Talk:Brand New

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Requested move (January 2013)[edit]

The following discussion is an archived 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: moved. The discussion was over 13,000 words long, but I'll try to keep this brief. There is a clear numerical majority in support of the move (13 to 7 I think I remember counting) and, more importantly, the arguments in favour of the move, in particular Noetica's in-depth analysis, are far stronger in terms of policy that those in opposition. I will go into more depth if requested, though I think this pretty much sums it up. Jenks24 (talk) 13:41, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Brand New (disambiguation) → Brand New
Brand New → Brand New (band)

– There are many popular uses for the term "Brand New", so the disambiguation should be at the plain name, and the band should be disambiguated. Relisted. Steel1943 (talk) 02:23, 26 March 2013 (UTC) -- 76.65.128.43 (talk) 07:52, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Survey[edit]

Oppose. This is not even close. Views in the last 90 days: Apteva (talk) 08:35, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- MTV Brand New [which does not conflict] 999
- Brand New (The Stereo Bus album) 65
- Brand New (Shinhwa album) 2,192
- Brand New (Salt-n-Pepa album) 3,841
- Brand New 120,485

Apteva, you oppose on the basis of those statistics. But I have shown that they are entirely misleading. I put it to you: your contribution should count for nothing until you meet the challenge to those statistics below. In particular, see my detailed responses to ≠ User:Bkonrad below. Noetica^Tea? 03:05, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: unless anyone is contesting Apteva's figures above, the band appears to be clearly the primary usage. PamD 13:39, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I am contesting their interpretation. Please see below, and respond. See also my responses to other editors. ☺ Noetica^Tea? 01:52, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You oppose on the basis of Apteva's statistics. But I have shown that they are entirely misleading. I put it to you: your contribution should count for nothing until you meet the challenge to those statistics below. In particular, see my detailed responses to ≠ User:Bkonrad below. Noetica^Tea? 03:05, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per usage; long-term significance does not appear to differentiate any of the topics. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:57, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
JHJ, none of the topics has any demonstrated long-term significance; so why does a minor band from Long Island get to appropriate this common English phrase for the title of its article? Highly connected to this question, how do you counter my detailed responses to ≠ User:Bkonrad below, against the present arrangement? Noetica^Tea? 03:05, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Since I know you disagree with WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and WP:PRECISION but have formed no new consensus, I have chosen sanity rather than repeat the corrections to you. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:15, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sanity? It does not appear that you choose any such thing. No new consensus is needed. Here I am fully respecting those policy and guideline provisions that you mention, setting aside general concerns about the level of consensus they truly have from the community. No, here I have called for evidence and argument. I have provided some, and I have shown that the raw pageview evidence offered above is woefully inadequate. Do you think that the support votes below, some following the evidence I present, represent insanity? Take care, I suggest. I look foward to some actual argument that will engage with the facts as presented. Noetica^Tea? 17:12, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sanity. "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Albert Einstein, (attributed). Rather than make myself insane by reading and responding to your disagreement with WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and WP:PRECISION in yet another forum, I stop. I wasn't implying insanity on your part or on the parts of the other !voters. Try not to take it personally, I'm sure you're no less likely to be insane than anyone else here.-- JHunterJ (talk) 19:12, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support when I see Brand New I do not think "this is a band". The term has a non-specific meaning, and there is no reason to assume on seeing it people will then of a band.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:49, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. The title is for readers who type in this term. These readers do seem to think of "Brand New" as a band, or at least that is what the Google rankings suggest: "Brand New" -wikipedia. Kauffner (talk) 05:00, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Type in where, Kauffner? If in the Wikipedia search box, readers get a prompt for the present article because it has most traffic, on account of its indeterminacy. Who knows what it will be about? You do not know how many readers are after the band article, because its title "Brand New" does not reveal which of several topics that article might be about. See also prolific use in book titles. The band called itself "Brand New" because it is an extremely common term. That does not mean that they own it, or that a Wikipedia article lacking the obvious precision "(band)" makes any sense at all; least of all when all enquiries about this common English phrase are diverted without notification to the band's article, distorting our statistics! Noetica^Tea? 01:52, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you do the same search in more reliable sources, via Google Books, you get a very different picture: [1]. And web search also get this other use in #2 position: [2]. I think Kauffner's search is mostly an illustration of extreme RECENTISM. Dicklyon (talk) 02:44, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Once again, we see raw figures offered to support an arrangement, but no argument is articulated to demonstrate how those figures are relevant. Editors, please read WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and the policy provisions at WP:TITLE, and show with chapter and verse how omitting short and obvious precision helps anyone in the present case. In your answer, consider this WP search on Prefix:brand new. In particular, note that this statistic is worse than useless: "Brand New 120,485". Thousands of readers may be typing in "brand new" and getting to this article, though they want something entirely generic and unrelated. Yes, the common expression "brand new", too generic to have its own article here, is almost certainly most often sought. That is a natural presupposition, and it explains (as usual!) why a band has appropriated that stock-standard phrase as its name. Nice commercial manipulation of Google. And of Wikipedia? ☺?
Noetica^Tea? 06:23, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Actually it would be fairly easy to write a valid article about that phrase and its use in marketing; we already have As seen on TV and Not sold in stores, and there's plenty of sociology, psychology and communications academic work on such phrases and related issues (e.g. statistical studies proving that "smiling ladies" in ads, and use of certain trigger words like "new", "free" and "improved", increase sales). I would be surprised if there isn't an article on the phrase "brand new" within a few years actually. I'm shocked that smiling ladies is still a redlink; entire books have been written about that. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 12:32, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

~~Support.~~ Oppose. Support. The usage stats provided are quite clear. The prefix search offered for consideration by Noetica mostly contains only unambiguous partial title matches. older ≠ wiser 12:31, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

After further consideration, I'm changing my position to support. While I remain skeptical of the reliance on complex searches using highly specialized data sources, what I did find persuasive (and which was not explicitly described by Noetica or other supporters, but which only suggested itself to me after comparisons were made to the page traffic for other bands), is that page traffic for Jesse Lacey (31078 for last 90) is less than 1/4 than that of the band (121163). Similarly none of pages for the band's albums or songs come anywhere remotely close to the stats for that of the band. It seems extremely unlikely that only the main band page would generate such a volume of traffic while all the related topics remained at a significantly lower level. older ≠ wiser 14:24, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You may want to oppose again - see below. Dohn joe (talk) 18:49, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

- Those sound like reasons to oppose. Kauffner (talk) 03:23, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - You're right, I was confused. older ≠ wiser 03:55, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    - With respect, ≠ User:Bkonrad, I think you still are. You have posted here in what purports to be an RM discussion, but you have bypassed points that have been made against the very evidence that you appeal to. Please do discuss, with a response to those points. Noetica^Tea? 01:52, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      - Discuss what, that you're wrong? The stats are extremely clear indications of usage, IMO. Can you explain what it is about them that you find worse that worse than useless or in what way the list of unambiguous partial-title matches from the prefix search have any relevance? older ≠ wiser 02:15, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        No, show how I am wrong, if you think I am wrong. Once again, since you appear not to have read what I wrote:
        The pageview statistics reveal practically nothing, since "brand new" is an extremely common phrase in English (evidence presented above). To find a prompt for that article is not to find what it is about. Readers typing in and clicking on "brand new" without checking the prompts also do not know what the article is about. They could be looking for all sorts of things, given the commonness of the phrase. Nevertheless, all the hapless readers turn up at the article about the band whether they like it or not, and they are registered among the pageviews. So a band's choice of an extremely common name to capture interest has been generally successful. And specifically, the band's successful strategy is reinforced by the way Wikipedia sets up its article titles, and the way editors at RM discussions accept raw pageview statistics without analysis or circumspection. See other points I make above; and respond squarely to all this, without rushing to assume that I am "wrong". This is not about finding the best way to assist a band to promote itself. This is not about following the lazy path to a convenient and sloppy conclusion; it is about discussion to serve the needs of all readers in the best way we can. Noetica^Tea? 02:56, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        There are very few articles that are ambiguous with the phrase "brand new". That it also appears in unambiguous partial title matches has little bearing on a discussion of the disambiguation page. Unless you can provide some non-speculative evidence that any significant portion of the 120,485 views for the page were looking for something else, I see no compelling reason to assume otherwise. older ≠ wiser 03:06, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        Unless you can provide some non-speculative evidence that most of the 120,485 pageviews on "Brand New" represent interest in a band that has appropriated such a common English term, there is zero reason to accept that conclusion. No one here should accept it. Noetica^Tea? 03:22, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        Sorry, but that is ridiculous. I find it quite likely that that many viewers would be looking to see the article on the band. Without evidence, there is no good reason to assume otherwise. older ≠ wiser 03:40, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        Sorry, that is ridiculous. Of course "many" will be looking for the band. "Many" will be looking for all sorts of things! But most? I will present "good reason to assume otherwise". Brand New is an American band founded in 2000, right? Here is hard evidence of usage during the band's lifetime (2000–present), from COCA, the primary resource for rigorous corpus studies of American English:
        • Occurrences of the phrase "brand new" found with any or no capitalisation: 1102
        • Occurrences for the band, capped "Brand New" or "BRAND NEW": zero
        • Occurrences of "beatles": approximately 2000
        Go to the site, sign up if necessary, and check the facts for yourself. COCA does sample Rolling Stone and other relevant sources. Dozens of hits turn up in the COCA list for "Brand New" in musical contexts, like "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", "Brand New Me", "Brand New Key". So the band's name would have shown up somewhat more than zero times, if it were truly notable. (₰!)
        Noetica^Tea? 04:29, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        So wait, you're saying there are no occurrences for the band in the corpus? I think there might be something wrong with your search (or less likely, with the corpus). Does the corpus include the New York Times which does have coverage of the band? But in any case, I'm not convinced that your search of the corpus reveals any meaningful about ambiguous usage. That a phrase is commonly used in combination with other terms does not reflect on the ambiguity of that exact phrase as a search term for entities with that name. Such unambiguous partial title matches have no relevance for this disambiguation page (aside from adding templates to facilitate searches for such partial title matches). older ≠ wiser 15:10, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So why are you not convinced, ≠ User:Bkonrad? Do you deny that COCA is the major resource for such investigations, among linguists and other researchers? Read about it at Corpus of Contemporary American English. You suspect that I have not done the search diligently? Check it, as I have suggested. New York Times is indeed sampled in COCA. Here is a description of the coverage of newspapers: "Newspapers: (92 million words [91,680,966]) Ten newspapers from across the US, including: USA Today, New York Times, Atlanta Journal Constitution, San Francisco Chronicle, etc. In most cases, there is a good mix between different sections of the newspaper, such as local news, opinion, sports, financial, etc." Similarly for magazines. Rolling Stone is also sampled, as I say; the article Brand New has a reference to this archived material from there: "Brand New has cemented their place in the alternative rock landscape, and the band remains one to watch in the years to come." That is not sufficient to have it commandeer an extremely common English phrase.

It's sampling, right? Unbiased sampling. To show this, and to validate the method I have used, compare COCA hits for these bands, all founded in 2000 (ascending order by 90-day pageviews):

BLK JKS (South Africa): 2429; 2 in COCA
Echobrain (US): 9092; 5 in COCA
Datarock (Norway): 9634; 2 in COCA
The Futureheads (UK): 11069, 1 in COCA
Blitzen Trapper (US): 15121; 3 in COCA
From Autumn to Ashes (US): 15926; 1 in COCA
Architecture in Helsinki (Australia): 18776; 3 in COCA
3 Inches of Blood (Canada): 22426; 3 in COCA
The Decemberists (US): 85226; 24 in COCA
Brand New (US): 120485, 0 in COCA

Spot the anomaly. Names of members of the band Brand New? No hits in COCA for any of them, either.

Those bands were selected intuitively from Category:Musical groups established in 2000. If I found any citation in COCA, I reported it above. Sample listings, for The Decemberists:

...
15 	2009 	NEWS 	Chicago ... and the carpe diem message here are blissful pop perfection. # 7. The Decemberists, " The Hazards of Love " (Capitol) # Speaking of pop perfection
16 	2008 	MAG 	Esquire ... the most interesting music being made now. Just look at a band like the Decemberists: Sex, drugs, and rock' n' roll have been replaced by
17 	2008 	NEWS 	Atlanta ... have deep-sixed. There's more White Stripes, Flight of the Conchords, the Decemberists. // " He's opened up substantially from the person he was in his first
18 	2007 	NEWS 	Chicago ... first release for Chicago's Thrill Jockey Records. Yes, if orchestral popsters the Decemberists are the new Jethro Tull, the far stranger Fiery Furnaces are the new Genesis
19 	2006 	MAG 	RollingStone ... doesn't look a thing like Jesus " into a killer hook. 35Summersong THE DECEMBERISTS # " Rambling, where to begin? " wonders Colin Meloy in the first
...

Any questions? Convinced now? If not, why not? (In your answer, show all working and references.)
Noetica^Tea? 23:53, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest, no I am not convinced. I've already established that there are mentions of the band that your search has not uncovered. That is either a deficiency in your search methodology or in the corpus. And you have still not addressed in any way the issue of partial title matches. older ≠ wiser 01:57, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's it? That's your response to the case I have painstakingly laid out? To deal with your particular points:

"I've already established that there are mentions of the band that your search has not uncovered."

Of course there are, in the sources that are sampled by COCA. You miss the point, yet again. It's random sampling from those sources; and I have shown that several comparable bands (founded in 2000) whose articles have fewer pageviews (far fewer in some cases) did get picked up in COCA's sampling. I found none (in the range on the WP category page that I used) with higher pageviews than the generically named Brand New, and I proved a point about that generic naming. Show how I failed to do that.

