Talk:Athas

Requested move 20 January 2026

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 discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Since the base title no longer exists, this is uncontroversial. (closed by non-admin page mover) Thanks, 1isall (talk | contribs) . . (he/him) 00:21, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

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Athas (name) → Athas – Many of the people listed here are more well known than the fictional planet. Even though Athas is a redirect, it will still need to be moved anyways due to the page history that was merged into the main article Duckmather (talk) 00:00, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Note 1: the second proposal, "Athas → Athas (fictional planet)Athas (fictional planet)" had to be removed, because "Athas" is a redirect. Redirects are ineligible to be current titles in move requests. Also, a gentle reminder that if this request succeeds, then due to the edit history of the Athas redirect, the closer should use the round-robin page move procedure. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. – welcome! – 12:40, 20 January 2026 (UTC) 15:13, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Please clarify in future notes like this that this is just a weird little bug in the supporting software, not an actual lack of eligibility of redirects to be moved. --Joy (talk) 13:45, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Editor Joy, you'll have to explicitly point to the "weird little bug". Is there a PHAB report? I move redirect pages all the time in the course of moving pages, and I haven't come across anything buggy. It's just that the RMCD bot will list any move request that has a redirect for a current title as a "malformed request", a list which I monitor. So redirects are definitely ineligible to be current titles in move requests. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. – welcome! – 14:15, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

RMCD bot is the supporting software, and you've just described the bug yourself. The fact that this process is currently modeled to rely a lot on this particular piece of software doesn't mean that the behavior of the software solely determines the properties of the process in general. Mediawiki allows redirects to be moved, there's nothing ineligible about them in that regard (nor should there be). --Joy (talk) 15:19, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Ah, I understand. Your opinion is noted and will be taken under advisement. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. – welcome! – 15:37, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Please, don't open a PHAB for an English Wikipedia bot, post a report or request on the bot's talk page: User talk:RMCD bot#is there a way to bypass the no-RMing-redirects exception? is where I was notified of this. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:26, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

No worries. It appears that editors don't know of or have forgotten about the round-robin procedure. There is no bug in the RMCD bot in this regard. Redirects should be and should remain ineligible to be current titles in move requests. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. – welcome! – 16:25, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Note 2: Since I entered note 1 above, the Athas redirect was moved by editor wbm1058 to "Athas (fictional planet)", so the Athas redirect no longer has a significant edit history. Because of that redirect page move, the round-robin page move procedure will not be necessary if this proposal is successful. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. – welcome! – 14:46, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose A DAB page might be merited but the name is also not primary topic by a long shot. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 12:10, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

  The current list at Athas (name) is trivially modified to be a disambiguation list rather than an anthroponymy index. --Joy (talk) 13:46, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

  Done that now. A Google Books search for "Athas" shows me nothing about the planet. Views of the redirect and the destination compared to views of other topics and in turn their monthly views show that even when the separate article about the planet existed, it wasn't consistently the most popular topic with the name. As in the recent case of Talk:OKD, I'm amenable to the argument that even a minor subtopic of a more popular topic merits consideration. This data here doesn't indicate that there's a primary topic, and if we set up a disambiguation list at the title we can further measure where the readers actually want to go. (Support) --Joy (talk) 13:54, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

  It can't be a disambiguation list, however, due to WP:PTM. Name indexes have to be separate from DABs as they are not the same type of page. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 14:30, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

  Per WP:PTM: Human names are often divided in multiple parts that serve as natural disambiguation. Many of these parts are specific in the aforementioned meaning: those that are used by readers to refer to a person just like they would use a full name, and would reasonably be looked up with an expectation of navigating to eponymous people. It is likewise proper to include such names in disambiguation pages, provided further guidance under #Names is observed as well.
  

  Names

  To prevent disambiguation pages from getting too long, articles on people should be listed at the disambiguation page for their given name or surname only if they are reasonably well known by it. We reasonably expect to see Abraham Lincoln at Lincoln (disambiguation), but very few sources would refer to the waltz composer Harry J. Lincoln by an unqualified "Lincoln", so he is listed only at the Lincoln (surname) anthroponymy article. Consensus among editors determines if an article should be listed on the disambiguation page.
  In this particular case, the disambiguation page is not getting too long, and keeping the names on it avoids making readers click to go to another page to find what they're looking for. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:11, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

  Sadly, I don't think you're going to convince them of that just by quoting the guideline, because they've been relying on their own interpretation of the guideline for years now :) I wrote that first clarifying paragraph last year after dozens of repetitive arguments just like this, but there's just no effect. People's names are just not eligible to be considered, err, their names. Mononymous usage is the only thing that could ever matter. For all the readers. No exceptions! Citation not needed :D --Joy (talk) 15:25, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

  Indeed we have a similar title Atha (disambiguation), where nobody has felt the need to split the names out to Atha (name). – wbm1058 (talk) 19:31, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

• Support. It already looks like a disambiguation page to me. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:54, 21 January 2026 (UTC)
• Support. Technically, the "Other uses" section makes it a {{disambig}} page, and the names make it a {{disambig|given name|surname}} page rather than a {{hndis}} page. So "(name)" should definitely be removed from the page title. The Athas redirect has been deleted to facilitate this page move. This is a "dab" page, and not exclusively a "name" (anthroponymous) page. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. – welcome! – 13:28, 21 January 2026 (UTC)
• Support does not matter much whether formatted as a DAB or SIA, functional distinction being whether the one entry in "other uses" is moved to "see also", and SIAs need not be appended with DABifiers anyway. Furthermore, if no entries are primary an index is the correct option for an undabbed title anyway. Movement makes navigation easier, formatting specifics unimportant right now. ~2026-39780-5 (talk) 20:37, 21 January 2026 (UTC)
• Support Vacant base title, other topic is now a redirect. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 06:45, 22 January 2026 (UTC)
• Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 20:01, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.