Talk:Ohrdruf

Page move

I've moved the page because, although it's a famous cathedral, it's also the name of a famous concentration camp (which gets far more google hits). If that gets an article, this should become the dab page for both - or a page for the city itself. Grutness...wha? 03:59, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Requested move 12 July 2020

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 ⇒ Pages moved back. Comments are split between those favouring the town as primary, based on its longer-term significance primary topic as well as questions over whether the camp really is just called "Ohrdruf"; and those who feel that the extra page views of the camp give it a claim to primacy. Policy and evidence-wise, both of these arguments can be sustained so the result here is that there is no consensus either way. Given that the original long-term status quo, prior to a recent undiscussed WP:BOLD move, was that the town was primary, the no-consensus outcome means that we revert to that situation, i.e. the pages are moved as proposed.  — Amakuru (talk) 20:37, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

---

• Ohrdruf, Thuringia → Ohrdruf
• Ohrdruf → Ohrdruf (disambiguation)

– Contextless (that is, without referring to WWII, holocaust, concentration camps, etc), "Ohrdruf" generally refers to the town. The name of the town is used as such as a disambiguator in article titles such as "Johann Christoph Bach (organist at Ohrdruf)". PS: in the discussion area it has now been shown conclusively that, by following the steps listed at WP:DETERMINEPRIMARY, the town is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for the "Ohrdruf" name. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:49, 12 July 2020 (UTC)—Relisting. —usernamekiran (talk) 06:08, 29 July 2020 (UTC)—Relisting. —usernamekiran (talk) 08:13, 7 August 2020 (UTC)—Relisting. DrKay (talk) 14:29, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Relist note: the 2nd nomination was added on 9 August 2020, so this request should stay open and active for at least seven days following that date, that is until 14:29, 16 August 2020 (UTC). P.I. Ellsworth  ed. ^put'r there 17:46, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this subsection with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Strong oppose The concentration camp gets four times as many pageviews, and is often referred to by the name "Ohrdruf", without "concentration camp" attached (just a few examples [1][2][3]). "Ohrdruf" is best known in English speaking countries as the concentration camp toured by Patton and Eisenhower. Pageviews strongly suggest that readers who search "Ohrdruf" are more likely to be looking for the camp. (How many readers will type out "Ohrdruf concentration camp", especially on a mobile device?) Therefore, this page should not be moved. (t · c) buidhe 06:10, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
  • For clarity, I consider this a contentious and disruptive page move: the town is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for the Ohrdruf name, as has been shown now in the discussion area below, so the town should not have been moved away from that page name without discussion, and moving back could be treated as a technical page move (which preferably should have been operated before a RM discussion). --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:55, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

    Actually, you have shown no such thing. I kindly request that you assume good faith and drop unsupported allegations of wrongdoing on my part. (t · c) buidhe 13:15, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

• Support The place is the primary topic, has been for centuries, all things named for it should go second, even if infamous, and need natural or other dab. Yesterday I met an abbey which has an article in English, but the town has not. We still say Lüne Abbey, not just Lüne, not even for an only topic. Also, called Ohrdruf concentration camp, the place had better chances to be found when some reader looks for such a camp. I bet almost any reader searching for Ohrdruf alone would mean the town, and there no other towns to distinguish. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:14, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
• Support. Page views are telling to be sure. The dab page gets 21 views a day, but no more than one of those appear to go forward to the town. The rest seem to go forward to the camp. Also crucial to PTOPIC is "long-term significance", and the town of Ohrdruf is the hands-down winner in that category. I see no need to dab the town's article with the more specific qualifier "Thuringia". A hatnote to the dab page (if it is kept, and I think in this case the dab page should be kept and renamed to Ohrdruf (disambiguation)) can be used after the page move to aid readers who want to read about the camp or another Ohrdruf mystery. P.I. Ellsworth  ed. ^put'r there 13:10, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose for now. Ohrdruf concentration camp gets much higher pageviews, but we don't know how many of them would search for just "Ohrdruf", whereas Ohrdruf, Thuringia can always be referred to as "Ohrdruf", so we don't really know where most readers want to go after reaching "Ohrdruf". The best solution is to retain the disambiguation page where it is, and run a WP:DABTEST by creating special-purpose redirects for the two and measuring the outgoing traffic for each. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 15:03, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
• Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 23:37, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose: I would even argue that Ohrdruf concentration camp is the primary topic for Ohrdruf; compare with Belzec, for example. --K.e.coffman (talk) 01:21, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

  I compare to the village, and see a big difference, as Ohrdruf is not a village but a major town with importance in history. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:21, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

• Weak oppose. This is a small town, formerly in the DDR, where Bach spent five years as a schoolboy. In comparison, Halle (Saale), the fifth largest city in Germany and the birth place of Handel, does require disambiguation. In WW2 so much was damaged in Ohrdruf, including the church. In the 1970s, it was sometimes possible to visit the DDR, including Weimar, Eisenach and Buchenwald. At that stage, the bomb-damaged Bach House in Eisenach had not been spruced up: the castle of Luther was the place to see. The very small Bach museum in the ruined church of Ohrdruf is a curiosity, but not a substitute. The proximity to the concentration camps in Thuringia seem more significant, particularly from the point of view of 20th century history. Mathsci (talk) 01:02, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

  This reads to me as if you'd argue differently if only Ohrdruf had not been bombed. Really? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:15, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

• Support per Gerda Arendt's comment. This is the only town named "Ohrdruf," so there's nothing to distinguish there, and a hatnote can take care of the people looking for the concentration camp. Ejgreen77 (talk) 10:46, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose per traffic and Buidhe's analysis below. Favor King of Hearts' suggestion for WP:DABTEST and revisit in a month or three. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:18, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

