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Mass renaming of articles in Category:Attacks on supermarkets in the United States

Hi all. I am proposing the mass renaming of articles in Category:Attacks on supermarkets in the United States to bring them in line with pages in other categories pertinent to attacks in indoor places in the United States, per WP:TITLECON. Pages in this category tend to be named after the year and city/town the attacks take place in, (e.g., 2022 Buffalo shooting, 2024 Fordyce shooting, 2019 El Paso shooting, 2021 Boulder shooting) which does not align with how it tends to be in other categories.

When looking at other categories for attacks on indoor places in the United States, the vast majority either include the name of the business or the type of venue in their name. For example, see the following where the majority of titles include the names of the businesses or type of venue: Category:Attacks on shopping malls in the United States (16 out of 21), Category:Attacks on office buildings in the United States (9 out of 12), Category:Attacks on nightclubs in the United States (14 out of 15), Category:Attacks on hotels in the United States (7 out of 7), Category:Attacks on hospitals in the United States (6 out of 12), Category:Attacks on restaurants in the United States (17 out of 26), Category:Attacks on churches in the United States (13 out of 17) and Category:High school shootings in the United States (50 out of 51). On average, 79.3% of articles include the place name or type in titles, based on those listed above.

Category:Attacks on supermarkets in the United States is an outlier, where only two pages out of ten have the name of the business or type of place in their title, even when reliable sources may commonly refer to the attacks as such, seemingly due to WP:TITLECON within the category. Including the type of place as well as year and location in some article titles will also better suit WP:NCWWW.

Proposed Renames (Based on naming conventions from reliable sources)

