Talk:H. Johan Andersson

Relevant?

Why is this article relevant? This player is playing in HockeyAllsvenskan. Have I missed something here? /HeyMid (contributions) 19:55, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. 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 proposal was not moved. --BDD (talk) 22:32, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Hans Johan Andersson → Johan "Bois" Andersson – “Hans Johan Andersson” is a wrong name that is not supported by any source. The editor who original moved the article to its incorrect name is the same editor who has objected to moving the article to a name that is supported by a source. There is a need to disambiguate from the very common Swedish name “Johan Andersson”, and the conventional method does not work because there are three hockey players who share the same name – two of them born in the same year! There is no source which verifies the subject's name to be “Hans Johan Andersson” and, in fact, his given name is NOT “Hans. It remains a mystery as to where the editor who originally moved the article found this name. All sources within the article correctly show his name to be “ Johan Andersson”, with a single reference (in Swedish) referring to the person as 'Johan "Bois" Andersson'[1]. The proposed name name 'Johan "Bois" Andersson' is supported by a source, and it addresses the issue of disambiguation. Dolovis (talk) 02:42, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose Actually the article was created with Hans in the lead. Hans is the equivalent to a middle name in English people except in Swedish it comes first. Per standard disambiguation if you can disambiguate by using the full name then do so if you can't use the bracketed disambiguation which is the case here because there are two with the same name born in the same year playing the same position. You do not use quoted nicknames in article titles. -DJSasso (talk) 12:14, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Can you find any source to verify that his name is Hans? Dolovis (talk) 13:19, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
    • See Birthday.se and Ratsit.se. Hans is part of his full name. HeyMid (contribs) 13:51, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose I agree with Djsasso above: in cases like this one we should disambiguate by their full name, not by some "nickname" (which I have noted BTW), and the source for the nickname links to a voluntary and independent fan-site for the team. It's an unfortunate coincidence that these two players have both the same name and were born in 1984, but many players have nicknames assigned by the fans. Birthday.se and Ratsit.se both verify that Hans is part of his full name. By your logic, I think we would want to move articles such as Alexander Ovechkin to "Alexander "Ovi" Ovechkin" and Henrik Zetterberg to "Henrik "Zäta" Zetterberg". HeyMid (contribs) 13:56, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Reply: Per WP:BLP "any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be explicitly attributed to a reliable, published source". If you want to oppose the move, then show the source for the name "Hans". Dolovis (talk) 16:35, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
    • He did. He gave you links to two. -DJSasso (talk) 16:36, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment: HeyMid, Ovechkin and Zetterberg don't need to be disambiguated, so there's no need to bring them into this discussion. But I can verify that "Hans" is part of this hockey player's full name. HandsomeFella (talk) 11:04, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose I found two good references to him being nicknamed Bois [2][3], both are from Växjö Lakers official website. The nickname probably has to do with him being from Mariestad. But I don't think either the suggested move, or current article name is the best solution. There must be a better way to disambiguate between the two. —KRM ^{(Communicate!)} 17:07, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. It may be that there is a better name than the current, but a nickname within quotation marks is definitely not an appropriate naming practice. Tomas e (talk) 20:11, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose per above. The attempted disambiguation was understandable, but quotation marked nicknames in the middle is very poor. Also, Dolovis, when you do make moves, please take more care to avoid obvious misspellings like the missing S in this case. Resolute 23:22, 28 May 2013 (UTC)
• Other opinion: I don't think either alternative is perfect. Nicks are not suitable as dabs, and first names that are not used in address are not good either, because people don't know who Hans Johan is. Why not have him at "Johan Andersson (ice hockey b. March 1984)"? Fortunately, the other Johan Andersson – currently located at Johan A. Andersson – was born in May. I know we haven't done this before, but this will obviously be rare. Another alternative would be "H. Johan Andersson", using the same logic as with the other player. HandsomeFella (talk) 10:51, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Much better than the current solution IMO. —KRM ^{(Communicate!)} 00:28, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
    • Including the month has in the past been deeemed too long which is why we decided to use full name in such cases. As for why we use A. in the other article, its cause we don't know the full middle name or we would use it. -DJSasso (talk) 00:33, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
    • Although looking now we do know it. So that article should be moved to match what we've typically done. -DJSasso (talk) 00:33, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. 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.

