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Talk:Teeswater sheep

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Latest comment: 10 years ago by BlindEagle in topic Requested move 25 August 2014
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Requested move 25 August 2014

Latest comment: 10 years ago33 comments12 people in discussion

Teeswater sheep → Teeswater (sheep) – Revert undiscussed move, see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive847 #Undiscussed page moves by SMcCandlish. I'd hoped someone else might deal with this, but it seems not. There are a lot of these (this is just a first instalment), so please excuse (and ignore) any listings that are for any reason incorrect. Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 16:10, 9 September 2014 (UTC) Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:34, 25 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

This is a contested technical request (permalink). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 21:06, 25 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Survey

  • There are several radically different, even contradictory, types of move proposals here:
    1. Teeswater sheep → Teeswater (sheep) and the majority of the other cases: Oppose per WP:NATURAL. There's no reason at all to force unnatural disambiguation on these names. It's completely routine to disambiguate, in everyday speech and writing, everywhere, by everyone, in the form of adding the species name after the breed name, across the board, for all species of domestic animals. If you have a Cymric cat, you can reasonably say "I have a Cymric" to someone who knows cat breeds, and write that in a column you're submitting to a cat publciation, but you automatically use "I have a Cymic cat" any time you're addressing an audience that isn't necessarily going to know what you're talking about, which is always the case with Wikipedia when the name is ambiguous without it. The only exceptions to this practice are a) when the species name is already included in the formal breed name (e.g. American Quarter Horse, or b) when some alternative, unambiguous word or suffix for the species name is part of the formal breed name (e.g. Hound, -hound or -hund for various dog breeds). Keeping these at Teeswater sheep, etc., will be consistent with almost all other animal breed article names (some dog ones are an exception, and need to be examined as do a few other random stragglers not addressed here. A handful of parenthetically disambiguated breeds not mentioned here also need to move to natural disambiguation, e.g. Aspromonte (goat).
    2. Beltex, Bleu du Maine, Castlemilk Moorit, Dorper, Meatmaster, Perendale, Polypay → Beltex (sheep), etc. – Oppose per WP:DAB. These are all unique, made-up names for the breeds, and are not ambiguous with anything. Adding a disambiguator of any kind serves no purpose (not even one of the ones contemplated at Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Proposal/question: Should we disambiguate year-range work titles? and the ensuing, lengthy discussion about why we might sometimes (as with US place names) want to "pre-disambiguate". Nothing supports these renames at all. They would also directly conflict with naming in all other domestic breed categories; see, e.g. Africanis, Aidi, Azawakh; Burmilla, Chaussie, Peterbald; Abtenauer, Akhal-Teke, Appaloosa; Donek, Frillback; Amerifax, Droughtmaster, Square Meater, etc., etc., etc.. There are hundreds of breed articles at undisambiguated names because, like these, they're not ambiguous. Update: See WP:PRECISION policy, which specifically addresses this. While it enumerates a handful of supposed exceptions, this is not one of them, and even those are increasingly considered a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS problem. See User:JHunterJ#Local consensus vs. precision for a list of previous discussions of similar cases, which consistently close with a result to follow WP:PRECISION. Concession: One can make the argument that Meatmaster cattle would be more consistent with other cattle names, and that could be true. I'm just skeptical that consistency of that particular sort trumps brevity, under the WP:CRITERIA, etc. Our main consistency problem is just radically different treatment of very similar names, thus the large number of breed RMs I launched today (which avoid the parenthetical stuff at issue in this RM).
    3. Danish Protest pig, Laughing chicken, Philippine Native chicken → Danish Protest Pig (i.e., capitalize the species), etc. – Oppose by default per MOS:LIFE and per the WP:BIRDCON precedent, but tentative support if article-by-article, compelling reliable-source research proves that the WP:COMMONNAME in general-audience sources uniformly appends the species name as part of the breed name, which seems fairly likely in some of these exact cases, because of their ambiguity. This is consistent with other, similar article titles (some of which were already arrived at through RM discussions) not raised by nom here: Basque Mountain Horse, Norwegian Forest Cat, Bavarian Mountain Hound, Formosan Mountain Dog, etc. Failing that, then oppose per MOS:CAPS: If sources are not consistent on both including the species and capitalizing it (when the source also capitalizes "Protest", "Laughing" and "Native"), then retain the lower-case, natural disambiguation. However, this is maybe the wrong venue: Moves this particular and nuanced should probably be discussed individually on their own talk pages, not buried in a mass move that raises different issues in all other cases. Note also that nominator is being self-contradictory here, urging in all other cases for the form Danish Protest (pig) [which is contraindicated for other reasons]. Added note: I found the curious counter-cases of Georgian mountain cattle and Harz Red mountain cattle; they do seem to be real breeds, not landraces, so if we're going to capitalize breeds then "Mountain" should get that treatment here, whethe rto capitalize "Cattle" in those cases is the same analysis required for Danish Protest pig vs. Danish Protest Pig.
