Talk:RPM (disambiguation)

Requested move 2 May 2017

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: no consensus. I do note that some of the arguments seem to be missing the difference between RPM and rpm, but overall there is no strong consensus in either direction. Primefac (talk) 17:44, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

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RPM (disambiguation) → RPM – revolutions per minute is not such a sufficiently dominant usage of this three-letter acronym that we should keep it as the primary topic. After Rp2006 changed the target of the RPM redirect, TheDragonFire made a technical request for this move, which was granted (that's what caught my attention, as there was unfinished post-move cleanup needing to be done) but then reversed after DPL bot added one of those nasty {{incoming links}} templates. We've been down this road before, as DPL bot previously templated this in December 2012. The majority of three-letter abbreviations are ambiguous, and this one is too. I finally took on the time-consuming task of disambiguation, and fixed a lot of [[RPM]] links that were intended for RPM (magazine) (which charted the peak positions of songs and albums in Canada), RPM Records (which is itself an ambiguous company name), RPM (Brazilian band), and RPM Package Manager (originally Red Hat Package Manager, for which other software is written, and thus links to it). There are just a handful of these I left unfixed. For now, I intend for the lower-case form, rpm, to remain a redirect to revolutions per minute, as acronyms for units of measurement are frequently given in lower case (e.g., mpg, mph, psi; see WP:UNITS). See also User talk:wbm1058#Why are you changing RPM to rpm? for further background. wbm1058 (talk) 21:41, 2 May 2017 (UTC) --Relisting. bd2412 T 02:12, 13 May 2017 (UTC)--Relisting. TheSandDoctor (talk) 05:13, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

History merging

• Note. I also invite my fellow administrators to review the deleted history of RPM (Filipino band). A good chunk of that was formerly disambiguation or redirects. I'm tempted to hist-merge, but I see that a previous history-merge may have been reversed? In any case, this is further evidence of the longstanding ambiguity of RPM. wbm1058 (talk) 22:08, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
  • @Wbm1058: I'm here because Revolutions per minute appeared on my watchlist and I was just checking the history of that and related pages ... I'd forgotten about my attempt to history-merge it in 2009. I merged the history once again before realising why I'd reversed it in the first place. This time I think keeping the history around is a good idea ... in case this page actually is moved to the non-disambiguated title. Graham87 06:18, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Right, it shouldn't be merged with RPM (disambiguation), maybe with RPM, but the page histories are rather complicated by both the Red Hat Package Manager and the Filipino band. wbm1058 (talk) 19:37, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

OK, I merged 7 RPM (Filipino band) edits into RPM. – wbm1058 (talk) 20:40, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

• @Graham87: I merged RPM (disambiguation) into RPM Package Manager (7 revisions up to 02:00, 23 June 2003) Tero~enwiki didn't exactly do a cut-paste, as they significantly changed the content, but, nonetheless it was a de facto page move: (diff) – wbm1058 (talk) 17:06, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

They started editing the topic by putting a hatnote on lowercase rpm, so they may not have noticed the content on RPM when they created RPM Package Manager. When they soon did notice that page, they simply redirected it to what they just created. With no intervening edits to create parallel histories, it was simple to merge this. wbm1058 (talk) 17:20, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: Ah yes, that makes sense. Graham87 00:58, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Survey

• Oppose. Clear primary topic. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:05, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Necrothesp, it's not the clear primary topic for the editors responsible for these 45 pages I needed to disambiguate. In the music industry, it could mean revolutions per minute, or it could mean "Records, Promotion, Music": RPM. wbm1058 (talk) 02:35, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

It is however the clear primary topic for the vast majority of people, especially those outside Canada who have never heard of this magazine but who do know the common term which is used throughout the English-speaking world. -- Necrothesp (talk) 07:36, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

...and outside of the music business, and outside Mali, and outside the Philippines, and outside Linux, and outside Brazil... we take a worldwide view. These editors may be assuming that if they meant revolutions per minute, they would use lower-case for that: rpm. We have nearly 400 links to rpm. wbm1058 (talk) 11:21, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

No, we take a worldwide English-language view. That discounts Brazil, Mali and possibly the Philippines. And we also take a view that primary usage to most people trumps primary usage to a minority (e.g. those in the music business or in IT). -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:21, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