Requested move 2

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. 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 proposal was moved to H. Johan Andersson, not moved, moved to Steve Smith (ice hockey, born in Scotland), and moved to Steve Smith (ice hockey, born in Canada), respectively. It's time to put this one to rest. You can open a new RM on the Anderssons or Smiths if you particularly hate dead equines, but I hope we can all recognize these are among the most difficult pages to disambiguate in all of Wikipedia. There isn't going to be a perfect solution. --BDD (talk) 16:42, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

• Hans Johan Andersson → Johan Andersson (ice hockey, born in Mariestad)
• Johan A. Andersson → Johan Andersson (ice hockey, born in Motala)
• James Stephen Smith → Steve Smith (ice hockey, born in Scotland)
• Steve Smith (ice hockey) → Steve Smith (ice hockey, born in Canada)

– Three of these four ice hockey player articles currently have titles that differ from the respective player's commonname. --Relisted. -- tariqabjotu 06:39, 29 June 2013 (UTC) HandsomeFella (talk) 21:06, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

See this thread for the discussion preceding this requested move. HeyMid (contribs) 19:17, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Note: the RM has been modified. See discussion under heading "Modified proposal". HandsomeFella (talk) 09:22, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Adding a middle/first name or initial that is not part of the commonname in order to dab the articles is not recommended by the guidelines – although the occurrence of it is noted there. It only moves the problem; readers who don't know the middle name/initial might well find the article with the help of a dab page, without necessarily being able to identifying it as the one they are searching for; and might believe it's another player. Example: "Hans Johan Andersson, that's not the guy I'm searching for, I'm searching for a Johan Andersson". (This might sound somewhat lame to some, but it's definitely in the ballpark.)

There have been various efforts to solve the problem of dabbing articles on people who share many "properties", in addition to their name and profession. One of them can be seen above. It was a good faith effort – as is this one – but a nickname is not a suitable title, unless it is part of the commonname, such as in the case of Butch Reynolds. I believe that this is probably why the RM above didn't go through. It doesn't necessarily mean that everybody thinks the article has the correct title.

In the case of the Johan Anderssons, they share:

• the name,
• the profession,
• the role on the ice (forward),
• the year of birth,
• and the country of birth,

but not the month of birth and the city of birth.

In the case of the Steve Smiths, they share:

• the name,
• the profession,
• the role on the ice (defenceman),
• the year of birth,
• and even the month of birth,

but not the country of birth.

So, in my view, we have to go with what we've got, hence the proposed new titles. Yes, these disambiguators are unusually long, but as Pichpich said in the discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ice Hockey/Archive57#Like-named hockey players born same year that preceded this RM, the "freak occurrences of the Steve Smiths and Johan Andersson are unreasonably rare so I don't think we should be overly worried about the length of the disambiguators".

The guidelines say that the disambiguator should be as short as possible. Well, this is as short as it gets.

In all honesty, I must also mention that other people, for instance DJSasso, have been negative to the proposal. Not many have expressed their view though. Hopefully, there will be more discussion when this RM surfaces.

Adding the name of a team they play for, or have played for, is not a good solution, because players tend to change teams. They might also have played for the same team. For players Stéphane Richer (ice hockey forward) and Stéphane Richer (ice hockey defenceman) – both born 1966, and both born in Quebec – that is exactly the case; they have both played for Tampa Bay Lightning. Fortunately, they had different roles on the ice, so they could be moved to the current titles.

Better use something that will never change – like place of birth.

I have created sub-sections, if there's a need to keep the discussions on the Johanssons and the Smiths separate. It could be useful to read the discussion at WT:HOCKEY (linked to above) as a start.

