Talk:Paul Jackson (Irish cricketer)

Requested move 10 December 2015

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: Move. We have a narrow but decisive consensus that nationality – a common method of disambiguating biographical articles, it should be noted – will better serve readers in this case. The move restores the status quo titles.--Cúchullain ^t/c 13:59, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

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• Paul Jackson (cricketer, born 1959) → Paul Jackson (Irish cricketer)
• Paul Jackson (cricketer, born 1961) → Paul Jackson (Australian cricketer)

– To revert two recent undiscussed moves. I would think anyone searching for one of these men is much more likely to know they were Irish or Australian than whether they were born in 1959 or 1961. Cricket does not seem to have standard disambiguation practices laid out (either at the WikiProject or at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (sportspeople)) and my experience has always been to disambiguate with nationality first, rather than year of birth, because readers will more likely know that. Pinging Lugnuts who made the moves and I'll drop a note at WT:CRIC after starting this discussion. Jenks24 (talk) 11:18, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose On the basis that it seems to be standard practice to disambig all biographies (not just sport) with the year of birth (where this is known) - obvious example. Agree that there's a mis-mash of disambigs used currently and it would be good to standardise these. I don't agree with the logic on if someone was searching for them, they (the searcher) would know which nationally they are. The average person would put "Paul Jackson" into the search engine and come to the disambig page or type "Paul Jackson (cricketer)" and also go to the dab page. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 11:37, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Reply @Lugnuts: Wrong. It is not "standard practice to disambig all biographies with year of birth". Per WP:NCPDAB "Years of birth and death are not normally used as disambiguators (readers are more likely to be seeking this information than to already know it) although this may be necessary when there are multiple people with the same name and tag."
    The example cited by Lugnuts of John Smith is misleading, because year of birth is used there to distinguish between a raft of English cricketers called John Smith. A glance further up the page, for example at John_Smith#Politicians, also shows how year of birth is used rarely, because in most cases other more helpful dabs are unambiguous. A similar pattern can be seen at David Brown. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:33, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Get off your high horse. We're not talking about politicians here, so you're wrong. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 07:47, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Lugnuts, re-read what you wrote: "standard practice to disambig all biographies with year of birth" (emphasis added by me). I demonstrated that is not the case. If you want to narrow your claim to argue that this is standard practice for sports biographies, that might be a different matter, tho I still don't see the evidence for a claim that sport+birthyear is preferred over nationality+sport.

It would also be helpful if you would explain why you think that a casual reader is more likely to know a sportsperson's date of birth than their nationality. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:45, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

• Support the use of nationality, unless that is still ambiguous (if there were >2 from the same country, or if for instance, both cricketers were notable for playing county cricket in England despite being from Ireland/Scotland/Australia etc), or there is no clear nationality (what nationality would you use for Kepler Wessels or Tony Greig?) But they should be the exceptions, not the rule. People do generally know what country someone is from - especially in a sporting situation, you'd rarely if ever know what year that they were born, especially when it's only 2 years apart. So in this case it's clear that the nationality is much better. And whilst WP:NCPDAB is silent on the use of nationality, it does state Years of birth and death are not normally used as disambiguators (readers are more likely to be seeking this information than to already know it). The-Pope (talk) 11:55, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose for the reasons I gave over at WT:CRIC, where I suggest this debate should take place. Johnlp (talk) 10:18, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. Year of birth is a Wikipedia-wide way of disambiguating, so no need to change it. Joseph2302 (talk) 20:48, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Reply @Joseph2302:. As noted elsewhere in the discussion, that's not what WP:NCDAB says. Year of birth should be used only when other dabs are ambiguous, which is not the case here. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:41, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
• Support per WP:NCPDAB "Years of birth and death are not normally used as disambiguators (readers are more likely to be seeking this information than to already know it) although this may be necessary when there are multiple people with the same name and tag." The tag "Irish cricketer" and "Australian cricketer" can be used as disambiguators for these two players. --Bcp67 (talk) 22:32, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
• Support per the nominator's point that readers are more likely know a sportsperson's nationality than year of birth. BoB is particularly unhelpful when there is a gap of only two years between the two dates.
  Note that per WP:NCPDAB as cited by Bcp67, date of birth is to be used as a disambiguator only when other more helpful dabs are themselves ambiguous. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:25, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
• Support as a sensible solution, especially given how close their birth years are - if they were born in 1929 and 1961, the reader would be more likely to know which one they wanted. WP:NCPDAB seems to suggest that disambiguating by birth years are more for when there isn't a better solution: Where the disambiguation can't be resolved in a straightforward manner by such more specific qualifiers... date of birth can be added in this format: [[Name (qualifier, born YYYY)]]. Here, their nationalities can be the "more specific qualifiers". Disambiguating by (sport, birth year) is not the norm for all athletes - some sports use positions, for example. The two baseball-playing Chris Youngs are Chris Young (pitcher) and Chris Young (outfielder), not Chris Young (baseball, born 1979) and Chris Young (baseball, born 1983), which would require readers to remember which of the two players with largely contemporaneous careers was the slightly older one. Egsan Bacon (talk) 01:42, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

We're not talking about baseball players here either. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 07:47, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

While factually accurate, I'm not sure how that observation is in any way relevant to the discussion. At all. Opposition is based on the misconception that it seems to be standard practice to disambig all biographies (not just sport) with the year of birth and Year of birth is a Wikipedia-wide way of disambiguating. Biographies of baseball players are biographies (and so are biographies of politicians), and it has been shown that they do not disambiguate that way. If one wished to show a guideline regarding cricket players that set a standard of disambiguating players by birth year rather than nationality, then pointing out that the people in a counter-example were baseball players would be relevant. However, since that hasn't happened here, it's not.

As a further example of not disambiguating by birth year, actors and actresses are often disambiguated by nationality, such as in this RM discussing whether or not it was okay to disambiguate (English actress) or (Scottish actor) or the like. Egsan Bacon (talk) 20:55, 17 December 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.