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Wondering how to edit this département entry? The Wikipedia:WikiProject French departements standards might help.

Requested move 28 December 2018

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The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: pages moved as requested per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 02:03, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

– The department is not in any sense the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, and nor are any of the other pages listed at Marne (disambiguation).
The 500km-long Marne (river) was a major transport artery for hundreds of years before the department was created in 1790, and the river was the site of two major eponymous battles in WWI (which may also have a claim to primary topic status). By long-term significance, there is a case for making the river the primary topic, but it gets less than 30% of the total pageviews for a limited set of comparators. Despite occupying the unqualified title, the dept gets only 45% of the total pageviews. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:25, 28 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

90-day pageviews
Marne (department) 7064 45%
Marne (river) 4845 31%
Marne (disambiguation) 231 1%
10 other uses 3435 22%
TOTAL 15575 100%
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.

Issues with Move

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Pinging involved editors: BrownHairedGirl, Crouch, Swale, Dekimasu. Seems to me that during a move discussion like this, some consideration should be given to how many dabs it creates, and if moved, those dabs need to be repaired. In this case it was well over 1000. There are editors now slogging their way through the list, but it will take numerous hours of quite a few editors to complete. In addition, the Infobox French commune is now broken and needs to be repaired so that Marne doesn't appear as a dab in every infobox. Infobox templates are something that I only attempt to fix rarely, and for me is very time consuming. If one of you could fix that template, that would be great. Onel5969 TT me 12:44, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately this often happens when a move of an article that has too many links to fix manually by the nom or closer such as Nancy and Bury. I have fixed a few redirects, there seem to be quite a few easy ones so maybe someone with AWB could fix them (BHG has AWB). There aren't any links arising from templates that I can fix. Crouch, Swale (talk) 14:06, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The templates have been done, but it may take a while for article links to disappear from the reports. None of the links meant the department. (The one I fixed was Marne village in India.) I'll help fix some articles with DisamAssist. Certes (talk) 14:56, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
First, I would like to affirm that I am not an involved editor; I only assessed the outcome of a discussion and closed it accordingly. Please note that I did fix a considerable number of templates after completing the move, understanding that many links would need to be fixed. It takes a while for those to propagate. Conversely, other pages were linking to this article mistakenly and those will now be easier to discover. As noted above, this is a common outcome after a move request and there is even a project with the sole purpose of fixing such links. After a time the number of links to the disambiguation page will return to a normal level near zero. Dekimasuよ! 16:14, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Dekimasu: "there is even a project with the sole purpose of fixing such links".
WP:DPL editors are all volunteers, and (although we are tolerant people) none of us likes to see a thousand links dumped on us without warning. It has taken us four years to get the headline number down from 175,000 to 1,000 or so (I've seen suggestions that historic numbers were in the millions). Logging on to find that number is now 2,000+ is just what we don't need. That is on top of the 500 or so new bad links created every single day. Don't be complacent and assume that someone else will fix them. Trying to keep on top of bad links to DAB pages is a full-time job for several editors. Narky Blert (talk) 04:39, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Narky Blert, I fixed a considerable number of these, and have been one of those volunteer editors for a dozen or so years, so I'm aware of what WP:DPL entails. (XTools shows me with around 1000 edits just to WP:DPL and its subpages, not even counting how many actual links I fixed over the years, although it used to be many more in the days before the dab challenge existsd, e.g. see Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/2007-02-06 dump. In those days the number of ambiguous links was more like 1.5 million.) However, I try to reassure editors who ask questions about these things that there is a framework in place to deal with them, and that we shouldn't hesitate to implement productive/consensus changes because links will need to be fixed afterwards.
At times moves do require the creation of a large number of new links all at once. I'm not sure that there is a better way to do this than "without warning," because to begin disambiguating the links before the move would be to assume consensus before consensus has been found. And it's easier to disambiguate the links once they are attached to the disambiguation page (unless you're using new tech now that makes this irrelevant); and again, it's difficult to require the closer to make the requisite changes rather than simply implementing the consensus, even if that closer is me. Dekimasuよ! 05:12, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
And the nom fixed a considerable number, I fixed a few and so did Dekimasu. Indeed as I suggested it would be useful if someone with AWB could help with these sutuations since they can do it a lot more efficiently. Crouch, Swale (talk) 09:08, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks to all who helpfully fixed all resulting mis-directed links. We're keen to keep that process for future cases. If I've sounded negative, it's just to avoid giving anyone reading this discussion later the mistaken impression that it's someone else's job to clean up after them. Certes (talk) 12:13, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I missed one template which continues to cause bad links from about 626 articles: {{Infobox French commune}}. I've put in an edit request. Other than that, I think disambiguation is complete. Certes (talk) 16:36, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Dekimasu - sorry, by involved I meant an editor who had touched the discussion in some way. Just slogged through a couple hundred or so. Well over 90% were links to the department, maybe 20 or so referred to the river, and a handful referred to the Marne Barrack in England. There were a couple I couldn't discern, as they looked to be referring to a region, rather than the actual department. And Certes, thanks for fixing the template, the one I mentioned above was the commune one, which is causing a bunch of dabs. Onel5969 TT me 16:40, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I fixed the one you had linked to the disambiguation page directly, Edward Radcliffe-Nash. Best, Dekimasuよ! 16:46, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I put the edit through. Dekimasuよ! 16:44, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I did a null edit in Reims and it disappeared from the naughty list, so most of the outstanding errors should go away over the next few hours, after which we can fix any odd cases that we've missed. Certes (talk) 16:50, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I am doing an AWB run of null edits to purge all the pages which transclude the templates. I will leave a note here when that is complete. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:15, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. It looks like the rest of the individual dab repairs have been made.Onel5969 TT me 17:35, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Templates now all purged. Any remaining links in https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AWhatLinksHere&target=Marne&namespace=0 are now hardcoded on the article page, and need disambiguation. There are currently 217 undisambiguated links. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:10, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In just did a further AWB run, clearing the dab is articles on communes, which seemed to be a set of simple articles without many other links. Having done those 194 edits, there are no remaining undisambiguated links.