"That is either a deficiency in your search methodology or in the corpus."

Refuted. See preceding; and see accolades for COCA from linguists everywhere. Start with this Google search on the site for Language Log, the premium academic linguistics blog (see the WP article Language Log). And show the deficiency in my methodology. Better still, replicate my research with your improved methodology and report your divergent findings here.

"And you have still not addressed in any way the issue of partial title matches."

What's to address? What's the issue? I wrote this, in supporting the proposed move: "In your answer, consider this WP search on Prefix:brand new." That evidence was to show how ubiquitous the phrase is in English. So is this new evidence: intitle:"brand new". So is this new evidence: there are 162 occurrences of "brand new" in the full text of OED. It is you who have not addressed any challenges. Please do so, now.

So ≠ User:Bkonrad, it is unhelpful to do so little to justify a position when meticulous expert testimony has been given against that position. Please respond in full, this time meeting all of the points I have made.

I remind you also about intellectual honesty.

Noetica^Tea? 02:54, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What a load of pompous self-righteous bunk. Despite your self-proclamation of expert status, you have no credibility and there is no reason to accept your interpretations without independent verification. You have not demonstrated that there is any ambiguity. There is no reason to presume that the page views are not for the band and there is no reason to presume that the band is not the primary topic for the phrase. Sorry, but your biases are getting in the way of your intellectual honesty. older ≠ wiser 03:18, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Right, now we're getting to the bottom of your resistance. You have been shown how to verify or falsify, but you refuse to do so. You have no argument to offer against my own, and you resort to invective and a desperate ill-focused ad hominem. (And you're an admin, right? ☺) Very well. I'm satisfied that you cannot answer the substance of my evidence and arguments, after repeated requests that you do so. Let's just move on then.

Anyone else like to show where my analysis might be in error?

Noetica^Tea? 04:05, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The essential flaw in your reasoning is that you have not demonstrated that any other subject that is ambiguous with the title "brand new" takes precedence over the band (or conversely, that the band is not the primary topic per the criteria of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC) as indicated by the high volume of traffic for that page. I'm really not sure what you think your resarch demonstrates, but I do not see any relevance for purposes of disambiguation of articles on Wikipedia. older ≠ wiser 04:26, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Of course I have not sought to demonstrate that any other topic is primary – just that there is no good evidence for a pretty insignificant band from Long Island to have that status. Consider WP:RECENTISM, if nothing else. But there is much more to consider; and I have shown some of it. The phrase is very common, and searched on for all sorts of reasons. What was thought to be good evidence favouring the band is now in shreds. So quite obviously, Brand New ought to be the DAB page, until we see genuine evidence to the contrary. Simple, really. Noetica^Tea? 04:43, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What you've shown, so far as I can grok, is that the phrase is commonly used in combination with other terms. I don't think there is any dispute about that. However, that has relatively little bearing on what a reader searching for the something titled "brand new" is looking for. Your research gives no reason to discount the overwhelmingly disproportionate volume of page traffic for the band. In general, disambiguation pages do not address unambiguous partial title matches. When determining a primary topic, the focus should be on the subjects that are ambiguously titled. older ≠ wiser 05:04, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, you still miss the point. I have indeed shown what we all knew: the phrase is certainly used in all sorts of contexts. But I have shown much more. I have shown that the pageview evidence supposedly favouring of the band from Long Island has a very plausible alternative explanation. That evidence should therefore be discounted, until it is rehabilitated by argument and evidence at least equal to what I have offered against it. Noetica^Tea? 06:21, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

While you do with false self-confidence seem to think that you have shown much more, I remain unconvinced by your distortions of reality (more below). older ≠ wiser 14:28, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. In addition to the page stats shown above, consider the stats for the dab page itself: 947 views in the last 90 days, including a significant bump due to this discussion. If 120,000ish people have gone to Brand New, and fewer than 1,000 have gone on to the dab page looking for other uses of "Brand New", then I think a reasonable inference is that the current setup is working well enough. Dohn joe (talk) 05:21, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I see you do not address my arguments themselves, Dohn joe. Will you please do so?

Before the recent artefactual spike, about 10 people a day visited the DAB page Brand New (disambiguation); in the same period, about 1440 visited the page for the band, Brand New. 10 is 0.69% of 1440. It is wildly implausible that the DAB page was found by people seeking something connected with the common English phrase, or that they were satisfied by any of the entries at the DAB page. There is a Netherlands television station; and the rest are minor topics in popular music. It is also implausible from this evidence that readers even see hatnotes, let alone follow them. We know about hatnotes; and we pursue what they offer. But there is no evidence that others do so. Points to bear in mind:

Brand New (disambiguation) does not even turn up as a prompt in a WP search until "brand new di" has been typed. We have no reason to believe that readers would do any such typing.
Brand New (disambiguation) does not turn up in the first 100 hits in a raw Google search on brand new.
Brand New (disambiguation) turns up about 30th in a raw Google search on brand new wikipedia. In other words, not on the first page by the default Google setting.

The most economical hypothesis, when we set aside our own epistemic situation as Wikipedia editors interested in titles and disambiguation, is that readers have no clue about DAB pages. They are most unlikely ever to find one if it has the form "XXX (disambiguation)". Sad, but very likely a fact. What evidence is there to the contrary, anecdotal or otherwise? Please answer with reference to Big (disambiguation) (no search prompt till "big di" is typed): 2570 pageviews over 90 days, compared to 138353 for Big (a film!) and 322924 for The Notorious B.I.G., to mention just two of the articles disambiguated at Big (disambiguation). We can estimate the DAB page's share of the total relevant pageviews as no higher than 2570/800000, which is 0.32%. But it is certain that readers are looking for all sorts of things called "big", as demonstrated at an infamous RM, and by the DAB page entries and their pageview statistics.

So, the system is working? That stretches credulity. Show evidence that it is working, and counter explicit evidence that editors and closers basically get this wrong: again and again.

At the very least: When you just don't know, help the readers by default, with simple precision that plainly does no harm at all.

Noetica^Tea? 06:21, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It is wildly implausible that the DAB page was found by people seeking something connected with the common English phrase, or that they were satisfied by any of the entries at the DAB page -- I'm not sure what your point is. The disambiguation page is not designed or intended to serve persons looking for an unambiguous usage. I have recently added search templates to facilitate searches, but these are tangential to the purpose of a disambiguation page.
It is also implausible from this evidence that readers even see hatnotes, let alone follow them. Why is this implausible? What evidence shows that readers do not see hatnotes?
The most economical hypothesis, when we set aside our own epistemic situation as Wikipedia editors interested in titles and disambiguation, is that readers have no clue about DAB pages. This is your polemical opinion -- there is little reason for anyone to accept your opinions at face value without independent corroboration. That disambiguation pages do not appear in the search box or in google searches means little as I would not expect anyone other than Wikipedia gnomes to deliberately search for a disambiguation page. From that, I believe is it quite reasonable to assume that the traffic to the disambiguation page comes primarily from the hatnote at Brand New.
Big again, really?

To sum up, your arguments are not nearly as convincing as you believe them to be. Based on the available evidence, the present location of the band article is more than adequately serving the readership. Now if with your Born2Cycle-like obstinate persistence you achieve some success in changing consensus to broaden the scope of disambiguation pages to also address unambiguous partial title matches, then I would be fine with making disambiguation pages into comprehensive search indexes. But that is not the current consensus and I see no reason to make an exception in this case. older ≠ wiser 14:28, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have numbered all your points, ≠ User:Bkonrad, and now I answer them:

I'm not sure what your point is, in return. Please explain. I make two claims: First, people looking for "XXXX" do not typically arrive at a Wikipedia DAB page if its title is "XXXX (disambiguation)". Second, if they do arrive there, we have little evidence that they are satisfied by the range of choices presented. Often they are looking for something specific but not covered; or for something completely generic and "uncoverable" – especially when "XXXX" is something very common in English like "big", "something", or "brand new".
"What evidence shows that readers do not see hatnotes?" As I have explained, anecdotal evidence from assisting naive users to find things on Wikipedia; and I should add, comparison of traffic for marked DAB pages (with "(disambiguation)") and unmarked DAB pages. What evidence do you have that the marked pages are known about, reliably found, or much used? What evidence do you have that hatnotes are reliably found, read, or followed?
"This is your polemical opinion." No, I have come to it by reasoned examination of pageviews, and arguments presented at many RMs, informed by evidence that I have acquired in the real world. "There is little reason for anyone to accept your opinions at face value without independent corroboration." Absolutely! And your own opinions? The evidence, and the non-polemicists' arguments in support of your opinions? "That disambiguation pages do not appear in the search box or in google searches means little as I would not expect anyone other than Wikipedia gnomes to deliberately search for a disambiguation page." Exactly: readers do not search for them, in any mode. Think about it. It means something. "From that, I believe is it quite reasonable to assume that the traffic to the disambiguation page comes primarily from the hatnote at Brand New." I have argued in detail that there is a better hypothesis. You choose not to take that hypothesis seriously; but a failure to keep an open mind is not an argument. Nor is a failure to do the hard work of empirical investigation.
Yes, Big again. It was closed by JHunterJ against the clear majority opinion. JHJ is known as an enthusiast for conciseness over other considerations (especially direct appeals to usability by real readers in the real world, which never seem to impress him at all though the principle is quite rightly enshrined in policy at WP:TITLE). JHJ also played a major role in shaping the conventions for film-article titles, with a huge emphasis on primary topic that goes well beyond the scope of that page and prejudges title choices for articles not concerned with films. Highly relevant to the blinkered and doctrinaire thinking we often observe at RM discussions, including this one.

To sum up, you have resorted to ad hominem attempts to dismiss my arguments, and simply refused to address the painstaking evidence I offer (unmatched by any empirical investigations of your own). Comparing me to Born2cycle is just another example of diversion rather than looking at the substance, which you seem obstinately unwilling to do. Or perhaps, I have to say, incapable of doing.

Last, your broken-record insistence on a point that I have already explained in full (about partial matches) provides confirmation: you are not really interested in discussing, but only in dismissing any uncomfortable challenge to orthodoxy. That's your choice; I make a different choice. ♥

Noetica^Tea? 04:29, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Your comments re #1 indicate your understanding of disambiguation pages is not at all aligned with current practice as described at WP:DAB and WP:MOSDAB. Readers do arrive at pages with "(disambiguation)" in the title. Page traffic statistics clearly show traffic that is not random and far greater than only wikignomes. Typically the only way to get to a page with (disambiguation) in the title is through the hatnote on a primary topic. As for whether they are satisfied by what they find there, no there is no way of knowing they are satisfied by the range of choices presented. But disambiguation pages are intended to present all Wikipedia articles that are ambiguous with term or phrase. If readers go to a disambiguation page looking for something that is not ambiguous, there is little help for them except to provide other tools to assist them in their search such as {{lookfrom}} or {{intitle}}.

re 2, see above.

re 3, regardless of what you claim, it certainly looks and quacks like rather polemical duck.

re searching for disambiguation pages, this is simply astounding. Why on earth would you expect anyone to deliberately search for a disambiguation page when they are looking for a specific topic? This is a tortuously convoluted line of reasoning. Why should I take your polemics seriously however carefully-reasoned you might think it?

re 4, while I agree that it would have been better for all if JHJ had allowed someone else to close the discussion, I very seriously doubt that any experienced move closer would have seen the discussion as consensus to move, even if there were a small majority in favor. However, your continued grousing about this event is more unseemly than the event itself.

I'm sorry, but your mannerisms are simply too tempting a target for mocking. And you say you have already explained in full (about partial matches) -- say what? I don't see any satisfactory explanation. It seems rather that the existence of unambiguous partial title matches is a cornerstone of your flimsy (oops, sorry, your detailed and thoughtful) analysis. older ≠ wiser 05:10, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please re-work your response so I can make sense of it. You refer to five numbered points, but there were only four (in response to your four). Also, you might look at my reply stamped 02:54, 20 January, above. It addresses those partial matches, and you seem wilful in not understanding. They are not a cornerstone; they, now supplemented with OED evidence, are circumstantial evidence that the phrase appropriated by the band is common in everyday use. O, you might also address the earlier wealth of substantial argument that you have so far steadfastly ignored, rather than persist with uncivil ad hominems. (Theoretically, I mean.) And I suggest that you steer well clear of mockery. Even if it were permitted on a talkpage, you would soon be out of your depth if we both indulged. ☺ Noetica^Tea? 07:40, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed the numbering. As far as I'm concerned, your comments regarding partial title matches do not address (or reflect a willful lack of comprehension) of the issue. Partial title matches are not ambiguous and disambiguation pages are not designed to address such unambiguous partial title matches. older ≠ wiser 13:04, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you start with the presupposition that this is a "pretty insignificant band from Long Island," then sure, 120,000 views over the past 90 days seems unlikely. If you read the article, however, and see that the band is signed by a major label and has had multiple top 40 albums and singles, including an album that debuted at #6 in the US, then that number makes sense - especially when you compare it to other similar band articles. If a search for the band turned up zero results, then there's something wrong with that search. Dohn joe (talk) 07:29, 22 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, if. But I did not start from that presupposition. I had never heard of this band; but that counts for nothing. Of course I did research outside of Wikipedia for notability and coverage.