Footnote: this RM complies with the recently revised naming conventions for people articles, which includes a comma, and uses "born" (not abbreviated as "b.").

HandsomeFella (talk) 21:06, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

General discussion

Let's first agree on the fact that these disambiguators are horrible. There's no denying that but these two cases are completely out of the ordinary and as such require that we at least consider out-of-the-ordinary disambiguation. The current solution is to use names that most readers don't recognize and I think that's unacceptable in any circumstance. To a certain extent, I think we (meaning, we long-time editors) are being somewhat selfish because we all like slick, short disambiguators but I don't think the casual reader cares. He wants to get to the info he's looking for. Pichpich (talk) 22:20, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

To have cruft like this in huge letters on top of an article looks amaturish. A title should: 1) Tell the reader the common name of the subject, 2) Not clash with other titles, and 3) Look like something that might appear in a professionally written reference work. I don't see anything in the guideline about using middle initials, or not using them. In my opinion, the common name plus a middle initial is close enough, so Johan A. Andersson is fine as it is. According to WP:NCPDAB, a four-word tag is "excessively long." These are six-word tags. Kauffner (talk) 15:40, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Yet, it gives examples of two poker players with four word tags – excessively long. By that measure, wikipedia is full of ice hockey player with excessively long tags. "Ice hockey" is two words, and "born XXXX" is two words. What do you suggest we do with them? Move them to titles with their full names no-one has ever heard of? How in the world would you find what you were looking for? And how do you find out their full names? Not to mention that some people only have one first name.

Another thing: if there appeared another hockey player named Hans Johan Andersson as his commonname – then you would have to disambiguate him to separate him from a guy who actually doesn't go by that name!

These are extremely rare occurrences, and I think we have to accommodate for that.

HandsomeFella (talk) 21:49, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

It's even more amateurish to use a name when we know full well that no reader will recognize it. Using a middle initial that nobody's ever seen is just as good as naming these articles "Johan Andersson (first guy)" and "Johan Andersson (second guy)". If your only objective is to have something that looks like a professional encyclopedia, you're out of luck. Any traditional reference work would use "Johan Andersson" because that's the subject's name and the only name by which they're known to the public. It's been your mantra for a while that any disambiguator is a horrible disfigurement of Wikipedia but you're recommending something that is much worse: it's confusing to our readers, especially those who browse categories. Like I said, it's selfishness for our own little aesthetic pleasure. Pichpich (talk) 23:23, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

What sense does it make to use birth years for disambiguation if the two subjects have the same birth year? The proposed forms are monstrosities, ungrammatical strings no copy editor would allow to be published. It is not true that readers indiscriminately vaccuum up information. Scientific studies have found that ungrammatical writing is a whole lot less likely to be taken seriously. When two similar subjects have the same name, this is inherently confusing no matter how we might present it. "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," per WP:NATURAL. A parenthetical should be used only when, "natural disambiguation is not possible." Let me go through the request item by item:

• Hans Johan Andersson. Move it to H. Johan Andersson or Johan "Bois" Andersson
• Johan A. Andersson. Fine as it is.
• James Stephen Smith. Move to Steve Smith (Oilers defenceman)
• Steve Smith (ice hockey). Move to Steve Smith (Flyers defenceman) Kauffner (talk) 07:17, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Let me rephrase what you just said: what sense does it make to use "defenceman" for disambiguation if the two subjects are both defencemen? And what team name should be selected? They have both played for more than one NHL team. HandsomeFella (talk) 10:24, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

For the sake of comparison, both the Finnish and French Wikipedias disambiguate the Steve Smiths using their full birth date. The German and Swedish Wikipedias disambiguate the Johan Anderssons using the month of birth. Obviously we don't have to follow either example but it at least shows that clunky disambiguators have been chosen as the least bad solution. Pichpich (talk) 20:02, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

• One of the major factors in Wikipedia's rise is that the site design makes it look like a published reference work. So I must dissent from the argument that this issue is just all about "our own little aesthetic pleasure", and why don't we cram as much information as possible into the article title? Kauffner (talk) 05:30, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

