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Prefer the version with the names written in full?

Under Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Middle names and initials it says:

  • If reliable sources write out a subject's full first and middle names nearly as often as they use initials, prefer the version with the names written in full. Example: Johann Sebastian Bach and not J. S. Bach, although the latter has more Google hits.

Doesn't this contradict WP:AT, particularly WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CONCISE? If RS use initials as commonly, and certainly if more commonly, shouldn't we also use the initials? I'm not sure Bach is a good example - do RS use "J. S. Bach" more often than "Johann Sebastian Bach"?

Bach is not a good example of this, and I don't think there is a one, because this statement does not reflect actual practice on WP, so far as I can tell.

I propose bringing this guideline into accordance with actual practice and WP:AT by changing the above wording to this:

  • If reliable sources write out a subject's full first and middle names less often, or about as often, as they use initials, prefer the more concise version with the initials. Example: John F. Kennedy, not John Fitzgerald Kennedy

--B2C 18:57, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Irrelevant example. "John F. Kennedy" gets almost 30 times as many Google hits as "John Fitzgerald Kennedy". --MelanieN (talk) 21:47, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
P.S. A better example would be Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach. "C.P.E. Bach" gets slightly more Google hits than "Carl Philipp Emmanual Bach", but our article is titled with the full name. Maybe this should be used as the example on this page, instead of J. S. Bach.--MelanieN (talk) 21:55, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) Your arguments are reasonable, but I think you might be misreading the MOS—though if so, that's as attributable to poor phrasing as to anything else. The key word: "If reliable source write out a subject's full first and middle names." I don't think that's meant to be read as an and/or, so the JFK example wouldn't really apply. So how do we treat such cases? Hard to say. We have J. R. R. Tolkien, but that form is more common. I know offhand this is a common practice with some Indian figures, though I can't think of any specific examples at the moment. As I understand it, this passage applies only where one of the potential names consists of only surnames and initials. --BDD (talk) 21:51, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Prefer names written out in full, IF the written out in full version is well recognizable (not necessarily better) AND commonly (but not necessarily more commonly) used in sources. Eg prefer "Johann Sebastian Bach" but not "John Ronald Reuel Tolkien". WP:CONCISE has been taken too far into brevity, as if trying to save valuable space. Writing full names, if expected and recognized, giving more description while still being concise, is better for readers. And evidence should be drawn from sources used, not page views or ghits. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:01, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
    • There is a real danger here that these proposed changes are trying to micromanage something that does not need it. No we do not "Prefer names written out in full", but neither do we "Prefer names with initials", what editors should do is follow common usage as is done for other types of article titles. If usage is about the same then let the local consensus decide if it is an issue, and if no agreement can be reached then use whatever was used first. There is really no need to bloat this guideline with advise such on this issue, as the policy covers it adequately. -- PBS (talk) 20:00, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
      • I agree that's how it should be, but the danger is someone here would like to use CONCISE to eliminate editor discretion, and for all titles to be shorter unless there are other "policy-based reasons". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:02, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
      • PBS, the current wording already attempts to micromanage that which doesn't need it. Worse, the guidance it gives is to go against usage in reliable sources, contrary to WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CONCISE, at least in some cases.

        The proposed changes attempt to fix this. The current wording says to prefer the longer form when the shorter form is used more often in RS. With the proposed change it would just say to follow RS usage. If RS usage prefers the more concise form, then we do too. If not, then not. But removing this section altogether would fix the problem just as well. --B2C 21:25, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

