The Pakeha settlers article was created on 24 May 2005 by 218.101.80.106, an IP with a history of only two edits.
At 12:24, 27 June 2017 Hazhk moved Pakeha settlers to Pākehā settlers, with (correct spelling) as their reason. The move simply added diacritics. That's been, to date, the only move in the page's history.
When article title discussions end without consensus, the applicable policy preserves the most recent stable title. No consensus in this discussion preserves Pākehā settlers.
Remember that the criteria for deciding on an article title should be seen as goals, not as rules.
Four shortcuts were given as rationales in support of moving.
The first two, WP:COMMONNAME and WP:RECOGNIZABILITY, target the first of the five article titles policy criteria, Recognizability (use commonly recognizable names). I believe that Pākehā settlers is a term which someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, New Zealand will recognize. However this is also a term that someone unfamiliar with New Zealand probably won't recognize.
Wikipedia generally prefers the name that is most commonly used in sources, and Google links are provided showing that "European settlers" appears substantially more often than "Pākehā settlers" in articles relating to New Zealand. However, ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources, and non-neutral but common names may also be avoided.
WP:COMMONALITY targets the Manual of Style guideline, which says using vocabulary common to all varieties of English is preferable. Use a commonly understood word or phrase in preference to one that has a different meaning because of national differences – but "Pākehā settlers" may be glossed to prevent confusion.
Finally, WP:CONSISTENT targets the fifth of the five article titles policy criteria: the title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. European New Zealanders was cited as the title to be consistent with. However, a search for titles with "Pākehā" finds Pākehā Māori, another title to be consistent with. European Māori is a redirect which has yet to be created.
MOS:TIES, targeting the Manual of Style guideline, was cited in support of keeping the "Pākehā settlers" title. An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the English of that nation. I'm not clear on the relevance of this point. Sure, "Pākehā settlers" is clearly a "New Zealand English" term, but, isn't "European settlers in New Zealand" also?
Now I'll review the other three article titles policy criteria.
Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English. This seems like a title that some readers may search for. Putting "Pākehā" in the search box, I find that the drop-down list gives me Pākehā settlers, Pākehā Māori, and Pakeha (spider). I also found a Category:Pākehā Māori.
"What links here" shows me ~80 articles linking to Pākehā settlers. Template:Culture of New Zealand and Template:History of New Zealand have links which account for many of these. Looking for natural article links from outside these templates, I find:
- In Politics of New Zealand: "Early Pākehā settlers believed that traditional British legal principles (including individual title to land) would be upheld in New Zealand."
- In Pacifism: "In colonial New Zealand, during the latter half of the 19th century Pākehā settlers used numerous tactics to confiscate land from the indigenous Māori, including warfare."
- In History of New Zealand: "Already a majority of the population by 1859, the number of Pākehā settlers increased rapidly to reach over one million by 1916."
- In William Hobson: "The land was later resold to Pākehā settlers at a profit to provide for further operations."
- In Pākehā: "Some early Pākehā settlers who lived among Māori and adopted aspects of Māoritanga became known as 'Pākehā Māori'."
- In Dog Tax War: "It has been described by some authors as the last gasp of the 19th-century wars between the Māori and Pākehā settlers."
- In James Busby: "His duties were to protect British commerce, control, and to mediate between the unruly Pākehā settlers and Māori in New Zealand."
That's a sample I found by working through the first 17 articles on the list, so there are likely many more natural uses of the term in New Zealand-related topics.
Precision – The title unambiguously identifies the article's subject and distinguishes it from other subjects. This criterion seems to be satisfied. Pakeha (spider) is the only title requiring disambiguation, and page views for the spider are much lower. I see unlikely confusion with the concept of spiders settling into new territories.
Concision – The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects. There was a consensus that Pākehā settlers is more concise than European settlers in New Zealand. Fortunately this is not one of those all too common discussions I see where editors are pushing to make a title so concise that it bumps into precision issues, and then the title needs to claim "primary topic" status to bail it out of its precision conflicts.
The current title seems to be doing OK on most of the criteria. The main issues I'm seeing those supporting the move raise are recognizability on a global basis (a higher standard than the policy prescribes), and usage.
On the global recognizability issue, a look at the page views of related articles finds that most readers from around the world are likely to arrive in this neighborhood by landing at European New Zealanders, a term they should recognize. There, in § Alternative terms, they are introduced to the term "Pākehā", albeit not until after they have already been guided to the subtopic Pākehā settlers from a hatnote in § History. This issue could be rectified by moving § Alternative terms up to make it the first section below the lead section.
Finally, I'll take a deeper look into the thorniest issue, (common) usage.
The naming policy (over)emphasizes searching the Internet for usage everywhere, over simply looking at usage in the article itself. The Pākehā settlers article uses the word "Pākehā" about twice as many times as it uses the word "European". In its references section, I see "European" just once, while I see "Pākehā" five times. Perhaps "Pākehā settlers" is the more commonly-used term, in the sources cited by the article.
"Most commonly used name" assumes that the set of names used to find the most common among them are equivalent names, i.e. synonyms. I'm not convinced that "Pākehā settlers" and "European settlers in New Zealand" are completely synonymous terms, although they have very similar meanings. "Pākehā settlers" may be the more appropriate term to use when describing facts from a Māori point-of-view.
The 1996 census used the wording "New Zealand European (Pākehā)" in the ethnicity question, however the word Pākehā was subsequently removed after what Statistics New Zealand called a "significant adverse reaction" to its use to identify ethnicity. In 2013, the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study carried out by The University of Auckland found no evidence that the word was derogatory, 14% of the overall respondents to the survey chose the option Pākehā to describe themselves with the remainder preferring New Zealander, New Zealand European or simply Kiwi.
In Pākehā:
Opinions of the term vary amongst European New Zealanders. A survey of 6,507 New Zealanders in 2009 showed no support for the claim that the term Pākehā is associated with a negative evaluation; however, some reject it on the ground that they claim it is offensive, or they object to being named in a language other than their own. In 2013 the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study carried out by the University of Auckland found no evidence that the word was widely considered to be derogatory; however, only 12 per cent of New Zealanders of European descent actively chose to be identified by the term, with the remainder preferring 'New Zealander' (53 per cent), 'New Zealand European' (25 per cent) and/or 'Kiwi' (17 per cent) which is another Māori word.
Pākehā is not a legal concept and has no definition under New Zealand law. Most inclusively the term can apply to any non-Māori New Zealander. Historically, before the arrival of other ethnic groups, the word Māori was not an ethnonym as it meant 'ordinary' or 'normal'. The arrival of Europeans led to the formation of a new term to distinguish the self-regarded 'ordinary' or 'normal' Māori from the new arrivals.
The term is commonly used by a range of journalists and columnists from The New Zealand Herald, the country's largest-circulation daily newspaper.
I find that there is again no consensus to move the page.
I'm anticipating that I will hear cries of "supervote" from some of those reading my above analysis and interpretation of the policies, guidelines, and "discussion", such as it was. I saw too much "shouting" of this and that WP:SHORTCUT, and too little analysis, so I felt compelled to do the detailed analysis myself. So, if you prefer a count of !votes, I see this hovering slightly above the range of 60% in support, with no particularly compelling arguments from either side, putting this in a discretionary range, so I'm using my discretion to settle this. –