Macxcxz (talk) 14:16, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

This should really be done through WP:RM, which then tags the pages and adds them to relevant reports that editors watch. Gonnym (talk) 14:23, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
I know that is typical protocol, but I wanted to discuss it in a singular place first. Multiple discussions over multiple RMs would be confusing. Macxcxz (talk) 14:38, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Generally speaking, this should only be done with a consensus on the talk page of the article concerned. Mass renaming without a requested move discussion is likely to be reverted.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 14:39, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
I know, I just want to discuss it. Macxcxz (talk) 14:41, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
RM has a procedure in place for multiple pages as well. You should go read up on it. Gonnym (talk) 15:13, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Oh I see, I didn't know that was possible. Still, I'd prefer to discuss it here without any actual actions taken first. Macxcxz (talk) 16:33, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
WP:TITLECON is an essay, it's about WP:CONSISTENT, which is just one of the five WP:CRITERIA for titles, and it's the last one, because it's the least important one. I get nervous whenever anyone endeavors to "make all titles consistent."
There are basically two categories of titles based on my understanding of how WP:AT policy is applied: those with a WP:COMMONNAME and those without. For those with a common name, we use that name, regardless of whether it's consistent with anything else. So, Columbine High School massacre is not called "1999 Columbine shooting," and "Pulse nightclub shooting" is not "2016 Pulse shooting" or "2016 Orlando shooting". So for each one you want to change, you'd have to check whether the current title is the common name or not.
For those that don't have a common name, there are four other equally or more important criteria: WP:PRECISE, WP:CONCISE, WP:NATURAL, and WP:RECOGNIZABLE. So, for example, "2019 Jersey City shooting" is certainly as precise, and more concise, and in my view, more natural and recognizable, than "2019 Jersey City kosher supermarket shooting". In my view, if it doesn't have a common name, it should be as short (WP:CONCISE) as possible, using only those descriptors that are needed to be precise. So: "[date] [place] shooting" is fine unless there were two shootings in that year or place. In fact, "[place] shooting" would be better in my view, unless there were multiple shootings at [place].
I don't see any value in adding the word "supermarket" to a title unless it's needed to disambiguate [place].
I don't think we should ever add the brand name of the private business ("Walmart", "Buffalo Topps") where a shooting occurred, unless it's part of the common name (as with the Pulse shooting). It's not nice or necessary to associate the business with a shooting that happened at one of its locations.
My 2c. Levivich (talk) 15:07, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
To clarify, my proposed renames are also based on WP:COMMONNAME, sorry if I didn't make that clear. In regard to 2019 Jersey City shooting, I do note that the page's current name does reflect common name so a rename may not be necessary. The same goes for the 2011 Tucson shooting, hence why I did not propose a rename for that page.
The main reason I even proposed this was because I attempted to rename the 2019 El Paso shooting to 2019 El Paso Walmart shooting based on WP:COMMONNAME, but two people responded (the only people to respond) objecting on the basis of WP:CONSISTENT. I wasn't aware WP:CONSISTENT was considered less important than any of the other criteria, and actually I can't find anywhere that says such a thing, perhaps you know where.
In regard to adding brand names/private businesses, this is already a well-established concept both on Wikipedia and in reliable sources. The vast majority of school shooting articles will include the name of the school, which I'd argue is far more damaging than just naming "Walmart". Certainly regarding the El Paso shooting, "Walmart" is part of the common name based on RS, but as I said before it was apparently a consistency issue to propose that rename.
So, I'm pretty confused. Does common name take priority? I've heard different things from different people now. Macxcxz (talk) 16:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Yeah... welcome to Wikipedia, where if you ask three people, you'll get six answers. There are very few clear black-and-white rules regarding article titles (or anything else on Wikipedia). Does common name take priority? Yes, usually. As WP:COMMONNAME explains, Wikipedia generally prefers the name that is most commonly used ... as such names will usually best fit the five criteria listed above. So common name will usually take priority because it usually fits the 5 article title criteria the best. That doesn't mean always follow the common name, but it does mean the common name is a very strong factor in this multi-factorial analysis.
As for consistency being low priority, that's more my opinion, or my analysis of how these things usually go, than a "rule" or policy. WP:CONSISTENT itself is written with some rather weak language and caveats, e.g. To the extent that it is practical. And should be consistent does not mean "must be the same." Even "consistent" doesn't mean "the same." WP:CONSISTENT continues, there has been a history of consensus among editors regarding several areas where consistency does not control titling, and the first example given is Disambiguation, which is what you're talking about. The example given in WP:CONSISTENT says just because Georgia (country) has the (country) disambiguator doesn't mean every country article must have one, even though that would be consistent. I think there is a direct analogy here to "Walmart": just because some articles identify the name of the business doesn't mean all articles should identify the name of the business.
But ultimately, titles are decided very much on a case-by-case basis (in large part because a common name analysis is a case by case analysis), so who knows what the consensus will be at that particular RM about the best title for that particular article. Right now I see it's split 2-2. I'd argue with the votes that say that that article shouldn't have "Walmart" in the title because other articles don't, as that argument seems like it directly contradicts the "disambiguator" part of WP:CONSISTENT. Ultimately, it depends on what the consensus will be as to whether, for that particular article, in the inclusion of "Walmart" would better match title criteria, e.g. because it's part of the common name. So there's no clear "right answer," it's a matter of how the people participating in the discussion will weigh the various competing factors involved. Levivich (talk) 16:46, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
welcome to Wikipedia, where if you ask three people, you'll get six answers – I disagree, Levivich! You usually get four answers from three people, unless one of them is socking, in which case you'll get five. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:07, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Overall, I like the idea of a slightly more informative title. After a while, they all blur together ('No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens), and having some little hint would sometimes be helpful. The use case I'm specifically thinking of is when you're searching for an article. However, I don't feel strongly about this, and I oppose making them all match just for the sake of matching. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:13, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
A lot of these are just random crime news that don't need their own articles to begin with. Except for the ones that saw major coverage after being resolved, I'd say merge them all into a list. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:01, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Font options

Wouldnt it be great to look at articles in like comic sans WikipedianAncientHistorian (talk) 23:26, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

WP:CSS explains how to install your own custom CSS. Switching to a different font should be relatively straight-forward. RoySmith (talk) 23:38, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the tip honestly wasn't aware it existed WikipedianAncientHistorian (talk) 19:30, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
Wikipedia doesn't specify the font being used for article text; it uses whatever you have configured in your browser for sans-serif text. So feel free to configure your favourite font for use in your browser. isaacl (talk) 00:24, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
oh makes sense thanks WikipedianAncientHistorian (talk) 19:30, 17 September 2024 (UTC)
What if I don't want a sans serif font? Can I set things up to use a serif font in article text? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:54, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
If you change your browser configuration, you can set up any font you want to be used when a web page uses the generic sans-serif CSS property. If you want to do something specific to English Wikipedia, see the web page to which RoySmith referred. isaacl (talk) 18:29, 19 September 2024 (UTC)
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