I have to concur with SmokeyJoe on this; Born2cycle seems to be making precisely the argument SmokeyJoe is talking about.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:46, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
So? There is a policy-based reason to make a title shorter (WP:CONCISE) - as long as the shorter title meets policy at least as well as the longer title. The only "editor discretion" that eliminates is to ignore policy without invoking IAR. Is that a problem? --B2C 07:21, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
"Concise" means to communicate succinctly presented information. This means "not wordy", and "without redundancy", and "without parts with no meaning". I think that is no doubt that we do not want titles that are wordy, containing redundancy in the word use, or using meaningless phrases. However, you have read into "concise" a desire for a minimum number of characters that still leaves a recognizable title, even if recognizable only to a very small set of readers. This, I don't think has anything like consensus, but simplistic reading of policy and relentless battling in RM backwaters has produced what looks like momentum to shorten all titles shortenable. I think everyone who has expressed concern for the needs of readers is not in favor of this. I think we have two options: (1) Specify in policy things that are desirable in the face of CONCISE arguments, like "Full middle names are preferred over initials" (akin to how abbreviations in titles are bad); or (2) amend the explanation of the concise criterion at WP:AT to prevent B2C's extended interpretation. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:41, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
That gets at my concerns with the "razor" essay (its content, anyway), in clearer language than I've been able to articulate. I don't think every aspect of it is wrongheaded, but the salvageable ideas in it should be in WP:AT, after thorough consensus discussions, not in some essay that has attracted gobs of thumbs-down responses.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:54, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
I wish you would express your concerns at Wikipedia talk:Concision razor, because I really want to understand what your concerns are. The "thumbs-down" responses that were not too vague, have all been addressed. --В²C ☎ 07:30, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
no Declined I don't have any interest in lending further weight to what amounts to a failed proposal. No one on that talk page is even close to agreeing with you that you have addressed the concerns they raised.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:32, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

"However, you have read into "concise" a desire for a minimum number of characters that still leaves a recognizable title, even if recognizable only to a very small set of readers. " User:SmokeyJoe, I've never said that, or even thought that.

Concision is relative assessment - something can be concise, then made more concise, and then even more concise. The most concise is, well, most concise. Normally the term applies to a statement, paragraph, sentence or phrase, that conveys a certain meaning. If the same meaning can be conveyed in fewer words, that's considered making it more concise.

In the context of titles, the titles don't convey meaning as much as they reflect what the article topic in question is normally called. If two titles both do this, but one is shorter, that one is more concise. It has nothing to do with recognizability, which is a separate criterion.

In the case of HC/HRC, for example, both reflect the name of the topic in question just as clearly. The only difference, in terms of concision, is actual length. HC clearly does the job more concisely than does HRC. --В²C ☎ 07:30, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

If concision is an endless measure, until you have nothing left (something you appear to believe, but I do not), and you want to maximise concision, then it follows that you want to minimise length. I thought it obvious that what you quote, and deny, is what you think, implicitly at least.

I think concision cannot be take to the limit because there is a point at which something is sufficiently concise, and to make it any shorter requires discarding information (aka description). This is why something you think may be more concise is actually not so, because it no longer provides the same description.

Titles do convey meaning. Some think that the meaning communicated by the title can be very important. Others, including you I think, think little of significance in a title. A good title will reflect the content of what it titles. However, some, for reasons that don't translate into benefit to readers, want there to be minimal description in any title.

HC/HRC is not directly a test of the importance of concision. They are both concise. One is shorter, loosing the reference to Rodham, the pre-Clinton person, but this lose of reference to a phase of the subject life is not the most important reason. The most important reason is that the preponderance of quality sources, the sources actually listed as supporting the material in the biography, including actual biographies, and also other tertiary works, title similar biographies on this subject as "Hillary Rodham Clinton". If this is what reliable sources do, if this is the title recognized in reliable sources, then it is the title that Wikipedia should use. Your preference for titling decision algorithms not based on independent reliable secondary sources amounts to an excursion into forbidden WP:NOR, and is incompatible with the principle that Wikipedia is guided by its sources, in everything. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:09, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

You lost me at "If concision is an endless measure". Of course it's not. I've use this example before. "Wate" is not more concise than "Water". If you think I think concision is an endless measure, then you can't possibly understand my position. That explains much.

Where we disagree is on this: "A good title will reflect the content of what it titles". Putting aside topics that don't have names and require descriptive title, reflecting the content of the article is the role of an article lead, not that of the article title. The title is supposed to reflect what people use to refer to the topic of the article. For example, the apparently arbitrary name given this river is the title of Ebro, not something that reflects the content of the article. In contrast, the lead reflects the content: "one of the most important rivers on the Iberian Peninsula. It is the biggest river by discharge volume in Spain. It is the second longest river in Spain after the Tagus.". And of course "Ebr" would be even shorter, but not more concise. However, "River Ebro" and "Ebro River" would both reflect the content of the article better than "Ebro", but they would be less concise. By your logic, that title should be changed accordingly, as it would benefit the readers. In fact, "Spanish River Ebro" would be even better by your reasoning, would it not? Or am I misunderstanding your position?