• Support – it's a very ambiguous acronym, even if it has one well-recognized meaning. Dicklyon (talk) 05:47, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Primary usage is for Revolutions Per Minute, in more than half of the topics a on the dab page that use RPM in the title, RPM in those titles refers to "Revolutions Per Minute". — InsertCleverPhraseHere 09:04, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Would one of the editors opposing this please take the time to fix the remaining seven pages that I left undone? Or do you just consider this to be not a problem, or someone else's problem to fix? wbm1058 (talk) 13:38, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I fixed five of those (one was indended for this RPM), and the remaining two are results of sloppy editing in the first place. One is some rock music genre, maybe even a typo, and the other some obscure video format (real player movie, it seems). And I don't even oppose :). No such user (talk) 14:14, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

• Here's a look at the page view stats. I concede the record companies don't have much punch here, and the Canadian magazine may be less of a problem going forward, as it's defunct. However, RPM Package Manager does register significantly, and given that it's a recursive acronym (the PM stands for Package Manager), I expect that links to [[RPM]] intended for the package manager will continue to be an issue in the future. Also note that, while I don't recall finding any bad links for these, there are other science and technology terms using the same acronym: Radiation Portal Monitor, Rendezvous pitch maneuver, Rounds per minute, Random positioning machine. Also the company RPM International. So we're not just discounting pop-culture topics. wbm1058 (talk) 14:11, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
• Well, hmm. On the one hand, there like 40 entries on the dab page. Usually with that many I'm not inlcined to assume that one big usage is going to overwhelm 40 other uses, each maybe tiny, but significant if added together. Think of it like this: if the 40 other meanings each average 1% of searches (some under but some over 1%) that's 40% which is enough right there to question if there's any one primary meaning. On the other hand, "revolutions per minute" is

1. the most common meaning by far,
2. the most important (encyclopedic, serious, educational) and will always be important in the long term,
3. the original root meaning for some of the others (e.g. RPM magazine), and besides which
4. a number of the uses look to be awfully obscure, although a few are just "pretty obscure".

Long-term, "revolutions per minute" is going to be notable 20 years from now and more. Can we say the same for RPM Package Manager? Maybe; it is already 20 years old. RPM Package Manager is the only use that can give "revolutions per minute" a run for its money, according to the pageviews. And while I'm sure it's important, its technical and of limited interest for a specialized audience. My inclination is to oppose, although it's a tough question. Herostratus (talk) 09:48, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

• Support. Revolutions per minute only gets 55% of the hits of 10 ambiguous uses, and that leaves out a lot of other things also called "RPM".[1] And not all of those readers will have gotten there by typing or clicking RPM in caps, but through other searches like Revolutions per minute or lower-case rpm. It seems unlikely that it's really more prominent than all other uses combined, which is the condition of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC.--Cúchullain ^t/c 15:40, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
  • This gave me pause, Cuchullain, but worst case, even if we have an edge case here, nobody should be surprised at landing on this page when searching with "rpm" or "RPM". And the dab page is only one click away. --В²C ☎ 16:21, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
• Support, with the condition that Revolutions per minute be given a prominent place at the top of the DAB. I feel there are too many uses for this to remain the primary redirect. It also means we can remove the unsightly hatnote. Laurdecl ^talk 09:04, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

• One point: I agree with User:Laurdecl that, no matter what, revolutions per minute should be given a prominent place at the top of the DAB. I urge the closer to make that clear in the closing to prevent future formatting disputes.

One query: Should lowercase rpm direct to the DAB page if this move is carried out? —  AjaxSmack  22:02, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Science and technology is the first section on the disambiguation page, and revolutions per minute would be the first one listed in that section. But given that rpm would still keep it a sort of "half-primary", keeping it listed at the very top as now makes sense too.