For comparison:

For clarity: I'm unconvinced that users would generally "expect" to find the concentration camp when typing only "Ohrdruf" in a search engine: there are some peaks in readership of the concentration camp page, which are indeed much higher than the peaks for the town, but no clear indication that the concentration camp page is generally accessed by typing only "Ohrdruf" in a search box. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:28, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

These comparisons are on different scales, making them pretty useless for determining anything. (t · c) buidhe 06:54, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, you didn't bring anything to the discussion that demonstrably supports your preconceptions: I'm trying to find something at least, but am unsuccessful. In other words, lack of evidence does not support having the concentration camp as primary topic – compare also:

So, no, even if the Wikipedia article on the town is visited far less than the page on the disaster that is named after it, that doesn't mean that the name "Chernobyl" is primary topic for the disaster. Similar for Ohrdruf: even if the concentration camp is the most significant part of the town's history, that doesn't mean that it would be the primary topic for the town's name. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:23, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Chernobyl should probably be a disambiguation page. However, the concentration camp is referred to as just "Ohrdruf", not "Ohrdruf concentration camp" in many places (just a few examples [4][5][6]) "Ohrdurf was a Nazi concentration camp" is a common phrasing, I doubt the same is true of "Chernobyl was a disaster...". (t · c) buidhe 07:37, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Taking your examples in same order:

• http://www.89infdivww2.org/ohrdruf/ohrdrufintro.htm
  • The page starts 89th Infantry Division of World War II – which gives context
  • The content under the "Ohrdruf" header starts:

    The following comments were written by Carl Peterson, President of the Division Society: When our Tour of Rememberence: (Fall of 1999) reached Ohrdruf, no one in authority in the area was available to guide us or talk to us about the place. It is currently a German Army training center. All vestiges of the place had long since been dismantled and bull dozed over to the extent that it was simply open ground on a ridge line over which German troop units conducted training exercises.

    Up to that point in the narrative on that page, "Ohrdruf" is not taken as meaning "Ohrdruf concentration camp" – which only happens in the next sentence:

    The purpose of this story is to fill in the blanks for some and/or refresh the memories of others who had first hand knowledge of the Ohrdruf Concentration Camp because ...

    Indeed, with the addition "... Concentration Camp", to distinguish from the meaning of "Ohrdruf" as used earlier on that page. In short: this contradicts that even in World War II context the unqualified expression "Ohrdruf" would be generally used to refer to the concentration camp.
• https://exhibit-archive.library.gatech.edu/holocaust/ohrdrufdes.htm
  • url gives "holocaust" context, and the foot of the page highlights "Camps"
  • One website does not prove anything – counterexample: https://www.accuweather.com/en/de/ohrdruf/99885/weather-forecast/1002024
• https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/ohrdruf-concentration-camp
  • The page starts WWII: The National WWII Museum New Orleans; the url ends on "ohrdruf-concentration-camp" – again the context is defined – still not proving any part of your contentions.
  • The article starts

    In November 1944, the Nazis established Ohrdruf south of Gotha, Germany.

    Which taken at face value is utter nonsense: Ohrdruf was established many centuries before Nazis even existed.
  • Another counterexample: https://www.expedia.co.uk/Ohrdruf.dx553248634649670450

Still, totally unimpressed with evidence as presented. Seeing it all, I also think some kind of POV is pushed. Ohrdruf is a (still existing) town in Germany. People live in that town. They should not be stigmatised as living in a concentration camp. Same goes for Johann Christoph Bach (organist at Ohrdruf), my OP example – the musician should not be stigmatised as living in a concentration camp, because some US war veterans fail to distinguish history from location. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:49, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

"Contextless" or "context" contrary to your claims is nowhere mentioned in WP:Commonname, WP:Article titles, or WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. We are only concerned with helping our readers get to the articles they want to read, not at all what some people may or not think about our article title scheme. I have been following the steps in WP:DETERMINEPRIMARY, to determine the primary topic. You have not. So please don't make unfounded accusations of pov-pushing. (t · c) buidhe 08:56, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Re. "I have been following the steps in WP:DETERMINEPRIMARY, to determine the primary topic." – No, you haven't, not by far:

• First step:
  • article traffic statistics – none shown; besides, they will show that "Ohrdruf concentration camp" is a more popular name than "Ohrdruf" – no reason to move one to the other
  • redirect traffic statistics – none shown; besides, they could not be construed as showing that Ohrdruf should be a redirect.
• Second step: you completely failed that one, using general search engine results which, per the guidance, "may be problematic due to limited sources, open interpretation, and personal search bias" – the more specific searches have not been used or presented, nor will likely show anything useful in this context.
• Third step: no "what links here" results shown: here they are,
  • 103 mainspace pages link to the article on the town
  • 40 mainspace pages link to the article on the concentration camp

Conclusion of third step: the town is the primary topic. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:23, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

1. Article traffic statistics: have been presented, showing that 4x as many readers are interested in the camp
2. As I stated above, I did several searches, including the recommendation to use https://encrypted.google.com to bypass search engine bias. Result: six out of ten results on the first page mean the camp
3. We should also consider how many people are clicking the links. The strong pageviews differential strongly suggests that the links to the camp are being clicked more often.

I kindly request that you assume good faith and drop unsupported allegations of wrongdoing on my part. (t · c) buidhe 13:14, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

(** Editor's support moved to Survey section above. ** P.I. Ellsworth  ed. ^put'r there 01:57, 13 July 2020 (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.