Talk:Jolene

Requested move 22 December 2025

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. (closed by non-admin page mover) TarnishedPath^talk 04:34, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

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• Jolene (song) → Jolene
• Jolene → Jolene (disambiguation)

– The other topics with the exact name "Jolene" are a film, a band, and the album containing the Dolly Parton song, with the song being overwhelmingly in the lead for page views among those.

While multiple famous people have the first name "Jolene", and some have substantial daily page views, I seriously doubt that most people typing in "Jolene" without any added words are looking for anything other than the Dolly Parton song. All of the people named "Jolene Lastname" are sufficiently disambiguated at Jolene (given name), which even has secondary sources confirming that the name rose in popularity after the song came out (and indeed, most of the famous people by that name are younger than the song). Just entering "Jolene" into Google without any other key words returns almost exclusively the Dolly Parton song or covers of it, and I found this to be the case long before Beyoncé's version existed. I got similar results in other searches, where typing "Jolene" by itself showed an overwhelming favor toward the Dolly Parton song.

In short, I feel like anyone just searching "Jolene" by itself is almost unquestionably looking for the Dolly Parton song. And if they are looking for anything or anyone else, then Jolene (disambiguation) and/or Jolene (given name) should suffice. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 18:01, 22 December 2025 (UTC)

• Support per nom. None of the other topics on the current dab page are of equivalent prominence to the Dolly Parton song. Tevildo (talk) 20:57, 22 December 2025 (UTC)
• Support per nom. Clear primary topic. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:31, 23 December 2025 (UTC)
• Per WP:DPT, let's look at some standard statistics:

• WikiNav illustration of clickstreams at Jolene

1. Views of Jolene that probably correspond to a click towards the song article 94 (17.5%)
2. Clicks from Jolene to something that we can't identify (anonymized) 37 (6.89%)
3. Views of Jolene that probably correspond to a click towards other identifiable articles 117 (21.8%)
4. Views of Jolene that can't be assumed to correspond to any outgoing clicks 289 (53.8%)

There's 94 clicks to the song compared to 537 views. There's also 117 other clicks that we can identify, and 37 more that we can't. Pie chart to illustrate this differently to the right

So the proposer's feeling that anyone searching for Jolene by itself is almost unquestionably looking for the song is refuted by easily available statistics that pertain to that specific question. (I don't think it's a good idea to use language like "unquestionably" in this regard, because it reminds me of the warning against implying that others would be lacking in common sense.)

Just in case something was off last month, a one-time blip in the stats, I checked the meta:Research:Wikipedia clickstream archive:

snapshot of the last 12 months of outgoing clickstream data at Jolene

Clickstreams are collated monthly.

clickstream-enwiki-2024-12.tsv:

• Jolene Jolene_(song) link 163
• Jolene Jolene_(given_name) link 119
• Jolene Jolene_(film) link 54
• Jolene Trouble_(Ray_LaMontagne_album) link 28
• Jolene Jolene_(album) link 23
• Jolene Jolene_(band) link 14
• Jolene Jolene_Blalock other 11
• total: 412 to 7 identified destinations

clickstream-enwiki-2025-01.tsv:

• Jolene Jolene_(song) link 151
• Jolene Jolene_(film) link 87
• Jolene Jolene_(given_name) link 85
• Jolene Trouble_(Ray_LaMontagne_album) link 32
• Jolene Jolene_(album) link 24
• total: 379 to 5 identified destinations

clickstream-enwiki-2025-02.tsv:

• Jolene Jolene_(song) link 142
• Jolene Jolene_(given_name) link 62
• Jolene Jolene_(film) link 44
• Jolene Trouble_(Ray_LaMontagne_album) link 32
• Jolene Jolene_(album) link 25
• total: 305 to 5 identified destinations

clickstream-enwiki-2025-03.tsv:

• Jolene Jolene_(song) link 206
• Jolene Jolene_(given_name) link 79
• Jolene Jolene_(film) link 46
• Jolene Trouble_(Ray_LaMontagne_album) link 34
• Jolene Jolene_(album) link 24
• Jolene Together_Through_Life link 13
• Jolene Jolene_(band) link 11
• total: 413 to 7 identified destinations

clickstream-enwiki-2025-04.tsv:

• Jolene Jolene_(song) link 142
• Jolene Trouble_(Ray_LaMontagne_album) link 84
• Jolene Jolene_(film) link 67
• Jolene Jolene_(given_name) link 60
• Jolene Jolene_(album) link 19
• Jolene Together_Through_Life link 18
• Jolene Cowboy_Carter link 15
• Jolene The_Foundation_(Zac_Brown_Band_album) link 10
• Jolene Jolene_(band) link 10
• total: 425 to 9 identified destinations

clickstream-enwiki-2025-05.tsv:

• Jolene Jolene_(song) link 142
• Jolene Jolene_(given_name) link 63
• Jolene Jolene_(film) link 51
• Jolene Trouble_(Ray_LaMontagne_album) link 36
• Jolene Jolene_(album) link 28
• total: 320 to 5 identified destinations

clickstream-enwiki-2025-06.tsv:

• Jolene Jolene_(song) link 136
• Jolene Jolene_(given_name) link 75
• Jolene Jolene_(film) link 48
• Jolene Trouble_(Ray_LaMontagne_album) link 29
• Jolene Jolene_(album) link 25
• total: 313 to 5 identified destinations

clickstream-enwiki-2025-07.tsv:

• Jolene Jolene_(song) link 147
• Jolene Jolene_(given_name) link 73
• Jolene Jolene_(film) link 55
• Jolene Trouble_(Ray_LaMontagne_album) link 43
• Jolene Jolene_(album) link 27
• Jolene Jolene_(band) link 10
• total: 355 to 6 identified destinations

clickstream-enwiki-2025-08.tsv:

• Jolene Jolene_(song) link 135
• Jolene Jolene_(film) link 66
• Jolene Trouble_(Ray_LaMontagne_album) link 55
• Jolene Jolene_(given_name) link 53
• Jolene Jolene_(album) link 17
• Jolene Jolene_(band) link 16
• total: 342 to 6 identified destinations

clickstream-enwiki-2025-09.tsv:

• Jolene Jolene_(song) link 184
• Jolene Jolene_(film) link 104
• Jolene Jolene_(given_name) link 57
• Jolene Trouble_(Ray_LaMontagne_album) link 36
• Jolene Jolene_(album) link 28
• Jolene Jolene_(band) link 12
• total: 421 to 6 identified destinations

clickstream-enwiki-2025-10.tsv:

• Jolene Jolene_(song) link 159
• Jolene Jolene_(film) link 63
• Jolene Jolene_(given_name) link 62
• Jolene Trouble_(Ray_LaMontagne_album) link 32
• Jolene Jolene_(album) link 20
• total: 336 to 5 identified destinations

clickstream-enwiki-2025-11.tsv:

• Jolene Jolene_(song) link 94
• Jolene Jolene_(given_name) link 45
• Jolene Trouble_(Ray_LaMontagne_album) link 40
• Jolene Jolene_(film) link 21
• Jolene Jolene_(album) link 11
• total: 211 to 5 identified destinations

There's no big change from the same pattern - the song is the topic readers most commonly proceed to, but it's just a plurality. In other words, if we change it, we risk having more than half the people click the hatnote.

There can be a risk that a lot of people not clicking anything here means the list is so badly done, that they can't find what they're looking for. Not sure why this would be the case here, though, because the song should be visible on the first page on desktop, there's mentions of Dolly Parton in captions, the heading is simply Music, meaning on mobile it's behind a single tap on that Music heading. It seems fairly trivial to navigate this.

There can also be a situation where a group of articles strictly related to the song would cause the interest to seemingly dissipate, but they're still looking for basically the same topic, so we can benefit from a broad-concept article instead. But we can see the other topics of interest are the name (in turn the biographies), the 2000s film, the 2000s songs. I don't see the latter works of art mentioned in Jolene (song), so they don't seem to be part of the same concept. The song is mentioned at Jolene (given name), so it's actually vice versa, the song is part of that concept.

Let's check the standard general page view statistics for everything here:

• All-time mass views for all linked items in this list
• All-time mass views for all linked items in the name list

The film is noticable in this regard. More importantly, the Jolene Blalock article receives substantially more reader interest than any other Jolene topic individually, including the song article. More biographies with noticable readership include Jolene Purdy, Jolene Anderson, Jolene Van Vugt, plus the long tail. The topic of most long-term significance here is apparently the feminine name. Even if the song did the most to promote the name, it didn't become more significant than it, because this assortment of fields of endeavor where we observe the name means the overall impact of these seven letters can't be attributed primarily to the song.

So I think the readers are telling us here with their behavior that there's no real benefit to changing navigation here. (Oppose) --Joy (talk) 08:37, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

One more thing. The consistency of people clicking on Trouble (Ray LaMontagne album) from the list, as item #4 and sometimes #3 and #2, despite the fact it's just a blue link for a mention, may indicate that there's also a fair few readers looking for more information on that 2000s song, and if an article would be written about it, the amount of readership there might well increase further.

Interestingly, we can also see some of that at the clickstreams for Jolene (song), where the system identified 66 clicks in November back to this index. I checked the archive, and this also happens consistently.

snapshot of clickstreams from Jolene (song) to Jolene

For the same twelve months as above:

clickstream-enwiki-2024-12.tsv:

• Jolene_(song) Jolene link 112

clickstream-enwiki-2025-01.tsv:

• Jolene_(song) Jolene link 107

clickstream-enwiki-2025-02.tsv:

• Jolene_(song) Jolene link 84

clickstream-enwiki-2025-03.tsv:

• Jolene_(song) Jolene link 104

clickstream-enwiki-2025-04.tsv:

• Jolene_(song) Jolene link 126

clickstream-enwiki-2025-05.tsv:

• Jolene_(song) Jolene link 86

clickstream-enwiki-2025-06.tsv:

• Jolene_(song) Jolene link 79

clickstream-enwiki-2025-07.tsv:

• Jolene_(song) Jolene link 82

clickstream-enwiki-2025-08.tsv:

• Jolene_(song) Jolene link 67

clickstream-enwiki-2025-09.tsv:

• Jolene_(song) Jolene link 73

clickstream-enwiki-2025-10.tsv:

• Jolene_(song) Jolene link 64

clickstream-enwiki-2025-11.tsv:

• Jolene_(song) Jolene link 66

So not only are the readers not telling us that there's only one primary meaning of Jolene, they are also telling us that there there's a fair bit of ambiguity to the meaning of 'Jolene (song)'. I for one didn't expect the latter, which just goes to show that WP:Not what first comes to your mind is a good guideline to follow. --Joy (talk) 14:40, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Jessintime (talk) 18:50, 29 December 2025 (UTC)
• Support While I had initially opposed on a pure pageview argument, the song is unequivocally far more important by longterm significance. Therefore, I support it purely on significance grounds. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 03:14, 30 December 2025 (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.