• I'm tempted to add a citation needed tag to your first sentence. Call me crazy but I'd always thought that Wikipedia's qualities of being free, fairly reliable, frequently updated, extremely broad and multilingual and having articles that are thoroughly interlinked and connected to its references were all more important factors than how it chooses to handle disambiguation. In any case, the fact is that we don't treat titles like other encyclopedias and reference works and that we do so not by sheer stupidity but by design and by choice. It would be trivial to have a gadget that hides disambiguators or tweak the software to separate the title from the disambiguator (as is done on Wikidata). Pichpich (talk) 23:22, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

• I believe two disambiguators is enough as long as we can use middle name. Secondly, I do not support Kauffner's suggestions above. "Bois" is just a non-official nickname the club has decided to give him. Also, it's not appropriate to use team as a disambiguator; why should the Edmonton Oilers be James Stephen Smith's disambiguator? He spent six seasons with the Chicago Blackhawks, and just one more with the Edmonton Oilers. And although he is currently coaching the Oilers, he has also been a scout for the Blackhawks for two seasons since retiring. The same question applies for Steve Smith (ice hockey). Both Smiths have played some games for the Sabres. I noticed now that both players were born in April as well, so we can't disambiguate by month either in this case. And, they were both defenceman. I do think we should move James Stephen Smith to Steve Smith, since it appears to be his common name. My conclusion: if it's possible to find out the middle name(s) for Steve Smith (ice hockey), then we can use that to disambiguate the Smiths, but only the first letter of the middle name – otherwise, I'll support Kauffner's suggestion to move James Stephen Smith to Steve Smith (Oilers defenceman) and move Steve Smith (ice hockey) to Steve Smith (Flyers defenceman). A very difficult case indeed. See also my comments in the "Johan Andersson" and "Steve Smith" subsections. HeyMid (contribs) 10:45, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

• If we choose to disambiguate by birthplace, then the birth year is unnecessary. So that would reduce it to Johan Anderson (ice hockey, born in Mariestad) and Steve Smith (ice hockey, born in Scotland), etc. Also, I would absolutely oppose labeling any player on the basis of one of the teams they played for. That's not only an even worse disambiguator, it is completely POV. Resolute 13:07, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Perhaps Johan Anderson (ice hockey b. in Mariestad) and Steve Smith (ice hockey b. in Scotland) would be better, just like the format we use to disambiguate by birth year: Firstname Surname (ice hockey b. YYYY). HeyMid (contribs) 14:07, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
    • That is certainly better than was is proposed above. -DJSasso (talk) 14:12, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
    • Comment: @HeyMid, the updated naming conventions for people articles now state that we should use "born" (unabbreviated), preceded by a comma. So that would be Johan Andersson (ice hockey, born in Mariestad), Johan Andersson (ice hockey, born in Motala), Steve Smith (ice hockey, born in Scotland) and Steve Smith (ice hockey, born in Canada). HandsomeFella (talk) 11:43, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Modified proposal

Several opposers have objected to the length of the disambiguator. If we drop the year of birth, which isn't offering any disambiguation anyway, could the opposers accept that, and will the supporters still support? HandsomeFella (talk) 12:32, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

I can support that. Regarding your response to my comment above, the naming conventions for disambiguation apparently state that in cases like this, we may use other ways to distinguish the persons, including the use of additional names (James Stephen Smith, Hans Johan Andersson, Roger Meddows Taylor etc.). The conventions also note the use of birth country: "Steve Smith (Canadian-born ice hockey player)", which may be excessively long disambiguation. The conventions also state that "When there is a usual way of distinguishing two people of the same name, use it." I can support your proposals, but the important thing is that we don't make the disambiguations excessively long. I agree with Resolute that we should not disambiguate by team. HeyMid (contribs) 14:39, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

As mentioned above I would take this version over the original options. -DJSasso (talk) 12:24, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Seems the most reasonable alternative. Resolute 15:30, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Johan Andersson