    4. Estonian Bacon pig → Estonian Bacon, and Forest Mountain pig → Forest Mountain – Oppose per WP:DAB and WP:COMMONSENSE; these are obviously too ambiguous to use for animal breed article titles on Wikipedia. Such names are only given in short, speciesless form when not ambiguous (see examples under "Beltex", above). Nom is also self-contradicting again, otherwise insisting on names of the form Estonian Bacon (pig). Such proposals also contradict already-established animal breed natural disambiguation patterns, e.g. Norwegian Forest Cat, etc., etc. I would potentially support alternative moves to Estonian Bacon Pig and Forest Mountain Pig (capitalized) for consistency, but only under the same reliably-sourced WP:COMMONNAME analysis on a per-article basis as in the above point regarding Danish Protest pig, etc. These seem notably less likely to make that cut, and see many similar names that do not, e.g. San Clemente Island goat, Black Pied Dairy cattle.
    5. Arapawa pig, Jeju Black pig, Morada Nova sheep, and Swabian-Hall swine → Arapawa Pig, etc. (i.e., capitalized species again) – Oppose. No rationale for such moves at all, as the pattern is evidently the same as that of, respectively, Teeswater sheep, Kerry Hill sheep, and hyphenated cases not mentioned in the list, like Chistopolian High-flying pigeon, Ural Striped-maned pigeon. Again, nom self-contradictorily wants to move the others to Teeswater (sheep), Kerry Hill (sheep), etc. As in the last case, if and only if the overwhelming preponderance of evidence gives one of these breeds' names with "Sheep" in it, then I'd support that move, but that's an RM for that article's own talk page. NB: This same sort of analysis needs to be done on some other animal breed article names, e.g. Chinese Crested Dog. What we have here are enthusiasts with different sensibilities insisting contrarily that "the X breed's real name(TM) is the Foo Bar Bandersnatch" while others are saying "the X breed's true name(R) is the Foo Bar, and only the ignorant would add the species, 'Bandersnatch' at the end, much less capitalize it as part of the breed name proper", and both are convinced of their righteousness in this incredibly important matter, with nom seemingly trying to take both sides at once in different cases for no apparent reason other than a reflexive urge to revert all efforts to bring some rhyme and reason to breed article names. There is arguably a clear case for our readers (why we're here, remember), to use names like Carpathian Shepherd Dog and Norwegian Forest Cat because without the species name they're confusing (seeming to be about a regional occupation and a woodland, respectively). No such case can be made for "Morada Nova Sheep" and these other examples.
    6. American Game chicken → American Game (chicken) – Oppose per all of the reasoning that already settled this at recent RMs of Australian Pit Game fowl and West African Dwarf goat, and thus per WP:FORUMSHOP. See also Continental Giant rabbit. NB: In nom's clouding of this RM with references to past irrelevant discussions, they conveniently didn't happen to mention these directly relevant ones.
    7. Auckland Island pig → Auckland Island Pig – Oppose per MOS:CAPS and almost all other animal breed article names of this sort (see already cited examples, and others from Amsterdam Island cattle, Channel Island cattle and Enderby Island cattle to Cumberland Island horse; the format <Placename> <Landfeature> <species> is a not uncommon type of breed article title, and <Placename> <Whatever> <species> is the #2 most common form after <Placename> <species>). This is the exact same case as Kerry Hill sheep, and an example of the nom self-contradicting again, going for "Auckland Island (pig)" format otherwise. The species, as noted above under Danish Protest pig, is not capitalized unless it is always included as part of the breed name in reliable sources due to the ambiguity without it. This never seems to be the case when the form is <Placename> <species> (including <Placename> <Landfeature> <species>) that is a real place not a type of place (as in "Norwegian Forest Cat"), since everyone knows that "I have a <Placename>" cannot possibly refer to the possession of an entire country, while "I have a Norwegian Forest" could actually refer to land ownership and "I have an American Quarter" to coinage. "Mountain" when referring to a specific mountain might be handled like "Island", but I'm not sure we have such a case.
    8. Any of the chicken cases could be moved to "<Whatever> fowl" (note the lower case) in theory, but only if a preponderance of reliable sources call them that. "Fowl" seems to be conventional only for a small number of breeds. Regardless, that hasn't been proposed here, and should be a case-by-case rename if necessary on specific article talk pages.
    9. It's possible that I've missed some other, differentiatable case, but this should be clear enough to separate the majority of these into distinguishable groups that others can address by number.

       — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:43, 14 September 2014 (UTC)Reply

  • Oppose – the existing titles appear to be mostly better, which I presume was SMcCandlish's intent in moving them (I'm not so much a fan of his point 2 that applies to a few, but I agree on the rest). The rationale for these proposed moves is unclear; it seems to be just that they were previously moved by SMcCandlish. If there are specific ones that share a rationale, they should be proposed as a smaller set so the point can be discussed. Dicklyon (talk) 21:03, 14 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
I've clarified the policy and precedent basis for #2, with an <ins>...</ins> insertion.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:28, 14 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
Well, I'm not suggesting that Beltex etc. are ambiguous, or need disambiguation; rather, that Beltex sheep would be more precise and recognizable for what it is. A win on consistency, too. But that's a discussion for elsewhere, if such a move gets proposed. Dicklyon (talk) 23:45, 14 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
@Dicklyon: Understood, but I strongly suspect it'll be a worm-can. The dogs project hate this idea with unleashed passion. When I moved some of "their" articles to names in this format because were already ambiguous and parenthetically disambiguated for no reason, they reflexively and dismissively reverted them all here. The blatantly self-contradictory nom wrote "Parenthetical disambiguation was used when natural disambiguation is not possible in ALL dog articles" then proposed moving every case like Armant dog back to Armant (dog), despite that being the exact opposite, and using parenthetical disambiguation when natural disambiguation was clearly possible and already being used. No one commented in that RM, hosted out of main talk space on their wikiproject page, except the project's own participants. I didn't see it in time to advertise it to WT:AT, WP:NCFAUNA and WT:MOS where people with a more generalized view might have been interested in commenting. Someone may try to use that micro-consensus as evidentiary of something, but it was just a status quo ante reversion, not a discussion on the WT:AT merits, which would surely have stuck with natural disambiguation. Anyway, if at this point in time, anyone tried to move a Beltex-like dog name, e.g., Briard to Briard dog with this sort of "pre-disambiguation" idea, it'd be a holy war. >;-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:06, 15 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. Some of these might be reasonable moves, but they should be examined on a case by case basis, and not as a mass-move. While consistency is good... it can be taken too far (hmmm... perhaps WP:AT needs to address the issue of over-consistency?) A consistent title format that works for dog articles may not work for sheep articles, and vise versa. Flexibility is required. Blueboar (talk) 22:16, 15 September 2014 (UTC)Reply

Discussion

Some of these comments were initially posted at WP:RM itself

@Justlettersandnumbers, while SMcCandlish is currently banned from making undiscussed moves (as of July 15) these moves were done prior to his ban. Would you object to having a centralized move discussion for all the sheep articles? It looks to me that some editors might support these moves. It's a lot of work for an admin to do a mass revert and then have to move all the articles back later per discussion, if that turns out to be the result. Why not have the discussion first? The issues in this set of articles don't even involve capitalization (as in Talk:American Paint Horse#Requested moves). It's only a question of natural versus parenthesized disambiguation. EdJohnston (talk) 15:01, 25 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

I'd also endorse this suggestion, with the obvious caveat that if the bulk RM ends as no consensus it will default to moving back to the previous titles. Jenks24 (talk) 15:17, 25 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Works for me, with the caveat that it be a bulk RM on the merits, not a WP:POINTy "move these back because SMcCandlish didn't get consensus first" pseudo-RM. Given still-ongoing behavior by Justlettersandnumbers, I have some concerns. It'll go to full RM or RFC regardless, because the renames made sense under policy, others agree with them, and they tend to stick at natural disambiguation when these do go to full discussions (see, e.g., recent RMs of Australian Pit Game fowl and West African Dwarf goat, and many more over the years, like most horse breed articles), so there's no point in pre-emptively moving them around again. There's no actual evidence that the names they're at now are controversial (no one seems to think so but Justlettersandnumbers); rather, the controversy was the scale at which I was making such moves without a prior consensus discussion about them. The discussion is overdue; I expected it to happen a month ago.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:26, 25 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Thank you, EdJohnston and Jenks24, for your comments. Points in order:

  • I'm truly sorry about the amount of work involved, for everyone, whatever happens. I suppose that is more or less a definition of WP:DISRUPTIVE editing - doing stuff that takes other people hours of work to sort out. I know I've already spent hours on this that I'd much rather have spent doing something else. There are hundreds of articles affected.
  • I don't see that another discussion is necessarily required for most of these; we've already had two, this about reversing McCandlish's undiscussed moves to "natural" disambiguation - this covers, e.g., all the Italian sheep breeds above, without exception; and this about reversing his undiscussed lower-casing of the animal name when it is part of the breed name, as in Auckland Island Pig above. Both ended with restoration of the status quo ante.
  • There are, I think, two other types of incompetent move in the complete list: the addition of an unnecessary "disambiguation" to a title that requires none, such as adding "chicken" to White-faced Black Spanish; and messing about with hyphenation against all the evidence in the sources, such as Naked-neck chicken when even in the hyphen-crazy UK it is called Naked Neck. Neither should require discussion to revert.
  • That said, I'd like those who will (or won't) have to do the hard work to make the call. If you don't mind, Ed? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:38, 25 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
    • How about we open a formal move discussion for the first four sheep moves, and leave a note in the RM pointing to the complete list of sheep that SMM moved. That way if the discussion finds consensus to move back the first four, then an admin might go ahead and do the rest of the list as 'reverts of undiscussed moves'. That reduces the work involved but still gives a chance for consensus to be formed. EdJohnston (talk) 20:22, 25 August 2014 (UTC) Reply
    • Removed my earlier suggestion. This is now a regular move discussion for all the animals in the above list. It is a proposal (by User:Justlettersandnumbers) to put all of them back to their original titles. EdJohnston (talk) 02:16, 26 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
    • Some notes regarding Justlettersandnumbers's invective and assumptions:
List of observations about this RM

{{hatnote: On item on this list was wrong - Justlettersandnumbers (Jlan) didn't list this mass, mess RM here personally, but only at RM; it was moved here administratively as a relisting of a contested "noncontroversial" proposal.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:41, 18 September 2014 (UTC)}}Reply

  1. Pre-loading what is supposed to be a neutral discussion about article names with a boatload of wikipolitical and personalizing antagonism is a process violation. This is not a vote and nominators are not supposed to be campaigning, much less doing so in a way that verges on personal attacks. All of Justlettersandnumbers's aspersion-casting about my editorial judgment and competence seems to be happening because the nom's RMs now at issue, with only a handful of potential exceptions, are poorly supported by facts, policy, normal practice, or logic; it is an ad hominem fallacy attempting to hand-wave attention away from the lack of merit inherent in these proposed moves to names like Teeswater (sheep) or worse yet, Forest Mountain (?!).
  2. "I don't see that another discussion is necessarily required for most of these" – Of course it is. Neither of the prior discussions Justlettersandnumbers referenced, about unrelated articles, are particularly relevant. The first was about reverting to status quo ante due to moves being undiscussed, and whether the names comported with WT:AT policy was not the subject of the discussion, which was about addressing a process matter. I fully expect we'll be revisiting many of those dog article names in more narrowly defined, small groups, soon enough. We've already agreed that reverting to status quo ante in this case would be pointless if we're immediately (and now, already) going to get into discussion of the merits of different naming proposals. So it's essentially totally senseless to bring up the dogs reversion at all. The second was about a factual matter to do with capitalization in one particular horse breed case, which has nothing to do with the natural vs. parenthetical disambiguation matter at issue now. "Both ended with restoration of the status quo ante" – That's because it's what happens when a dispute arises over a move, until the dispute is resolved on the merits of the arguments (and it's not required that it be done, just common; WP:BRD is an optional process, not a policy.) In that case there had been no agreement to defer a status quo ante move until discussion on the merits, and that discussion still hasn't happened about those articles. In this case, there was such an agreement, and that discussion is happening in the #Poll section. Not comparable cases.

    That said, I think we do have something like a consensus, at least among editors spending much time on animal breeds, that (provided we continue capitalizing breed names, an idea that WP:BIRDCON suggests may be more controversial than most breed editors think it is), we should capitalize the species name when it is almost invariably included in the breed name, e.g. Norwegian Forest Cat. In some cases, such as American Paint Horse whether this is the case is open to dispute (plenty of reliable sources can be found that refer to the American Paint as such, so the case for WP itself insisting that the name "is" American Paint Horse may be an WP:NOR and WP:NPOV problem, in which case it should be at American Paint horse per MOS:CAPS and WP:NATURAL. It's not a case I would care to argue about in detail here, as it's just a distraction. It has no impact on the list of moves contemplated here, in which Justlettersandnumbers wants to prevent inclusion of the breed name entirely unless it's in the form of parenthetical disambiguation, for reasons that aren't very clear.

