Talk:Southwest Museum of the American Indian

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Cheech & Chong? Is there a connection between the comedy duo and the Southwest Museum of the American Indian to justify the “See Also” link? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:8A00:31D0:60ED:9015:EF96:A29D (talk) 02:25, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Untitled[edit]

this museum is quite boring71.103.134.94 05:22, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, and it shouldn't be. I will try to put in more details over the next few months68.70.77.226 01:44, 11 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Move?[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:43, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Southwest Museum of the American Indian → Southwest Museum –

Reverse an earlier BOLD move made without consensus, one which violates WP:COMMONNAME Purpleback pack 89≈≈≈≈ 05:21, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: "Southwest Museum of the American Indian" seems to be the name the Autry National Center itself uses. It's what appears over the entrance in the image at the top of this page, for instance. Deor (talk) 13:32, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Tell that to Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr. and James Earl Carter...per WP:COMMONNAME, if the title was already unambiguous at Southwest Museum (and it was); then it's okay to drop additional words ("of the American Indian") that you don't need. The present title isn't in accord with WP:COMMONNAME; the original title was Purpleback pack 89≈≈≈≈ 15:16, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I was just pointing out that the current title of the article reflects the current name of the museum. Apparently, its name was just "Southwest Museum" before it was absorbed into the Autry National Center, but now it's "Southwest Museum of the American Indian", as stated in the last sentence of the first paragraph here. Whichever title is decided on, the text of the article should probably make this clearer. Deor (talk) 18:55, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. So far it appears that Deor has a good point. In any case, there is more to WP:COMMONNAME than is suggested above, including reference there to the five questions further up the page at WP:TITLE. One of those deals with precision, on which "Southwest Museum" fails as a title: other Southwest Museums include those of photography; of engineering, communications and computation; and of clocks and watches. If the one concerned with the American Indian is the most famous, or the most represented on the web, or the most politically supportable, those attributes are of little use to enquirers who have encountered "Southwest Museum" somewhere and want more information. They are not helped by the impression that there is only one that bears the name, simply because some people speak of it all the time and therefore shorten the name: people who in all likelihood neither know nor care about any other referents of the term they use among themselves so successfully. "Southwest Museum of the American Indian" appears to meet the requirements of all five questions pretty well. Noetica^Tea? 06:31, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, that's not right. For starters, you can't really count the other Southwest Museums because they don't have articles on this Wikipedia. The only other Wikipedia article with "Southwest Museum" in this title is the light rail station that serves this museum. And how can you say it meets all the requirments of the title when it fails WP:COMMONNAME by having four extra words it doesn't need? Purpleback pack 89≈≈≈≈ 15:05, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On the contrary, yep. There is no reason to exclude evidence from the wide world when investigating usage in the wide world. We often need to do that, to settle whether a term is naturally received as generic or uniquely identifying. It would be pretty incestuous only to use the evidence of current Wikipedia articles. And circular. What's more, current titles of other articles do have the components southwestern and museum, but they have other components also, as the present article should continue to have:

Locals might abbreviate either of these to "Southwest Museum"; but their doing so would not be something for Wikipedia to act on – in a pretence of uniqueness, and a subversion of authentic generality. So with Southwest Museum of the American Indian.

The article Southwest Museum (Los Angeles Metro station) is well named, since its meaning is immediately clear and it is based plainly on the only official name relevant to the topic. Do we say that it has "too many words", and therefore fails WP:COMMONNAME? Of course we don't, even if some would argue that "Southwest Museum Station" or "Southwest Museum Metro Station" is sufficient – and that's what they call it.

Finally, you write: "... how can you say it meets all the requirments of the title when it fails WP:COMMONNAME by having four extra words it doesn't need?" That is plain question-begging, and gives additional evidence of a tendency to circular reasoning, nothing more. The very issue here is whether those four words are needed.

Noetica^Tea? 02:05, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.