There are nearly 400 links to lowercase rpm. I'm not keen on disambiguation of these, as for lowercase, my spot checks have found that revolutions per minute is nearly universally the intended target. So, I didn't include that in the scope of this proposal. wbm1058 (talk) 11:41, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about that. I can clean up 400 disambiguation links in about eight minutes with AWB. bd2412 T 20:45, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

 Done Cheers! bd2412 T 21:31, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks BD2412. I'm ambivalent about the lowercase rpm; there may be a valid rationale for keeping that redirecting to revolutions per minute, per WP:DIFFCAPS. Did you find any [[rpm]] links that needed disambiguation to something else? I trust you didn't process these too fast to notice any exceptions. wbm1058 (talk) 15:53, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

There were three fixes to rounds per minute. This is an error rate of less than 1/100, which is generally indicative of a primary topic. bd2412 T 15:57, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. (But there's a fascinating page history at the target.) RPM is a ubiquitous term in many different settings... from tachometer displays to 78 records. The other terms even taken together do not remotely rival it either in significance or in likelihood of usage. Andrewa (talk) 04:46, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
• Support Revolutions per minute. Ambiguous, so spell it out, three words beats a TLA hand down for informative titling. RPM is not even the standard abbreviation, it is one of confusingly several non-standard abbreviations. The standard abbreviation is the all lowercase "rpm". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:13, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

• While it is true that the official abbreviation is rpm, have you checked any cars or motorcycles? The common abbreviation is RPM, as seen in the graphic from our tachometer article to which I linked above, and also its caption there. Agree we should continue to spell it out in the title of the revolutions per minute article; This is just about enabling those who use the common abbreviations to navigate there. Andrewa (talk) 18:18, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

• Yes, an aware of the widespread non standard uses. There is a difference between "official names" and "standard abbreviations". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:41, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
• You mean to say that a disambiguation page does not enable readers searching for "rpm" to navigate to revolutions per minute?!
• Lowercase is quite common in vehicles, so "RPM" in caps is not "the" common abbreviation:
  • File:Abarth 500 - Flickr - David Villarreal Fernández (18).jpg
  • File:Ci17250a 2.jpg
  • File:Daewoo Nexia Tacho.jpg
  • File:Honda CB750four 1972 meter.jpg
• Others spell it out "r/min" (File:Honda CBR 600 tachometer.jpg, File:Mitsubishi Carisma 1.8 GDI Tacho.jpg, File:W800 instruments.jpg) lending support to the idea that the vehicle makers do not all perceive "rpm" to be universally understood. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:05, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. Revolutions per minute gets more hits than all the other topics combined, as noted above, so is most likely the term people want. And in terms of assessing primary topic, the only topic likely to challenge it is the RedHat package manager, but I think really in terms of common usage and long term significance, revs per minute, something found on everyday objects such as cars and record players beats a product which is found just one one flavour of Linux. We can always hatnote back to RedHat package manager as well as to the dab page if necessary.  — Amakuru (talk) 08:55, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per Necrothesp and Amakuru. RPM/rpm meaning Revolutions Per Minute is universally known in the English-speaking world, including by anyone who has ever sat behind the wheel of a car, or used a cadence monitor on their bike, etc. RPM packages are only known to the minority of Linux users that use rpms among the minority of computer users that use Linux (which includes me, by the way, but no one else in my family). The other uses are even more specialized. The pages covering those specialized uses that link to rpm or RPM need to be fixed regardless. --В²C ☎ 16:12, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Page history

• At 14:01, 20 May 2001, LA2 started rpm as an article about revolutions per minute. This is the only related page old enough to be found in the original Wikipedia. Amazingly enough, LA2 is still active.
• At 15:15, 3 September 2002, Vaganyik started RPM as an article about the Red Hat Package Manager. Vaganyik is still active too!
• At 15:00, 4 August 2003 Tero~enwiki added a hatnote to RPM Package Manager on rpm.
• At 15:15, 4 August 2003 Tero~enwiki started the page RPM Package Manager
• At 15:24, 4 August 2003 Tero~enwiki redirected RPM to RPM Package Manager (a de facto cut-paste move, I have merged the history as there was no overlap
• At 00:07, 5 August 2003 Lexor Merged in important, but subtle points from original "RPM" article, says "RPM != RPM Package Manger"
• At 00:10, 5 August 2003 Lexor moved RPM Package Manager to Red Hat Package Manager
• At 11:08, 6 August 2003 Tero~enwiki moved Red Hat Package Manager back to RPM Package Manager
• At 18:25, 2 October 2003, Jnc converted RPM into a disambiguation page, adding the line: * Rotations per Minute, a measure of angular velocity (no link was made to rpm!)
• At 17:07, 6 December 2003, Docu added a hatnote to rpm: Alternate uses: rpm (disambiguation)
• At 17:09, 6 December 2003, Docu added: * revolutions per minute (rpm) to the RPM disambiguation page
• At 17:10, 6 December 2003, Docu changed the RPM lead: RPM may mean either: → RPM or rpm may stand for: and merged the redundant dab items: * rotations or revolutions per minute (rpm), a measure of angular velocity
• At 14:43, 30 October 2004, 213.51.209.230 redirected rpm to rpm (disambiguation)
• At 14:44, 30 October 2004, 213.51.209.230 created the new page (?) rpm (disambiguation), merging the content of the rpm "article" into the RPM disambiguation, effectively 'deleting' the "article"
• At 14:45, 30 October 2004, 213.51.209.230 redirected RPM to rpm (disambiguation)
• At 20:40, 23 December 2004 Smyth split content back out of rpm (disambiguation) to reboot the article under the new title Revolutions Per Minute
• At 20:40, 23 December 2004 Smyth moved Revolutions Per Minute to Revolutions per minute