  3. "There are, I think, two other types of incompetent move in the complete list: the addition of an unnecessary "disambiguation" to a title that requires none, such as adding "chicken" to White-faced Black Spanish" – Skipping for now the second ad-homimen attack, it's not at all certain that an RM focusing on White-faced Black Spanish chicken will conclude that this should be at White-faced Black Spanish, and same goes for the other similar cases. Justlettersandnumbers themself have proposed several moves above that contradict nom's own position on this one, further indication that nom may be playing an "undo SMcCandlish" game instead of focusing on what the correct titles should be per our titling policy. We routinely (and naturally) disambiguate names for breeds and whatnot if they can be misinterpreted as referring to people or groups thereof. This accounts for a large number of disambiguated breed names, regardless of species, because most of them are partially or entirely geonyms, and these are usually interpreted as having or sometimes having human referents. (There are some other articles not mentioned here that need fixing in this regard, e.g. Brown Caucasian, Brown Carpathian, and Indo-Brazilian).
  4. hyphenation against all the evidence in the sources, such as Naked-neck chicken when even in the hyphen-crazy UK it is called Naked Neck. Yet another hand-wave to distract; that article title is not at issue here, and this RM raises a grand total of zero hyphenation issues. But while we're on it: The hyphenated form occurs, too. But given that the unhyphenated one is more common, that's a simple WP:COMMONNAME matter, and need not be a source of melodramatics. A rare case like this has virtually no relevance to the rest of this discussion, or anything else for that matter.
  5. "I've already spent hours on this that I'd much rather have spent doing something else." It really clearly wasn't enough given how malformed this RM is; is really kind of unbelievable that Justlettersandnumbers had the hypocrisy to refer to my moves as incompetent; I think I made a grand total of one actual error (the hyphenation case, and even an MOS purist would say it wasn't an error). No one required Justlettersandnumbers personally to list a bunch of pages for RM, much less in a big confused and self-contradictory pile. If something is too much for someone or they feel it's a waste of their time, they should something productive instead of "messing about", to use Justlettersandnumbers term, with article names they can't keep straight.
  6. It also noteworthy that in response to EdJohnston's request, Justlettersandnumbers agreed to rescind the request for status quo ante move reverts, because "It looks [like] some editors might support these moves. It's a lot of work for an admin to do a mass revert and then have to move all the articles back later per discussion, if that turns out to be the result. Why not have the discussion first?" I.e., a discussion on the merits, which is what I agreed to as well. But Justlettersandnumbers simply copy-pasted the request for reflexive status quot ante moves, word for word. (This would also seem to invalidate Jenks24's caveat about what to do in case of no consensus; the very act of not going by what was agreed to could invalidate this entire RM, which would give Justlettersandnumbers the result they want without having to present a rationale for a single page move, if Jenk24's suggestion were applied, reverting back to the article names as they were at the beginning of July, despite many of them being WP:AT policy problems.)
  7. Justlettersandnumbers's promise that this RM mess is "is just a first instalment" is troubling. It would be entirely appropriate for the closer to admonish Justlettesandnumbers to never launch a disruptively confused mass RM like this ever again. Hopefully, my numbered analysis of the different types of RMs the nom lumped together here may be enough to save this RM from being closed early as an abuse of process or simply too broken to proceed. It probably took more time to do this than Justlettersandnumbers "wasted", but I'll consider it time well-spent if we get more clarity and consistency out of this. Above all, it should not be used as a platform for yet more WP:POINTy move reverts without discussion of the merits of the vying article names. These titles have been stable for months, with no known objection other than that of Justlettersandnumbers in most if not all cases. Per WP:CONSENSUS and WP:CCC in particular, that's long enough with silence enough to indicate that they actually now represent a consensus. (Of course, I moved them in the first place to conform to broader, pre-existing consensus on how we name articles.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:07, 15 September 2014 (UTC) (edited from Sep 13 original)Reply
  • SMcCandlish, you're being unfair to Justlettersandnumbers in some of the above comments. Look at the page history of this talk page, Anthony Appleyard copy-pasted RM/TR request here to start this discussion. And although that's the standard practice for technical requests that are contested, it has made rather a mess of things here because of the large number of articles in question and the fact the nomination is so clearly intended as a technical request, not a full RM. But that's not Justlettersandnumbers' fault. And regarding restoration of the status quo ante, that is policy – see the article titling bullet of WP:NOCONSENSUS. Jenks24 (talk) 09:45, 15 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
Fair enough. I'll just rescind collapse-box the entire thing, rather than pick at the details, since it's probably not constructive anyway. Other than to note "This is now a regular move discussion for all the animals in the above list. It is a proposal (by User:Justlettersandnumbers) to put all of them back to their original titles", per EdJohnson, so I'm not the only one observing that this RM was in fact listed as a pointless mass-move request despite that being what we were going to not do. WP:NOCONSENSUS applies when there's a legitimate dispute. "Oppose everything SMcCandlish does no matter what it is" isn't one, meanwhile the names have stood with no troubles of any kind arising from them for months now (=new consensus, I'd say), and we all already had an agreement that we'd be forgoing the status quo ante reversion stuff as liable to be counterproductive. It's therefore disruptive and WP:LAME to have a huge pile of demanded status quo ante reverts here. I hope that the analysis and grouping of them I've done is enough that this mess can proceed in an orderly fashion. Meanwhile, I'm proceeding with other RMs, while avoiding any that would move "Foo (bar)" breed names to "Foo bar" ones, pending the outcome of this one. The upcoming ones I'm about to list are of a different nature, and properly grouped into separate multi-page RMs that focus on moves of the same exact kind.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:08, 15 September 2014 (UTC)Reply

