Talk:WAR (wrestling promotion)

Requested move 6 August 2018

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 non-admin page mover) Bradv 04:46, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

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WAR (wrestling promotion) → Wrestle Association R – The abbreviated name of this promotion is WAR, however that article title cannot be used as it's already used by War (disambiguation), a disambiguation page for other uses of the word. Per WP:NATURALDIS, an alternative naming option can be: Natural disambiguation: Using an alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English reliable sources, albeit not as commonly as the preferred-but-ambiguous title. - in this case, the full name of WAR is Wrestle Association R (the previous name was Wrestle and Romance which shouldn't be considered as a former name). The article was unsourced but I was able to find sources talking about the promotion such as: ""Y2J" has been competing in professional wrestling since 1990 when he began working for small promotions such as Wrestling and Romance/Wrestle Association R", same quote, "Chris Jericho is no stranger to Japan. He wrestled for Wrestling and Romance (now known as Wrestle Association "R") in 1994", "Well, it is until you find out that WAR stood for Wrestle Association R or, bizarrely, Wrestle and Romance" and non-English source "La última lucha individual que Rey Mysterio tuvo para una empresa japonesa, ocurrió el 13 de diciembre de 1996 en el Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan en la función “WAR Ryogoku Crush Night” con motivo de la defensa del Campeonato J-Crown en Wrestle Association-R (WAR)" Gonnym (talk) 13:15, 6 August 2018 (UTC) --Relisting.  — Amakuru (talk) 17:16, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

• Perhaps you can comment a bit more on "shouldn't be considered as a former name"–they're both former names, so shouldn't we choose either (a) the one that's the most common (which might be "WAR"), or (b) retain the current title since the acronym encompasses both full names? Dekimasuよ! 00:39, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
  • From what I understand from that article, the promotions started as Wrestle and Romance in 1992, then changed its name to Wrestle Association R in 1995 then shut down in 2000. Both are not former names - one is a former name (Wrestle and Romance) while the second (Wrestle Association R) is the name it was known by when it finished operating. --Gonnym (talk) 07:24, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

• Both names are no more–they have ceased to be. My point is simply that which name came last is not the determining factor. Instead, the common name in English is the determining factor. (In some cases, the name when the organization was most notable might be worth consideration. It looks like at least half the content here is on the period before the name change.) Dekimasuよ! 16:34, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

I disagree with your logic. When someone dies you don't stop using that name to describe that person. In this case, one name ceased to be, the other still exists, just the promotion is not there. If this article was made during its name, the name would have been changed when that happened (as can be seen by numerous RM for name changes that happen). As an example - Mumbai's recent name was changed 25 years ago, yet was known as Bombay for hundreds of years. What information the article talks about is also a bit irrelevant as the topic is not more than a stub with big tables. The question should be what the topic is and the topic is the promotion itself, which for 3 years it was known by one name, while for 5 years by another. So both common practice of using the current/latest name and if you want to go by what is was known by for most of its lifespan, both fit the name proposed. As a side note - Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and American Broadcasting Company both are known much more by MGM and ABC (and I'm sure the sources can prove this) with ABC using the long name probably in part as ABC couldn't be used per WP:NATURALDIS. --Gonnym (talk) 17:02, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

