Talk:School of Philosophy and Economic Science

Rechristening

Well a simple question around a complex matter: now that since 2019 SES (the UK master organisation, branches always had less 'Economy' flavour names) is known as SPES, it's time that Wikipedia follows suit. I plan to do the renaming but in an as minimal as possible way, no need to touch the many discussion areas around a movement like this and hence also its wiki: 1) Normal Wikipedia 'move' to School of Philosophy and Economic Science'. And of course different first sentences, something like 'Was know as School of Economic Science from xxx to 2019'. 2) It should automatically create a redirect page for those searching under the old name to the new one. 3) In the text as much as possible replace 'SES' abbreviation by 'School'. This seems safest, as talking about SPES in many stories about the past does not really make sense but neither does talking about SES for current and future situation.

Comments welcome, planned execution depending on sunny vs rainy days 'within next 2 weeks'. Erikdr (talk) 19:04, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Some things went wrong 1st round, sorry. Will proceed in bits and pieces. Erikdr (talk) 19:03, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Hello Erikdr, thank you for the good find and the work. Clearly, we need to add citations for such important changes. I can't right away see where you've added any, although you have rightly updated the subject's own web address to the new one. The only potential citation I can find is here: https://www.schoolofphilosophy.org/our-new-name/

The citation raises an issue because it states that the organization's legal name has not in fact changed. Only its name for public relations purposes has. (And as you can see, that the organzation chooses to call itself by many different names is already an important part of the lede.) This raises a bit of doubt in my mind about whether the article name from SES to SPES is merited, particularly as the overwhelming majority of sources still refer to it as the SES. In principle, Wikipedia is not meant to be more faithful to an organization's own PR than to what the majority of verifiable, secondary sources say. And on the subject of this organization's PR, please be aware that this article has been a major WP:COI and WP:SOCK battleground in the past. I suggest we take this to a forum to open out discussion on naming conventions, and in the meantime I'll add the citation.

Secondly, in the body of the article your change from 'SES' to 'School' is presumably to solve the muddle about the SES/SPES names. However, there has been past discussion on this talk page that there is no consensus on whether this organization is defined as a new religious movement, a cult, a school, a sect, etc. So to find a generally acceptable term we have settled on synonyms of 'organization' and possibly 'group'. To use 'the School' with a capital letter would be misleading because it emphasises one definition; besides, it doesn't work as a shorthand by the token that we don't refer to the BBC as 'the Corporation', etc. This second point I am more sure of, and would like to WP:BOLD fix that, for your info. Cheers, --Roberthall7 (talk) 12:53, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Robert. Yes I am very much aware of the debates about what SPES should be categorised as, but I only changed SES to 'School' or 'the School' on places where before it was depicted as SES, which already is its own name and not something neutral as organization/organisation. But anyhow I don't want to spend too much time in this, as long as people can find what they look for it's good enough. Do note however that the name change seems to be more than just PR; https://schoolofphilosophy.org/pages/timeline definitely mentions "The Fellowship votes to alter the Objects, changing the name of the School to the School of Philosophy and Economic Science". Actually a name which is far more in line with the name in other countries than SES. So to me it more looks that the fact that the legal name is not changed (yet) has technical/cost reasons. Thanks again, Erikdr (talk) 18:16, 5 September 2020 (UTC)