Comment. As must be obvious from the initial remarks in this discussion, this was not originally intended to be a move request; if it had been so intended it would have been formulated very differently, and posted at WT:WikiProject Agriculture. Some points:

  • What's at issue here is whether or not to restore some hundreds of articles to the titles they were at before SMcCandlish moved them without discussion and without reference to the WikiProjects concerned or (that I'm aware of) to the few editors who actually contribute in this area (I'm thinking of BlindEagle, Steven Walling, JTdale, PigeonIP, Richard New Forest, Montanabw, Ealdgyth, I've surely forgotten many; and also, incidentally, myself).
  • There are a lot of these articles. The list above is merely the first hundred or so. The rest are listed here and here.
  • Many of these moves were made after McCandlish had been specifically told that such moves were contentious, and that the normal move request process should be used. All this has already been extensively discussed at ANI (now at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive847#Undiscussed page moves by SMcCandlish), where McCandlish was roundly criticised and banned for three months from moving articles.
  • McCandlish has decided (again without reference to WikiProjects or other interested editors) how he wants domestic animal breed articles to be named, and is apparently on a one-man crusade to impose that decision on the rest of us. Of course, as he worked his way through the categories, the mantra "like almost all articles in this and other animal breed categories" became less and less untrue.
  • In many of these cases parentheses were removed citing WP:NATURAL or with the mantra "use natural disambiguation not parentheticals when possible, per WP:AT policy". That policy reads:

    Natural disambiguation: If it exists, choose an alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English, albeit not as commonly as the preferred-but-ambiguous title. Do not, however, use obscure or made-up names.

In some cases (the Teeswater is one) following the breed name with a species name produces a phrase that can be commonly found in English; in others, such as the Tacola, there is no evidence that the title McCandlish has chosen is ever used in English; Tacola sheep is a made-up name. These moves were made without due care to observe WP:AT policy.
Okay, let's try this again.

