Talk:David Pepper (intelligence official)

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Requested move 9 April 2018

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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: move the pages at this time, per the discussion below, and create a new disambiguation page at David Pepper. Dekimasuよ! 22:01, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

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• David Pepper → David Pepper (intelligence official)
• David A. Pepper → David Pepper (politician)

– I don't think that either David Edwin Pepper (currently at David Pepper) or David Andrew Pepper (currently at David A. Pepper) are the primary topic for the name "David Pepper". If anything, I think David Andrew Pepper is the more primary of the two, as Googling "david pepper" primarily shows results about him, and David Edwin Pepper isn't mentioned until the 8th result on page 2. The page views favor David Andrew Pepper's page slightly, but not by much (however, David Edwin Pepper's page may be getting false hits since it currently holds the article title "David Pepper"). However, it's worth noting that both of these results are skewed by recentness; David Andrew Pepper is presently active as a politician and writer, while David Edwin Pepper doesn't seem to be up to much since his position as GCHQ Director ended in 2008.

Basically, I think that a) the current article at "David Pepper" is definitely not the primary topic, and b) arguably, there isn't a primary topic at all. Thus, both of these pages should be moved to disambiguated titles, and a disambiguation page should be created at "David Pepper". I prefer parenthetical disambiguation (e.g. "David Pepper (British)" and "David Pepper (American)") to disambiguation using middle names/initials (e.g. "David E. Pepper" and "David A. Pepper") because neither of these individuals is commonly referred to by their full name. I support disambiguating by nationality (e.g. "(British)" and "(American)") because I think it's the least confusing option. Disambiguating by occupation is more commonly used (e.g. "David Pepper (civil servant)" and "David Pepper (politician)"), but it would be confusing in this case because "politician" and "civil servant" are very similar and overlapping terms. I guess we could do "David Pepper (British civil servant)" and "David Pepper (American politician)", but that seems needlessly non-concise. After reading WP:NCPDAB, I have changed my proposal to "David Pepper (intelligence official)" (instead of "David Pepper (British)") and "David Pepper (politician)" (instead of "David Pepper (American)"). IagoQnsi (talk) 23:16, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, I've just discovered WP:NCPDAB, which lays out the policy for disambiguating people with the same name. It seems that using nationality by itself for parenthetical disambiguation is more unconventional than I had thought. Perhaps "David Pepper (intelligence official)" and "David Pepper (politician)" would be better than my above proposal? –IagoQnsi (talk) 23:27, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Those sound more standard to me. I think it's early enough that you can just revise the templates to reflect those suggestions, if you want. Dekimasuよ! 23:39, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

@Dekimasu:  Done –IagoQnsi (talk) 00:43, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

• Support per detailed nomination. There is, indeed, no primary topic and it is clear that the politician and author does not use the middle initial "A."    Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 06:10, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
• Support GNews In ictu oculi (talk) 09:17, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
• Support per nom - no clear primary topic for "David Pepper". Paintspot Infez (talk) 15:01, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. The director of a national communications intelligence agency in a major country seems considerably more notable to me than a local politician. Although he can be moved to David Pepper (politician). -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:01, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
• Suggestion. I just checked, and there is nothing prohibiting the use of *two* identifying terms, as in David Pepper (politician & author) or David Pepper (American politician & author). Such a designation might be helpful considering people's searches for him might be instigated by his work in either area of accomplishment. WebMaven2000 (talk) 00:31, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

@WebMaven2000: It's not explicitly disallowed, but it is definitely less concise and a bit unexpected. We should try to pick one title in my opinion. I think he's far better known for his political career--I'm not sure he would even meet WP:N if you take away his political career. For what it's worth, both of his books are political thrillers, so someone looking for the author probably wouldn't be too surprised by the label "politician". --IagoQnsi (talk) 04:26, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

No, generally avoided. And we don't need a national identifier if there's only one of them. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:01, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

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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.