Talk:The Devil's Brigade

Re-focus

I recently edited this page, and tried to move it to The Devil's Brigade (disambiguation), which failed. I had thought the First Special Service Force would be the primary topic by a long way for this title (it has nearly 5000 page views recorded, as does the film about them, while the band, the album and the comic strip get about 420, 115, and 4, respectively), but I gather the page was recently moved the other way (via a {{db-movedab}} request on the basis that there was no primary topic. So, what's the thinking, here? Any offers? Swanny18 (talk) 16:15, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

You might try opening a formal WP:RM - you'll have more responses that way.

As for the meat of your proposal, it's worth pointing out that the dab page at its current location only got about 950 views over the last 90 days (or about 11 per day), which suggests the vast majority of the hits on First Special Service Force are either from internal links or people typing something besides "The Devil's Brigade" into the search bar. It's probably unlikely to be all that useful to readers to move the dab page from the primary location. Parsecboy (talk) 20:50, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Maybe; but while the current layout reflects the relative importance of the terms it is unlikely to be acceptable to those who monitor dab pages outwith such a move; so I had better try the RM at least. Anyway, thanks for replying, Swanny18 (talk) 17:26, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 16 June 2016

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. (closed by a page mover)  Wikipedian Sign Language Paine  07:17, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

---

The Devil's Brigade → The Devil's Brigade (disambiguation) – The title “The Devil's Brigade” has a primary topic (nearly 5000 page views recorded, as does the film about them, while the band, the album and the comic strip get about 420, 115, and 4, respectively), so ought to redirect to the First Special Service Force page, and the current article be disambiguated. The title requested was the original title, but the page was moved after being templated (see above), so a move would require admin assistance. Swanny18 (talk) 17:25, 16 June 2016 (UTC) --Relisting. Omni Flames (talk) 00:45, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose: no evidence has been provided that this is the WP:COMMONNAME of the First Special Service Force, or that under the name The Devil's Brigade it would constitute the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. The Devil's Brigade only gets 226 hits a month so clearly very few people are searching for it (and we don't know how many of those are looking for the band/album/comic. Ebonelm (talk) 18:05, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Just to be clear, Ebonelm, the proposal is not that "The Devil's Brigade" be the title, as a common name of the First Special Service Force, but that FSSF is the Primary Topic of the term, because (as mentioned) it is “the topic more likely than any other” (by a ratio of 10 to 1) and “more than all the others combined”, to be the topic sought. The FSSF also has more long-term significance than the band, the album or the comic strip, and has greater enduring notability, with 47 refs and 15 books listed, compared to 7, 10 and 12 refs (respectively) for the others. If you are against the proposal that's fair enough, but you may have the wrong end of the stick regarding it. Swanny18 (talk) 23:57, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

@Swanny18, I understand your proposal. What you are failing to demonstrate however is that when people search for 'The Devil's Brigade' that they are thinking of First Special Service Force and not the band/album/comic... All you've done is said that loads of people visit the First Special Service Force page and not many visit The Devil's Brigade, you are assuming that people are searching for the FSSF when they come to that page but have provided no evidence, it could be that nobody is looking for the FSSF this way. You're currently one step short of arguing that all pages should redirect to Muhammad Ali (the most Popular Wikipedia article of the week June 5 to 11, 2016) because that page has more page views than any other. Ebonelm (talk)

@Ebonelm: OK, I had assumed that counting page views was the standard way to determine primary topics, but there you go... So how about a google search? "The Devil's Brigade" gets 90,000 odd results, and every one of them on the first dozen pages (bar 3; a song on p5, an article on p7 and a blog on p11) refers to the FSSF or the film about them. Likewise for "Devil's Brigade", and "Devils Brigade" (the actual name of the band), the vast majority of hits are still for FSSF. What other measure would you suggest? Swanny18 (talk) 23:51, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

The problem with your argument, which is what Ebonelm was getting at, is that you can't assume that simply because the First Special Service Force page gets lots of page hits that it's the primary topic for The Devil's Brigade. If we were discussing a page move between something like First Special Service Force (commando unit) and a hypothetical dab page at First Special Service Force, yes, then page views would be relevant. But since we can't measure how many people click the link from this dab page, we can't see how useful a page move would be.

And as I said in the thread above, since the dab page gets less than eleven views per day, any move seems to be of dubious value. Parsecboy (talk) 12:01, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Well, for the first point, I have (I hope) addressed that with the google search for the term TDB itself: doesn't that show the FSSF to be the primary meaning of the term? Even a search for "Devils Brigade" (no definite article, no apostrophe, the actual format of the band name) puts the band 11th and 14th down the list, after the FSSF, and its film and book.

And for the second I believe the value of this proposal (such as it is) to be simple consistency; with the related pages (Devil's Brigade and Devils Brigade redirecting to FSSF, and Devil's Brigade (disambiguation) redirecting here) and with WP:DAB (which insists that terms with a primary meaning should redirect there, and their dab pages be labelled as such). Swanny18 (talk) 19:26, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Comment to both: To move away (for a moment) from discussing the short-comings of the phrasing of this proposal, can I ask if either of you wish to contend that the First Special Service Force is not the primary meaning for the term "The Devil's Brigade"? Or that, even if it is, that the proposed page move should not take place, for some other reason? Swanny18 (talk) 19:31, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Your google search is not particularly convincing. When I search, the first page has 5 hits for the movie, and 5 for the FSSF. The second page has 5 hits for the movie, one for the band, and 5 for the FSSF. The third page has 3 for the movie, 1 for the book, and 6 for the FSSF. So of the first thirty results, 16 are for the FSSF, 13 are for the movie, and the band and book each pick up one hit. Those are hardly PRIMARYTOPIC numbers. And I don't imagine that that basic math would change a whole lot if I continued to sift through the results. Parsecboy (talk) 01:20, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

@Parsecboy: Back again! And yes, my search showed much the same result. The difference being that I was interpreting hits for the film (and the few for the book) as reinforcing the primacy of the FSSF; you seem to be taking the opposite view on that. Which is fair enough I suppose, though it'll probably make the proposal a non-starter if that will be the more likely view.

The problem will remain, though, that a search (using the search option here) for "Devil's Brigade", "Devils Brigade" and "The Devil's Brigade" will all throw up results for the term, the film, and the band, but while in the first two the term redirects to the FSSF, in the last one it comes here. Which means that anyone typing the latter, and wanting the unit, rather than the film or the band, has to come to a dab page first. And, if it gets re-edited into a dab for a term with no primary topic, it'll be even less clear. Which may not be a big thing, it is an avoidable inconvenience.

Still, if you are not persuaded of the merits of this, there's probably little point in pursuing it; This is getting a bit TLDRy now, I think...Swanny18 (talk) 22:33, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

• Support per nom, i.e. The Devil's Brigade should WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT to First Special Service Force. SSTflyer 02:31, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose. It appears from the Google search mentioned that the FSSF and the film called "The Devil's Brigade" enjoy roughly equal primacy as results for this search term. I don't think the fact that the film is about the unit means that there should be a redirect to the unit. Particularly as the film is actually called this name, while the unit is not. Readers may well be looking for the film, so the status quo seems fine.  — Amakuru (talk) 17:34, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

---

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.