The name of the article would have changed if and when the common name changed, per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:NAMECHANGES. It's not clear to me from what we've seen so far that the common name is (or ever became) "Wrestle Association R". I am guessing that the most common name has always been WAR, which explains why they went to the trouble to keep the same acronym when they changed the WP:OFFICIAL name. At any rate, the names of Wikipedia articles do not necessarily change when official titles change. The Japanese article is also at ja:WAR (プロレス). Dekimasuよ! 00:50, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Note that "Wrestle Association R" yields only about a fifth the Google hits of "Wrestle and Romance". It's quite difficult to search for the acronym, which is why I hadn't brought this up so far, but I don't think the evidence is in favor of the proposed move. Dekimasuよ! 01:15, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Did you do a normal google search or something special? As I'm getting different results with a normal search. Anyways, as you said it's hard to find, not only because of the acronym situation but also because the whole promotion is pre-modern internet times so there are hardly any RS talking about it. I did find that sports wikis use ""Wrestle Association R" ([1], [2], [3]) and found also real books mentioning it: A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex - here he mentions all three names with acknowledging the name change, Legends of Pro Wrestling: 150 Years of Headlocks, Body Slams, and Piledrivers here it's clearly shown that there is an official name and in parenthesis the acronym. But to return to the acronym issue MoS guidelines clearly state that a non-acronym title is preferred. WP:ACRONYMTITLE: One general exception to this rule deals with our strong preference for natural disambiguation. Many acronyms are used for several things; naming a page with the full name helps to avoid clashes. For instance, multiple TV/radio broadcasting companies share the initials ABC; even though some may be far better known by that acronym, our articles on those companies are found at, for example, American Broadcasting Company rather than ABC (U.S. TV network). - In addition, I just found out that there is another wrestling promoition using the "WAR" acronym, which is "Wrestling And Respect" ([4]) which makes the WP:ACRONYMTITLE even more relevant to our case, as not only does "WAR" by itself mean other things, there is another subject in this field using the same name, meaning that a title such as WAR (wrestling promotion) is ambiguous. While not having its own article, it is mentioned in this list --Gonnym (talk) 08:54, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Briefly, I get 68K normal Google hits for "Wrestle and Romance" and 12K normal Google hits for "Wrestle Association R". Upon further examination this appears to be skewed, just a bit, by the game "Wrestle and Romance: Gen'ichiro Tenryu Puroresu Revolution" which was released for Super Famicom in 1994. On the other hand, those hits do all basically refer to this promotion. Google Trends has too little data to be helpful but it is all for Wrestle and Romance. I still don't think this is the situation that WP:ACRONYMTITLE envisions, since the acronym defines the scope more accurately than either of the individual names. Dekimasuよ! 20:38, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm not getting anything to close to those numbers. Wrestle and Romance gets me 28k and Wrestle Association R gets me 12k. Regardless, as I've shown, as we don't have more than a handful of RS to base an argument on, we do see that the non-RS wrestle fan community does use the full name Wrestle Association R in their wrestling database and wiki sites. Also, I disagree, this is the exact situation in which WP:ACRONYMTITLE comes into play. Full title is prefered over an acronym with a disambiguation -- more so when that disambiguation is not complete, as a true one would be WAR (Japanese wrestling promotion). Take a look at the MGM scenario. Google Trends shows a very clear acronym usage here and since MGM had several titles, you could also argue that it defines the scope more accurately (I do not agree with this argument, but just repeating yours here), yet MGM was not chosen as the title. Even more, MGM was not a conflicted title that was used by something else, it leads to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The problem with the acronym gets even more messier with child articles, such as List of WAR tournaments - this tells the reader nothing. Is this an article about tournaments held at war times? Or maybe it's war simulator tournaments? Or maybe they are even Wrestling And Respect tournaments? Once you disregard acronym ambiguity you run into these kind of problems. Also, I've found RS (OK for uncontroversial claims according to Wikipedia:WikiProject Professional wrestling/Sources) that talk about the American WAR ([5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10][11], giving even more weight to the fact that "WAR tournaments" or "WAR (wrestling promotion) might be confused for this one (while searching for RS, I found another "WAR" wrestling promotion which is listed here List of professional wrestling promotions in Europe called Wrestling Academy Rorbas ([12] shows they use the WAR acronym) with news articles [13], [14], [15], [16]). --Gonnym (talk) 22:25, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

I get the same numbers as before (68K and 12K) for a depersonalized Google search. Dekimasuよ! 18:14, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

