Talk:Interest

There are a ton and a half of articles with the word interest in the name, but no good article on the generic concept. Interests and Interesting both redirect to "Attention", but that's not necessarily the best solution. Anyone got a better way to approach the problem?

Should Interest be overridden with a more generic Britannica-based definition at the top of this page, and moved to Interest (financial)? MrZaius^talk 20:08, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Requested move 3 February 2021

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: Not moved; no consensus. There are nearly 1,000 links to "interest" (which makes moving this a significant bit of work), and nobody has shown that mislinks intended for another topic are a problem. Certainly no consensus to move to a red link; if there is a need to disambiguate then Interest (finance)Interest (finance), the title this was moved off as per unnecessary disambiguation in 2006, or Interest (economics), which is Britannica's "short description", are the obvious choices as finance and economics are major topic areas. – wbm1058 (talk) 21:31, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

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• Interest (disambiguation) → Interest
• Interest → Interest (payment)

– No clear primary topic, the emotion would probably be thought of as primary to most if anything, see also Commons:Commons:Categories for discussion/2020/12/Category:Interest where Interest (fee) or Interest (financial) have also been suggested by me. Interest (economics) is another option. Even if the emotion is less likely in an encyclopedia it still seems like it has enough long-term significance to displace the payment. By views the payment has 11,074 and the emotion has 1,533 but Sexual attraction has 33,781, Conflict of interest has 16,428, National interest has 4,694, Point of interest has 1,712 and Self-interest has 1,484. Although Google returns more results for the payment the 1st result is a dictionary infobox which gives the emotion first, Images only appears to return the payment but Books does appear to return the emotion as the 1st result even though the other results appear to be for the payment. Crouch, Swale (talk) 08:58, 3 February 2021 (UTC) —Relisting. Vpab15 (talk) 22:24, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support In my Google scholar search the results for the top 20 are: interest group (1), interest in psychology (10), interest in economics (2), self-interest (1), public interest (3), Interest points in computer vision (1). Although some of these are partial dabs, clearly economics is not the primary topic in RS. I think interest (economics) is a better dab, but have no strong feelings on that point. (t · c) buidhe 10:03, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. In formal written English, when people write "interest" without any preceding adjective, they normally mean interest in the form of money. For example, the academic literature in communication studies consistently introduces the term with adjectives like "romantic" to distinguish it from the financial kind. In contrast, the academic literature in economics as well as business magazines for a general audience does not use any adjectives before the word "interest." --Coolcaesar (talk) 11:51, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose No evidence here that the financial concept of Interest isn't the primary topic. 162.208.168.92 (talk) 17:31, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose we don't assign primary topic based on what first comes to your mind, but by pageviews or (more frequently) by the long-term educational significance of the topic, and the topic "being interested in something" isn't really something we have an article on. Red Slash 22:39, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

  Well being interested in something is something we do have an article on namely at Interest (emotion) even though in an encyclopedia it may be less likely. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:10, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support but with Interest (finance) as the new disambiguator, not "payment". I think that conflict of interest and interest group have to be considered in the page views, which makes there be no primary topic in page views. 75.162.124.147 (talk) 02:09, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

  Those are partial title matches. Essentially no one will search for conflict of interest by typing in just plain "interest". Red Slash 16:07, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support. I don't see a primary topic in terms of significance between the financial concept and Interest (emotion), despite the difference in popularity between the two articles. If anything, the latter article (whose existence appears to have been missed by some of the opposers above) corresponds to the primary meaning of the word interest in English, and hence is more likely to be at the centre of reader expectations during searches for the bare term. – Uanfala (talk) 21:25, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose, the unqualified term almost always refers to the financial sense. older ≠ wiser 21:42, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
  • Note: the form interested may be another matter. Than term perhaps should redirect to Interest (emotion) rather than to the disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser 21:44, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
• Support – no primarytopic. The term has too many versions to not disambiguate. Dicklyon (talk) 01:30, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose per Coolcaesar and others. "Interest" unadorned is the financial version. The other articles aren't relevant due to Wikipedia is not a dictionary - nobody interested in sexual attraction is going to look it up via "interest", even if in running text it could mean that. SnowFire (talk) 02:22, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
• Half oppose, half support - I would support moving "Interest" to "Interest (payment)", but I think "Interest" should remain a redirect to the article about the payment, as that is by far the most likely thing editors will want to link the unqualified word "interest" to in articles. HumanBodyPiloter5 (talk) 18:56, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
• Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 04:01, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
• Support per nom. No primary topic. LSGH (talk) (contributions) 10:58, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose as I suspect most people searching for this term are looking for the financial one. –CWenger (^ • @) 17:20, 25 February 2021 (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.