Job done! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:24, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As a general principle, I don't think that the extent of resulting cleanup should be a factor in choosing the right pagename for a topic. It is possibly an issue to consider if the decision to rename seems finely-balanced and likely to change, to avoid doing a lot of work which may later need to be be undone if the consensus shifts even slightly ... but those situations are relatively rare, and this was not a finely-balanced decision.
I think that the overriding priority in choosing a pagename has to be to get it right, per the policy at WP:AT. If that needs a lot of work, then so be it.
I do agree, however, that those involved in moving a page have a responsibility to tidy up after themselves. In general, editors should try where possible to cleanup after themselves and not create work for others. That isn't always possible, but it's a good principle to aim for.
When I move a page, either by a BOLD move or by closing an RM discussion, I try to fix all links so that they point to the right place. I also try to do that when I have proposed a move which was closed by someone else, and I find it helpful when a closer notifies me that my proposed move has been implemented. In this case, I wasn't notified by @Dekimasu, but came when pinged by @onel5969. I would happily have taken responsibility for the cleanup, even though this was in my experience not a big change: there are now <1500 incoming links to Marne (department), whereas I have previously been involved in the move of pages with many tens of thousands of incoming links.
I appreciate the work done by others to disambiguate here, but it seems to me that some of approaches used may have been less than optimal. So I hope that the following may help:
  1. Templates first. In most cases, the majority of incoming links are generated by navboxes and other templates. So the first step should be to use whatlinkshere to check for links to the old title from the template namespace, and fix those. That allows the routine purging of pages to begin, and also ensures that any edits to pages which transclude the relevant templates will also bring them up to date.
    In this case, a significant amount of manual editing of articles was done before the templates had all been updated, which unwise, because those pages retained the navbox links to the dab page.
  2. Use tools. For purposes such as this, WP:AWB is quite simple to use, it is massively faster than manual editing. Some pages will require manual scrutiny, but as @Crouch, Swale noted, AWB is great for making rapid progress through the simple cases. Anyone doing much of this work should consider applying for permission to use AWB, at WP:RFP/AWB.
  3. Give the templates time to purge. Five years ago, it usually took about a week for the pages transcluding a template to purge, but nowadays it usually takes less than 24 hours unless the number of transclusions is well into the thousands. So waiting 36 hours is a good idea, because otherwise the worklist includes a lot of entries which need no manual fix.
Sorry if I am preaching to the converted, but I hope that some of this might be of some help. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:19, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • PPS @Narky Blert: in a case such as this, where you feel that a bunch of work has been dumped on WP:DPL, then I think the remedy is simply to notify the RM nominator and closer. In most cases you will find them very happy to help.
In this case, @Onel5969 did post such a notice, and as you can see, help came promptly. I would have preferred if Onel5969's tone had been a little less exasperated in an initial request, but the substance of the notification was just what was needed. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:27, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry you felt my initial tone was exasperated, BrownHairedGirl. Onel5969 TT me 10:26, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks again to BrownHairedGirl for tidying up and also for the useful explanation. After watchlist and notifications, my next port of call on Wikipedia is Templates with disambiguation links, where one simple edit can fix dozens of links. I agree that tools are very helpful. I usually use DisamAssist, but AWB or JWB is useful when the change is more complex than changing the target. Certes (talk) 10:33, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@BrownHairedGirl: New bad links from 100+ pages arrive at about one per day, and from 1000+ pages at about one per month. Some are unilateral moves which are clearly wrong, and they can be reverted pending discussion. Some are from unilateral moves which are clearly right or from moves after WP:RM discussions, and they need to be addressed.
My experience with RM closers has been mixed. Some have already got stuck in, and are helping to fix the bad links; they can be left to get on with it. Others get stuck in once it's been pointed out to them that they've created a problem. Others ignore requests for help. Still others retort that it's not their job to clear up the mess they've created, because they are very very busy, and there are WikiGnomes who delight in doing that sort of thing.
I have said before now that IMO WP:FIXDABLINKS is badly worded. It is unrealistic to ask RM closers to fix 1000-plus links before making a move. I have suggested before now that RM closers should be encouraged to ping the !support voters to say, Your argument has won the day, now help to deal with the consequences. IMO that should be stated in a guideline.
One reason that your final AWB check on Marne ran clean was because I had just spent the best part of an hour looking for and fixing the links to Marne from maintext which remained. Narky Blert (talk) 22:01, 13 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I admit that when I create a dab I usually fix the links immediately afterwards rather than following the guidance and fixing beforehand. Tools such as DisamAssist work better after the page has become a dab. On the other hand, if someone else creates a dab and hasn't fixed the links by the time I notice them, I tend to assume the worst and jump in to help. Certes (talk) 00:07, 14 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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