Talk:Canine gait

RM

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: moved to Canine gait. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 17:19, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

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Gait (dog) → Dog gait – WP:NATURAL Red Slash 04:33, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Canine gait would be a significantly less WP:COMMONNAME-based title, but is a second-preference choice. Red Slash 04:26, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose Would substantially fail WP:NATURALNESS (if it were sensibly written to say: "Wording within the title is of a form that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.)

• "gait" AND "dog" gets "About 133,000 results" in books

"gait of a dog" gets "About 5,650 results" in books

"dog gait" gets "About 1,220 results" in books

I think that the result here would be a manipulation of language by a, likely unintended, promotion of a lesser used phrase. "Dog gait" does not convey what the subject is most commonly called in English.

also ping Blueboar even on the basis of this is by no means extreme example can we please, please, please have more clarity and precision in guidelines so as to pull back from the current, I believe, absurd and unnatural prescriptions at Naturalness, please. GregKaye 07:57, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Comment the proposal is in sync with article Horse gait and out of sync with article Gait (human)

Possible title options might include Gait (canine) and Gait (equine) as animals such as wolves have gaits that may be interpreted to easily fit between the extremes of greyhounds and poodles and Zebras and donkeys have gaits that that may be interpreted to easily fit between the gaits adopted amongst a wide variety of horse breeds. Giraffes are in a distinct family.

Also ping SMcCandlish who has a history of involvement in the naming of animal related articles. GregKaye 08:20, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

• Comment: maybe canine gait would sound more natural (it does to me anyway) than dog gait, similarly horse gait could be changed to equine gait and gait (human) to human gait. Ebonelm (talk) 18:28, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Ebonelm possibly at least canine, equine and human are adjectives. It would be helpful to check if they are common turns of phrase. GregKaye 18:44, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Support Canine gait as per other articles beginning "Canine ...", and Human gait as suitably fitting Natural disambiguation. Horse gait is more attested than Equine gait in books but Equine is more clearly an adjective, has a potentially wider topic than "Horse gait" and fits with articles like Equine anatomy. That also seems to me to be a reasonable move. GregKaye 10:32, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

• Use Canine gait, Equine gait, Human gait, per WP:NATURAL and various other articles that fit this pattern. The present title implies a specific notable dog named Gait. I would more weakly support Gait (canine), Gait (equine), and Gait (human), on the basis that it's routine to parenthetically disambiguate when the alternatives are a phrase that isn't itself commonly used ("Dog gait"), or one that is awkward ("Gait of a dog", "Gait of canines"). Cf. Pack (canine), Lameness (equine), and a few other examples. However, "Canine gait", etc., do not seem odd at all, and WP:COMMONNAME does not "trump" WP:NATURAL; both are naming policies that exist in balance. The non-parenthetical use dominates in our article titles, including with regard to both equines and canines (see Category:Dogs, Category:Horses and their contents). The Google stats suggest that the phrase "dog gait" isn't overwhelmingly common, but they also prove that it is in fact used in some published sources. But, I don't think we care, because "Dog" shouldn't be in the title; as GregKaye observes, this would exclude wolves and other canines for no real reason. The first of the three Google stats given above is meaningless, since of course any work primarily about dogs will typically not use the phrase "dog gait" but simply refer to the "gait" of its already-given subject, yet probably also have the word "dog" somewhere else in it. Regardless, I don't see a good case for parenthetic disambiguation here, and we have various comparable articled that are not parenthetically disambiguated, e.g. Dog biscuit, Dog daycare, Dog food, Dog meat, Horse racing, Horse tack, Horse collar, etc., etc. Due to the fact that there are many individual notable dogs and horses, and we disambiguate them with titles like Trigger (horse), any cases of disambiguation by "(dog)" or "(horse)" of subjects that are not individual animals should be renamed. E.g., there is no reason for Breed type (dog) to be at that title rather than Dog breed type, especially given that the parent article is Dog breed, not "Breed (dog)". Whether to use "Dog whatever"/"Horse whatever" vs. "Canine whatever"/"Equine whatever" vs. "Whatever (canine)"/"Whatever (equine)" is going to vary on a case-by-case basis. E.g. Thrush (horse) should almost certainly be moved to Thrush (equine); I see nothing at the article suggesting zebras and asses are immune. Meanwhile "Horse thrush" would raise WP:RECOGNIZABLE problems, probably being mistaken for most readers for the common name of a bird species.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:00, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
• Natural disambiguation preferred: I think "dog gait" or "canine gait" are equally fine, and I do know of ambling mules, so though I know little about donkey or zebra gaits, I have no problem with a move (later and probably can be bold with out an RM) to "Equine gait". Montanabw^(talk) 21:06, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
• Support. Dog gait is the most natural sounding of the proposed titles, and therefore satisfies WP:NATURAL.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:42, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Amakuru In addition to its use as a verb, dog is primarily used as a noun. Canine is primarily used as an adjective. Dog is a term with a wide range of colloquial uses while I'd consider Canine to be more clearly and broadly defined. While, in cases mentioned above there is high level of WP:recognizability in regard to Dog biscuit, Dog daycare, Dog food and Dog meat, I don't think that this particularly applies to Dog gait and I think that for most people a comprehension of the meaning of the title will be more influenced by understandings of the words than by a marginal difference in prevalence of use. Ping Red Slash GregKaye 10:26, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

I'd be happy enough with Canine gait instead of Dog gait, if there is consensus for that. Either is OK as far as I'm concerned. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 11:01, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Ditto here, I am neutral on "dog" versus "canine". Whichever is most likely to not cause drama later. Montanabw^(talk) 17:03, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Dog is probably better than Canine, since the latter is ambiguous about taxonomic level (as evidenced by the latter link)- I could easily claim that "canine gait" is severely incomplete because it lacks extensive discussion of the gaits of oddities such as the raccoon dog, bush dog, or Maned wolf. HCA (talk) 20:24, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

• Support as the most natural natural disambiguation option.--Cúchullain ^t/c 16:08, 14 May 2015 (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.