Talk:Steven Morrissey (footballer)

Requested move 27 August 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: No consensus. Reasonable policy-based arguments have been put forward on both sides, but on balance they don't tip away from the current setup. No such user (talk) 11:50, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

(non-admin closure)

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Steven Morrissey (footballer) → Steven Morrissey – "Steven Morrissey" currently redirects to the singer who does not use that name professionally, unlike the footballer. Kailash29792 (talk) 05:12, 27 August 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. bd2412 T 18:52, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

• Support. The Steven Morrissey redirect currently averages just one hit per day out of almost 3,000 for its target, [1], most of which came from a few wikilinks that I've just fixed, so it isn't really needed for that purpose. Station1 (talk) 07:14, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose (pending further evidence): The question is what percentage of those 30 views per month are people looking for the article about the footballer instead of the one about the singer. That is something we don't know. What we do know is that the article about the singer gets about 500 times as many page views as the one about the footballer, and that "Steven Morrissey" is the actual name of both people. The footballer (with an article that only gets about 6 page views per day and does not describe any awards or exceptional accomplishments or personal notoriety) doesn't seem that highly notable. Also, a web search for "Steven Morrissey" yields results that are heavily dominated by the singer, and nothing at all about the footballer in page-after-page of search results (except Wikipedia itself, and not on the first page). —BarrelProof (talk) 19:30, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

  We can safely assume that close to 100% of the 30 views per month were looking for the singer, for two reasons. First, there were a half dozen wikilinks to the redirect until I changed them (that should also lower the number of views a little). Second, as you say, 500 times as many people look for the singer, so we can assume the proportions landing on the redirect also weigh heavily toward the singer. However, in absolute terms the numbers are so low that we can afford to put both articles at their best possible titles, in my opinion. Of course, a hatnote on the footballer would be appropriate. Another consideration is that if the article is not moved we should technically add a {{redirect}} hatnote to Morrissey pointing to the footballer. Station1 (talk) 20:16, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

  If it is clear that nearly all of the Wikipedia interest for Steven Morrissey is for the singer, then the singer is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for Steven Morrissey, and we should send people to the article about the singer (where there should be a hatnote about where to go if looking for someone else). Why send people to an article about the footballer if most of them are looking for the singer? The fact that there were a half dozen Wikilinks to Steven Morrissey that were intended to link to the singer is further evidence that people are expecting the singer (not the footballer) to be found at Steven Morrissey. —BarrelProof (talk) 03:39, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

  I agree that the disadvantage of a move would be some readers (fewer than one per day, or 0.033%) looking for the singer would need to click on a hatnote on the footballer. The advantage would be the footballer would be at his real name without artificial disambiguation and the almost useless hatnote on Morrissey could be eliminated. Frankly, it makes little difference either way. Station1 (talk) 03:16, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

  The percentage of readers looking for the singer is irrelevant. What matters is the percentage of readers looking at Steven Morrissey for the singer. As long as a significant percentage of the people looking at Steven Morrissey are looking for the singer, those people shouldn't be sent to an article about a footballer. —BarrelProof (talk) 03:01, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

• Weak oppose A Google search returns mostly the singer. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:44, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

  Unsure per Station1, it does seem a bit odd to give the PT to a different topic when the singer who's full name gets 500x the views. I have added a hatnote as suggested. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:27, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

  Then why are you saying you're unsure instead of continuing to oppose the proposal? —BarrelProof (talk) 03:39, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

  Because Station1 has given some good arguments, however I'm leaning towards weak oppose. Crouch, Swale (talk) 13:32, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

• Comment. If the Jamaican footballer was a major player on the international scene, the choice would be easy. However, since he is not, and the singer is not known to the public by the full name "Steven Morrissey", I would support the creation of a Steven Morrissey disambiguation page listing both men.    Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 03:04, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
• Create a DAB page. Neither is known to the audience of the other. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:13, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
  • It's not unusual for all of the uses of an ambiguous term to not be known to the public in general. If likely ASTONISHment by searchers of the other uses was a reason to not put a primary topic at a basename, we could only put widely recognized topics with ambiguous names at base names. But that has never been the practice on WP. Primary topic is determined by looking at likelihood of being sought relative to the other uses of the term. If one meets the criteria, then it's the primary topic, even if it's relatively obscure in general (as long as the other uses are even more obscure). --В²C ☎ 00:01, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

• 1st sentence true.

2nd sentence disagree. Astonishment must be considered, but hte astonishment risk may be small and the not quite universally know topic can quite reasonably be put at the basename, certainly if for all other topics, the readers for that topi cwould understand that their topic is a niche topic.

3rd sentence. Sorry, you are not a reliable source for practices at Wikipedia, you have a highly skewed and blinkered view. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:14, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

• Support. WP:PRECISION and WP:SMALLDETAILS are sufficient to justify this move. Red Slash 03:28, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
• Support. I fail to see the relevance of SmokeyJoe's point -- "Neither is known to the audience of the other" -- to this decision. No policy or guideline even suggests we consider such a factor, explicitly or implicitly, as far as I know. Given that essentially no one refers to the singer by this name (the dearth of Steven Morrissey redirect page views is telling[2]), the probability that anyone would be looking for the singer with this name is practically nil. That's very relevant to determining WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for this name. Searching for the footballer with this name, on the other hand, is highly likely. I think WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is clear here, and I see no policy/guideline based reason to oppose this move. --В²C ☎ 21:06, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - keep as is. The singer is vastly more of a primary topic than the footballer and, as already noted, his name actually is Steven Morrissey.  — Amakuru (talk) 23:24, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per BarrelProof and SmokeyJoe. Omnedon (talk) 23:53, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. After consideration, while the Morrissey is overwhelmingly introduced mononymously, it is very well known that he is "Steven Morrissey", it is not unreasonable for someone to think they could him covered by a biography titled "Steven Morrissey", and for many Morrissey-interested readers, the footballer is completely obscure to them, and them downloading the footballer's page would be too astonishing. Also not e that the suffix "(footballer)" adds considerable improvement to the recognisability for the footballer's Category listing entries, hovertext, urls, and other downstream uses. The proposal is bad for readers of both articles. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:20, 13 September 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.