Itemized response. I doubt anyone actually wants to read this stuff, so I'll just collapse-box it again so people can skip it easily. Justlettersandnumbers should probably do the same with the above text-wall.
  1. Justlettersandnumbers (hereafter Jlan) already agreed to not pursue a WP:BRD revert, weeks ago, because the admin most likely to be performing those moves was skeptical (and others backed him up) that many if any of these names Jlan prefered would actually be adopted by consensus (which a status quo ante revert doesn't represent; it's a procedural stability action). The admin did not want to have to move them from their current names to the old names then back to the current names after further discussion. Nothing about any of that has changed, except Jlan's apparently selective memory. "What's at issue here", now, is not whether or not to do a mass BRD revert, but is precisely the community discussion about what these page names should really be, that Jlan said didn't happen. Jlan can't have it both ways, objecting that the original moves lacked a discussion, but now that discussion is under way, attempt to short-circuit it and demand that the pages go back to what Jlan wants them to be. That horse (or other domestic animal) has already left the barn. See WP:WRONGVERSION. Jlan's re-insisting on the rationale for a reflexive revert after already accepting why one isn't wise in this case, simply doesn't make sense, and seems to be a WP:IDHT problem. That can be shown to be a recurring theme here.
  2. Arguing that "the few editors who actually contribute in this area", and listing them by cherry-picked name, are the only ones with a stake here is not only a factual misrepresentation about who edits domestic animal breed articles, far more importantly it's a dismal failure to understand WP:OWN and even how Wikipedia works generally. All editors have a valid stake in all articles, without exception, and wikiprojects who claim an article is within their scope cannot exert special control over it (see WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy). Jlan's perpetual insinuations, running for months now, that I and various other editors who do in fact write breed articles (just not the ones Jlan like as often as Jlan would like, apparently), as well as some who don't but are involved WP article titles policy discussions and frequent RM discussion contributors, somehow aren't welcome in these discussions is snide, ad hominem nonsense, and grossly misplaced elitism.
  3. Opening a WP:RM discussion about why four or five articles on breeds with nearly identical "Pied" breed names have completely different article title formats is not "a one-man crusade" (that's another personal attack by Jlan – there have been others, but I find hauling people to ANI or AE for personality problems to be distasteful, so I never do anything about them, to date), it's precisely the kind of discussion involving "other interested editors" that Jlan decries as not happening, so the characterization defies the reality right in front of Jlan's face.
  4. Going out of one's way to re-mention, in the most ad hominem way possible, the non sequitur about a long-resolved ANI case concerning whether move process was proper two or three months ago, the decision in which was agreement that RM should be used, and then Jlan following this by attacking me for using RM process, is hypocritical and disruptive.
  5. Jlan somehow expresses shock and outrage that, as cleanup efforts among inconsistent article names in breed categories have progressed slowly over several months, exclusively using RM processes since the ANI about not using RM, than the names have become decreasingly inconsistent. What could possibly surprise Jlan about it? It's how Wikipedia works.
  6. Jlan's renewed suggestion to move Estonian Bacon pig back to the absurdly misleading Estonian bacon (it fails both the precision and recognizability WP:CRITERIA) triggered immediate resistance, which JLan glossed over as if no one objected. That sure seems like IDHT again. The fact that I moved that article myself months ago says nothing about the quality of the move (all moves have to be performed my someone, after all – pages don't move themselves around), and my "citing" it (mentioning it – Jlan is misusing "citation" here as hyperbole, since an article name isn't a policy, guideline, arbcom decision or even essay that can be cited) in the context of another RM doesn't undermine that RM, which is based on policy not that particular example, one that is extremely unlikely to be reverted to Estonian Bacon anyway. Cherry picking one tiny sub-argument in one related RM discussion, about of dozens of them, to pick at on not-really-valid procedural technicality, isn't an argument, it's a hand wave distraction.
      1. Crucially (and possibly indicative of WP:OWN issues), no one has moved that, or any other of these articles, back. Jlan seems to think that the mass RM that Jlan agreed to back away from, an agreement now clearly being reneged on, is the only BRD revert anyone could have made. But that's patent nonsense; any one of these renames could have been reverted, without any RM process, without even a discussion, just a demand for a discussion, by any editor at any time before this more substantive discussion launched, yet it didn't happen. Every word of Wikipedia is written by changing a page here and seeing if it sticks. When it sticks, we move on and build on it, we don't raise histrionic, confused, WP:BATTLEGROUNDing and WP:POINTy, mile-long piles of process to wallow in. See WP:FILIBUSTER and WP:WIKILAWYER, and signal-to-noise ratio for that matter.
  1. Also crucially, there demonstrably is no controversy here, other than the one Jlan is personally manufacturing and perpetuating. Over two months of no controversy about the actual content of the current article names from anyone but Jlan personally is a pretty obvious indication that a new consensus has been formed. (It may be a clear indication of a few other things, too, but editor behavior issues are not an RM matter.) While silence is not the strongest consensus, between the mass RM filing, two ANI cases (one rejected as frivolous, the other resolved and followed without incident), and a number of related but properly formed RMs running concurrently and calmly, there is more than enough "advertising" of this issue that interested parties can comment. As of this writing, they're entirely against Jlan's proposed names.
