Talk:Hamme

Requested move 10 April 2024

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 after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. After extended time for discussion, there is a clear absence of consensus favoring the proposed move at this time. BD2412 T 00:16, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

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• Hamme → Hamme, Belgium
• Hamme (disambiguation) → Hamme

– I had disambiguated this recently, and Talk:Hamme (disambiguation) contains a pretty good explanation based on data on why there is no primary topic by usage. User Fram reverted this move now, just as I was typing the most recent reply in that discussion. I suppose it's better to have a formal RM to gather more community input.

Fundamentally, we do not have much reason to believe that the term "Hamme" is strongly associated by the average English reader with the Belgian location, and a simple disambiguation list is the easy and reliable solution here.

With regard to long-term significance, it's not clear that the town would come even close to overshadowing the other homonyms, which include a river in Germany and another settlement there. Joy (talk) 16:41, 10 April 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 07:52, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

• Weak support per nom. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:40, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. Hamme is primarily used to refer to the city in Belgian. Hatnote already makes this clear. Cfls (talk) 23:13, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

  @Cfls In Belgian? Sorry, what do you mean by that? --Joy (talk) 14:32, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose, by far the most looked for of the different Hammes. These are the pageviews for 2023[1]. The total daily average without Hamme is 2, with Hamme it is 12. Total views of the other 3 is 693, total views of Hamme alone is 3781. Getting more than 5 times the views of the others combined is a good indication that, contrary to the nom claims, we have a clear primary topic by usage. Fram (talk) 07:45, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

  These numbers are not determinative, they can be impacted by how we organize navigation. I've talked about this at WT:D#a change in page views between primary topic and primary redirect. Also, the article about Bochum wasn't linked from the hatnote in this time period at all. --Joy (talk) 14:35, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

  On this note, I should mention that I've also listed Hamm and Hamme in WT:D#on what statistics should look like for hatnotes, primary redirects, primary topics which should hopefully help us make some more informed observations on how reader traffic works between cases with hatnotes and otherwise. --Joy (talk) 14:38, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

  No uptick in the views for Hamme, Bochum can be seen since it was included in the disambig (and thus now in the hatnote)[2]. It is not a topic of much interest to our readers at all. Fram (talk) 14:39, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

  This follows from it not showing up in the identifiable clickstreams, though it is not a lot of data points since the change. Still, if you're willing to draw conclusions from this statistic, why are you not willing to draw conclusions from one month of clickstream statistics we discussed before at Talk:Hamme (disambiguation)? Better yet, why would we be unwilling to gather more of such pertinent data. --Joy (talk) 19:16, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

  I'm "willing to draw conclusions from one month of clickstream statistics", but my conclusion doesn't match yours. And from the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation, it seems I'm not the only one with serious misgivings about your interpretation of the numbers. Fram (talk) 07:30, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

  Let's just ask @Bkonrad to review this case then, too. --Joy (talk) 12:37, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

• Support, no PRIMARY.--Ortizesp (talk) 12:48, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose, this seems a pretty reasonable case for a primary topic. The page view count for none of these are particularly large, but the town in Belgium has a pretty significant majority of outgoing page views and in the raw count of page views. The undiscussed move in Feb and subsequent revert seems to have made the recent data a complete hash. To be honest, I can't really make sense of the rationale at Talk:Hamme (disambiguation)#post-move supporting the initial move in Feb. older ≠ wiser 14:05, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

  WP:PTOPIC does not define things in terms of majority of raw stats, rather the guideline says: with respect to usage if [the Belgian town] is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term. The rationale is that -- at a time when the term Hamme was a disambiguation list of a handful of items, with the Belgian town on top -- only about 16% of people who visited clicked through to the Belgian town. When about 84% of readers don't visit a topic when presented that simple choice, that is not indicative of a primary topic by usage. --Joy (talk) 18:27, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

  There you go making assumptions about the significance of incoming page views. Based on both raw page views and the actual outgoing page views (excluding the dead-end incoming views), it is pretty strong case for the Belgian town. older ≠ wiser 20:47, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

  The raw page views are an objectively worse statistical indicator than clickstreams, surely? We don't have any way to prove all those readers really have the opinion of "Hamme is Hamme, there is no other way to refer to this place, if you put it at Hamme, Belgium this is unsettling to me"? I don't think the case can be strong based on these numbers that we're seeing here. What is the practical scenario under which these ~84% are some sort of a fluke that we somehow are seeing but don't matter? We change the navigation, the search engines shift all the Belgian-oriented traffic away with almost perfect precision, and we're left with just 28 viewers who wanted the Belgian town and 148 who are in the wrong place? Compared to ~300 of those who saw the Belgian town article before (recent monthly page views graphs), where did these extra 100+ views come from, and which are now ruining the picture? Why would we be happy to ignore them despite the fact their numbers are comparable with the 232 who saw the Belgian town article in the same month? --Joy (talk) 12:57, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

  We simply do not know anything about these dead-end incoming views and it is speculation to think otherwise. You may have some rationale for some speculation, but I don't see it as sound. And I don't think raw page views is objectively worsewhen comparing to speculative interpretations. Where clickstream data is unquestionable superior and highly relevant for primary topic discussions is the outgoing page views. older ≠ wiser 16:54, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