As I reported, there were zero mentions in COCA, the dominant corpus of American English, though there are mentions for "The Decemberists" and "Blitzen Trapper" (comparable US bands, started in 2000).
There is no evidence that "Brand New" stands out egregiously above "The Decemberists" or "Blitzen Trapper" in the magazines "SPIN" or "Billboard".
Searches in the Rolling Stone archives find 37 hits on "Blitzen Trapper", and 156 hits on "Decemberists". I could find none by the same means on "Brand New", because they all seemed to be for something else: "Brand New Day", "Brand New Eyes", "Brand New Me", "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", and so on. Please, show me what I have missed.
Brand New have had 3 albums peaking in the US top 40: at 6, 31, and 6; their best single peaked at 124.
The Decemberists have had 3 albums peaking in the US top 40: at 35, 14, and 1; their best single peaked at 19.
I don't know the situation for Blitzen Trapper.
90-day pageviews:
Blitzen Trapper: 15121
The Decemberists: 85226
Brand New: 120485.

Those 90-day pageviews are therefore suspicious. At the very least, there is serious doubt about their utility, since it cannot reasonably be doubted that many readers turn up at Brand New and are disappointed. Most importantly, we do not know how many. We cannot know how many are after one of the other WP articles that include the string "brand new", since we have no empirical findings about the use of hatnotes (the only way most readers would even find the present DAB page). Nor can we know how many or the worldwide readers are looking for something completely different, or something generic.

Dohn joe, you write: "If a search for the band turned up zero results, then there's something wrong with that search." An interesting article of faith. Justify it, in light of the evidence I adduce above.

Noetica^Tea? 03:42, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I thought I had, and I would've thought that your own stats just above would have led you to the same conclusion. If one band, The Decemberists, has had three albums, with an average peak of 13, including one in the top ten; and another band, Brand New, formed the same year, has also had three albums, with an average peak of 14, including two in the top ten; it is simply not reasonable for a search for the one to return 156 cites and the other zero. Faith has nothing to do with it. The simplest, most reasonable conclusion is that there's something wrong with the methodology. If there is a more reasonable explanation than a faulty search, please present it. Dohn joe (talk) 07:04, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Dohn joe, more evidence could easily be given if you are not satisfied that reaching number 1 in the top 40 trumps other considerations. You introduced achievement of top-40 ranking as a measure; I worked according to your rules, loosely stated though they were. I worked with overall ranking in the US, for US bands. What would you prefer, now? And why do you disregard the overall US singles rankings: Brand New achieved 1, at rank 124; The Decemberists achieved 1, at rank 19. Inconvenient for your case?

"If there is a more reasonable explanation than a faulty search, please present it." If you have any actual evidence that any one of my searches is faulty, by all means show it. I may have slipped on some detail somewhere; but not, I think, in anything that affects the outcome. I have shown you where to go and what to do; off you go, and do the search yourself on "Brand New" in the Rolling Stone archives. I look forward to a report of your findings. Sheer opinion carries no weight against empirical data, analysed with rigour.

Noetica^Tea? 07:56, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It took me about three minutes to find this article in the Rolling Stone archives: [3], with the following quote: "Brand New, man. That band said it the best on that Devil and God (Are Raging Inside Me) record...." So yes, a search that finds zero cites is faulty, and an analysis based on such search results cannot be trusted. Dohn joe (talk) 18:29, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, Dohn joe. You're not following a consistent methodology. We already knew that references to the band "Brand New" could be found on the Rolling Stone site by some means or other. (I reported one above: "Brand New has cemented ...".) It's a question of how many hits, for various bands, using the same regime for each. I wrote, just above: "I have shown you where to go and what to do; off you go, and do the search yourself on 'Brand New' in the Rolling Stone archives." You refuse to do that search, trawl through the results, and report? Very well, I offer this report under a different regime, using bands from the same list I used before:

Google site searches; COCA hits; 90-day pageviews
(using site:http://www.rollingstone.com) 

                   Rolling Stone COCA pageviews

"decemberists"               352   24     85226
"blitzen trapper"            156    3     15121
"blk jks"                     19    3      2429
"futureheads"                 12    1     11069
"brand new"                   11    0    120485
"datarock"                     8    2      9534
"architecture in helsinki"     6    3     18776
"echobrain"                    2    5      9092

Only in the case of "brand new" was it necessary to scrutinise all Google hits (600+) for irrelevant uses of the phrase. I did that, and you can too. It is possible that there are one or two to add to those 11 references to the band; but this makes no difference to the power of these statistics.

Your analysis, please.

Noetica^Tea? 23:50, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Noetica - you said that you could find no relevant results in a search for "Brand New" in the Rolling Stone archives, and suggested I do so, saying, "Please, show me what I have missed." That is exactly what I did. I did that precise search, sorted it by date, and on page three was the result I posted above. I showed you something that you missed. You then proceeded to falsely state that I had not done so, claiming that I had refused to do that search, with no basis whatsoever. I'd appreciate an apology. Dohn joe (talk) 19:08, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Of course I apologise, Dohn joe. But you gloss over some important details; and you did not tell me which methodology you followed. In all of these searches and analyses we are working statistically. For example, I wrote just above: "It is possible that there are one or two to add to those 11 references to the band; but this makes no difference to the power of these statistics." And just before that: "We already knew that references to the band 'Brand New' could be found on the Rolling Stone site by some means or other. (I reported one above: 'Brand New has cemented ...'.) It's a question of how many hits, for various bands, using the same regime for each." Since you did not report what method you used, I was at a loss. The incidental hit you mention was on page 3 of the 909 results, and the band's name was not visible on the results screen! Compare the vastly greater presence of "Blitzen Trapper", visible at a glance. All 37 hits genuinely refer to that band, because the name has no other meanings (unlike "brand new"); and 10 of those hits turn up on the first page (sorted by relevance) in headings. Please help me here: does any one of the articles that mention the band "Brand New" do so prominently in a heading? I found none. I found 11 rather incidental mentions, and concluded that "Brand New" has far less coverage in an iconic popular music magazine than comparable bands with fewer pageviews on Wikipedia.

I will be interested to see your analysis of all the results I present using the different methodology, by which I found just 11 mentions in Rolling Stone.

Noetica^Tea? 23:35, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Whether the page traffic is an anomaly can be determined, with a little experiment (although considering this discussion so far it seems unlikely there will be consensus to move the pages even temporarily). If you are correct, then if Brand New is moved to Brand New (band), we should expect the page traffic for the band article to drop significantly. Assuming it might be possible to reach consensus for such a trial, if the traffic for that band article remains higher than than of all the other articles on the disambiguation page combined (which is one of the current criteria), would you agree then that the band article should be moved back? older ≠ wiser 05:28, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have often hoped that we could get such experiments done, and I agree that in the present case it would be hugely revealing. The results of the experiment would be valuable for very many titling decisions. I would want the move to last for at least six months, and I would want to evaluate all the evidence after a further three months. But it's wishful thinking. Would I agree, given the result that you mention, to have Brand New where it is right now, and not a DAB page? I would more readily acquiesce; but in fact (and depending on all the exact numbers), the alternative might still not serve readers better. After all, both on Google and on an internal WP search readers would find exactly what they wanted at the top of the list, with the phrase "Brand New (band)" clearly visible. Sorting all these issues out would require a suite of varied and expertly designed experiments, followed by careful analysis. Intellectual honesty, and scientific rigour. A complete lack of prejudice.

Noetica^Tea? 08:09, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. So basically, you would make the move and then reserve the right to stonewall any attempts to move it back on the basis of other as yet unspecified considerations. Realistically, I would not expect many to agree with the conditions you lay out here. A month or so after all internal incoming links to Brand New have been fixed should be more than sufficient to see if the band article traffic was anomalous. older ≠ wiser 13:11, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Of course not! I am not proposing that an experiment be actually done; I am seriously supporting this move, for the readers' sake. Stonewalling? O right, you mean sticking to one's original position and refusing to consider any evidence that turns up. Like what I tabulate above, for example. Or this, conveniently derived from articles on the DAB page we are discussing:

            Google site searches; COCA hits; 90-day pageviews
            (using site:http://www.rollingstone.com) 
        
                               Rolling Stone COCA pageviews
        
            "rhymefest"                   38    7     16156
            "salt n pepa"                112  ≈50     96986
            "brand new"                   11    0    120485

Uh huh? How can you still think most pageviews for this generic phrase "brand new" are seeking the band Brand New? Rated, as we see from Talk:Brand New, as of low importance for both WikiProject Alternative music and WikiProject Emo. I'm ready to be corrected, and persuaded. Show me actual systematic evidence and I'll respond – after you have responded to what I have systematically presented.

Noetica^Tea? 22:22, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support Noeticas statistics, which I find far more compelling than Aptevas, show that whether this band is the primary topic by usage is questionable, and it is clearly not the primary topic by long term significance, itself being named for a phrase dating back to at least the 16th century. The advantages of this move outweigh the disadvantages. --Qetuth (talk) 01:51, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support per Qetuth. I'm convinced by the evidence that has been produced that this is not the primary meaning. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 04:22, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support—I find Noetica's analysis of external sources for notability compelling. Tony (talk) 11:09, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support Noetica has convinced me that Apteva's figures are superficial and potentially misleading. What's more, 'brand new' is a sufficiently commonly used term not to warrant having to reside at some disambiguation page; even though the band's name is in caps, the article really ought to go to a '(band)' namespace – there are many much more famous bands with otherwise common-sounding names that reside in '(band)' namespace: Queen (band). Nirvana (band), Pretenders (band), Garbage (band)-- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 00:31, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Incidentally, Nirvana (band) gets on average 3 times as many hits than 'Nirvana'; both Garbage and Queen are even more dramatic at 9 times for the band, and that doesn't prove these bands need to be moved into the undisambiguated namespace. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 00:56, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I have to say that Noetica's analysis of the corpus not only suggests that renaming the article is a good idea, it suggests we should rename the article because currently by having the generic name be at the article on the band we are misleading many users who want to find something else when they type in "Brand New", but who may give up and go elsewhere because obviously wikipedia is not the place to find it.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:03, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I think we next should move Big (disambiguation) to being the main page. My guess is many people who type in "big" in wikipedia really want to get to the wikitionary entry on big.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:13, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So can we please mark that as Support (typed in as '''Support''')? Just for clarity in assessing consensus. Noetica^Tea? 03:01, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support – per Noetica's analysis, the trivial analysis does not support the conclusion that the obscure band is the primarytopic for Brand New. It's actually hard to see why anyone would want such a generic and ambiguous term to go straight to the band, given all the other meanings. Dicklyon (talk) 05:46, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support - per Noetica and WP:VERIFIABILITY and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Those who oppose the move do so based on a Wikipedia-centric, editor-defined metric of "usage" for the term; but PRIMARYTOPIC is worded on what readers are likely to look for. The statistics outside Wikipedia are more reliable for the primacy of a topic and a term than the Wikipedia server statistics, which don't have any scientific nor professional validity, so they don't provide weight to the level of usage for each meaning - mainly because the statistics towards the use of the band are distorted for its article being in the place of an English idiom. Diego (talk) 19:47, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support - Having the band be the primary topic for this term is absolutely ridiculous. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:39, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - The band, though I have never heard of it, is clearly the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. I mean, what else could someone else searching with "Brand New" be looking for? It's highly unlikely to be anything else. Much of the argument in support, at least from Noetica, here and elsewhere, seems to be heavily based on the assumption that users searching WP rely on the relatively new auto-completion feature in WP search that requires a browser to support javascript, and that it is turned on (turn off javascript and try it). We should be taking this into account at all when deciding whether a given use is the primary topic. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:22, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Much of the argument? Only some of it, surely. Note: javascript is turned on by default in modern browsers, and most readers of Wikipedia are sure to see prompts when they search in Wikipedia. You give not the slightest evidence that many people going to the article called Brand New are interested in, or have even heard of, a certain band from Long Island. I, on the other hand, give strong evidence and arguments against such facile claims.

All we have to do is stop treating Wikipedia as a hermetically sealed system. It interacts with Google, and it is about the real world. Wikipedia is made for real readers in that real world. This makes some editors uncomfortable. But we cannot change the facts by replacing them with simplistic and defective algorithms. We cannot make a useful encyclopedia that seeks evidence only within itself, by fanatically promoted and fantastically self-serving rules.