• Support per nom and PichPich's comments. These are extreme cases but don't justifying using names for the BLPs that aren't their normal names, that helps no one. We do sometimes have exceptionally long non-disambiguated titles in royalty Robert Bertie, 4th Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven is not the longest by far. We can also have 4 hockey BLPs which contain long dabs. No one types the ( ) anyway, as been frequently noted. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:16, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:NATURAL. Using these disambiguators is no more helpful to readers because no reader is going to type out this massively long dab when randomly searching for the player. They will type their real name and end up at the dab page which will then point them where they want to go. And even if they are going based on what auto-fill pops up in the search box, it includes all the redirects. So all the redirects that do include their normal name will come up. There is no reason to use some very amateurish disambiguation when there is a much more concise professional way to do it. -DJSasso (talk) 12:42, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
• Support Nickname Bois or place of birth are better options than an unheard of middle name.—KRM ^{(Communicate!)} 23:18, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
• Support per WP:COMMONNAME and common sense. The name "Hans Johan Andersson" is not commonly recognizable as the name of the hockey player. The nom's proposed names are are recognizable and distinguishable, and will therefore be helpful when trying to find the article about the subject of interest. Dolovis (talk) 04:56, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. I agree with Djsasso here. From my point of view, two disambiguators is a maximum; there's no need to disambiguate by birth location as well. The Johan Andersson moves and Steve Smith moves would also cause inconsistency; in this case we would be disambiguating by city, while in the Steve Smith case we would disambiguate by country. I would prefer to disambiguate by middle name in this case. HeyMid (contribs) 09:53, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Changing to Support per my comment in the "Modified proposal" section above. HeyMid (contribs) 11:02, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
• Support per my earlier comments. I also want to point out that Djsasso's pointer to WP:NATURAL is weird given that this guideline recommends "choose an alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English, albeit not as commonly as the preferred-but-ambiguous title". In these cases, the names including the middle name are not "used commonly albeit not as commonly". They are basically never used and are unrecognizable to all but a handful of people such as that player's agent, their mom and the people who are discussing the issue on this talk page. I think that's a huge difference. Pichpich (talk) 22:29, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose - I think whichever way you fry it, the disambiguation brackets are going to look long and ugly. Better to keep them at full name disambiguation.  — Amakuru (talk) 23:26, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Did you read the modification of the proposal? HandsomeFella (talk) 09:22, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. The current titles are reasonably close to the common names, and without parentheticals. That beats even the modified proposal. Few readers would know the names of the towns these players were born in, and this method of disambiguation is most unusual. Kauffner (talk) 04:47, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Steve Smith

• Support per nom and PichPich's comments. In ictu oculi (talk)
• Oppose per WP:NATURAL. Using these disambiguators is no more helpful to readers because no reader is going to type out this massively long dab when randomly searching for the player. They will type their real name and end up at the dab page which will then point them where they want to go. And even if they are going based on what auto-fill pops up in the search box, it includes all the redirects. So all the redirects that do include their normal name will come up. There is no reason to use some very amateurish disambiguation when there is a much more concise professional way to do it. -DJSasso (talk) 12:42, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
• Support per WP:COMMONNAME and common sense. The name "James Stephen Smith" is not recognizable as that of the former hockey player. The nom's proposed names are recognizable and distinguishable, and will therefore be helpful when trying to find the article about the subject of interest. Dolovis (talk) 04:58, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. I agree with Djsasso here. From my point of view, two disambiguators is a maximum; there's no need to disambiguate by birth location as well. The Steve Smith moves and Johan Andersson moves would also cause inconsistency; in this case we would be disambiguating by country, while in the Johan Andersson case we would disambiguate by city. I would prefer to disambiguate by middle name in this case. HeyMid (contribs) 09:53, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Changing to Support per my comment in the "Modified proposal" section above. HeyMid (contribs) 11:02, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
• Support See my comments in the two earlier sections. Pichpich (talk) 22:29, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose - same situation as Johan Andersson.  — Amakuru (talk) 23:26, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Did you read the modification of the proposal? HandsomeFella (talk) 09:22, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