  2. The fact they were actual former names at one point doesn't make them any less proposed names now; too much time has passed, with too much explicit agreement to not reflexively revert. It's already progressed to a substantive one about the article titles' relative merits, in many cases, and in others, multiple commenters observe that the cases are particular and need to be the subject of their own individual RMs. The idea that discussion on the merits of what the names should be has to proceed from what the names used to be, the names Jlan prefers, is transparently farcical at this late date. Jlan is proceeding from a false basis that there's some kind of popularity contest to "win", based on some article titles equivalent of pole position, as if the current name of a page has special imprimatur or seniority, like an incumbent politician up for re-election, or someone relying upon squatter's rights to a domain name. As noted above, Jlan already agreed, upon admin advice, that reverting to the old names was not necessary to discuss whether the new ones were better, so this is yet another hand wave. #See Jlan's opening statement "I'd hoped someone else might deal with this, but it seems not.", and later "I'm truly sorry about the amount of work involved, for everyone, whatever happens. I suppose that is more or less a definition of WP:DISRUPTIVE editing." The first indicates that Jlan acknowledged over a month ago that there wasn't any actual controversy about the content of the moves (and Jlan knows the procedural controversy about the process by which they were arrived at was resovled at ANI, since Jlan cited that ANI case one sentence earlier). The second of these quoted statements indicates that Jlan also acknowledges the disruptiveness inherent the approach taken by this editor, who did it anyway, and is now trying to go back to that method despite the discussion having moved past it.
  3. Finally, I'm not sure why Jlan, except as another fallacy ad homimem, re-mentions old move discussions that aren't relevant to these cases, after it's already been pointed out why they're not relevant – American Paint Horse raised a debate about whether in that individual special case the species name was formally a part of the breed name, a question not raised the articles at issue here, and the dog one was a pure status quo ante revert that, unlike the extant discussion as it has moved on now, did not address what the names should actually be, but only the process followed. Most of us understand that such arguments will not magically become relevant just because one repeat oneself. So, it's yet another, very clear, indication of a IDHT problem. The fact that Jlan's entire mass listing and repeated rehash arguments about it fails to discern even that the article names resulting from of the horse and dog cases, like around half of the renames you're mass-mess-RM proposes, directly contradict each other, is highly indicative of what the problem here is.
I could go on, but I don't think it would be useful to do so. I'm not angry at Jlan for having personality clashes with me; rather the arguments presented by this editor to mire or derail this and related RMs are not sustainable under any RM-relevant rationale, and that's all that needs to be shown here.
I've suggested that Jlan (and Montanabw and WhatamIdoing) and I shoudl probably engage in a formal WP:Dispute resolution process; much of this heat vs. light appears to be a personality conflict, not a WP:AT one, really.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:41, 18 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment I really don't want to be involved in this messy business but I will point out to SMc where he questions why Fowl is only used on some chicken breeds - Fowl exclusively refers to birds within the poultry fancy with Game in their name (i.e.: Gamefowl). We don't have Rhode Island Red fowl, but Old English Game fowl is acceptable. Shamo fowl would make no sense because no Game in the name. You really have to take things by case by case. No one system is going to work. JTdale Talk 11:00, 17 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
    • Understood. Having a few breeds named "X Game fowl" isn't problematic, any more than having a few pig articles named "X swine" instead of "X pig" because the sources indicate it's conventional. No one has suggested some kind of robotic conformity enforcement that would prevent "fowl" or "swine", though the straw man position that such ideas are proposed has been common enough in previous related debates. The specific content of these and other ongoing related RMs is actually proof that no such "hyper-conformity" proposals are on the table at all.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:41, 18 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
  • "with the exception of the two": There may be others in the two extra lists pointed to hereinabove. And in "Shamo chicken → Shamo (chicken)": a main meaning of "Shamo" by itself is a Chinese name of the Gobi Desert. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 12:45, 17 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment My personal preference is to use the parens. This makes it much easier for me to find breeds by their name. Again, personal preference. Teaswater sheep as a title of an article, to me, would imply that is the name of the breed. It is not. The name of the breed is Teaswater. Of course, to have a name of an article with just such a title would be confusing and thus the parenthetical. Just my $0.02. BlindEagletalk~contribs
  • Neutral I've written many of these articles. I used the parenthetical because the word "sheep" (or "chicken" or "cow" or "pig") is most definitely not part of the proper name for these animal breeds. Its purpose is solely for disambiguation. This is quite important, since in most cases sheep are named for places. This editorial policy, at WP:NCDAB, seems quite clear to me. However, as to whether the parens are necessary or not seems a particularly academic question. As long as we use the disambiguation term where necessary, readers will be well served. I personally prefer to defer to whatever other primary authors in this area, like BlindEagle and Justlettersandnumbers, want to do. Steven Walling • talk 20:22, 17 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment 1: I favor Steven Walling's comment that a certain amount of deference should be given to the article writers, such as JLAN in this case, with the caveat that titling consistency with a set of articles (dog breeds, horse breeds, sheep breeds, chicken breeds) should be maintained whenever possible (I say this in part because WikiProject Equine takes the opposite position on parenthetical titling for some very thoroughly discussed reasons that are not relevant here, but we have no intent to impose our views on other animal projects that have a different convention for standardization). Montanabw(talk) 21:32, 17 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
    • The utter lack of any form of consistency within almost all breed categories (much less between any of them) is why this ever arose in the first place. This horses category is much more consistent than most, which is a blessing, and I've repeatedly supported you in resisting moves that would thwart it, which you seem to forget. No one is accusing or suggesting that the equine wikiproject is or couple be "imposing [their] views on other animal projects". Rather, we have a WP:AT policies that are being ignored by many articles in most of these categories.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:41, 18 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment 2: SMC's ongoing page move and titling disputes, combined with a penchant for rather vicious personal attacks while simultaneously accusing others of attacking him (see, e.g. Talk:Kiger Mustang are really getting out of hand and I am wondering if it time to discuss how to stop this endless drama. Montanabw(talk) 21:32, 17 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
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