Noetica^Tea? 05:13, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support: Noetica's analysis is far more rigorous, if not 100% perfect, than the rest, and Dohn joe in particular seems to be misconstruing a lot of the statistics. I agree with Noetica that D.j.'s attempted refutation is a "failed" one, and with Dicklyon's concerns that the WP:GOOGLE mess presented by Kauffner is badly flawed by recentism. WP:COMMONSENSE also mandates disambiguation. We already have articles on stock marketing phrases like "brand new" which are often capitalized in adverting. Some examples are Not Sold in Stores and As Seen on TV (the latter of which goes to a disambiguation page; nothing like a band or TV show gets "primary topic" billing, and given that they're all derived from the marketing slogan usage, it's entirely safe to move As seen on TV to As seen on TV (disambiguation) and move As seen on TV (marketing) to As seen on TV). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 12:21, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose – Some 240 mainspace pages link to Brand New, see what links here. I challenge move supporters to find any of these links which are misdirected. While I frankly haven't heard of anything on the dab (except the wikt:brand new meaning, from which I learned that the word derives from firebrand or branding iron, not brand name) I see no compelling reason to move this obscure band off of primary topic when the contenders are even more obscure. This is a capitalized proper name, which rules out the dictionary meaning from primary contention. I hope that if this somehow does succeed (looks like it will close as no consensus) that the move supporters will volunteer themselves to help out at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links to clean up all the dab links they will have created. Don't write this off as fixable just by tweaking a few templates either—there's just a handful of links to Template:Brand New. Having put significant time into cleaning up all the links to Battles (that's a redirect), nearly all of which were intended for Battles (band), I'm not keen on this, considering the mountains of much more important stuff waiting to be done on Wikipedia. Why are so many editors wasting their time on this silly discussion? Wbm1058 (talk) 03:54, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation pages and primary topics are decided for the sake of readers, not for the convenience of Wikipedia editors; the number of links that ought to be changed is a weak argument to oppose a change, what matters with respect to the guideline and WP consensus is what readers writing the term will expect to find. If there's no consensus that this is a primary topic, again the guideline instructs to link to the DAB. And why do you think capitalization "rules out" the dictionary meaning? I hope you're not suggesting one of those terrible results where the capitalized term leads to a different page than the lowercase spelling. Either the band is the primary topic for the term and all combined terms point to it, or it is not and all should point to the DAB. Diego (talk) 07:03, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Brand New has been stable at that location since 15 June 2004 and has never moved. Its author has been active on Wikipedia for many years, with a wide distribution of edits, thus is not a band promoter building publicity for the band on Wikipedia. Brand New (band) has been around as a redirect since 1 April 2007‎, yet only a half-dozen articles link to it. What's holding you supporters back? Get to work fixing those links. When over half the Brand New links are corrected to the more wp:SPECIFICLINK Brand New (band), I'll change my !vote. Lay the groundwork for the move. If anyone writes an article Brand new, explaining how the term originated, why it is used so often in proper names, how slapping the term on a product's advertising impacts sales, how long a product is called "brand new" after it is released (presumably the answer for this band is "forever"), etc., then I will be happy to support a title redirect to that article. But, for the most part, I see a solution looking for a problem. I've already made contributions in this realm, see Talk:Battles (band)#Requested move, where I didn't get any help from the opposition. Tell me why we dump readers onto dab pages for their sake. How is it convenient for a reader to search through a dab page to locate their ultimate destination? Wbm1058 (talk) 21:16, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How is it more convenient? Because there's no guarantee that the reader writing "Brand new" wants to read about the band, that's how. Presenting the DAB page upfront is therefore less work than having to wade through the hat note and then having to search through the dab page to locate whatever article they were looking for (which could very well be the Wiktionary definition). Now, if you could provide convincing evidence that the rock band is the primary intended target for readers, that would be a different argument to keep the current situation. Diego (talk) 22:06, 18 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We can speculate all night about what readers are thinking when they type brand new into the search box, but I guarantee you that we will have an ongoing problem with editors who save Brand New when they should have saved Brand New (band). I just corrected links to Battles in Bloc Festival and All Tomorrow's Parties Festival lineups. Brand new (lower case) should go to the dab, and I fixed it so that it does. If someone is looking for a proper name and takes the trouble to use their shift key, I'll assume they're looking for one of the many proper name uses and not the generic plain-English term. Maybe wp:AFT5 can help us learn what readers are thinking. Cheers, Wbm1058 (talk) 02:03, 19 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support Many of these discussions involve editors who seem to support disambiguate everything misleadingly arguing against WP:PRIMARYTOPIC based on a bunch of WP:PTMs. But here, there are other actual articles named "Brand New" (with disambiguators), and it's entirely plausible that this band is getting all these hits because people are looking for something else. Make the move and, if we must, revisit the issue in a few months. If everyone is still looking for the band, we can call it WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and move on. --BDD (talk) 17:37, 2 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

I have no idea what COCA has to do with primary topics, but here is my analysis. I googled "Brand New" -wikipedia and checked the first two pages of results. There were 15 results for band, two were dictionary entries, and there was one hit each for "Brand New Conference", "52 Brand New", and "Brand New Awards" -- all partial title matches. Since only one topic came up that corresponds to a relevant Wiki article, that should settle it. But I did a page view analysis as well: 120467 / (120467 + 146 + 3799 + 2138 + 691). Bottom line: 95 percent of relevant traffic is for the band. Kauffner (talk) 14:44, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but it appears that such evidence can be disregarded when it is inconvenient for editors who prefer titles to include preemptive disambiguating information. older ≠ wiser 15:37, 26 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You are disregarding great solid blocks of evidence, ≠ wiser. Anyone reading the discussion above must be struck by that – unless they have a prejudice favouring your own rusted-on opinion, of course. Noetica^Tea? 03:24, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, that does not settle it. The clear primary meaning of "Brand New" is to refer to things that are brand new. Partial title matches are of worth, because often people can only remember part of the title. Beyond this, the fact that the various songs named Brand New did not come up early in your search in no way indicates that they are less notable. The main problem is that brand new does not refer to the band, it just means that something has just come into existence.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:08, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Your continued assumption that we can compare the page views of what you have forced to be the primary topic to the other topics is just plain rubbish. People looking up the other topics have to proactively search for them, and most likely will have looked at the band page first. This is also true of people looking for Brand New Me and who knows what else.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:09, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"I have no idea what COCA has to do with primary topics, ...". Time you learned, then. It's the biggest most widely consulted resource for frequency studies and other analysis, by academic linguists and others interested in current English usage. Especially US English, and as such its content may be presumed to favour US bands, right? Yet comparable Australian, South African, and Norwegian bands with much lower WP pageviews show up in COCA, while Brand New, a US band, apparently does not. Something strange about the pageview evidence, then!
As for your Google evidence, don't presume to understand how Google elevates its hits to the top of the list. There is a whole industry out there to make that happen. A close member of my family works in that exact niche. Have a look at search engine optimization, a major internet marketing strategy. It's all very commercial; big money changes hands! But Wikipedia is not about commerce or big money. It's about true notability, and serving a worldwide readership's diverse needs.
Noetica^Tea? 03:24, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Requested analysis of statistics presented by Noetica. Above, Noetica requested an analysis of the statistics he presented regarding Rolling Stone cites, COCA cites, and WP pageviews. The bottom line? There is no correlation among these three metrics. As a result, it is not possible to prove - or disprove - from the stats presented alone, how accurate the pageviews are for Brand New. Remove Brand New from that list, and look at the ratios of RS hits to pageviews:

Google site searches; 90-day pageviews; ratios
(using site:http://www.rollingstone.com) 

                   Rolling Stone  pageviews ratio

"decemberists"               352    85226   242
"blitzen trapper"            156    15121   96
"blk jks"                     19    2429    127
"futureheads"                 12    11069   922
"datarock"                     8    9534    1,191
"architecture in helsinki"     6    18776   3,129
"echobrain"                    2    9092    4,546

What do you see? Blitzen Trapper, with 156 RS hits, has 15,121 pageviews. Architecture in Helsinki, with 6 RS hits - a mere 1/26th that of Blitzen Trapper - has 18,776 pageviews - more than Blitzen Trapper. Echobrain, with 2 RS hits - or 1/78th that of Blitzen Trapper - has 9,092 pageviews - or 3/5ths that of Blitzen Trapper. There is simply no correlation here, and thus any attempt to predict or verify Brand New's pageviews using these stats is invalid. Similar results are had with COCA hits (which I omit for clarity and brevity; ask, and I will present).

Further, I have presented metrics showing that Brand New might be viewed at least as often as The Decemberists - both have had three charted albums with an average peak between 13-14. Brand New has had two top ten albums to The Decemberists' one. (Noetica concentrates on The Decemberists' attainment of a number one album as well as a higher-ranked single. These are certainly part of the mix. But my purpose was not to prove that Brand New's pageviews are accurate - only that they could very well be.) As for new evidence, inspired by Bkonrad's re!vote above, I looked at 90-day pageviews for Colin Meloy, leadman of The Decemberists. Results? 21,712, or 26% of the band pageviews. Jesse Lacey, leadman of Brand New, gets 31,078, or 26% of the band pageviews.

These metrics show that it is entirely plausible that Brand New could receive at least comparable views to The Decemberists, and perhaps more. Note: I am not claiming it as a certainty, just that it is entirely plausible.

So where does that leave us? Essentially where we began. Without direct evidence, we simply cannot know how accurate the pageviews are for the band, and we are left with pure conjecture that the vast majority of readers are looking for something else. RMs should be decided on evidence - properly and thoroughly analyzed - and not conjecture. Dohn joe (talk) 18:49, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Do you realize your analysis is the ultimate argument to support the move? If the different metrics are not correlated, and thus we don't have any reliable evidence, it means that there's no way to establish whether the band is a primary topic, something to which you agree. But if the topic can't be established as primary, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC makes it crystal clear that the disambiguation page should be located at the base name. If the page views (the only evidence offered so far towards the band being primary) can't be trusted, the guideline mandates to revert to the neutral situation with no primary topic defined. Diego (talk) 23:00, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not quite. Two points to make. First: usage stats are only one way to establish primacy. Even if we were to discount them entirely in this case (which I have not done, incidentally), there are other ways to determine primacy. Second, and more important: WP:PRIMARYTOPIC only applies when "a word, name or phrase may refer to more than one topic covered in Wikipedia". An important caveat in this case, as WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and there is no WP article on the dictionary meaning of "brand new". The best we can do is provide a link to the Wiktionary page (which the dab page does, and the band page likely should). Since the dictionary term is not "covered in Wikipedia", it cannot contend for primacy. And nor should it: even if we were to conclusively prove that 90% of the page traffic for Brand New was intended for the dictionary definition, what then? There is no WP article about the dictionary definition to send them to, simply a dab page with a bunch of articles they were not looking for anyway. In such a case, it remains best for our readership to send them to the article they are likeliest to be looking for. Dohn joe (talk) 01:44, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You keep saying something "not covered in Wikipedia" cannot contend for primacy, but there's nothing in policy supporting that, and there are several hints to the contrary. PRIMARYTOPIC is about what readers will want to learn. WP:NOTDICTIONARY is about what Wikipedia editors want to write about; those are quite different things. Certainly NOTDICT doesn't say that navigation and disambiguation of dictionary words shouldn't be used; it actually says the opposite. You have a nice contradiction in you argument: you say there is no WP article about the dictionary - but there is a Wiktionary article, which NOTDICT supports including navigation to help readers find it, which is linked from the DAB page; so if "brand new" is proven to be what readers are looking for, sending them elsewhere can't be the best for the readership. Diego (talk) 07:17, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Diego - I added a link to Wiktionary on the Brand New article. So now, there is a Wiktionary link both there and at the dab page. Does that help address your concerns? Dohn joe (talk) 20:46, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It would, if not for the inconvenient fact that it must violate every rule in the manual of style for links as well as WP:UNDUE. But I appreciate the attempt to build consensus. Diego (talk) 21:29, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Thinking about that, maybe yours isn't a bad solution after all for articles like this one, where the primary meaning is a dictionary word. Though it would imply to get consensus to pass it as an exemption to the manual of style, so it belongs in a separate discussion. Diego (talk) 21:36, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if we think it would benefit the readers, let's WP:Ignore all rules, do it here, and start that discussion elsewhere. What do you think? Dohn joe (talk) 22:13, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've looked through several MOS and WP pages, and I don't see a rule against putting a link to Wiktionary in an article. The more I think about it, the better I like this solution. I realize that this proposal is now buried in the middle of a loooong discussion, but perhaps it would be worth proposing below? Dohn joe (talk) 05:24, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

With respect to your not-vote, you ask what could a reader search when looking for an article titled "brand new". As a non-English speaker, when I check for an idiom I want to learn its precise meaning, tone (formal or informal, offensive...), its history, common usages, appearances in media and cultures that used it in significant ways... Nothing of this has anything to do with the auto-completion feature. On which basis do you support your hunch that wanting to learn all this is highly unlikely? Diego (talk) 07:26, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Diego. Dohn joe's attempt at a refutation would not justify the present arrangement even if it did succeed in nullifying the assembled evidence. Not remotely! No one has shown that the raw pageview statistics favour the band from Long Island, which appears to get no mention at all in a huge unbiased sample of American English since its beginnings in 2000. Yet other bands from that year, even from Norway, Australia, and South Africa, do turn up in that huge sample. More soon. Noetica^Tea? 16:56, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have addressed the failed refutation below. See the subsection #Count the psychopaths. Noetica^Tea? 05:17, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My guess from the above is that Architecture in Helsinki is another article that should be renamed. It really should be about what it says, and not about some band that has hijacked a common English phrase with a clear potential Encyclopedia meaning.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:59, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Move to close[edit]

At Categories for discussion ... Category:Brand New, the category for the article about the band has just been moved:

The result of the discussion was: rename per nominator to Category:Brand New (band). --[User:BrownHairedGirl]

Add this to the evidence assembled above, and the support it has had from editors arriving after it was presented and analysed.

I now propose a closure in favour of the move. Let "Brand New" be the DAB page, and "Brand New (brand)" be the accurately labelled title for an article about a band. See evidence at a related RM for the article Big (which is about a film).
Noetica^Tea? 12:55, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would move to table this motion, given the rigorous analysis above which throws Noetica's conclusions into severe disarray, and casts grave doubts upon the support !votes which were based on such faulty analysis. Dohn joe (talk) 18:49, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No analysis has called into question the fact that "Brand New" is a generic English term not heavily associated with the band or that lots of other things are named "Brand New" in a way that people might be looking for them.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:35, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well now! Dohn joe appears to believe he has a refutation of all the evidence I assemble above. But unfortunately, he has achieved no refutation of anything. His is no "rigorous analysis", but a mere distraction from the line of argument I pursue. And John is right: Even if Dohn joe had succeeded, that would only demonstrate a general failure to bring any useful evidence to bear on the question of primary topic for this extremely multivalent title "Big". And when there are no rational grounds for finding a primary topic, call things what they are, so everyone gets to the desired article without diversion. More later. It's way past midnight here in Australia. Noetica^Tea? 16:42, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have addressed the failed refutation below. See the subsection #Count the psychopaths. Noetica^Tea? 04:59, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that Mr. Joe has admitted that "we cannot know how accurate pageview statistics are" should suggest they should not be used as evidence.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:36, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Close in favor of the moves, per WP:CFD, and per stats analysis by Noetica and Dohn joe's failure to refute them, and per Dicklyon's refutation of Kauffner's WP:GOOGLE mess as colored strongly by recentism. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 12:14, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Count the psychopaths[edit]

Yes, count the psychopaths. The sample is way too small for Dilbert to use that correlation.