• Support. A fan might not even recognize "James Stephen Smith". Kauffner (talk) 04:38, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
• Support. The name which he is known. Reiftyr (talk) 10:18, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Fresh start

As the discussion so far is somewhat inconclusive, maybe voting for various alternatives will yield a clearer outcome. Note that the first alternative is the current situation. Edit the section, and add your votes. (As you can see, the current proposal is not my top choice.) HandsomeFella (talk) 20:19, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Vote on Johan Andersson

Editor	Hans Johan Andersson Johan A. Andersson	H. Johan Andersson Johan A. Andersson	Johan Andersson (ice hockey, born in Mariestad) Johan Andersson (ice hockey, born in Motala)	Johan Andersson (ice hockey, born March 1984) Johan Andersson (ice hockey, born May 1984)
HandsomeFella	1 p	2 p	3 p	4 p
Heymid	2 p	3 p	4 p	1 p
Swedishpenguin	3 p	4 p	2 p	1 p
Djsasso	3 p	4 p	2 p	1 p
Dolovis	1 p	2 p	3 p	4 p
Resolute	3 p	4 p	1 p	2 p
Total	13 p	19 p	15 p	13 p

Vote on Steve Smith

Editor	Steve Smith (ice hockey) James Stephen Smith	Steve Smith (ice hockey, born in Canada) Steve Smith (ice hockey, born in Scotland)	Steve Smith (Canadian-born ice hockey player) Steve Smith (Scottish-born ice hockey player)	Steve Smith (Philadelphia Flyers) Steve Smith (Edmonton Oilers)
HandsomeFella	1 p	3 p	4 p	2 p
Heymid	2 p	4 p	1 p	3 p
Swedishpenguin	2 p	1 p	3 p
Djsasso	3 p	4 p	2 p	1 p
Dolovis	1 p	3 p	2 p	4 p
Resolute	3 p	4 p	1 p	0 POV
Total	12 p	19 p	13 p	10 p

The fact that this is tied right now is hilarious. So much for clarity. :D — SwedishPenguin | Talk 17:03, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

That is actually the reason if I remember correctly that we ended up on the current names for these articles. There were far to many options that all were not very good and the current names were the closest that came to the brevity required for disambiguation. -DJSasso (talk) 17:43, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

According to the first tiebreaker, the number of 3-point votes, the third proposal ("Steve Smith (Canadian-born ice hockey player) and Steve Smith (Scottish-born ice hockey player)") wins with two 3-point votes. Heymid (contribs) 19:44, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Comment from grumpy admin

This is getting ridiculous and messy with all the various alternatives flying around. There appears to be consensus based on the votes, but this table muddies the issue. Would anyone hate me if I closed as no consensus so new RMs could be initiated for the Anderssons and Smiths separately? I hope we can all agree that this RM has been listed much too long. --BDD (talk) 17:25, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