  Yet even that is not unquestionable, because it's all close to anonymization thresholds, and there's so little of it. We have clickstream data from just 1 month on about 1 person a day doing something. The other clickstream data is with primary topic assumption in place, so we've already tilted the scale there. Trying to figure out the view of the average English reader (a population of a billion or so) based on that involves quite a bit of speculation. --Joy (talk) 14:38, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

• I've added a link to Van Hamme in general and Jean Van Hamme specifically to the disambiguation page, I suggest to see the clickthrough for the next month or months to see if this changes the "primary" topic discussion and may account for part of the missing clickthroughs. Jean Van Hamme gets more pageviews than Hamme (the Belgian town), but how many people will look for him as "Hamme" is very uncertain (his surname is Van Hamme, not Hamme, but e.g. in the Netherlands people would be more likely to look for "Hamme" than for "Van Hamme"). Fram (talk) 07:38, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

  As the new link is still behind the hatnote, it's unlikely we'll see a whole lot of change, as we know from previous examples, but I guess it's worth a shot. --Joy (talk) 13:08, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. The Belgian town is the clear primary topic by long-term significance. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:19, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

  It has more long-term significance than the river Hamme? What exactly would we base this on? If we look at some conventional factoids presented to readers like population and area, the Belgian town is ~25k people and ~40 km². The river is ~50km long, ~25km navigable, and has a basin of ~500 km², and the places nearby include Osterholz-Scharmbeck with ~30k people and Ritterhude with ~15k people. The Belgian town is near Antwerp and Ghent, the German river is near Bremen.

  How would the average English reader recognize the long-term significance of one over the other?

  BTW, the Dutch, French and the Germans seem not to recognize this judging by nl:Hamme, de:Hamme and fr:Hamme all being disambiguation pages. --Joy (talk) 15:57, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

  A 30-mile-long river is generally not a major river (and this one isn't). And what other wikis do is obviously irrelevant. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:39, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  These other populations are statistically far more likely to be exposed to these terms and to recognize them compared to the average English reader. How is the idea of a primary topic for a reader population that statistically has no idea about any of this - not obviously irrelevant? --Joy (talk) 14:42, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  Other wikis have other rules about when to have a disambiguation or not. We have an article on Rome, but nl:Rome is a disambiguation. "America" is a redirect to the United States, but nl:Amerika is a disambiguation. The Dutch Wikipedia seems to make disambig pages way more often than we do. So yes, what they do is largely irrelevant. Fram (talk) 08:12, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

  Fine, they're all just weird crazy foreigners, we're the cool kids here. :)

  I still haven't heard an actual positive argument on why we think the average English reader would recognize the long-term significance of the town over homonymous topics. Sure, a 30-mi river is not a major river, and likewise a 25k town is not a major town. --Joy (talk) 08:48, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

  Why would you need such an argument? WP:PRIMARYTOPIC lists two arguments: in this case, the long-term significance is probably comparable, but the first argument, usage, is clearly in favour of the Belgian town. So combined we have an argument for the Belgian town, and one which doesn't favour either: end result is in favour of Hamme (the town) as primary topic. Fram (talk) 09:00, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

  No, I disagree that the logic of the WP:PTOPIC guideline works like that. The case is very weak in both conventional aspects, and therefore there is no primary topic. There is a reason why the disambiguation guideline heading says "Is there a primary topic?" as opposed to "Find a primary topic under any and all circumstances", and likewise a reason why the WP:AT policy talks of primary topics in terms of exceptions. They exist to serve a reasonable need to serve readers, so if we can't identify such a need, we just default to WP:CRITERIA, including precision (The title unambiguously identifies the article's subject and distinguishes it from other subjects.). --Joy (talk) 11:02, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

  Feel free to disagree and continue to shift the goalposts (how many different objections to this have you now raised?). "Is there a primary topic?", yes, it's Hamme, the place in Belgium, and the case isn't "very weak" but quite clear. Fram (talk) 11:12, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not moving the goalposts, I'm just continuing to provide arguments for the move. What I seem to be getting in response is a whole lot of assertions, which doesn't really strike me as helpful. --Joy (talk) 20:43, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

  "These are the pageviews for 2023. The total daily average without Hamme is 2, with Hamme it is 12. Total views of the other 3 is 693, total views of Hamme alone is 3781. Getting more than 5 times the views of the others combined is a good indication that, contrary to the nom claims, we have a clear primary topic by usage." My assertions are based upon facts. They aren't helpful for your case though, that much is true. Fram (talk) 07:31, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

  The issue with looking at the older data is that it's inherently biased in favor of your argument - when the town article is already at the base name, the search engines drive town-related traffic there, and the onus is put on readers to navigate further (which in turn just isn't as likely to happen). If we change the layout, then we get to observe changes in traffic patterns, which could go either way, and we've seen this effect before in examples such as those described at WT:D#a change in page views between primary topic and primary redirect. Indeed I believe we were starting to see the same effect in this case, but that experiment was interrupted after only 1 full month of stats. --Joy (talk) 19:59, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

• Comment - I initially closed this move, but I forgot to check for any unanswered/unresolved comments and other stuff and didn;t think I have to only check the votes. After a talk on my talk page, I allowed someone to reopen/relist as they wish. I was just on a day holiday, which is why. I will not be closing this discussion again as it will violate WP:RMCI. Also, why doesn't the main article have the RM notice? — Preceding undated comment added 19:43, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Could be because my initial filing was done through some automated interface which didn't provide for two options, then I added it manually, but the bots didn't seem to pick it up. Let's see if we can just post the notice manually. --Joy (talk) 20:46, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.