Yes, HC and HRC are both concise, but HC is more concise. --В²C ☎ 15:31, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Your example of that "Ebro River" is less concise than "Ebro" ignores the full meaning of "concise". We've been over this ground before. Omnedon (talk) 16:36, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
What you, and only you, have been over before, is that, in general, "city" is less concise than "city, state". You argue this is true because "city, state" is more comprehensive, comprehensiveness is an aspect of conciseness, and therefore "city, state" is more concise than "city". By your reasoning "Ebro River" is more concise than "Ebro", because "Ebro River" is more comprehensive. I don't know anyone else making this argument, including SmokeyJoe, so I'm not sure why you're interjecting it into this discussion. But since you have, I'll just say again, in the context of title decision making, what is comprehensive must be measured in terms of how well the title meets WP:CRITERIA, not in how well it describes the article topic. A name is not a description. San Francisco does not describe that city, it identifies it because that is the name commonly used to refer to it. Similarly, "Ebro" is comprehensive, as that is the recognizable and natural name used to refer to that river, not "Ebro River". And it's shorter. Therefore "Ebro" is more concise.

Smokey's reasoning, as I understand it, would apply in this case totally differently. That reasoning is that "Spanish River Ebro" is concise, and that's all that matters in terms of meeting WP:CONCISE (similar to how HC and HRC are both "concise"), and we should prefer "Spanish River Ebro" over "Ebro" because it would benefit readers; readers would recognize what it is better and because "a good title will reflect the content of what it titles" (and that's what the longer title does).

Now, am I misunderstanding anything? If so, please let me know. --В²C ☎ 17:14, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

I should add that if either of the two forms of reasoning which you two frequently advocate in title discussions was supported by community consensus, then probably the majority of our titles, including the unrecognizable-to-most-readers Ebro (and almost every other river name), would be different from what they are. --В²C ☎ 17:50, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

No, B2C -- not "me and only me". You know perfectly well that this is not the case. I'm not interjecting anything into this; you are talking about conciseness and making a claim with which I disagree. Others have agreed with me on this in the past, so please drop the notion that this comes from me alone. Omnedon (talk) 18:29, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
Well, if anyone else agrees with you that "concise" should be interpreted such that Tallahassee, Florida is more "concise" than Tallahassee, and "Ebro River" is more concise than "Ebro", I apologize, but I really don't recall anyone else ever interpreting "concise" in that manner. In any case, I'm quite sure that is not Smokey's position. If I'm not mistaken, Smokey's position is that both HC and HRC are concise (but neither is more concise than the other), and, presumably, that Tallahassee, Florida is concise, but not more concise than Tallahassee. So, again, I don't understand why you interjected your unusual (if not unique) position in this discussion between Smokey and myself.

Anyway, did I get everything else right? --В²C ☎ 19:25, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

User:Omnedon, if you can identify anyone else who agrees with you, let me know and I'll update my new list accordingly. Thanks. User:Born2cycle#Wikipedians_who_believe_Bothell.2C_Washington_is_more_concise_than_Bothell. --В²C ☎ 21:11, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

B2C, others have agreed. Huwmanbeing has, I believe, and SmokeyJoe has too, as I recall. This has come up many times in the last couple of years and I am not going to go back and search through archives to find them for you. Nor am I going to say definitively what other people believe, as you like to do. It's irrelevant anyway. Whether one person has a view or one hundred, it doesn't speak to the validity of the view. The fact is that concision is more than simple brevity. Move on from this thinly-veiled personal attack, please. Omnedon (talk) 23:43, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
The fact that concision is not simple brevity is not disputed. That's a straw man. My actual counter-argument to your argument is stated on my user page. --В²C ☎ 00:40, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
I think you don't understand straw man, Omnedon has not argued a straw man. You userpage doesn't support any position, but is evidence for your loopy reasoning style. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:12, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
Oh, I understand, User:SmokeyJoe. Do you?