For the record, I refuse to participate in the above table because it's just a horrible way of settling the issue. For one thing, the method chosen of ranking and adding the totals is just one of many reasonable voting methods, so why pick this one? We could for instance use instant-runoff voting, ask people to score the alternatives from 1 to 10 or ask people to simply say whether they think a given option is acceptable or not acceptable. There's a good chance that a different voting method would lead to a different result. Moreover, the whole point of discussion is to take the quality of arguments into account. Obviously I can't close the discussion but it does seem to me like there is at least a consensus concerning the Steve Smith articles while the Johan Andersson discussion is still essentially deadlocked. Pichpich (talk) 18:29, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't agree that the Steve Smiths were settled. It is 4 opposing and 5 supporting. (though one of the opposes was changed to support the alternate proposal so at best case its 4-4-1) Same goes for the Anderssons which are 4-4 (or 4-3-1 depending on the switch) Both are deadlocked. -DJSasso (talk) 19:28, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Maybe I'm counting this wrong but supporting the move for the Steve Smiths articles would be HandsomeFella, In ictu oculi, Dolovis, HeyMid, myself, Kauffner and Reiftyr. The only ones I see opposing the move are yourself and Amakuru. Counting heads, that 7-2. More significantly, the fact that HeyMid (who was initially opposed) and Kauffner (who has made it clear that he hates long disambiguators) rallied to the modified proposal strengthens the claim that there's a consensus to move away from the current titles and towards titles of the form Steve Smith (best disambiguator 1) and Steve Smith (best disambiguator 2). One can also see some support of that idea by Resolute though he never registered a !vote. Now we may not agree on what the ideal disambiguator is but it seems reasonable to me to conclude that the "modified proposal" is something that most people here consider an improvement over the current titles. Pichpich (talk) 23:44, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Maybe it is, but since you and others refuse to comment on the modified proposal via the table we don't know if it is something people consider an improvement. As it stands only 3 people have commented on the modified proposal above in the discussion and only 4 in the table. -DJSasso (talk) 12:41, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

It's pretty clear from my comments that I care more about using common names with a disambiguator than I do about what disambiguator we use. So if the modified proposal gets us to a solution of that form, I'm obviously all for it and it doesn't take a table to see that. Pichpich (talk) 19:56, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps, but it would certainly be helpful for everyone if you did participate so we could decide on what the actual preference is for the disambiguator. -DJSasso (talk) 12:41, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Relisting this discussion probably won't help consensus in this case. I wouldn't object if this RM is closed. However, there appears to be consensus to move Hans Johan Andersson to "H. Johan Andersson", James Stephen Smith to "Steve Smith (Scottish-born ice hockey player)", and Steve Smith (ice hockey) to "Steve Smith (Canadian-born ice hockey player)" (more 3-point votes, which is the first tiebreaker). Heymid (contribs) 19:31, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I made my thought known in my comments, and I am not participating in the table because I do not understand how it is being tabulated. The table muddles the discussion and should be ignored. I also think that move discussions should be handled individually. That being said, it appears to me that there is a consensus to move the articles away from their current titles, but there is not yet a clear consensus on what the new titles should be. Dolovis (talk) 19:37, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Apologies for muddling the RM, but I felt that whichever target was proposed, there was always someone objecting, and at the same time no clear support. My hope was that if I put all alternatives on the table, and all would put their votes in, chances were that we could have a "winner", and that the outcome would be generally accepted, once and for all. It's not too late, if everyone puts their vote in. Just give most points to the alternative you prefer (or that which is the least unattractive). HandsomeFella (talk) 21:46, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Okay, I think I now understand how the vote is intended to work, and I have added my votes accordingly; however I do not like any of the choices for "Steve Smith" so I have added a fourth option. Please re-vote for Steve Smith to give the new option your consideration. Dolovis (talk) 20:19, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Sigh. If voting here puts this silly mess to bed, then I will vote. On the Steve Smith point... I consider a dab by one team someone played for to be a violation of WP:NPOV. I would disqualify it outright, if I could. Resolute 13:30, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah picking a single team when they played for multiple teams is highly POV. -DJSasso (talk) 13:45, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually. it is not a violation of WP:NPOV because the selection of the one team does represent fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without bias, the NHL team for which the player is most often associated with. In both cases it represents the NHL team which drafted the player, and the NHL team for which that person predominately played. Dolovis (talk) 19:44, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Except that it doesn't. The Scottish-born Smith was an Oiler for six years (plus 2 games), a Blackhawk for six years and a Flame for three. He spent only a minor proportion of his career with any one team and it thus becomes one's personal POV as to whether one team is more significant than another. Resolute 22:24, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I am using an objective standard (draft pick/games played) as well as making a survey of reliable sources where most references to Steve Smith recognize him as a three times Stanley Cup winner as a member of the Edmonton Oilers. Dolovis (talk) 23:37, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. 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.