Talk:Allen Burns

Requested move 10 February 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: consensus to move the page to Allen Burns, per the discussion below; discussion of how to employ hatnotes and disambiguation pages can, of course, continue. Dekimasuよ! 22:40, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

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Allen Burns (footballer) → Allen Burns – Sole Wikipedia entry for an Allen Burns, thus making it unnecessary to attach a qualifier. Allen Burns currently redirects to the Alan Burns disambiguation page, while the footballer appears redundantly under section header "See also" at both the Alan Burns dab page and the Allan Burns (disambiguation) page. In fact, there is no need for separate dab pages for Alan Burns, which has 6 entries and Allan Burns (disambiguation), which has only 2 entries. Numerous Alan-Allan-Allen same-surname dab pages, such as Alan Cooper (disambiguation) or Alan Murphy (disambiguation), combine Alan, Allan and Allen under a single main title header. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 00:43, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

• What's the point This is a completely un-notable index micro-stub on a footballer who died in 1925. The designer of Ottawa Street Power Station is the only "Allen Burns" mentioned in books. I would guess anyone typing "Allen Burns" is simply mistyping for any Alan Burns or Allan Burns scriptwriter for the television sitcoms The Munsters, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:08, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Are we now supposed to start applying a notability test to each unique name entry if there is someone more famous with a similar name? If there is only one Jon Cunningham, but his prominence is rather low, should we qualify him as Jon Cunningham (hardly notable) and redirect Jon Cunningham to the John Cunningham dab page because Wikipedia users must have mistyped and intended to enter one of the more-notable John Cunnighams? If I say that Willy Loman is the notable one and you say that only Willie Loman is prominent, but Willy Loman is a nobody, are we going to require a vote to decide if Willy gets to stand alone and Willie needs a qualifier? We'd need a good salesman to sell that idea to WP:DAB. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 02:45, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

No, but in this case... In ictu oculi (talk) 09:45, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

And, of course, needless to say (although I neglected to mention the obvious), such cases always require hatnotes --- such as the one atop the undisambiguated main title header for Wikipedia's sole Richard Montgomerie or, if we had an entry for a Dick Montgomery: "For those of a similar name, see Richard Montgomery (disambiguation)." —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 16:05, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

• Support move and apply changes suggested by Roman Spinner, no need for disambiguation as there is nothing to disambiguate from. Although it's a stub article, it doesn't mean it can't be expanded. IMO In ictu oculi's argument is null and void and doesn't appear to meet any sort of policy/guideline. Flickerd (talk) 14:00, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
• Support as the only Allen Burns with an article. kennethaw88 • talk 00:28, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
• Weak oppose: This guy seems less notable than the power plant designer. We know practically nothing about him. At least the other guy created a substantial facility we can point to. We disambiguate topics, not articles. It is also worth considering that readers may not always know the exact spelling for the topic they are seeking. This article averages less than one view per day, and I suspect most of those views are accidental. How is that a primary topic? —BarrelProof (talk) 03:51, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

It has never been our practice to preemptively disambiguate stand-alone article titles based on their notability or lack thereof, or based on the anticipation that another article, such as Allen Burns (designer of Ottawa Street Power Station), will be created at some point in the future, while, in the meantime, parking the stand-alone name, Allen Burns, as a redirect to the Alan Burns dab page, where Allen Burns is not even listed as one of the entries but is shunted to the bottom under "See also".

Furthermore, no claim is being made that Allen Burns (footballer) is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC of the Allen Burns dab page, since such a dab page doesn't even exist. In fact, as has been already pointed out above, there is no need of separate dab pages for Alan Burns, Allan Burns and Allen Burns when "Alan", "Allan" and "Allen" can be easily accommodated under a single main header (using whichever form has the most entries) as is already being done at a number of pages which feature all three forms, such as the above-mentioned Alan Cooper (disambiguation) and Alan Murphy (disambiguation).