On 27 June 2005, page moves began to be recorded in the log pages, and the move itself is recorded in the edit histories of both pages. Prior to this date, moves were only recorded indirectly, in the page history of the old page name.

• At 19:33, 22 September 2005, Wiki Wikardo redirected rpm to revolutions per minute ("Few, if any, links seem to be referring to Linux or guns.") Wiki Wikardo (cute name!) is still active.
• At 03:00, 3 November 2006, Srleffler changed the hatnote on revolutions per minute: rpm redirects here. For other uses, see rpm (disambiguation) → "Rpm" redirects here. For other uses, see Rpm (disambiguation). (using {{redirect|Rpm}})
• At 14:47, 11 December 2006, 216.183.247.98 (a one-edit wonder) retargeted rpm back to rpm (disambiguation)
• At 19:23, 17 December 2006 R'n'B retargeted rpm back to revolutions per minute ("Revert; this is clearly the primary meaning")
• At 19:34, 17 December 2006 R'n'B retargeted RPM from rpm (disambiguation) to Revolutions per minute
• At 15:27, 15 May 2007, 16@r included a link to the packaging system in the revolutions per minute dablink: "Rpm" redirects here. For the packaging system, see RPM Package Manager. For other uses, see Rpm (disambiguation).
• At 13:21, 30 July 2007, 85.214.60.31 removed the packaging system from the hatnote and upper-cased it: "RPM" redirects here. For other uses, see Rpm (disambiguation).
• At 09:34, 29 May 2008, Stephan Leeds changed Rpm (disambiguation) to RPM (disambiguation) in the Revolutions per minute hatnote, and 'Revolutions Per Minute' → 'Revolutions per minute' in the lead
• At 09:35, 29 May 2008, Stephan Leeds moved rpm (disambiguation) to RPM (disambiguation): type-case correction

rpm

• rpm was the title of the revolutions per minute topic from 20 May 2001 – 30 October 2004 (3 years, 163 days) ...you can't get any more "primary" than that!
• There was no primary topic for rpm from 30 October 2004 – 22 September 2005 (327 days)
• Revolutions per minute has been the primary topic for rpm since 22 September 2005 (11 years, 245 days, as of today) – wbm1058 (talk) 14:38, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

RPM

• RPM was the title of the Red Hat Package Manager / RPM Package Manager topic from 3 September 2002 – 4 August 2003 (335 days)
• RPM Package Manager was the primary topic for RPM from 4 August 2003 – 2 October 2003 (59 days)
• There was no primary topic for RPM from 2 October 2003 – 17 December 2006 (3 years, 76 days)
• Revolutions per minute has been the primary topic for RPM since 17 December 2006 (10 years, 159 days, as of today) – wbm1058 (talk) 14:38, 25 May 2017 (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.

RPM medical specialty?

Is R.P. M. an abbreviation for a medical specialty? If so, then which one? I “googled” and came up with “research & preventive medicine” and “remote patient monitoring,” but I think it may mean something else also. Bwrs (talk) 12:48, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

I added a line for Remote patient monitoring. Preventive medicine and Medical research are two distinct concepts, which may be combined into the same department at a particular institution, e.g. King Institute of Preventive Medicine and Research. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:16, 23 July 2017 (UTC)