Talk:Queen Anne/Archive 1

Archive 1

Where to redirect to?

At present this redirects to Anne, Queen of Great Britain. Should it do so, or should it redirect to Queen Anne (disambiguation)? PatGallacher (talk) 08:40, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

The second option should presumably be "should Queen Anne (disambiguation) be moved (back) to here?" Well, I remain of the opinion that Queen Anne of GB is the primary topic for "Queen Anne", so Queen Anne should redirect to that article (or, better, be the title of that article). Can anyone say which other Queen Anne(s) readers are comparably likely to be looking for if they enter "Queen Anne" in the search box?--Kotniski (talk) 09:43, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

The consensus in the recent RM was to move the page for the British queen to Anne, Queen of Great Britain, so there is no primary topic. The DAB page should therefore be here, i.e. at Queen Anne, as it was before the incorrectly closed move.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 09:49, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

The British queen may be the best known Queen Anne but not necessarily by a large margin. Given the large number of other meanings, 19 other queens or similar called Anne plus the 2 locations in Maryland, it needs a fairly clear prominince over the others to decide that she is the primary meaning. She is not historically very important, she reigned for 12 years, a bit on the short side, and she was largely a figurehead monarch, effective power was really in the hands of male politicians. PatGallacher (talk) 10:54, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm British so have head of her: if you said "Queen Anne" to me I'd probably think first of all of her (without knowing anything about her, such as when she was queen) and second about the furniture style. But I think most people, maybe even most British people (history being what it is nowadays) would not be aware of her. She's not like Queen Elizabeth I or Queen Victoria, or even Queen Mary, all of whom had a significant impact on British history.

But my point above was that we've had a requested move which determined the best name for her article is Anne, Queen of Great Britain. Given that, and that no other article is a candidate for locating at Queen Anne, I think the DAB page should be here.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 11:19, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, all the other things named for Queen Anne (the places, the furniture and architectural styles, the war, the "Revenge") are named for this one queen of Great Britain, which implies that she is much remembered, and likely to be the target of Wikipedia readers' interest, and certainly under the name Queen Anne. None of the other queens called Anne are of much interest, they're relatively unimportant consorts (except Anne Boleyn, who is known as such, hardly ever as "Queen Anne"). None of the places called Queen Anne are particularly significant in themselves, either. I don't see any reason not to consider this woman to be the primary topic - people just refer to the large number of other topics that might be called Queen Anne, without giving any indication that any of these (even all of them together) have any standing comparable with the well-known monarch (of course she didn't do anything much herself except "reign", but that's still enough to arouse a great deal of interest in someone's life and character, as we know).--Kotniski (talk) 11:38, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Time for fun with statistics! Specifically, here's an article traffic analysis I did on the Queen Anne (disambiguation) page. First off, all stats are from August 2010 - well before this discussion started. Second, I excluded wives of Henry VIII - as Kotniski noted, they're commonly known by far other than as "Queen Anne". With that as preface, and keeping in mind that all statistics should be taken with a grain of salt....

• this Queen Anne had 55,500 page views (at Anne of Great Britain, of course) in August.
• adding the 9 other non-Henry VIII queens actually named “Anne” yields 93,800, with our queen at 59% of the total; second place is Anne of Austria at 11%
• adding the 7 other non-Henry VIII queens on the dab page yields 120,700, with our queen at 46% of the total; second place is Queen Anne-Marie of Greece at 11%
• the Maryland and Seattle place names total just 6,500 views
• the "other uses" pages total 54,200, with Queen Anne's Revenge topping the list at 18,800
• all 27 non-Henry VIII pages total 181,400, with our queen at 31%; second place is Queen Anne's Revenge, at 10%
• the Henry VIII Annes - Anne Boleyn and Anne of Cleves - together total 211,300, by the way....

What does this show? I think it clearly shows, at a minimum, that this Queen Anne is the person most widely known by that name. Especially when you exclude the Annas. Even including the adjectival uses of "Queen Anne", this one is viewed at least 3 to 5 times more than any other use. And I see the lowest percentage - 31% of all non-Henry VIII pages - as a conservative number, as many of those subjects are not commonly known simply as "Queen Anne". For each subject where "Queen Anne" is not the common name, this Queen Anne's percentage of the total increases. So there you go, folks - feel free to let me know where you think the weaknesses are, but I think it's a fair presentation of the big picture. It's a starting point, if nothing else. Dohn joe (talk) 18:36, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, for me, unsurpisingly, I see this data as confirming my thesis that Queen Anne of GB is the primary topic for the name "Queen Anne". The only topic mentioned that's significantly likely to be searched for AND likely to be searched for under the name "Queen Anne" is Anne of Austria, and it's getting only a sixth of the page views. I know these stats are not the final word on anything, but in this case they confirm what I think, to be honest, we all already know - that references to "Queen Anne" are almost always to that British monarch.--Kotniski (talk) 10:30, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Although it's true that the term "Queen Anne" is in wide use and often refers to the British queen of that name, I think you'll find that, in the English-speaking world, the reference is as often to an object in the style common during her reign, such as a "Queen Anne" chair or a "Queen Anne" house. Not at all the same thing. Deb (talk) 18:55, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