The straw man argument that Omnedon is attacking is this: Concision is simple brevity. That's a straw man attack because no one has argued concision is simple brevity. It's clear that that is the argument he is attacking when he says: "The fact is that concision is more than simple brevity." Again, no one disputes this. "The fact is that concision is more than simple brevity" is a straw man attack against the straw man argument that concision is simple brevity. --В²C ☎ 04:29, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

No, that is not a straw man. A straw man argument involves describing an exaggeration or extreme example of the consequence of what someone else said, and then criticising that construct. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:46, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
No, the straw man argument does not have to be explicitly described. It can be implied within the straw man attack. In fact it usually is. I suppose to be entirely accurate you would say it's a straw man response. Every example at Straw man#Examples is of that form.
A: Sunny days are good.
B: If all days were sunny, we'd never have rain, and without rain, we'd have famine and death.
B is a straw man, or a straw man response, if you will, because B is attacking the argument that all days are sunny. But A never argued that all days are sunny. And B did not describe that argument. B just attacked it.

Similarly, Omnedon argued "concision is not simple brevity" as if I had presented the argument that "concision is simple brevity", when I had not. Ever. That's a straw man. --В²C ☎ 06:25, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

That's not at all an example of the straw man fallacy; rather it's a slippery slope fallacy, doing double-duty as a red herring. Omnedon is not engaged in any of these, but rather in the fallacy of equivocation, i.e. making an argument about "concision" in which the term has a different definition than it does in the arguments Born2cycle is making. That said, some of Omnedon's arguments make quite a bit of sense, but only under that definition, in which ability to convey information is crucial. Some of Born2cycle's do as well, but only under the B2C conceptualization of what "concise" means in this context. The result is that they're both talking past each other and wasting our time.  :-/  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:32, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
SMcCandlish, that "sunny days" example might be slippery slope as well, but if you don't think it's a straw man, feel free to fix it at Straw man#Examples.

User:Omnedon's general argument — in which he argues that city,state is more "concise" than city— is a fallacy of equivocation, but his statement here — "concision is not simple brevity" — is a straw man attack. The straw man he implicitly set up to attack is "concision is simple brevity"; that's a straw man because nobody has argued that. --В²C ☎ 23:33, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Working on it: Talk:Straw man#The sunny days example doesn't belong here. I do understand what you're getting at, but I think you are misunderstanding Omnedon's point. The fact that your essay even includes the nonsense "Thus we don't prefer "Wate" to "water" for the title of Water" indicates clearly that you do not understand the "concision = brevity" argument, and are erecting a straw man yourself. No one sane could possibly suggest moving Water to Wate, and certainly no one on WP has made any such proposition. The argument that your conception of concision amounts to little more than brevity, including to unhelpful excess, is not related in any way to the imaginary "Wate" argument. One obvious failure of the excessive concision approach is exemplified by this passage at your essay, "For example, we have California slender salamander and not California slender because the WP:GOOGLE test indicates the longer form is used about 50 times more often than the short form.", and by the point #4 in it. The reason we use the longer title has nothing at all to do with search engine results. That's a jaw-droppingly severe misinterpretation of how articles are titled here and why. We use the longer title because the short one in a case like that is hopelessly confusing and ambiguous. "California slender" by itself could describe a fashion trend, or a diet, or my ex, or whatever; no one but a herpetologist would ever think to look for a salamander at that shorter title, and even then almost no one in that field actually would. I'll reiterate what I said when I introduced the salamander example on the essay's talk page: "WP article titles need to make immediate sense to the largest number of readers. All other goals are pretty much in the trashcan." The fact that you would actually prefer California slender if not for those pesky G-hits is proof that Omnedon's concerns do not form a straw man, but a correct inference of the direction of your "propessay". That said, he's still using a different definition of concision than you are, and this has resulted in most of the argument between the two of you just being noisy chest-beating without progressing the discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:45, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
On HC and HRC, and concision, my position is that both a concise, as in sufficiently concise, even quite concise, and that the difference is to go beyond the normal meaning of the word concise, to what we have been calling "ultra-concision". HRC is not "wordy", nor containing of meaningless phases. Further shortening only produces more whitespace on the title line.

Similarly for Tallahassee, Florida and Tallahassee. Neither is inconcise. An a strict comparison requires a careful definition of the question. To a reasonable definition, both are quite concise. The essential difference is one of recognizability. Many in the US would know the city, and would know that there are no other major uses of the word/name. To a wider audience, it may be that many do not know that Tallahassee, undisambiguated, refers only to the city, and this may cause them to fail to recognize it. Beyond that, there's the consistency benefit of naming all cities by Name, Place, and if done, the follow on benefit is that readers will recognize cities from non-place subject by the format. So there is are a myriad of little reasons to prefer a little more description, with no solid reasons for preferring ultra-concision.