And I'm still getting different numbers. I did another search, this time for "Wrestle and Romance WAR" and one for "Wrestle Association R WAR" (with parenthesis) 171 vs 469. Also, I couldn't find any RS use only Wrestle and Romance (if you have, please share), yet I've shown a book usage, the cagematch database (which according to Wikipedia:WikiProject Professional wrestling/Sources is marginally reliable and used for match results, though I'd say a technical aspect like a name, falls also into this category) and even this ESPN affiliate website uses it, as do our own Wikipedia sub-pages infoboxes WAR International Junior Heavyweight Championship, International Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship, WAR World Six-Man Tag Team Championship and the navigation template Template:Wrestle Association R. --Gonnym (talk) 08:08, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

I am not sure what this new search is intended to show. It proves that the string "Wrestle Association R" is more likely to be followed by "(WAR)" in parentheses, but that's not very relevant to the naming discussion, is it? "Genichiro Tenryu WAR" yields more results than either of those ...I have not researched what is considered a reliable source for wrestling articles. I may come back to that with more time since this has been relisted. However, I note that the Historical Dictionary of Wrestling (Scarecrow Press, 2014) uses "Wrestle and Romance" for the main entry for this organization.

Do you want the Japanese stats? "レッスル・アソシエーション・アール" gets 66 results, "レッスル・アソシエーション・R" gets 50. Some overlap, so that's about 100 for "Wrestle Association R". "レッスル・アンド・ロマンス" (Wrestle and Romance) gets 816. WAR+プロレス (WAR+"professional wrestling") gets 408,000 and another 3500+ in Google Books. That's pretty definitive in favor of the acronym. It doesn't indicate English usage, but there are a large number of reliable sources in Japanese that only use "WAR" and never spell out either of the names. This led me to search WAR+"Genichiro Tenryu" on Google Books in English, which yielded 434, or 57000 on normal Google. All in all I think it's pretty definitive that "WAR" is the most common way to reference this organization in both languages, both in reliable sources and in normal searches. Dekimasuよ! 18:54, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex by Chris Jericho has a chapter called "Wrestle and Romance" in which he refers to all three titles. That's a primary source, I suppose. Slammin': Wrestling's Greatest Heroes and Villains (1999), another primary source, uses "Wrestle and Romance (WAR)". Titan Shattered: Wrestling with Confidence and Paranoia (2015) uses "Genichiro Tenryu's WAR group" without mentioning associations or romances. Those are all from Google Books. I don't know what to look for on normal Google for reliable sources on wrestling yet. Dekimasuよ! 19:02, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

I don't really understand your MGM example. Did the movie studio's acronym at some point stand for something other than Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer? If at one point it stood for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and at another point it stood for Makes Good Movies, then I would probably be receptive to the idea that MGM is an appropriate title. That is what I meant by defining the scope more accurately–MGM would encompass both incarnations, while Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer wouldn't. Maybe I don't know enough about the history of MGM, but that seems different from what's going on here. (As a side point, I'm not sure this really counts as an acronym at all in the "Wrestling Association R" case–R doesn't stand for anything, does it? They just wanted the name to stay "WAR".) Dekimasuよ! 18:14, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

My MGM example, was a counter to one of your arguments about how "WAR" is the common name by usage numbers. MGM as I've shown, has much more usage numbers than the full name. The full name (according to the article) has changed names several times over the years as well. The fact that MGM did not mean anything else is irrelevant, and your arguing this fact for WAR is not based on any guideline or even common Wikipedia practice that I've seen - do you have an example of this with a good article? Also WAR does count as an acronym as the "W" and "A" stand for something. That's the definition of what an acronym is. --Gonnym (talk) 08:08, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

The fact that MGM did not mean anything else is what makes that case incommensurable with this one. As far as whether it's an acronym, it's technically not an acronym either way (it's not pronounced "war", but "W-A-R") but an initialism, and not an initialism to the extent that R doesn't appear to stand for anything. Dekimasuよ! 18:54, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Returning to another point, we don't need to worry about preemptive disambiguation if this is the only notable instance of a wrestling promotion called WAR–it seems to be the only one linked on Wikipedia, right? I'm sure I could find another John Smith (dentist), but this isn't considered incomplete disambiguation if only one John Smith (dentist) is notable. If List of WAR tournaments bothers you, there is always the option of List of WAR (wrestling promotion) tournaments, a naming scheme I'm not all that fond of, but that is employed in other places in the encyclopedia. There is a point to be made here about incomplete disambiguation but the existence of other wrestling promotions named sometimes referred to as WAR is not a major hurdle if we don't have articles on them. WAR (wrestling promotion) doesn't have a hatnote to the entry in the list at List of independent wrestling promotions in the United States#Ohio, and it isn't even a redlink on that list. With the exception of one promo article, the organization and the sources you cited appear to consistently call it "WAR Wrestling", not "WAR". Dekimasuよ! 18:14, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