A little basic statistics, Dohn joe. I'll keep it really simple – for the benefit of anyone who has not succeeded in completing a PhD in mathematics. (☺!)

Your argument presented earlier, like my own, draws attention to some very low numbers of mentions in Rolling Stone: 2, 6, 8, 11, 12, 19. Now, mentions in Rolling Stone are a skittish and chancy affair. It is not possible to draw strong inferences from such low numbers about other measures elsewhere. To demonstrate correlations, our counts must be larger. After all, no one at Rolling Stone says: "O look, Wikipedia pageviews for the Australian band Architecture in Helsinki are averaging 6000 a month. Let's mention them a couple more times to preserve a constant ratio." Nor do people flock in precisely the right numbers, each month, to the article Futureheads because, well ... Rolling Stone mentioned them 12 times in the last 12 years. It just doesn't work that way. On the other hand, look at some numbers that do reliably show a correlation, using the same measure you propose. I add "Brand New" for comparison:

Google site searches; 90-day pageviews; ratios
(using site:http://www.rollingstone.com) 

Performer          Rolling Stone   pageviews  ratio
                             (RS)        (PV)

Linkin Park                  332      833156   2510
Mariah Carey                 433     1325327   3061
50 Cent                      457     1270949   2781
Eminem                       967     2521518   2608

Brand New                     11      120485  10953

Once again, spot the anomaly. A Rolling Stone count of 11 is still very low, and subject to chancy variations; but we have meaningful data here. We know that there is something like a direct correlation between RS count and PV count, and that can be confirmed by selecting a range of comparable performers randomly, and checking. The correlation need not be tight, because there are many variables that are ignored here (genre, years of main activity, SEO marketing, manipulations of Wikipedia for promotion, and so on). Take the ratio from those famous performers whose names are not confusable by bad title choices on Wikipedia ("Mariah Carey" is not a common English expression occurring over a hundred times in OED!); and estimate from that ratio the expected number of pageviews for the band "Brand New" if its article were named with precision. We would expect it to be nearer to 30000 than 120000.

Again, note that Brand New gets not one mention in COCA's sampling. And in reply to your comparison for leaders of two bands, note these numbers based on our external sources (one specialised, one general):

Performer        Rolling Stone     COCA
                       (Google)

 Colin Meloy                88        9
(The Decemberists)

 Jesse Lacey                 0        0
(Brand New)

You can pick and choose as you will, Dohn joe; you can apply rough measures of correlation between measures that are simply ridiculous for very low counts; you can draw in whatever gerrymandered statistics will suit your purpose. But you have certainly not worked with sufficient rigour to make the pageviews for the band Brand New at all plausible. The better hypothesis, by far: those pageview statistics are inflated because readers do not know what to expect at "Brand New". It's time we admitted it: simplistic rules and unanalysed data are worthless.

Help the readers; do not feed editors' obsession with conciseness.

Remember, Dohn joe: it's surprising what judicious investigation with simple statistical tools can reveal.

Noetica^Tea? 04:56, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am pretty sure that the giving of logical titles for other things to bands violates the ban on surprising people with titles. That is definately how I feel about what happens with Architecture in Helsinki.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:05, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. That article should be disambiguated, and that title redirected to Architecture of Finland, with an "Architecture in Helsinki redirects here; for the Australian band see Architecture in Helsinki (band)." We're already doing disambiguation like this with The Presidents of the United States of America (band) for the same reason. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 12:41, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What happens after a primary topic is delisted[edit]

It's time to review, as informative, the similar case of Big that was pointed to the disambiguation page on February 12th. We can see that:

The number of visitors at Big (film) got a deep increase on February 12th, and moves in a range between 500 and 1000 - averaged around 700.
The number of visitors to the base name page decreased significantly on the same date from around 1100 to slightly above 500.
The number of visitors to the old DAB was around 30, so it was virtually unused.

In particular the number of visitors to the DAB page is smaller than those of Big (film), which means that readers interested in the film are finding it directly without the need of a visit to the disambiguation page. The new located of the DAB is getting significant use for the first time, which I interpret as more people finding the article they want. In particular, (1100 - 700) readers each day were being misguided to read about the film when they were not interested in it. Diego (talk) 07:17, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In January, Big (disambiguation) got 1.4 percent of relevant traffic (926 / (46,300 + 18,459 + 325)). Now the DAB gets 35 percent of relevant traffic (18,043 / (22,788 + 28,650 + 451)). This suggests that many readers who went directly to the film page before now go to the DAB first. Views for the film are down by almost 24,000 a month. For Big (TV_series), they are up by over 10,000 views a month. If you google Big -wikipedia, nothing about the Korean TV series shows up. So I assume the increase in readership has to do with the way the Korean search engines work. If you type in "Big" on Naver, the only Wikipedia-related result is the base name, so Koreans would go there. (Wikipedia is "위키백과" in Korean, in case you want to confirm this). In short, the move allowed us to serve our Korean readers better, but English speakers must now click through an additional page to get to the article they seek. Kauffner (talk) 03:41, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That assumes the article they seek is Big (film), but this is dubious; and that article shows in the first page of Google anyway. For readers looking for any other article, it reduces one step. Diego (talk) 09:07, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The main purpose of a title is to tell the reader the name of the subject. If the film is named Big, or the band is named "Brand New", those are the logical titles for articles about those subjects. We've analysed enough of these moves to know what happens when you add a disambiguator: They cause readership to decline. So adding them is a kind of reverse SEO. What Web designer would introduce a page element whose sole purpose is to discourage people from reading the page? Kauffner (talk) 00:31, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What it tells us is that the people landing at Big were not after the film, and proceeded no further. After the change, we see how many people actually wanted the film. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 05:39, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The missing 14,000 readers a month were all satisfied with the DAB? So "big" means "large or of great size." I thought so, but I wanted to make sure. The problem is that the former name retains the article's search engine ranking for quite a while after a move. So readers click on the result for the DAB expecting an article of some kind. Koreans certainly seem to find the Big DAB to be useful. But generally speaking, my sense is that readers are confused and annoyed when they land unexpectedly on a DAB. Kauffner (talk) 06:50, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The missing 14k were not after the film, and were not after anything found in the disambiguation page either. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 22:54, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The most likely target for those visiting only the DAB is the Wiktionary article. For those readers, reaching the DAB is better than reaching the film article.

I've created a temporary redirect to count the number of visitors navigating from DAB to Big (film); it seems to average about 150 visits, or 4500~5000 a month. We can infer the other 9000 readers were not well served with the old primary topic. And as you said, the number of people looking for the film and using the DAB should be reduced after a while, when search engines demote the DAB page; which is a win-win for the move. Diego (talk) 09:48, 31 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Post-move discussion[edit]

Repost from User talk:Jenks24

While other websites use SEO to bring in as many readers as possible, Wiki introduces unnecessary disambiguators for the express purpose of driving them away. I don't have any interest in this band myself. But this tells readers who are that it is an unworthy topic, like we are holding our nose when we present it to them. Kauffner (talk) 06:16, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I thnk that your edit summary is a bit mean and unfair. Sure I can see you disagree with the move, but the logic of your interpretation is simply faulty; it's a value judgement on your part. All the dab tells visitors is that there may be other meanings to the generic term 'brand new'. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 06:40, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I agree with Ohconfucius. Page views of Brand New (band) / Brand New (band)(redirect) hardly show that any readers have been "driven away." Rather, they show how high the bar has been set for a determination of "wp:Primary topic" based on usage. It seems the MediaWiki software does use some form of search engine optimization (see also WP:SEO), when it presents the "top ten" "search suggestions" when I type "Brand New" into the search box. I'd like to know how the software creates this list:

The band is #1 on the list, which would seem to be a prerequisite for primary topic based on usage. No other Brand New (disambiguation) item cracks the top ten. I can only conclude that either the long-term significance criteria neutralizes the usage criteria, for this title, or All pages with titles beginning with Brand New is included when determining usage. There is no primary topic for this title, because of the long-term significance and enduring notability and educational value of the marketing term "brand new," even though Wikipedia doesn't yet have an article on the topic, or "more likely than all the other topics combined" includes All pages with titles beginning with Brand New in the other topics list. It seems clear that this is a case where there is some conflict between a topic of primary usage (the band) and one of primary long-term significance (marketing term), and consensus determines whether the band is the primary topic. Then there is the question of how high the bar is set on consensus. I think it's supposed to be significantly more than a simple majority of !votes. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:37, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The article was getting 1,400 views a day before the move, and now its getting 250 views a day. Unless you can show that the missing 1,150 readers a day are now happily going to another Wiki article, I think that can be fairly described as "driving readers away." I don't see how they could be going to an article on the generic term, since we don't have such an article. There is a song named "Brand New", as well as three albums with this name, but they get only 5-7 readers a day each. Kauffner (talk) 00:08, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's yet another subjective (and rather superficial, no offence) interpretation of the search result. You don't credit the average reader with any intelligence or determination, that they would stumble at the first hurdle and then say 'blow it'. It's equally if not more plausible that they used to search for and but found it wasn't what they were looking for. Now, they type in the search box (or google) and know straight away, that the band article isn't what they were after, obviating a 'wasted' page hit. Nothing would account for the large proportion of 'disappeared' clicks: readers don't just evaporate. The band article appears clearly as one of the possible alternatives in the undisambiguated page 'brand new', that the reader genuinely looking for the band article would click just once more, and 'presto'. The new page locations, instead of deterring readers, is actually helping them to find the article they are after with greater speed or otherwise wastes less of their time. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 00:39, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My point was just that the move has caused readership to decline, which you are not really challenging. Why has it declined? If you google "Brand New", you'll see that the DAB has retained the google rank earned by article when it was at the "brand new" lemma. So readers click on this result expecting an article, but get a DAB instead. These readers have never seen a DAB before and have no idea what to do with one. So they back out and try something else. There are plenty of results about this band. Wiki is not the universe. If we don't give the readers what they want, they'll go to the next site on the list. Kauffner (talk) 01:19, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Google doesn't react quickly to our moves. Give it some time, and Brand New (band) will float to the top of Google's results, I'm pretty confident of that. Wbm1058 (talk) 01:30, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not saying or agreeing with you at all that 'readership' has declined. You made the logical leap from 'clicks' to 'readers', and assumed that all those who landed on the band article wanted to be there, but I'm saying that does not necessarily equate. I'm more interested in overall optimisation – sending more readers to where they want to go in the fewest mouse-clicks, and that may mean some readers will get there with more and some with fewer clicks; it may also mean they will realise quicker what they are looking for isn't here and they will have to go look elsewhere. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:17, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As primary topic Brand New was getting about 1,400 daily views. This included some readers looking for something other than the band, who needed to click the hatnote to go to the dab. Post-move the number of views of the Brand New dab is about 900. To me this seems to indicate a ratio of about 500 views of "all the other topics combined" vs. 900 views of the band, a clear indication of primary topic based on usage. Consistent with this, in the first 4–5 days post move, Brand New (band) was getting ~900 views. Then on April 8, Dohn joe created Brand New (band)(redirect), a clear measure of clicks for the band on the dab page, and this gets ~700 daily views, leaving the band with a little over 200... seems that redirects aren't double-counted. The band is still getting about 900 daily views. 7 of 9 get there by search, then clicking the first item on the dab. 2 of 9 land there by internal links from other Wikipedia articles. No one's been driven away, they've just been rearranged. Arguably we have saved a click for readers who were not looking for the band, at the expense of forcing an extra click from readers who were searching for the band. Since the latter outnumbers the former, more readers "time is being wasted" now. But in the long term, more readers time will be saved, since the marketing term has greater long-term significance. Maybe someone will eventually serve these educationally-minded readers by actually writing an article on the topic. - Wbm1058 (talk) 01:12, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

oic. That would mean that the decline in readership was from 1,400 a day to 950 a day. That's a big change in the math, but I think the general point I was making is still valid. Kauffner (talk) 01:41, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Again, all one could say was that the number of clicks has declined. And although it is often generally assumed that the two are directly related/correlated, the ambiguity here means that relationship may not hold true, so i would not be fair to make any inference about 'readership'. By changing the names, and thus reducing that ambiguity, in the not too distant future, we will get a true picture of where those hits were intended. So WP:PRIMARYTOPIC itself does not always work to the best of the project. Disambiguated namespaces, however would allow proper data production and analysis, to the overall benefit to the project. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 02:34, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

End of repost from User talk:Jenks24

Requested move May 2013[edit]

The following discussion is an archived 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. The supporters of this requested move claim that Brand New (band) is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for the phrase Brand New. This was mostly based on article page view statistics as reported by stats.grok.se. Using these statistics, it was noted that about 89% of visitors were going to Brand New (band) page. There was strong opposition to this viewpoint. Some opposition claim that the 89% figure is wrong and the way it was figured was biased, others that the phrase is too common to not be a disambiguation page (like Queen), others that even if the 89% figure is right that searchers can easily find their way from a disambiguation page and those looking for other topics are helped more. A compromise solution was offered that did not gain support. Given the widespread opposition, both in number and quality of argument, to this requested move, I do not see how it could be closed as other than no consensus. -Nathan Johnson (talk) 22:55, 1 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Brand New → Brand New (disambiguation)
Brand New (band) → Brand New

