Talk:Chair of the Labour Party (UK)

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Requested move 6 April 2020[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: MOVED. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 17:59, 26 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]


Chairman of the Labour Party (UK) → Chair of the Labour Party (UK) – Should be unisex now that it's a woman in charge. Unreal7 (talk) 00:10, 6 April 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. buidhe 04:59, 18 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support, as the party are referring to the position as 'Chair of the Labour Party'. Mattythewhite (talk) 01:00, 6 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Likely WP:TOOSOON as reliable secondary sources continue to refer to the position as "chairman"[1][2][3] - a term that is, by the way, already unisex. -- Netoholic @ 03:50, 6 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose until we know if the party officially changes the title. The title should be based on what the party calls it. They may choose to retain "chairman" as the title despite a woman holding the office. Rreagan007 (talk) 05:08, 6 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, is referred to as Chair in the press briefings, labour's website, by Rayner herself, and on her parliamentary page (https://members.parliament.uk/member/4356/career ).--Turbo174 (talk) 19:28, 7 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Merriam-Webster defines "chairman" as the presiding officer of a meeting, organization, committee, or event. Cambridge dictionary defines "chairman" a person in charge of a meeting or organization. From these defintions "officer" and "person" are already gender neutral so I oppose the change. Furthermore, the two women have previously held the position: Hazel Blears and Harriet Harman. Regards  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 20:41, 8 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Per the commentary from @User:Spy-cicle JLo-Watson (talk) 20:58, 8 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. The party has already been using "chair" even when it was a man: [4]. This is different from the massive and controversial Talk:Chairperson/Archive 3#Requested move 22 March 2019, where a majority acknowledged that "chair" was superior to all other options except for the fact that it was not the primary topic, and support for that option (myself included) dropped dramatically when tied to a parenthetical disambiguator. Here there is no such ambiguity and "chair" is the way to go. To Netoholic's point, secondary sources do in fact use "chair", and have done so for quite some time: [5], [6], [7]. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:24, 13 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Business Insider is not a generally reliable source and the same can be said for The Canary. The BBC News article you did cite used both "chair" and "chairman". "Chairman" in this situation is clearly the WP:COMMONNAME [8], [9], [10], [11], [12]. Regards  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 20:43, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Here are some more for chair: [13], [14], [15]. I'm sure that we'll both be able to find dozens or more for "chair" as well as "chairman" as both are commonly used, so the number of examples we each can provide isn't really a good metric. To measure their relative frequency, I tried to search "Angela Rayner" and see what comes up, but unfortunately the vast majority of sources refer to her as the "deputy leader", outstripping both choices by such a large margin that sampling by hand is impossible. So all we can say is that both are valid choices but "chair" has the added benefit of complying with MOS:GNL. Meanwhile you haven't proven that "chairman" is the WP:COMMONNAME. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 20:59, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. The party used described the first chair of the Labour Party, Charles Clarke in 2001 as "Labour Party Chair" on its website. Same for John Reid in 2002, Ian MacCartney as "Labour Party chair" in 2005. So I'm not sure how it can possibly be WP:TOOSOON. Secondary coverage has used both over a long period of time, with more having used "chairman" than "chair" overall: but not enough to make the "significant majority" of RS coverage that WP:COMMONNAME asks for. Across the five WP:NAMINGCRITERIA, using "chair" is preferable according to conciseness. Across the other criteria, there's no difference with recognisability, consistency or precision. I'd say it's better in naturalness but some would object to that. Overall, I think the fact that "Chair" is the form that the party has used since the role was established is enough to comfortably use it for this article. Ralbegen (talk) 15:36, 21 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Ralbegen (above). Disregard all comments and !votes arguing whether chair or -man "is correct"; it only matters what the usage actually is, not what anyone thinks it ought/n't to be! DBD 14:23, 22 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    @DBD: - The requestor's only rationale given is what it "ought to be" in the way you describe, so I guess it should also be ignored? -- Netoholic @ 19:13, 22 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    @Netoholic: Fair observation; but now that we're discussing it, does it matter why we are? DBD 19:30, 22 April 2020 (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.

Requested move 2 May 2020[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: No consensus. Sceptre (talk) 07:39, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]


Chair of the Labour Party (UK) → Chair of the Labour Party – There are no other Labour chairs on Wikipedia. Unreal7 (talk) 09:55, 2 May 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. buidhe 22:08, 9 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support per WP:PRECISE. Ralbegen (talk) 11:25, 2 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Labour Party goes to the disambig page, with dozens of Labour Parties throughout the world. Maybe this article should be consistent with the Labour Party (UK) article? Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 07:19, 3 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I'm a bit torn on this one. I think we don't include parenthetical disambiguators when the specific topic cannot plausibly exist for any other entity, such as Governor of Georgia and President of Georgia. However, we do disambiguate when the thing can plausibly refer to the other entity but doesn't actually exist, e.g. Paleontology in Georgia (U.S. state) with a primary redirect from Paleontology in Georgia. So perhaps it depends on whether a position called "Chair" exists (in the real world) for the other Labour Parties. Though, maybe it's not quite comparable, as "Paleontology in Georgia" is a WP:NDESC that we made up while "Chair of the Labour Party" is an official title. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:33, 4 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Difficult, the current policy seems to favour no disambiguation, but IMO this particular disambiguator does improve Wikipedia. So I say, IAR and perhaps investigate the issues very well raised by King of Hearts above. Andrewa (talk) 20:48, 9 May 2020 (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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