In the hierarchy of my arguments this indeed was my least strong, though, as I've shown, there are enough RS for at least one article to be created. Also, the first one wasn't "sometimes refereed to as WAR", it's called WAR no less than this one is. Regardless if this change happens or not, the list will need to change (but again, that disambiguation, is exactly the reason WP:NATURALDIS exists). --Gonnym (talk) 08:08, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

With only one exception, it is consistently called "WAR Wrestling" and not "WAR" in those sources. The Japanese promotion is never referred to as "WAR Wrestling". Dekimasuよ! 19:02, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

"Also, my personal favorite WAR performer", "AND WAR presents its first ever TLC Match!", "The next match was the Loser Leaves WAR Match", "Plus: Dusty Dillinger laid down the challenge and The Postmaster accepted a “Best of 7″ series featuring GWA and WAR stars", "Come see the aftermath of the new GWA Commissioner having the WAR owner arrested", "Will Dusty Dillinger want revenge and take it out on someone from WAR?" - you were saying? --Gonnym (talk) 19:38, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Yes, "WAR" is used after specifying "WAR Wrestling" earlier in the article. Again, we don't argue that France is ambiguous because Anatole France is referred to as "France" after having been referenced by full name in running text. Boston isn't made ambiguous when the Boston Red Sox are referred to as "Boston" halfway down a baseball article. It's still a partial title match. There was only one of the sources you listed that didn't first establish "WAR Wrestling" as the proper title–and it's a press release.

Are these really considered reliable sources for wrestling articles? This uses "W.A.R. Wrestling" in one sentence, "WAR Wrestling" in the next, and "WAR" in the one after. There is no consistency. The first one is basically a blog entry and is listed as an opinion column. The third and fourth are clearly press releases. But they don't really help with naming this article either. All in all, I remain unsure why you consider it important to move this from a title that sits in the middle of a Venn diagram. WAR (wrestling promotion) is the A ∪ B of the applicable names. Dekimasuよ! 20:06, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

That's my point, it does not, you've created a scenario in which you believe that it does. You keep arguing that WAR is the common name, while I've shown you with multiple examples (and I have much more) that Wikipedia does not usually go for acronyms over full name when there is disambiguation. I've shown you stats that show you how much search results MGM gets over the full name, yet you still ignore it. Even when you finally respond to that argument you start a new one calling WAR not an acronym because the "R" stands for nothing, yet ignore the "W" and the "A" and every source available that says its an acronym. You keep showing stats for WAR usage, yet ignore the main discussion in that I argue that the MOS/policy clearly does not care how much more common an acronym is, it's not even given any importance. Of course acronym usage will be much more higher, it's shorter to write. You keep arguing for the former name, yet ignore ALL database and wiki use (including our own) which uses the full name (even in this very article in the Infobox). You get bogus search results of over 60k and believe they are true, when I need to search for hours just to find a handful of articles even talking about this subject. Do you really believe those numbers are correct? My 100~ numbers seem much more real (also, don't forget that some of those hits are because this page is called WAR and other "copy" wiki sites use the same data). Even now, I show you that RS use an acronym, and you argue that they use it after the full name, but that is the same with this same topic. There is no Venn diagram, the former name, is just that, a former name. Only you keep arguing for its importance and not RS. Please just official oppose so this can be closed as you've officially drained me of my will to see this article ever again. --Gonnym (talk) 20:26, 17 August 2018 (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.