Similarly for rivers. Amazon River and Murray River are immediately recognizable as the rivers to anyone passingly familiar with Amazon or Murray. It may not matter for Nile River versus Nile, but Ebro is definitely under-servicing readers compared to titling it Ebro River.

Bothell, Washington is not more concise than Bothell, it is an illogical, under-defined question. Both are concise, but they carry different amounts of information. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:12, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Okay, so we're all clear now:
Here, by the way, is a perfect opportunity for User:Huwmanbeing to have agreed with Omnedon that "Bothell, Washington" is more concise than "Bothell", but he didn't. Not saying he never did, just that I don't recall that, nor can find it.

In any case it's definitely clear that SmokeyJoe does not agree, and that my understanding of his position has been confirmed. --В²C ☎ 04:22, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

To the question "Is 'Bothell, Washington' is more concise than 'Bothell, I'd prefer to say that the answer is mu. It is not a valid question. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:46, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
Yes, you've been quite clear about your position. You see concision as a hurdle that is either met or not. From your perspective, both "Bothell, Washington" and "Bothell" meet the hurdle. They are both concise, and neither is more concise than the other, because you don't believe in gradients of conciseness. To you, something is either concise, or it's not. I get it. You reject the phrase, "more concise". My point is that Omnedon's view - that "Bothell, Washington" is more concise than "Bothell" - is not shared by you nor anyone else . So I want him to stop representing it as if it's a consensus view when he is the only one that holds that position. --В²C ☎ 06:14, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
There are, of course, degrees of inconcision, or wordiness. Concision is not a hurdle, but an aspect beauty. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:41, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
(EC) Born2cycle and Omnedon need to stop using this guideline talk page as a place to have a personal dispute about what "concision" means to them. Everyone else here understands that it's a synonym of "brevity". WP:AT already adequately addresses the need for brevity in article titles. The idea that we need an Ockham-style logical "razor" based on it is neither shown nor supported. There are innumerable cases where the briefest possible name (that still makes sense, i.e. without wandering into stupid arguments no one is actually making like "let's move the article 'Water' to 'Wate'") is not the best article title. Even the argument for reducing titles to the least possibly recognizable name frequently produces reader-hateful results, and among other problems, makes categories and lists inconsistent, makes it harder to write disambiguation pages and guess at links to articles when writing here, etc., etc. It is much better to have a reasonable level of concision and have it applied predictably than to throw out consistency in a drive to be ever more concise. Our reason for seeking concision at all is not that it is an end in itself here (however one may feel about its virtue in poetry and prose), but that excessive verbosity is also unhelpful to readers: William Jefferson Clinton can reasonably be shortened to Bill Clinton but not B. Clinton. And we already understand this. No change to AT policy is needed, no change this this guideline is needed.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:32, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
B2C brought up the subject here. I simply replied very briefly in disagreement, and off B2C went, going so far as to create a list of those that agree with my interpretation on his own userpage. Omnedon (talk) 14:37, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
Noted. See my 00:45, 9 May 2014 (UTC) interjection above, to B2C.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:56, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

imho it all comes down to this:

<first name> <last name> is the standard format, so preferred unless there are convincing reasons to do otherwise.

See examples in the guideline:

The shorter names are fairly unambiguous (they are redirects where the shorter version is in use), so it is clear that NCP's "standard format" defies or supersedes brevity or WP:CONCISE.

Let's apply this to the Bach examples:

... ambiguous / unheard of

Adding abbreviations of middle names (or are they just a set of first names? e.g. Jean-Paul Sartre):

... unusual, not even near to the WP:COMMONNAME principle

Other disambiguating techniques seem even more far-fetched

For the first example we can immediately jump to the common name (which wasn't the case yet when the NCP guideline was originally written).

For the second example there is some ambiguity: C. P. E. Bach and Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach are both in use, and there is no measurable recognisability deficit either way: the second is chosen because nearer to the standard format proposed by the NCP guideline.

Malcolm X, John F. Kennedy, F. Scott Fitzgerald and the like are chosen because there would be a recognisability deficit to do it any other way and/or because other options would be further from NCP's standard format. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:49, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

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