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– WP:NC-GAL, the naming guideline for referendums, sets out the naming format for referendums as being [date] [country name or adjectival form] [type] referendum", for example 1946 Faroese independence referendum, though it is worth pointing out some referendum articles do not have the [type] added, because it is too complex to explain in a few words or the referendums cover multiple topics. However, I do not think this is the case for these four articles (particularly not the first two listed)
I had assumed the move of this article would be uncontroversial given the naming convention (and made it a short time ago), but it was was reverted because it made the article title inconsistent with others, so now using the formal RM process.
I think the proposed titles of the 1933 and 1926 articles should be uncontroversial and in line with the naming guideline. I am not 100% convinced that there are not better alternatives for the 1929 and 1934 articles, which I am happy for alternatives to be suggested or simply to keep them at the existing titles if they are deemed to awkward. However, I felt that given the move of this article was reverted because the other articles hadn't been moved, it would be best to cover this in a single discussion, even if it is a little messy, so it might be best for responders to indicate whether they approve of all or merely some of the proposals (or none). Cheers, Number57 17:08, 23 February 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. — Amakuru (talk) 16:27, 4 March 2024 (UTC) — Relisting.JML1148(talk | contribs)10:06, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It seems good to move these to more descriptive titles, but I think WP should make some effort to identify common names (I find it hard to believe that these don't exist). For 1926, the term "princes" should really be included, but I don't know how that would be achieved. For 1929 Volksentscheid gegen den Young-Plan "referendum against the Young Plan" is used by several of the citations in the article and seems clearer than "1929 German Freedom Law," which is also potentially pov. It doesn't follow the naming guideline, but a common name would trump a topic-specific guideline. 1933 and 1934 seem fine. Furius (talk) 21:52, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Furius: Princes are still royalty and not all the rulers being dispossessed were princes – some were kings (like Ludwig III of Bavaria) and others were dukes. As a result I think "princely" would be misleading (as well as being quite an awkward word to use). Number5714:43, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't German Wikipedia though, and I doubt most English-speaking readers will be familiar with the nuances. And I also disagree that "royal" refers onto to kings. Princes are royalty too. Number5720:57, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What is the logic of the guideline here? Both "1933 German referendum" and "German League of Nations withdrawal referendum" are adequate on their own. Why combine date and type in every title? Srnec (talk) 05:33, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Extraordinary screeds of text here, but they don't really touch on referenda, so it's unclear why the WP norm is to stuff everything between the date and the word "referendum". If I was designing a norm from scratch I'd probably go for "[date] [Country] referendum on [topic]." But it's the guideline and all reasonable alternatives will end up at redirects, so it's probably not worth fussing. Furius (talk) 10:32, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would imagine there are two core reasons why the guideline ended up with this naming format:
Firstly to meet WP:NCEVENTS, which states In the majority of cases, the title of the article should contain the following three descriptors: When the incident happened, where the incident happened, what happened.. Not having the year means there is no "when".
Secondly, to meet WP:CONSISTENT in referendum article sets. Numerous countries have had referendums on the same topics multiple times (see e.g. Category:Referendums in Denmark), so the year is often required for disambiguation, so it would be odd if some articles had years and others didn't
The title you proposed originally was not ambiguous, but the date can't necessarily be removed as Srnec was suggesting. I'm agnostic on which title, of those including dates, is best. (t · c) buidhe09:51, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: The article about the 1929 referendum does not contain the phrase "Freedom Law", regardless of whether that phrase is capitalized or lowercase, so that one (and especially its capitalization) seems dubious. That is the only one that seems unnecessarily capitalized. — BarrelProof (talk) 01:25, 5 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, not at all clear that these are common names. It would be better to use translations of the actual names of the referenda, or to just leave as is. —Kusma (talk) 14:07, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support Makes navigation easier. At first, I thought this was a bad idea. But after realizing just how many very consequential referendums there were in interwar Germany, this makes sense. Easy to confuse them if you just list the year. And less useful if you just list the title. Having the year and a short descriptor makes it way more usable to our readers. CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓21:33, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support in general. WP:COMMONNAME is unlikely to have any applicability here, because these things have too little coverage in English to have developed a provably "most common name" for each (i.e., the sample size is too small for meaningful analysis, and for some may even be so small that we'd end up with WP:NPOV problem, picking a name preferred by one or another writers from a particular angle when the few other specialist writers in the subject, in English, may have principled objections to their usage). People here too often forget that WP:NDESC is entirely and properly a part of WP:AT policy, and the titles proposed above (like the titles of most of our articles on referenda and similar processes/events) are NDESC titles (phrases chosen by Wikipedia as neutrally descriptive of a subject for which no "most common name" is meaningfully and definitively provable). I have no objection to tweaking one or another of these names in some way, but the general gist of getting them into the prescribed "[date] [country name or adjectival form] [type] referendum" format is entirely sensible. PS: Yes, use lower-case for "freedom law", since there is no reliably sourced demonstration of this being a phrase that is near-universally capitalized in English-language sources as a proper name (cf. lead of MOS:CAPS). — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 10:13, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