– So, it's been just over a month since the move was made, and the post-move stats clearly show that the band is WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for "brand new", and so the previous move should be reversed. Article traffic stats show that in the last 30 days, Brand New (the current disambiguation page) had 28,346 visitors. A special redirect to the band page only located on the dab page, Brand New (band)(redirect), had 25,211 visitors. In other words, 89% of the visitors to the dab page were looking for the band article. Restoring the band article as primary topic is thus clearly in the best interests of our readers. Dohn joe (talk) 18:49, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Further comment as nom. Other stats bear this out, as well. The actual current band article, Brand New (band), got an additional 8,920 visitors in the last 30 days (either from internal wikilinks or coming from elsewhere). When you add that to the special redirect numbers, you get 34,131 total visitors to the band article, which extrapolates to 102,393 over 90 days. In the earlier RM discussion, it was noted that Brand New (at that time the band article) had gotten 120,485 views in 90 days. In other words, it is reasonable to conclude that approximately 85% of the visitors to Brand New were getting to the right place under the previous scheme. Dohn joe (talk) 18:49, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Survey 2[edit]

Strong oppose - the only claim that this is a primary topic is still based on number of visitors alone, disregarding all the reasons that lead to the current title one month ago. And we still don't have any data of how many visitors are using the link from the DAB page to "brand new in Wiktionary", so any analysis based on usage patterns is missing the most important information as of what readers might be looking for. Nothing has changed with respect to the previous discussion. Diego (talk) 18:58, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the opposition last time was based on intuition and inferences from other sources that there was no way that this band from Long Island could support the usage stats given. Nearly all the argument was designed to show that the usage stats were unfounded. What has changed since then? Now, we have proof instead that those usage stats were largely correct. I agree that it would be nice to have the Wiktionary link usage numbers. But what we do know as of today is that no more than 11% of the visitors to the dab page in the last month went to Wiktionary - or anywhere else besides the band article. Restoring the band as primary topic will save a click and improve navigation for 9 out of 10 visitors. Dohn joe (talk) 19:16, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
By the way - does anyone know a good way to track clicks to Wiktionary from here (or a good place to ask the question)? I asked at the Village Pump (technical), and got no response. Dohn joe (talk) 17:44, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A lightbulb went on and I realized that you don't have to be on or have access to a "Revision history" page to get stats from the tool.

...and then another one lit and told me to RTFD (read the documentation), which says ".d" for Wiktionary:
brand new – brand_new has been viewed 236 times in the last 30 days.

All pages beginning with "Brand New" – Special:Prefixindex/Brand_New has been viewed 56 times in the last 30 days.

All pages with titles containing "Brand New" – Special:Search/intitle:Brand_New has been viewed 12 times in the last 30 days.

We don't know how many of these came from clicks on our dab, but... Nope, not by any stretch will the dictionary entry ever become the primary topic by usage. Wbm1058 (talk) 19:59, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I created a special redirect over at Wiktionary for "brand new", and edited the dab page here to link to it in hatnote style, because I couldn't figure out how to make the Wiktionary template not display "(redirect)". If anyone knows how to do that, please feel free - or if you can improve the hatnote-style addition, do likewise. Dohn joe (talk) 17:11, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just like the original Whiskas advertisement, the above statement is misleading. I believe all you can say with the evidence given is that the moved article will improve navigation for 9 out of 10 visitors who want the article on the band. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 03:50, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, the numbers say what they say. Of the 28,346 visitors to the dab page in the last month, 25,211 went to the band article. Thus, moving the page would have improved navigation for those 25,211, or 9 out of 10 visitors to the dab page. It really can't any more straightforward than that. Dohn joe (talk) 18:57, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How do you explain that the Brand New (band)(redirect) was visited about 25.000 times in 30 days, but Brand New (band) was only visited about 9000 in the same period? Diego (talk) 15:26, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Beware that there are some concerns about the reliability of this page views tool, though I believe that for the most part it's accurate, there may be some glitches. See User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 133#Confirmed stats.grok pageviews omit https views

It appears that redirects are not double-counted, so in a sense it's clicks that are being counted, not pageviews per se. A reader clicking on Brand_New_(band)(redirect) is counted once there, but not a second time when they're redirected to Brand New (band). So 25K clicks at the Brand New dab (I'll assume that some of those clicks came via Google search) plus 9K clicks on Brand New (band) links in other Wikipedia articles (see special:WhatLinksHere/Brand New (band)) or maybe in Google results—where after a month Brand New (band) has bubbled up to the second page of Google's search results—plus a handful of clicks on nine other redirects to Brand New (band) equals about 34K total pages views of the band's article. Give it another month and maybe Brand New (band) will be on the first page of Google's results. – Wbm1058 (talk) 16:58, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - A generic phrase in wide use - such as "Brand New" - should not be encyclopedically given over to one temporarily-popular musical group. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 21:08, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose—It is just too common a word string in English to rely on the N capital for clarity, apart from which most people won't know that it's a musical band. This primary topic one-size-fits-all approach is a profound disservice to readers who are searching for information. It is inappropriate here. Tony (talk) 03:41, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But Tony, this isn't a theoretical or philosophical preference. We have evidentiary proof that 89% of the people who came to this page in the last 30 days went to the band article. That's not one-size-fits-all. That's acknowledging the actual observed behavior of our readership in this case, and trying to improve the usage of the encyclopedia. Other cases may have different results. But isn't it clear in this case? Dohn joe (talk) 18:57, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Wikipedia is not the world. Regardless of the number of page hits, it has been stated by numerous editors that the undisambiguated 'Brand New' – like 'Queen', 'Blue', 'Madonna' – is too generic a concept or name for the band to usurp even though it may have a much higher number of hits, for now. We cannot allow article titles to confuse the reader, as this change is likely to. -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 03:47, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- You make a good point with Queen. Queen (band) is at the top of Google's search, right below the band's official page. The Queen disambiguation is on the second page of Google's results. I suspect a similar configuration is just where Brand New is headed if we give Google's engine another month or two to work its magic. Queen (band) gets a monster 240K monthly views, ranking it 777 in traffic on Wikipedia, and dwarfing the Queen disambiguation's 25K views. Clearly the (band) on Queen hasn't "driven away" any readers. They are more popular than the Queen for now (as the Beatles were more popular than...), but for long term significance, the Queen is more important—especially if the princess' firstborn is a girl! A strong argument can be made that if the band Queen isn't primary topic based on its Top 1,000 traffic ranking, then neither should the band Brand New be primary topic based on traffic. But – There are viable alternative articles of greater long-term significance for Queen: Queen regnant and Queen consort. There are still no viable alternative articles of greater long-term significance for Brand New. – Wbm1058 (talk) 19:21, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I ~~find~~question your argument that "article titles without (parenthetical disambiguation) confuse the reader" ~~spurious~~. How can a reader of an article titled Brand New who reads the lead sentence "Brand New is an alternative rock band from Long Island, New York." possibly be confused? Even Google's search results include the article's lead in their listings. – Wbm1058 (talk) 19:21, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  Oh I see. Rereading the arguments of the first RM, I see that readers typing "Brand New" in Wikipedia's search box are just automatically given suggested article titles to click on and the simple title Brand New in the search box (without an accompanying article lead to disambiguate) leaves the reader guessing which "Brand New" article Wikipedia is suggesting. Now a totally dominant and universal PT might not leave many guessing, but in this case, for the minority who may be looking for something else, fair point. – Wbm1058 (talk) 23:15, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  
  ...And a central argument of the first RM was because an indeterminate number of readers (perhaps it could be a significant majority?) were using Wikipedia's search box, the page view stats for Brand New were meaningless because readers didn't know which "Brand New" they were going to view until after they already viewed it. Now we have proven, meaningful usage stats, so that fact in itself merits the relatively quick reopening of a new RM for this title. Wbm1058 (talk) 23:48, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose and speedy procuedural close per the January 2013 move that was just closed in April. This should be at WP:DRV since it just closed last month, and was open for 4 months, so I don't see how you could request the exact opposite having a 4-month-long discussion that was just closed, I don't see what has not been already discussed, or how WP:CCC can change in less than the length of the period of discussion for the previous move request. A month's worth of stats when pages were in flux is not a good statistic to use. We should wait atleast half a year, after half a year of establishing the new pattern, so revisit this in May 2014, if you need to. -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 03:55, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I believe you mean WP:MRV (Wikipedia:Move review). No one wants to delete anything here. I believe that determination of consensus was borderline, given that consensus means more than a simple majority, especially for a determination that overturned a title that had stood for 81⁄2 years without any moves or move discussions. As I said in the earlier discussion, I thought it would close as no consensus, so I was a bit surprised by the close. Had I thought otherwise, maybe I would have put more time into my arguments. I'm still on the fence this time around, but this definitely needs further review. – Wbm1058 (talk) 20:43, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The current situation is to be preferred. Primary topics should only be assigned when there's consensus that the topic is primary, something that we don't have in this case. Diego (talk) 11:02, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose – although 89% of traffic appearing to go to one place seems like a lot to some people, I'd rather give some consideration to the other 11%. Plus the stats show that essentially all of this traffic comes via the lowercase redirect Brand new. Does that make sense as behavior of someone looking for the band? In any case, that lowercase should certainly redirect to the disambig page, not the band page, so this move would not fix what the nom sees as a problem. Furthermore, the "precision" criterion of WP:AT suggests that titles should clearly indicate the topic of the article. This band's name is too ambiguous to do so without some help. Dicklyon (talk) 04:07, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Lower-cased brand new/Brand new has directed to the DAB since February 18.[4] I note that nothing in particular happened to band's page views after that edit.[5] Kauffner (talk) 08:41, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- You'll find that the article traffic statistics tool isn't case sensitive. I find that both:
  - Brand new (lower case) and
  - Brand New (upper case) give the same identical result: "viewed 28393 times in the last 30 days." – Wbm1058 (talk) 20:05, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The preview suggestions at the internal search bar are also case insensitive. Disambiguating page titles by capitalization only is a bad idea for many reasons, even if it's common practice. As long as we don't have software support more powerful navigation tools for ambiguous titles, I'm in favor of using more precise titles in cases like these. Diego (talk) 11:09, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

When I type "red me" in the search box, I'm presented with:

Red meat
Red Meat
Red mercury
- etc. - Seems to work fine for disambiguation by capitalization to me. - Wbm1058 (talk) 15:11, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support. The primary purpose of a title is to inform the reader, to tell him the common name of the subject. What that does to traffic need not be our concern. This band's name is "Brand New". No RS calls it "Brand New (band)." There is no title clash that requires us to use disambiguation. That should be case closed. But, no, we have editors who worry that without a parenthetical, readers who want to know more about the general concept of brand newness will end up at the band's article. Every professional Web designer SEOs his pages to bring in more readers. Who else adds elements whose only function is to drive away unwanted readers? Kauffner (talk) 08:19, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not a web-only project, and increasing readership is not among its stated goals - as it's a non-profit. Titles should be decided on the basis of how to best classify knowledge, not for an increased online presence - good criteria for a SEO may not be relevant here. Diego (talk) 08:31, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support. No other use of "Brand New" on WP is sought nearly as much as is the band. The is the epitome of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Opposition to this move is tantamount to rejecting the very concept of primary topic. --B2C 16:51, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Questions about similar titles to draw out more comments and opinions:
- Should Made in London redirect to Economy of London, as London Manufacturing does?
- Should Contrived redirect to wikt:Contrived?
- Should Senior discount redirect to Discounts and allowances?
- Should The Sale redirect to Sale?
- Should New and Improved redirect to Brand New?
- Should Career Suicide redirect to Career suicide?
- Should Freezepop redirect to Ice pop?
- Should Bee and Flower redirect to Pollination?
- Should Stolen Babies redirect to Kidnapping?
- Should Street Dogs redirect to Free-ranging dog?
- Should 10 Years redirect to Decade?
- Should The Whigs redirect to Whig? – Wbm1058 (talk) 21:33, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - Good examples. The essence of the arguments opposing this move supports a whole host of other changes, like the redirects above. I suggest that's just the drop in the bucket, because if you generalize the argument to apply to all titles of "generic sounding" terms, not just to bands with generic sounding names, the list is of course much longer. --B2C 22:56, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Strong, strong, strong support. This exact title, with this exact capitalization (remember, natural disambiguation by capitalization is in line with WP policy (see Red Meat), even though I personally agree that disambiguation via different capitalization is idiotic, that is our policy) should have the band. There is no compelling case against the band being the primary topic for a capital N. I think the relisting one month after the previous move's consensus-based closing is in bad form and I would definitely suggest hitting the editor in question in their brand new face with a WP:TROUT; nevertheless, I agree. Red Slash 03:10, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose by Noetica. Please see authorisation below in the discussion section. I can provide documentary evidence on a private basis to anyone who requests. Tony (talk) 08:23, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Striking !vote by Noetica. I appreciate the intent, Tony, but Noetica has chosen self-imposed exile from the community. If he wishes to return and contribute as an active editor, he is more than welcome. Until then, I don't think it's a good idea to permit proxy votes from nonactive editors (whether by choice or not). Dohn joe (talk) 17:12, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's one way to "win" at any cost. Tony (talk) 01:36, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Dohn joe seems to be treating this as a vote. However, it seems to me that Noetica went to some effort to write out his views, and these should be considered because polling is no substitute for discussion. -- Ohc ^{digame / ¿que pasa?} 01:53, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Guys, please assume good faith. I struck three words: "Oppose by Noetica". I did not strike, nor would I think it appropriate to, the discussion paragraphs below posted on Noetica's behalf by Tony. Everyone is as free to consider his views as they were before I struck his !vote. I just don't think it's appropriate for someone who has made a conscious decision to remove himself from this community to continue to be afforded the privileges of we who remain. Noetica announced a principled stand to retire if certain circumstances came to pass. When they did, he stuck to his word, and we can respect him for that. If those circumstances change, or even if he simply changes his mind, he can return - there is certainly room for him if he does.
As for "winning at all costs", please note my support for Wbm's compromise below, which will allow for further reevaluation of the best solution here. I wouldn't think that any closer would be particularly swayed by the presence or absence of a single !vote in any event. Dohn joe (talk) 03:55, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support a compromise. There are two issues here. First, the primary topic disambiguation guideline. Evidence collected during the past month's "experiment" conclusively shows that 85% to 90% percent of usage is for the band, so the band clearly meets the usage criteria. If anyone doubts the accuracy of the statistics coming from the article traffic statistics tool, then, if there is any overlap and common interests between our readers and editors, the sheer number of articles in which I spent hours changing links from Brand New to Brand New (band) provide additional evidence supporting usage. Regarding long-term significance, unlike Queen (band), which has alternate usages which do have greater long-term significance (e.g., Queen regnant), there are currently no viable long-term alternate usage articles to redirect to. Thus we go with PT based on usage by default. To do otherwise opens the door for a whole can-of-worms of redirects, as I alluded to in the questions I posed above (and which no editor favoring the status quo has yet engaged me with a reply). If, in the future, someone writes an article on Brand new, and improved (marketing), well I've helped lay the groundwork for making that the PT and would be happy to support it. The other issue is the article title precision policy, which says, "titles should be precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but no more precise than that." I'm setting the bar higher here. For the average reader who has never heard of the band, "Brand New" by itself does not unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, while Brand New (band) does. Seeing Brand New (band) in the suggested titles list when typing "brand new" in Wikipedia's search box will immediately tell the reader looking for an article about marketing, "don't click here." However, that may be of limited help, because what they are looking for won't break into the top 10 until someone writes an article about it (see #Post-move discussion above). If they type, "brand new", redirect them to Brand New (disambiguation), and if they type Brand New they're redirected to the PT, Brand New (band) where there is an otheruses hatnote to Brand New (disambiguation). We must assume that readers see hatnotes. If you believe that readers overlook hatnotes, this is not the appropriate forum to address that. Propose that on a project-wide scale, Wikipedia hatnotes should be made bigger and bolder to put them more in readers faces. So, in summary:
- Keep Brand New (band) where it is
- Move Brand New → Brand New (disambiguation)
- Redirect Brand New to Brand New (band)
- Redirect Brand new to Brand New (disambiguation)

For an example of where this is done, see Inverter, a PT which is natually disambiguated to Power inverter. While this is my favored solution, I also accept the move as proposed, as the issues caused by a somewhat ambiguous definition of the topical scope would be relatively minor. – Wbm1058 (talk) 14:17, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I can agree with that, understood as a compromise. It solves many of the problems of having Brand New the band as a primary topic; provided we make sure that the band article gets its hatnote and keeps it (there are people actively working to remove them at articles with disambiguated titles). Diego (talk) 15:16, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

While I still support my original proposal, and would like to see it evaluated on its merits, I would accept that as an interim solution, with the intent to re-evaluate after a month of that system in place, followed by a month of special redirect stat gathering. The whole point here is to figure out how best to facilitate the experience of our readers. If people think that Google ranking placement is an important factor in that (which it undoubtedly is), then let's see if we can improve that. (Note: other search engines, such as Yahoo! and Bing, already have put the band article on the first page of results.) Bumping up the band page on Google will certainly increase the number of direct views of the article, and decrease the number of views of the dab page. I would hope, though, that editors would be open to the results of that experiment. I'd also like to thank Wbm for thoughtful engagement towards finding a solution, and for recognizing why I made the new RM so soon after the previous one had closed - we now had a dramatically different foundation of knowledge with which to evaluate the situation. Dohn joe (talk) 17:12, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I can agree to the above proposal from Wbm insofar as it doesn't create ambiguity. To wit, ~~I would strongly prefer~~ 'Brand New' must be redirected to the dab page too, as this is common practice for almost all other instances where the only disambiguator is the capitalisation. -- Ohc ^{digame / ¿que pasa?} 02:16, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
After giving the matter some considerable thought, I now fail to see the rationale or the need to create 'Brand New (disambiguation)' and move the current disambiguation page 'Brand New' to it, and would like things to stay where they are, for now. The move seems rather like creating a whole lot of redundancy for nothing. I would hate for it to be used as a Trojan horse for the band article to usurp the namespace as described by Dicklyon. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 04:14, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Band should have called themselves "Brand New Band". *shudders* --George Ho (talk) 06:26, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I oppose the compromise; Brand New must be the dab page; the term is too ambiguous to do otherwise, even if one article is relatively more popular. Dicklyon (talk) 06:43, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- In your initial oppose above, you said:
  - lowercase should certainly redirect to the disambig page, not the band page
  - the "precision" criterion of WP:AT suggests that titles should clearly indicate the topic of the article
My compromise proposal concedes both these points, by redirecting lowercase to the dab, and keeping (band) on the title, yet still you reject it. Do you have a concept of "relative ambiguity," and, if so, can you explain how the relative ambiguousness of a title is measured. Can you give some examples of ambiguous topics that are not "too ambiguous" and thus deserve to be given primary topic status in spite of their ambiguity, or do you reject the concept of "primary topic" entirely? Wbm1058 (talk) 00:14, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
W, thank you for asking. I don't have a problem with the idea of primarytopic, and have supported it in appropriate cases, most recently in my comments on Miracle on 34th Street today. That's a title of multiple films, a novelette, and other stuff, yet most people who have heard of it would know it as this topic. So I suppose you could call that relatively less ambiguous. Brand New, on the other hand, is obscure, known by few, distinguished by only one capital letter from some uses and not at all from others, which happens to be relatively more popular because the band is currently in vogue. It does NOT clearly indicate the topic, so should not be treated as primary, which is what redirecting it to the band would do. So it should go to a disambig page. Plus, I know there are editors whose next step, if Brand New redirected to the band, would be to say that therefore the band is primary and the disambiguation is not needed. Your compromise practically calls for that next step, which would be a bad one. Dicklyon (talk) 02:46, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Dick - I don't see any comments by you at Talk:Miracle on 34th Street or on your contributions page. Dohn joe (talk) 23:48, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We were discussing films as primary topics at Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(films)#Between_films_of_the_same_name. Dicklyon (talk) 05:37, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that link. Dohn joe (talk) 16:47, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion 2[edit]

Please forgive my second entry. I've just received an email from User:Noetica, who has observed this section and asked me to consider posting his opinion here. I agreed. His text lies between the horizontal lines:

I see a new RM for Brand New has turned up, ridiculously soon after the closure of the last marathon – with equally spurious reasoning (straw men and all) from those who insist on the briefest, least precise, and least helpful titles. All this in the name of "primary topic" (PT), as if that were a doctrine from Wikiheaven, inviolable as Star Trek's prime directive. If only the world were so simple! It is not; and we now read sound "opposes" that invoke Wikipedia's mission to serve readers and their diverse real-world informational needs. That mission (as opposed to serving editors' quirks and foibles) is enshrined in policy at WP:TITLE; but as usual, a coterie of RM regulars ignore the balanced requirements of titling policy and cite exclusively a distorted version of PT: a mere subsidiary guideline. The stuff of fantasy and science fiction. The real PT is there to be read; let it be read closely, and respected for what it is – not fetishised for what it is not.

What evidence does the proposer bring this time? Very soon after that last RM was closed, Dohn joe interposed a redirect at the dab page Brand New, so that all traffic headed for Brand New (band) could be measured. Worthwhile in itself. The technique is due to Diego Moya, who used it to show how pageviews changed after the "Big" set of moves, very similar to the present case. Clearly those moves were a great success, if the pageviews are analysed wisely. Same with the "Dr Zhivago" set: all obviously helpful to readers. So why do things look different this time?

No one has examined the Google rankings. Why not? They explain everything. Dohn's interpolation prevented most direct accesses to the page Brand New (band) from the very start; but Google seems to rely on direct accesses, at least for Wikipedia with which it has a tight relationship. Brand New was first of all the band article's title, and as such it gained a very respectable Google ranking. Google displayed it with several associated WP articles (discography, band members, etc.). All very neat! And no doubt it suited the band's own SEO and marketing strategies. Google loves pop culture almost as much as it loves Wikipedia. Then Brand New became the dab page, but Google's labyrinthine algorithms were flummoxed by the change because of Dohn joe's redirect. It came too soon, and was an event that Google could not have predicted or catered for. The present Google hits are just weird, for a naive search on brand new (without quotes). Take a look!

What to do? First, there is no need for haste – which only serves partisans who fear the slow release of genuine data, properly interpreted by sophisticated analysis. I would propose an RM moritorium on these pages for six months, or as long as it takes for the whole picture to emerge after Dohn joe's redirect is removed. Yes, it should be removed now; we have the useful data from it, and it can only continue to wreak havoc on Google if it is kept. Time to let Google do its customary work, as it has with Big and with Dr Zhivago. There is no harm in this, and a great deal of knowledge to gain about how the larger system actually works. I see no rational grounds for objection, in this extraordinary case.

A worrying aside: on at least one day the pageviews for Dohn joe's redirect were more than the pageviews for the dab page that hosts it. I fear this could only happen through manipulation by someone on a campaign. We hope all players are above that sort of thing, but there is reason to suspect not everyone is.

Feel free to cite this email at the RM, Tony. And to register a formal oppose from me, for the reasons I lay out above. Let people just wait patiently and see. Meanwhile, I am retired from Wikipedia ever since two participants in the present RM personalised issues by vindictively exploiting process at WP:AE. I have no time for such politics, and will stay retired until such abuses are reversed by ArbCom – or until a rescission of Sandstein's template AE warning, now that such vindictiveness has been further exposed in a case that is approaching its end as I write.

Tony (talk) 11:01, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What happen after the Brand New move is the same thing that happened after the Rohan, Doctor Zhivago, Big, and other counter-primary topic moves. The disambiguation page is retaining the Google ranking that was earned by the article when it was at the base lemma. So the DAB is now getting freakishly high page view numbers. Readers who are looking for band are directed to the DAB, so they are required to click through it. The only readers who benefited from the move are those who enjoy reading DAB pages. This was entirely predictable as the same thing happened after the previous counter-PT moves, as we have already analysed exhaustively. Now Noetica returns to tell us this is Dohn joe's fault. Kauffner (talk) 18:22, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Dohn joe, I believe your redirect Brand New (band)(redirect) has successfully served its purpose and conclusively proven that the band solidly meets the criteria for the wp:PRIMARYTOPIC guideline with respect to usage (though perhaps the jury is still out with respect to long-term significance). Would you mind turning that redirect into an orphan, so that Brand New (band) might bubble back up to the top of the Google pagerankings Brand New more expeditiously than it might otherwise? I recall that immediately after the move a month ago, the band's page was very deeply buried in the rankings, and it's since bubbled back to the second page of my search. Removing that redirect might expedite its return to the first page. Thanks, Wbm1058 (talk) 22:21, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done. The band page once again directly links from the dab page. Dohn joe (talk) 20:32, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Surely the fact that (band) is already atop Bing and Yahoo will accelerate the float to the top of Google as well – Wbm1058 (talk) 20:59, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Dang! Maybe they were tracking your redirect. The (band) seems to have dropped off their listings! (Bing & Yahoo) Maybe you should put it back? Meanwhile Google is sure & steady, still on page 2. Interesting. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:11, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done in reverse. Weird. Could they really track things that quickly? We'll find out.... Dohn joe (talk) 21:26, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. Now Yahoo! and Bing have the band page back on their first page of results, but Google has dropped the band to page 6 (well after "Brand New (Shinhwa album)". What gives? Dohn joe (talk) 20:16, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo! Search. That explains why those two move in lockstep. Wbm1058 (talk) 23:33, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The special redirect was deleted from the dab page in this series of edits this morning. Once again, the results for the band article plummeted on both Yahoo!'s and Google's results. I say this time we leave it as is for a while and see what happens. Dohn joe (talk) 16:14, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Those who expect Google to self-correct the rankings anytime soon should consider this: The Doctor Zhivago DAB still gets top billing, although that move was a year ago. I must correct Noetica on another point: The Big (film) (redirect) is also Dohn joe's creation, not Diego's.[6] Kauffner (talk) 01:03, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Huh? I clicked your link to find the Doctor Zhivago dab sandwiched between Doctor Zhivago (film) and Doctor Zhivago (novel)—Wikipedia has three of the top four links! What's not to like? Wbm1058 (talk) 01:42, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

...and Big (film) sits right above Big in my Google Big search (#3 & #4). No problem there, either! Wbm1058 (talk) 01:58, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Good" or "bad" is of course a judgement call. My point was simply that the former setup still has an impact on the Google rankings in both cases. This may be blamed on Dohn joe only with difficulty. Compare the rankings for Doctor Zhivago or Big to those for the The Wizard of Oz. Although I am sure this is a popular search term, there was never an article at this lemma. Kauffner (talk) 02:28, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Big results clearly shows the film article had a very large excess of hits from people who didn't want the film. -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 03:16, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

