The discussion process is used for potentially controversial moves. If any of the following apply to a desired move, treat it as potentially controversial:
There is an existing article (not just a redirect) at the target title
There has been any past debate about the best title for the page
Someone could reasonably disagree with the move.
If a desired move is uncontroversial and technical in nature (e.g. spelling and capitalization), please feel free to move the page yourself. If the page has recently been moved without discussion, you may revert the move and initiate a discussion on its talk page. In either case, if you are unable to complete/revert the move, request it below.
Alternatively, if the only obstacle to a technical move is another page in the way, you can request the other page be deleted. This applies for example if the the other page is a redirect to the current title of the article to be moved, a redirect with no incoming links, or an unnecessary disambiguation page with a minor edit history. If it has a single history line, see WP:Move over redirect instead. To request the other page be deleted, add the following code to the top of the page that is in the way:
{{db-move|<!--page to be moved here-->|<!--reason for move-->}}
@Justlettersandnumbers, while SMcCandlish is currently banned from making undiscussed moves (as of July 15) these moves were done prior to his ban. Would you object to having a centralized move discussion for all the sheep articles? It looks to me that some editors might support these moves. It's a lot of work for an admin to do a mass revert and then have to move all the articles back later per discussion, if that turns out to be the result. Why not have the discussion first? The issues in this set of articles don't even involve capitalization (as in Talk:American Paint Horse#Requested moves). It's only a question of natural versus parenthesized disambiguation. EdJohnston (talk) 15:01, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'd also endorse this suggestion, with the obvious caveat that if the bulk RM ends as no consensus it will default to moving back to the previous titles. Jenks24 (talk) 15:17, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Works for me, with the caveat that it be a bulk RM on the merits, not a WP:POINTy "move these back because SMcCandlish didn't get consensus first" pseudo-RM. Given still-ongoing behavior by Justlettersandnumbers, I have some concerns. It'll go to full RM or RFC regardless, because the renames made sense under policy, others agree with them, and they tend to stick at natural disambiguation when these do go to full discussions (see, e.g., recent RMs of Australian Pit Game fowl and West African Dwarf goat, and many more over the years, like most horse breed articles), so there's no point in pre-emptively moving them around again. There's no actual evidence that the names they're at now are controversial (no one seems to think so but Justlettersandnumbers); rather, the controversy was the scale at which I was making such moves without a prior consensus discussion about them. The discussion is overdue; I expected it happen a month ago. — SMcCandlish ☺☏¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 16:26, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, EdJohnston and Jenks24, for your comments. Points in order:
I'm truly sorry about the amount of work involved, for everyone, whatever happens. I suppose that is more or less a definition of WP:DISRUPTIVE editing - doing stuff that takes other people hours of work to sort out. I know I've already spent hours on this that I'd much rather have spent doing something else. There are hundreds of articles affected.
I don't see that another discussion is necessarily required for most of these; we've already had two, this about reversing McCandlish's undiscussed moves to "natural" disambiguation - this covers, e.g., all the Italian sheep breeds above, without exception; and this about reversing his undiscussed lower-casing of the animal name when it is part of the breed name, as in Auckland Island Pig above. Both ended with restoration of the status quo ante.
There are, I think, two other types of incompetent move in the complete list: the addition of an unnecessary "disambiguation" to a title that requires none, such as adding "chicken" to White-faced Black Spanish; and messing about with hyphenation against all the evidence in the sources, such as Naked-neck chicken when even in the hyphen-crazy UK it is called Naked Neck. Neither should require discussion to revert.
How about we open a formal move discussion for the first four sheep moves, and leave a note in the RM pointing to the complete list of sheep that SMM moved. That way if the discussion finds consensus to move back the first four, then an admin might go ahead and do the rest of the list as 'reverts of undiscussed moves'. That reduces the work involved but still gives a chance for consensus to be formed. EdJohnston (talk) 20:22, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
