Talk:Richard Wright

Primary topic for Richard Wright

Richard Wright (musician) has 32442 views in April 2009 and Richard Wright (author) has 19273 views. From this it seems that there is no clear primary topic per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC "significantly more commonly searched for and read than other topics". Tassedethe (talk) 07:01, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Comparison of recent months shows that the gap is not as significant as this particular sample. A sample of the reference works in the Gale database "Biography in Context" shows that the author appears in 15, the musician in 4. The Encyclopedia Britannica has a multi-screen entry on the former, one paragraph on the latter. The first Google internet search and Google Scholar search are for the author and naturally the first several screens of Google Books are hits for the author. Additionally, numerous reference works and obituaries cite the musician's name as Rick, so instead of disambiguating one or both, why not just move one to Richard and one to Rick? So, being bold and all that, I'm going to do this. Gamaliel (talk) 20:05, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I have restored this as I feel it needs a proper WP:RM discussion. The current page views don't show the author as "much more likely than any other, and more likely than all the others combined" as per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Tassedethe (talk) 19:12, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I also restored Richard Wright (musician). The Guardian[1] and BBC[2] obituaries both refer to him as Richard Wright. Tassedethe (talk) 19:17, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I think this was a bad reversion; it makes sense to do this to avoid modifiers on the title. The obituaries are obviously going to refer to him by his full, proper name. Rick Wright is a very common rendition of the musician's name; I'm certain some of the WikiProject Pink Floyd editors could back that up using biographies and autobiographies. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 19:34, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

As the article has been at Richard Wright (musician) since 2 August 2008, and he died on 15 September 2008, it seems odd that nobody has discussed moving the article in all that time. Tassedethe (talk) 19:53, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, the Guardian uses Rick in the text of the obit, Richard in the headline. "Rick Wright Pink Floyd" = 831,000 Google hits, "Richard Wright Pink Floyd" returns 437,000. Gamaliel (talk) 19:59, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Requested 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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Consensus is that there is no primary topic. Dpmuk (talk) 21:10, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

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Richard Wright → Richard Wright (disambiguation) — Listed here at the request of the editor who reverted my page move. Moved on the basis of overwhelming scholarly and public prominence as demonstrated by listings in numerous reference works and Encyclopedia Britannica, and search results in Google, Google Scholar, and Google Books. Other editor objects on the basis of Wikipedia page views. Gamaliel (talk) 20:41, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

• Richard Wright (author) → Richard Wright
• Richard Wright (musician) → Rick Wright
  • Oppose as above. The musician is clearly known as Richard Wright, as evidenced by The Guardian[3], BBC[4] and NY Times[5] obituaries. Also the official announcement on the Pink Floyd website[6] and his bio at Allmusic[7]. The pageview statistics show that the musician is consistently the more viewed page on Wikipedia compared to the author. The WP:PRIMARYTOPIC guidelines state there is only a primary topic when one page is "much more likely than any other, and more likely than all the others combined", a condition which has not been met. Tassedethe (talk) 15:09, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

I concur. I've never heard of the author or a single one of the many books he has written; there's no way he's more prominent than one of the most recognized keyboardists in the world. That said, however, I have seen roughly equal prevalency between Rick and Richard. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 06:28, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Black Boy was required reading in my high school (and a very good book). I am also a huge Pink Floyd fan. They're both very famous. A Google books search returns 17,400 results for the author using just this one book of his many works as a false-positive limiter <"richard wright" "black boy">

• Oppose I am a bit buffaloed by the Google Books (and scholar) results I've just checked but I'm still coming down on oppose on balance. Both Black Boy and Native Son were required reading in my high school (and very good books) but I am a huge Pink Floyd fan and if you woke me up at 3 am and said "quick, who's Pink Floyd's keyboardist", I would say Richard Wright without batting an eye. They're both very famous. Yet Google books results are massively in favor of the author—a huge disparity: 17,400 results for him using just one of his his many works as a false-positive limiter (meaning there would be many more if we had a perfect search that would find him in all contexts) <"richard wright" "black boy"> with <"richard wright" "pink floyd"> returning just 752 results (a 23:1 disparity). Scholar also strongly favors the author. Nevertheless, news archive results split them about evenly as does web. I think this has a lot to do with how an author's works, verses a musician's are treated by the world--books will contain more scholarly mention of an author; news will reflect a musician's fame more evenly. Coupling this with the page view statistics, there does not appear to be a primary topic.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:06, 27 February 2011 (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. No further edits should be made to this section.