour of contemporary topics, particularly with respect to politics, might it be worth posting what those numbers are when we take out "Kennedy"? 207.161.86.162 (talk) 03:33, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You are reading far too much into "formal tone", and confusing it with stuffy and scholarly (and perhaps foreign?). Particularly in article titles, we are looking for WP:COMMONNAME, with an emphasis on recognizability. "Senatorial" is not a word commonly used, particularly not to refer to the US Senate. Indeed, adjectival forms are rarely used in reference to US politics - for instance, we don't say "Senatorial elections", we say "Senate elections" (we also say "Virginia elections" and not "Virginian elections", and "Massachusetts politician" and not "Massachusettsian politician"). One of those peculiarities of common language in US politics - apparently the only adjectival forms we tolerate are "Presidential" and "Congressional", everything else reverts to nominal form. That is the formal language used in this context. It is how it is preponderantly used in books, newspapers, etc. when referring to the US Senate (as the Kennedy example demonstrate clearly) (story might be different for the Roman senate, but that's irrelevant here) It is archaic and uncommon to refer to the US Senate in the adjectival form. Purge out all mentions of Roman history in your results, and maybe we can revisit. Until then, my opposition to move stands, as strongly as ever.
Since you seem to have something against the Kennedys, we can check out searches for "Clinton's senatorial career" (6 hits) vs. "Clinton's senate career" (801 hits), or "McCain's senatorial career" (7 hits) vs. "McCain's senate career" (750 hits). The difference is dramatic. Would you really like to go on? Walrasiad (talk) 04:21, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ngrams - when we consider capitalization a considerably different result is returned. BilledMammal (talk) 14:27, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
True – note that there is both United States Senate career of Barack Obama and Illinois Senate career of Barack Obama. How would this proposed move handle them? Wasted Time R (talk) 10:30, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Wasted Time R: As I noted in the original proposal, the articles affected by the proposal are:

the only five similarly named articles about specific politicians' tenure in a particular office where the politician didn't sit in two similarly named legislative bodies, except for those articles that begin with Chancellorship of, Chief Ministership of, Governorship of, Labour Party leadership of, Mayoralty of, Premiership of, or Presidency of.[a]

The only such articles a where the politician did sit in two similarly named legislative bodies are those two articles about Obama.
This proposal would leave them at their existing titles for the purpose of disambiguation. This is in accordance with article title criterion 4 – concision – which states, The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects, as well as criterion 3 – precision – which states, Usually, titles should unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but should be no more precise than that.
Natural disambiguation is handled much the same way as parenthetical disambiguation in this regard. For example, our standard qualifier for parenthetical disambiguation for politicians is (politician), but in cases such as the name Dan Sullivan, Dan Sullivan (politician) remains ambiguous, so we qualify it further by adding the subject's nationality, as in Dan Sullivan (Australian politician). And sometimes even that is insufficient for disambiguation, so we have to use an even more specific and precise qualifier, as in Dan Sullivan (Anchorage mayor) and Dan Sullivan (U.S. senator).
The fact that greater specificity and precision is sometimes required for disambiguation is no reason for its use across the board, especially when there's only one case where such specificity and precision is needed. We have to assess this through the application of the five article title criteria. And in the case of the consistency criterion (criterion 5), the criterion presumes that a consistent formula for disambiguation – a formula which may result in differing degrees of specificity – is not undesirable. This is evident from the fact that the policy cites our topic-specific naming conventions as an example of the application of the criterion and these conventions routinely provide for disambiguators that are no more specific than necessary.[b] 207.161.86.162 (talk) 01:08, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per WP:PRECISE. WP has an actual need to specify what kind of senate, and to do so WP:CONSISTENTly. While the OP is correct that "senatorial" is a word and is often enough used in this kind of construction, so is "senate" on both counts and it is more WP:CONCISE.
    More concise still: Move to "US Senate career of Huey Long". We routinely abbreviate "United States" when we do not need to spell it out, and this is clearly such a case.
     — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:21, 5 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @SMcCandlish: How does this proposal propose handling the article about John McCain's 20th-century congressional career? Would it use use the title "Congressional career of John McCain (until 2000)"? Or "US congressional career of John McCain (until 2000)"? Because "US House ... Career" is an awkward construction and is rather wordy combined with the words "and Senate". 207.161.86.162 (talk) 04:58, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    It would be "US congressional", since the states also have congresses (though some call them assembly and senate instead of house and senate).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:59, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Relister's comment: pinging previous !voters to discuss the proposal by SMcCandlish above: @ModernDayTrilobite:, @Wasted Time R:, @Walrasiad: and IP notified.VR talk 00:19, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move all "United States" to "U.S." for conciseness. Keep the rest the same. BD2412 T 05:31, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Without the dots, for conciseness. See MOS:US; we use "US" an any context where consistency with "UK", etc., comes up, and in article titles it obviously does.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:01, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - If you have to move'em? then go with US Senate career.... GoodDay (talk) 07:08, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per others, needs to specify which Senate. Would prefer "U. S. Senate" with periods though to not scan as "us" if there's a desire to shorten it, but I'm not sure there's even any need to do that. SnowFire (talk) 14:25, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

  1. ^ Emphasis added in bold.
  2. ^ The text of criterion 5 is as follows: The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. Many of these patterns are listed (and linked) as topic-specific naming conventions on article titles, in the box above [emphasis in original].
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.

Requested move 18 March 2022[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: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Calidum 00:59, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]


US Senate career of Huey Long → United States Senate career of Huey Long – @GoodDay:; @SnowFire:; @SMcCandlish:; @FOARP:; @ModernDayTrilobite: There are numerous problems with titling a page "US Senate career of [politician]". First of all, "US" is not American English, so if the title were to be abbreviated, it would need to be "U.S. Senate career of". This would be consistent with the titles of other articles concerning American subjects, such as U.S. Routes or independent agencies of the United States government. However, it also does not make much sense to abbreviate the title in the first place. The page "United States Senate" is not abbreviated as "U.S. Senate", nor "United States" as "U.S.", and neither should these articles. State senate articles, such as Illinois Senate career of Barack Obama, are not titled "I.L. Senate career of Barack Obama", so I don't see why U.S. Senate articles should be. Also, I noticed that the article United States Senate career of Barack Obama was not moved, although that could be due to the editors not being aware that the article existed. In any case, I would strongly support a move back to the original titles. -- Politicsfan4 (talk) 17:16, 18 March 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. ---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 20:24, 26 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

On the first point, MOS:USA and long-standing consensus disagrees with your assertion that U.S. is mandated by American English. The guideline says "While, in principle, either US or U.S. may be used (with internal consistency) to abbreviate "United States" in any given article..." with no references to an WP:ENGVAR preference for one or the other. In cases where other abbreviations such as UK or USSR appear, moreover, use of US is mandated so as to avoid mixing styles. In reality, lots of American sources write "US", so there's no reason for us to switch from that to any other format. I also think it's a common enough abbreviation that it's correct to use it here instead of the longer "United States", per WP:CONCISE if nothing else. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 14:44, 18 March 2022 (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.
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