If, or when, the forms "Alun" or "Al" occur, accommodation can be made for those, although "Al" may also refer to "Albert", "Alexander" or other names. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 19:18, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

We disambiguate topics, not articles. Please see WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT: "The fact that an article has a different title is not a factor in determining whether a topic is primary." For example, there is no article entitled Hurricane. The power plant designer is discussed in an article. In the language of WP:DAB, the plant designer is "a subtopic covered by an article in addition to the article's main topic". Given how little we know about the footballer, there is no indication that the footballer should be given priority over the power plant designer. —BarrelProof (talk) 21:59, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

We disambiguate main title headers of articles when there is at least one other article with the same main header. As of this writing, Wikipedia has only one article titled Allen Burns. Anyone is welcome to create an article delineating Allen Burns (designer of Ottawa Street Power Station) and when / if such article is created, Allen Burns should, quite properly, be moved back to Allen Burns (footballer), but before the designer has his article, the footballer is Wikipedia's sole Allen Burns, without the need for a qualifier.

As for WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT, it has no role here, because there is no contention that Allen Burns is the primary topic of anything. The removal of the qualifier would make no difference in his article's status, since the only dab pages in question are Alan Burns (with 6 entries) and Allan Burns (disambiguation) (with only 2 entries) and those work best united into a single dab page with all men named "Alan", "Allan" and "Allen" united under section headers such as "Sportspeople", which would list:

• Allen Burns (1870–1925), Australian rules footballer
• Alan Burns (rugby league) (born 1961), Australian rugby league footballer of the 1980s

thus providing a clear comparison between the two sportsmen.

The Allen Burns article would, of course, carry a hatnote to the effect of: "For similarly named people, see Alan Burns (disambiguation)." —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 23:43, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

The idea that disambiguation is only about titles rather than topics is not supported by any Wikipedia guideline or policy. I challenge you to find a quote from a Wikipedia policy or guideline that supports the notion that "We disambiguate main title headers of articles when there is at least one other article with the same main header." Wikipedia guidelines explicitly say otherwise (except perhaps for albums and songs). How do you explain the quote from WP:DAB that refers to "a subtopic covered by an article in addition to the article's main topic"? —BarrelProof (talk) 04:36, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

"Deciding to disambiguate", the first section header under WP:DAB starts with the key sentence, "Disambiguation is required whenever, for a given word or phrase on which a reader might search, there is more than one existing Wikipedia article to which that word or phrase might be expected to lead." There is no need to go any further as there is no other existing Wikipedia article titled Allen Burns.

Your quote regarding "a subtopic covered by an article in addition to the article's main topic" would, in the case of Allen Burns, refer to any other individual named Allen Burns who might have a WP:DABMENTION in any Wikipedia article. One individual bearing that exact name does, indeed, receive a single, very brief mention in the article Ottawa Street Power Station and has just been added to the Alan Burns dab page, under section header "See also".

Such WP:DABMENTIONs, however, are not entitled to serve as placeholders [for instance, Allen Burns (designer of Ottawa Street Power Station)] whose redlinked qualifiers could force currently existing Wikipedia entries to adopt their own qualifiers to compete with non-existent article titles.

If a Wikipedia user is searching for someone named Alan Burns or Allan Burns, but has typed Allen Burns, then an obligatory hatnote would be there to direct the user to the all-inclusive Alan Burns (disambiguation) page. A glance at such previously exemplified dab pages as Alan Cooper (disambiguation) or Alan Murphy (disambiguation) will demonstrate that those dab pages also have standalone entries such as Allan Cooper, Allan Murphy, Allen Cooper or Allen Murphy, which has a hatnote, "For those of a similar name, see Alan Murphy (disambiguation)." —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 07:27, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

The first two paragraph of the last comment above are straightforward. The next two drift away a bit, but I don't see them really countering what I'm saying. Mere examples of WP:OTHERSTUFF on Wikipedia do not equate to policies or guildelines. WP:PRIMARYTOPIC should also be taken into account. We know very very little about this footballer. The article is absent any in-depth coverage in reliable sources. —BarrelProof (talk) 06:36, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

The key point of the counter-argument is that we do not subject stand-alone Wikipedia main title headers to a POV notability test to determine if such main headers are entitled to stand alone or be saddled with a qualifier, while the base name is redirected to a more-notable target. If that is the proposal, perhaps a few examples of already-existing stand-alone redirects of that nature could be provided. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 21:36, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

We should, and we sometimes do, consider notability and potential sub-topic needs for disambiguation in article title discussions, but that's water under the bridge (or the power plant) at this point, since the article has just been expanded into something more substantial. —BarrelProof (talk) 00:18, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Opposition withdrawn, as the article has since been expanded, and now has some meaningful content that makes a stronger case for the footballer being notable. —BarrelProof (talk) 00:18, 15 February 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.