Talk:Prostitution in the Spanish Civil War

Latest comment: 5 years ago by John B123 in topic Title

Title

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@LauraHale: Firstly congratulations on a well researched and well written article. Although title primarily suggests the article is about the Civil War period, the background and the follow-on in the Franco era gives it a coverage of 1800 - 1973. Perhaps the title needs to be changed to reflect this? One thought was to add pre-1800 and post-1973 (possibly from Prostitution in Spain?) and call it History of Prostitution in Spain. A second thought was that as the article covers the politics in such depth, Politics of Prostitution in Spain. --John B123 (talk) 22:53, 25 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

@John B123:, Thanks for the praise and apologies for rambling. I realize the article scope is actually bigger than the name suggests as properly covering the specifics of the war period requires a great deal of contextualizing of the situation that led to it as the subject was part of a lot of debate in the Second Republic and used by both sides in the Spanish Civil War for their own ideological ends. Expanding the scope to include earlier and later periods seems problematic as that would need a different sort of historical contextualization. (Fascism and leftist first wave feminist views are less important in that context.) Prostitution in Spain's Restoration and Second Republic period would probably be a better name for what it encompasses as it reads now. Even Prostitution in Spanish Second Republic and Civil War period might serve. Francoist Spain's issues around prostitution probably deserve their own article. And earlier periods ditto. The earlier period just isn't connected ideologically in the same way that the Second Republic was. It would be possible to make the sections on the Second Republic and the Civil War period lengthier, or even potentially take the "Prelude to the Second Republic (1800–1922)" and "Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-1930)" sections out and spin them off into start articles without losing much meaning in the content focus of this article. Because this was a last minute addition to the series I was doing on the period, it was shorter than other articles. --LauraHale (talk) 08:09, 27 March 2019 (UTC)Reply
@LauraHale: - I've also written articles that once the background is added in and the legacy, the article cover far more than the core of the article. Some have been renamed to reflect this, others not. One of the reasons being title length. For a variety of reasons, some of which aren't really logical, articles with short titles seem to be read far more than those with long titles. I'm not sure changing an article's title, even if more accurate, to something more complex is a step forward. There is an article History of Spain (1810–73), perhaps something similar, say Prostitution in Spain (1810–73) would be suitable?
Although WP is about collaboration and you cannot WP:OWN an article, I do think in cases like this the original author's views and their aim for the article carry a lot of weight. Having reread it at length, the article works well with its current title, especially given the lede, but arguably a broader title may be an improvement. If you feel the current title sums up the aims of the article accurately and would prefer to keep it, I don't see that as a problem. Not sure spinning off sections to increase the focus on the Civil War period would be a positive step given their contextual importance. (Hope this helps rather than confuses the situation) --John B123 (talk) 21:18, 27 March 2019 (UTC)Reply