Talk:New York (state)/July 2016 move consequences

A long discussion about moving the New York article was conducted in July 2016 and is currently under review by a three-person closing panel. This page is meant to assess the consequences of the discussion, both in case the state page is moved and in case the status quo is maintained. Lots of work has to be planned and executed in both cases.

Background

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Currently, New York is the title of the Wikipedia article about New York State; New York City is the title of the article about the city; and there is a disambiguation page at New York (disambiguation) that lists both the state, the city, and other topics that might commonly be referred to by the name "New York".

Some users have proposed moving the article about the State to a different title, such as New York (state). By default, this would create a redirect from the title New York to the moved article, but that could be changed (either by changing the target of the redirect, or by moving a different page to that title) based upon the results of this discussion.

The purpose of the discussion was to seek consensus about whether (a) the article about the State should be moved to a different title; and (b) if it is moved, whether to change the target of the redirect or to give either the article about the City or the disambiguation page the title New York.

The main debate is now closed pending evaluation by the panel.
However you can still voice your opinion on the appropriate article title, in case there is consensus to change it from "New York".

Immediate actions

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Irrespective of the debate outcome, some steps must be taken as soon as the decision is known.

Consequences of the status quo

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Even if the article titling of New York and related pages is left unchanged, there are tens of thousands of incoming links to New York that are meant for New York City and must be fixed. Please contribute proposals for an action plan below. — JFG talk 17:34, 28 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

Comment. I don't think you can extrapolate from the manual survey that "tens of thousands" of links are wrong, especially since many links come from templates which are far more likely to link correctly. And even if some links are wrong... so what? There's a hatnote on top of New York. It's not a big deal nor is it "detrimental to readers and to the integrity of the encyclopedia". This kind of problem happens on many articles and has been around since the start of Wikipedia without anybody really noticing or caring. To the extent that people volunteer time by "importance" rather than their own interests, I'd think that time would be far better spent on Wikipedia's *actual* areas for improvement - better sourcing, spot-checking shady references, systemic bias issues, etc. Links to slightly wrong pages are not a "break out an action plan" problem. SnowFire (talk) 16:18, 29 July 2016 (UTC)Reply
(I should probably add that I have my own WP:GNOME type tasks I enjoy, like fixing the styling on disambiguation pages. So if someone WANTS to go fix links, please do, it'll help! But... it's just good housekeeping, not a Big Deal.) SnowFire (talk) 16:21, 29 July 2016 (UTC)Reply
Well yes, there is some perspective to be had. In fact, the single most important thing we could be doing is making sure our core articles are up to snuff. Government for example. Practically a stub :) But then that's not everybody's cup of tea, and correcting the New York links is still something worth doing.  — Amakuru (talk) 17:36, 29 July 2016 (UTC)Reply
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A rough analysis of the situation and initial proposals for addressing the issue can be read at Talk:New York#Implementation, #Backlinks and #Time to execute. Such efforts should be structured and coordinated here.


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JFG said here regarding the plan to fix links: "It won't bring the ambiguity to editors' attention as they save their work (only making "New York" a dab page would achieve this) ". But I wonder, what prevents us from drawing attention to direct links through other means? An edit filter could warn editors when they save a direct link to New York and request that they create a piped link, or a bot could be configured to warn them to check their intended meaning at their talk pages like we do with dabs. Diego (talk) 12:34, 1 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Consequences of a title change

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If New York becomes a dab page

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In this case, internal links to New York will be flagged automatically as requiring disambiguation. A concerted effort by editors and bots will be required to fix the large number of such links which were meant to point to the city page. After this initial effort, editors will be warned when linking to New York, so no recurring buildup of wrong links should take place. As a side bonus, maintenance bots can keep hunting for some regular patterns identified during the drive to stamp out wrong links.

Grace period

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There should probably be a grace period, in which the state article is moved but not yet the dab page. That will give us a few days to sort out the incoming links before completing the change of ptopic.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:59, 27 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

I agree with the grace period. WP:R2D obviously doesn't apply to a redirect which will soon be changed into something else. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 02:42, 28 July 2016 (UTC)Reply
Yes, and according to bd2412 the process should take a few weeks. We can track progress below and move the dab page when a large enough chunk of incoming links have been corrected. — JFG talk 17:34, 28 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

Automated fixes

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Manual fixes

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Yes if New York becomes a dab page. Not necessary if New York City becomes primary topic, in which case New York and New York State just swap places and the edit notices say the same thing (basically, use American English). — JFG talk 17:34, 28 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

Stub types

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I believe that, in this case, stub categories with the geographical scope of the whole state would get renamed along with other categories; and stub tags and stub categories about parts of the state would keep their current names. Pinging Grutness and Dawynn, the other major participents in WikiProject Stub Sorting, to allow them to express their opinions in the matter. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:44, 7 August 2016 (UTC)Reply

That would make sense. given that there are both {{NewYork-stub}} and subtypes of it for the state and {{NYC-stub}} and subtypes of that for the city, there may need to be a massive template-renaming process too, at least for the state stubs. Grutness...wha? 06:55, 8 August 2016 (UTC)Reply
I don't see the need for mass renames here. The state is still called New York; {{NewYork-stub}} and {{NYC-stub}} remain valid descriptions of stubs about New York (state) and New York City. — JFG talk 08:43, 8 August 2016 (UTC)Reply
The whole argument for the move of the article seems to be that "New York" refers primarily to the city. As such, keeping the state's stub template at NewYork-stub would be counterintuitive for editors. Given that wherever possible stub types reflect categories, if the category for the state becomes Category:New York (state), then some move of both stub categories and stub templates should happen. Grutness...wha? 01:44, 9 August 2016 (UTC)Reply

If New York City becomes primary topic

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There would still be tens of thousands of wrong links to New York, the mirror image of the pre-move situation. So, instead of fixing links to New York intended for the city, we should fix those intended for the state. The question of preventing a buildup of wrong links in the future probably would call for similar steps to those outlined in the status quo case. — JFG talk 17:34, 28 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

If the City of New York becomes primary topic at the title "New York", it will need to be decided whether to use [[New York]] (meaning the city) or [[New York|New York City]] to link to the article. e.g., infobox elements such as birthplace, residence, hometown, etc., and in article bodies. Ḉɱ̍ 2nd anniv. 02:42, 30 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

Implementation

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Volunteers

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Tasks

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Progress tracking

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