But if you refer to a "Queen Anne chair", then the words "Queen Anne" do refer to the Queen (only the phrase as a whole refers to anthing else, namely the chair - but that's a different phrase, which of course can direct to a different article).--Kotniski (talk) 20:47, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

The main issue is what is most likely being searched when someone enters "Queen Anne" into the search box. Is it just as likely to be something other than the queen as the queen, or is much more likely to be the queen? What people first think of when they hear "Queen Anne" might shed some light on that, but that's not ultimately what we're looking for. What is much more helpful is page view statistics. The article now at Anne, Queen of Great Britain regularly gets over 50,000 views per month. Does any other use of Queen Anne get anywhere near that many? The chair gets about 1500. That's what tells us how likely a given search for "Queen Anne" is intended for the queen rather than some other uses. There should be no debate about whether the queen is the primary topic of Queen Anne. Of course she is. So Queen Anne should either redirect to the article about her, or be its title. There is no support at WP:D or any other policy or guideline that I know of for moving the dab page to Queen Anne. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:13, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

What I am trying to explain is that "Queen Anne" is a period in the decorative arts/architecture, in the same way as "Georgian" or "Jacobean". Anyone looking for an explanation of the phrase is qyite likely to look at the article on the queen in the hope of elucidation. That doesn't mean they want to know about her as a person. Deb (talk) 12:23, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Fine, but the relevant question still is: when someone enters "Queen Anne" in the search box, how likely are they to be looking for the architecture vs. looking for the queen? In other words, if we were to randomly choose 1,000 people entering "Queen Anne" in the search box, how many of them do you estimate would have been seeking the architecture and how many the queen?

The best way we have to answer this question is probably by looking at page view statistics which show that the architecture at Queen Anne Style architecture gets about 11,000 views per month, while the queen, formerly at Anne of Great Britain, gets over 50,000, sometimes 60,000 or even over 70,000. In other words, out of 100 people looking for either the queen or the architecture by searching with "Queen Anne", conservatively speaking no more than 20 would be looking for the architecture while over 80 would be seeking the article about the queen. It's only reasoning like that that can be used to determine primary topic, and in this case it clearly indicate that the queen is the primary topic for Queen Anne. Does that make sense? --Born2cycle (talk) 20:31, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

You're making the false assumption that everyone who goes to the Anne of Great Britain article does so because they want to know about the person rather than expecting to find information about the style. (Until yesterday the Queen Anne chair article didn't even have a link to the person who gave it its name.) But if you see a reference to the style and don't know what it's referring to, the natural thing would be to search for Queen Anne, and the disambiguation page would nudge you towards the top entry rather than the bottom section. Deb (talk) 12:27, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Have you any evidence that significant numbers of people are making this mistake? I think we have to assume that people are going to articles because they want to go there (i.e. they're not misreading the disambiguation pages, at least not in large numbers).--Kotniski (talk) 13:08, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

• If I were making that assumption it might be false, but I'm not. However, I am assuming that most who go to Anne of Great Britain want to know about the topic of that article, and as Kotniski suggests, I know of no evidence or reason to assume otherwise. Do you?

  I also don't understand the relevance of the article about the chair not having a link to the article about the queen to your argument. If anything, that would artificially lower the page view counts of the queen article, and not affect the view counts of the chair article (because you have to be already viewing the chair article to be affected by whether or not it has a link to something else). --Born2cycle (talk) 19:56, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

That assumption is a false one and betrays your lack of familiarity with the subject. The reason that the lack of a link from the Queen Anne chair article is relevant is that it shows that many people are unaware of the connection between the Queen Anne who, according to your assumption, is the primary topic for the phrase "Queen Anne" and the style of decoration. This supports my argument that someone seeing the phrase "Queen Anne" in the context of a decorative style (and it's not just architecture) will often fail to understand understand the reference. They will therefore tend to go to the article on the queen first, even though that is not the real subject of their enquiry. Deb (talk) 12:52, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

And will then follow the hatnote and dab page to get to where they really want to go. And the figures show that, as far as we can tell, most of them were happy to finish their enquiries at the queen's own page. Perhaps there should be an explicit link in the hatnote to the architectural style (as well as the link to the dab page), since that seems a relatively popular target that might reasonably be searched for with the phrase "Queen Anne", but not so much that it we need to send everyone via a dab page even if they're looking for the queen (as most of them are).--Kotniski (talk) 14:15, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Try googling on "Queen Anne" + "style". Deb (talk) 18:27, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I saw what I would have expected - lots of pages about the Queen Anne style - what is that supposed to demonstrate?--Kotniski (talk) 11:49, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

That there are actually more results for Queen Anne + style than there are for Queen Anne + Britain. Deb (talk) 16:09, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) I've rejigged the Queen Anne (disambiguation) page so that the links to the articles on the style(s) come at the top rather than near the bottom; improvement?--Kotniski (talk) 12:05, 11 December 2010 (U

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Anne, Queen of Great Britain which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 15:14, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Queen Anne (disambiguation) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 21:59, 4 September 2017 (UTC)