They were Koreans looking for Big (TV series), which had a huge viewship bounce after the move. Perhaps we can we move other articles whose titles correspond to the names of pop culture subjects in other languages. Kauffner (talk) 13:13, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want to make any bad faith accusations that Kauffner has outright lied, but the diff he provided for Dohn joe having placed the link for big was highly misleading, and Kauffner ought to have spotted that DJ's redirect was put in place on 4 May 2013m whereas Diego created one and activated it some weeks earlier.
It was not "another thing that Noetica was wrong about". As I said, Diego first applied the technique of an interpolated redirect, to count traffic from a dab page to a sought page. Diego later removed his redirect from the Big dab page, since its work had been completed as the data gathered was sufficient. But Dohn joe then saw fit to promptly introduce another, differently named redirect at the Big dab page! – the one Kaufner cited above.
The primordial "error", as I have shown, Was Kauffner's. So, I think it would be highly appropriate for Kauffner to apologise, or at least strike his remark about "Noetica's mistake". -- Ohconfucius ^{ping / poke} 06:18, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is really necessary to repost every e-mail Noetica sends here? This is just personal attack garbage. Kauffner (talk) 09:45, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, I did not know about Diego's earlier special redirect when I added one here (and later at Big). I guess great minds think alike (except when they disagree...) Dohn joe (talk) 17:12, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Great minds do indeed think alike, only in this world, the early bird catches the worm. The faster one enjoys a first-mover advantage whilst the slower one will go down in history as a copycat or plagiarist. ;-) -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 09:52, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In support of reopening discussion after only a month (copied from first RM discussion)

Whether the page traffic is an anomaly can be determined, with a little experiment (although considering this discussion so far it seems unlikely there will be consensus to move the pages even temporarily). If you are correct, then if Brand New is moved to Brand New (band), we should expect the page traffic for the band article to drop significantly. Assuming it might be possible to reach consensus for such a trial, if the traffic for that band article remains higher than than of all the other articles on the disambiguation page combined (which is one of the current criteria), would you agree then that the band article should be moved back? older ≠ wiser 05:28, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have often hoped that we could get such experiments done, and I agree that in the present case it would be hugely revealing. The results of the experiment would be valuable for very many titling decisions. I would want the move to last for at least six months, and I would want to evaluate all the evidence after a further three months. But it's wishful thinking. Would I agree, given the result that you mention, to have Brand New where it is right now, and not a DAB page? I would more readily acquiesce; but in fact (and depending on all the exact numbers), the alternative might still not serve readers better. After all, both on Google and on an internal WP search readers would find exactly what they wanted at the top of the list, with the phrase "Brand New (band)" clearly visible. Sorting all these issues out would require a suite of varied and expertly designed experiments, followed by careful analysis. Intellectual honesty, and scientific rigour. A complete lack of prejudice.

Noetica^Tea? 08:09, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. So basically, you would make the move and then reserve the right to stonewall any attempts to move it back on the basis of other as yet unspecified considerations. Realistically, I would not expect many to agree with the conditions you lay out here. A month or so after all internal incoming links to Brand New have been fixed should be more than sufficient to see if the band article traffic was anomalous. older ≠ wiser 13:11, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Of course not! I am not proposing that an experiment be actually done; I am seriously supporting this move, for the readers' sake. Stonewalling? O right, you mean sticking to one's original position and refusing to consider any evidence that turns up. Like what I tabulate above, for example. Or this, conveniently derived from articles on the DAB page we are discussing: ...

Uh huh? How can you still think most pageviews for this generic phrase "brand new" are seeking the band Brand New? Rated, as we see from Talk:Brand New, as of low importance for both WikiProject Alternative music and WikiProject Emo. I'm ready to be corrected, and persuaded. Show me actual systematic evidence and I'll respond – after you have responded to what I have systematically presented.

Noetica^Tea? 22:22, 24 January 2013 (UTC) [Last entry inserted by Tony1 to correct out-of-context distortion] Tony (talk) 07:49, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So here we are a month or so after all internal incoming links to Brand New have been fixed (mostly all by me, BTW) and I agree that was more than sufficient to see that the band article traffic wasn't anomalous. Wbm1058 (talk) 04:19, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wbm, you appear to have extracted text from what Noetica wrote in the earlier RM and cited it in this box, out of context sealing it so that no one can add or detract from it to put it in context. It is highly irregular to cordon off fairly quoted material in a box, but when it distorts the original intending meaning through omission, you have to wonder whether it's deliberately selective. I will assume good faith at the moment. However, I have inserted Noetica's original reply to Bkonrad to clarify the context, and have removed the box. It can't possibly serve any purpose in a talk-page discussion. Tony (talk) 07:49, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK, fine, it certainly was not my intention to distort or put anything out of context. I don't feel that I did, but if you do, then I apologize for that. I was just looking for a template to clearly separate the old discussion, that I copied to make a point, from the current discussion. Maybe there's a better template for that purpose somewhere. Obviously, when cutting from a very lengthy conversation to make a point, one has to choose where to begin and end. I left off N's reply because I didn't feel that it added anything constructive to the conversation, and in fact reflects poorly on him. Shouting about stonewalling. Is that the pot calling the kettle black? Wbm1058 (talk) 11:18, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wbm, thanks for your reply. Well, we could all do with a does of kindness here ... Tony (talk) 11:28, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Significant arguments in the first RM were broken record objections to the alleged appropriation/commandeering/hijacking of this "common English" expression/phrase/term (by the band). So I present some examples of titles which are so common that they have {{See Wiktionary}} hatnotes, and ask why none of these need to be disambiguated with (band) or (album) or (song) or (character), etc. to satisfy the WP:PRECISION policy?
- Estrangement
- Ungrateful
- Wacko
- Oh My Gosh
- Not Today
- Mess Around
- Forgiving
- Spoilsport
- Paper Trail
- Crack Down

—Wbm1058 (talk) 02:28, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What makes you think none of those need to be disambiguated? Dicklyon (talk) 05:51, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably if those titles needed to be disambiguated, they would be (I'm assuming that those titles are correct, per consensus). But I'm not sure whether they need to be disambiguated or not. Picking one for argument, by the logic used to support the first RM, hasn't paper trail been "hijacked" by T.I.? If the band needs to be disambiguated to Brand New (band), then why doesn't Paper Trail need to be disambiguated to Paper Trail (album)? After all, we don't know how many readers might be looking for an article on the technique used by investigative reporters to discover wrongdoing and expose it. Now I don't know how much this aspect of "Noetica's in-depth analysis" contributed to the earlier move decision, but by forcing the band into parenthetical disambiguation, are we opening the door to more of these forced moves on the grounds of "commandeering common English?" Doesn't the concept of not allowing titles to hijack common English make the template {{See Wiktionary}} redundant? I wonder what the band's fans feel about this selective forced disambiguation. I'm concerned about the negative media resulting from creating "ghetto" categories for women (see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-04-29/In the media. Are we opening the door for some band's fans to generate negative media because we "disrespected" their band by refusing to allow them to be the primary topic, in spite of obvious evidence that they were overwhelmingly primary based on usage, and that there was no title that was primary based on long-term significance? Wbm1058 (talk) 13:05, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Per WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, it is seldom useful to rely on examples of potential problems as if they are evidence that such things are not problems. That's why I asked "What makes you think none of those need to be disambiguated?" I fixed Not Today already, and I agree that Paper trail looks like it would be worth fixing. Perhaps some of the others, too, though the degree of ambiguity is less when the term is not so widely used; if we don't have someone come along and support the idea that "Forgiving" is too ambiguous to be an article title, then we don't really need to worry about it; it would probably be a harder case to decide than Brand New, which was hard enough. Dicklyon (talk) 18:27, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You are assuming that the band necessarily has a view, and that they would object to forced disambiguation. But by choosing a rather common term for their name or the name of a work, it is usually because the band is somehow inspired by the term, or such a term means something special to them. Many items of similar nomenclature exist on WP, and such considerations are not what we take into account when naming articles. We just do the best that we can with what the world gives us, and I don't see how any fan or group of fans would be entitled to assume that such usurping gives the band the automatic right to own the namespace, for WP is not a company or trademark registry. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 04:56, 18 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Neither is Wikipedia a dictionary. See WP:NOT#DICTIONARY. I'm simply assuming that the band might have a view, and that they might object to forced disambiguation. Please don't assume what I think. Assume that a reader is looking for the article about "Forgiving," which is episode 17 of season 3 in the television show Angel. How are they supposed to find it or navigate to it? Wbm1058 (talk) 15:58, 20 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Did I assume what you think? I apologise if that was the case. All I meant to say that was if the band have a view, it is of no consequence to us. WP nor its editors can be sued for any such forced disambiguation.
The way readers habitually find episode articles where they exist is to navigate to the series article and then the season or directly to the article by the navigation template for the given series. Not all episodes of all serials have articles, and there is no provision for editors being able to look for all episodes by its name, for many of them have rather bland and less than memorable titles, and for good reason. If the article was pre-emptively disambiguated 'Forgiving (Angel)', it pops up as a choice in the search bar, and the readers find it in a flash. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 03:11, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Less than a day after I asked "Should 10 Years redirect to Decade?" (21:33, 10 May 2013, see above), at 13:06, 11 May 2013‎ Ohconfucius indirectly answered my question by making the move. Although the recent release of 10 Years (film) likely takes the band off of primary topic status, from that it doesn't necessarily follow that decade is primary topic. I redirected Ten Years to 10 years (disambiguation), after I cleaned up ambiguous links to that title. Similarly, I think that 10 Years should redirect to the more specific title 10 years (disambiguation). The fact that ten years is a decade is common knowledge, and anyone searching for an article on decade would likely use that search term. It's much more likely that readers searching for 10 Years want the article on the band or the film. In any event, I'll support the move of the band off of primary topic after the ~100 10 Years links are disambiguated, as I'm sure most of these are for the band. I'll work on this when I have more time, but would appreciate some help. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:42, 22 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I can't figure out how to edit the link at Category:10_Years_albums, and I suspect the few articles remaining in the list are doing it through some weird template, since there are no direct links in them. All the rest are gone. Diego (talk) 05:27, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Guys, I'm impressed. You only missed one. Very good. Wikipedia's cache needs to be refreshed after template edits. It helps when making these link changes to do the templates like {{10 Years}} first. If you can find them. Sometimes it takes some effort to find all the templates that transclude the link you want to change. See Wikipedia:Purge. I left a few wp:dummy edit summaries to show the link to Wikipedia:Purge, then did the rest with wp:null edits. Thanks for your help. – Wbm1058 (talk) 11:29, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I see no actual discussion or consensus for moving articles associated with the term "10 years" above. At best it was a sidebar observation of a bold move that was reverted. It is my opinion that there should be a discussion about that move before it is faultily re-instated. That is, should 10 years (disambiguation) be moved to 10 years or should it be a redirect to decade? That should have happened BEFORE people go around pre-emptively fixing links. older ≠ wiser 11:44, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. A requested move should be submitted on the proper talk page. But I see no harm in setting up more specific internal links to 10 Years (band). Wbm1058 (talk) 12:03, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Statistics update. Now that the special redirect has been retired for the moment (see above), I thought I'd update the 30-day stats.
- Brand New (this disambiguation page) - 28,823
- Brand New (band)(redirect) (the special redirect to the band article) - 25,664
- Brand New (band) (the actual band article) - 10,766
  - total direct and indirect visits to Brand New (band) - 36,430
- Brand New (Salt-n-Pepa album) - 1,253
- Brand New (Shinhwa album) - 1,096 (with an interesting spike starting May 16)
- MTV Brand New - 472 (also with a spike on May 16)
- Brand New (Sista song) - 301
- "brand new" (the wiktionary entry) - 209
- Brand New (Kevin Simm album) - 157
  If anyone feels I left any pertinent stats out, feel free to augment the list. Dohn joe (talk) 16:44, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Reader feedback: I tried to know what means "...[edit]

178.121.40.14 posted this comment on 12 May 2013 (view all feedback).

I tried to know what means "brand new" literally, and see the difference between this expression and just "new".

Perhaps a new product isn't really new until a branding iron has certified it so by stamping it with a "born on" date. Definitely something for Brand new, and improved (marketing) to answer. Or maybe the lead sentence of this dab, or Wiktionary. Any other thoughts? Wbm1058 (talk) 11:18, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Or it's really bran' new when it's shipped packaged in bran, the ancient version of packing peanuts - Wbm1058 (talk) 19:59, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not either of those kind of brands. In KJV, a brand is a burning stick. See Zechariah 3:2: "Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?" or Amos 4:11: "ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning". So "brand new" is a variation on "firebrand", a stick freshly pulled out of the fire. You could carry one around at night, allowing you to see clearly. Shakespeare used "fire new."[7] Kauffner (talk) 06:40, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Origin and definition can be found on dictionary.com. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/brandnew?o=100074 Onebadtown (talk) 19:21, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Google Ngram Viewer chart is interesting. Per that, brand new is clearly primary topic, and has been ever since it passed bran new in 1879. Fire new barely registers, and Brand New just began to register in the last 30 years. Brand new took a dip in the years following WW II, but usage has been accelerating since 1963. I'm reading an interesting book on these Ngram charts, see ISBN 978-1-59448-745-3. – Wbm1058 (talk) 03:18, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
brand new vs. new and improved. Interesting Wbm1058 (talk) 03:28, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]