Talk:Vandal

Untitled

I removed this item added by 66.234.198.188:

• the term "Vandal" is also used as a bigoted pejorative for African Americans, especially on the West Coast of the United States.

This needs a citation from a published source. Jokestress 16:43, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

I live on the West Coast. Never heard that. 97.126.29.252 (talk) 15:41, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

What's a good reference to Wiki Vandals? Regards, Ben Aveling 07:06, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Requested move 3 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. There is a consensus among participants that the singular term "Vandal" lacks a primary topic. (non-admin closure) WhatADrag07 (talk) 23:04, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

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Vandal (disambiguation) → Vandal – No clear primary topic for the singular, Google and Images appear to return more results for the crime though Books appears to mainly return the tribe. Although the crime name comes from the tribe I think most people would associate the singular with the crime similar to say Perth/Perth, Scotland. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:51, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

• Support per nomination. Users who, in the course of researching the ancient Germanic people Vandals, might type "Vandal", "The Vandals" or "Vandalism", will find links at the top of those entries directing them to their proper destination. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 23:57, 3 January 2026 (UTC)
• Support per nom, no PRIMARY.--Ortizesp (talk) 03:23, 4 January 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose Vandal should go to vandalism, whose importance has by now exceeded its namesake tribe. Though I do prefer this move to the current status quo, so if there is widespread support for it, I would also vouch for it. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 06:05, 4 January 2026 (UTC)
• Last time we had a discussion like this I think was the one at Talk:Angles. The results there aren't particularly clear, but in this case we are one step further away from that one (we're keeping the plural with the tribe), so it makes sense to try this change to the singular as a more conservative option. WikiNav doesn't seem to show the hatnote within top 20 clicks here, which sounds somewhat suspect, but may also just reflect the nature of links in this article. I checked the archive and it does happen, in the last six months we were able to identify 148, 136, 185, 123, 151, 145 clickstreams towards there. Also not huge, but not ignorable either. Comparison of views between the redirect and the disambiguation page is moot, because there are some spikes where the patterns match well, and some where they don't. A Google Books search for the singular shows me ambiguity, also including references to the surname. (Support) --Joy (talk) 15:04, 4 January 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose. This does not seem like a typical WP:DIFFPLURAL case. I see no reason to treat the singular different from the plural. Just as you have Vandals, you can have a Vandal. (It also works as an adjective.) And just as one can be a vandal today, there can also be many vandals. Treating the singular and plural differently seems odd in this case. If there is no primary meaning for the singular, I don't see why there would be for the plural. See ngrams. Srnec (talk) 21:01, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

  If you extend the ngrams to capture more of those historical references like this it's still fairly clear that the plural has been far more common. I think the relative rarity of the singular is what makes it more likely we won't upset many readers if we change that. Likewise, the more recent data from the last 100 years or so does indicate relative parity between upper and lower case usage, reinforcing the idea there might be ambiguity. If this partial change produces new measurements that provide better hints as to whether the term is ambiguous or not, that would be valuable, whether we end up reverting or also moving the plural later. --Joy (talk) 13:32, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

  It also makes it more likely that that status quo isn't upsetting anybody either. Srnec (talk) 17:43, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

  It's hard to tell because we don't have a neutral navigation element at the moment. And since our navigation doesn't resolve most actual reader queries, rather the external search engines do, we're seeing reader behavior only after it's been filtered through that, too. --Joy (talk) 20:21, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

• Support. No primary topic. Vandals and Vandalism are both equally plausible primary redirects. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:41, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

  But how is it plausible to treat the singular and plural differently? They work the same capitalized or not. Why should we be treating Vandals and Vandal differently is the question. Srnec (talk) 17:43, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Thanks, Glasspalace (talk • contribs) 05:45, 10 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.