Talk:Telegram (disambiguation)

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: no consensus. No consensus regarding the long term significance of Telegram (app) and Telegram (communication method) (non-admin closure) Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 16:46, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Telegram (disambiguation) → Telegram – Telegram currently redirects to Telegraphy#Telegram services. That is a primary topic by long-term significance, but certainly not by usage. The instant messenger dominates search results, incoming links by 2:1 and Page views by 15:1. A 20th-century Wikipedia would rightly have redirected Twitter to Bird vocalization, but usage changes and the oldest meaning may not remain primary forever. Certes (talk) 12:07, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

 Comment: By the page move you proposed here, there will be no primary topic. But the disambiguation pages on names of software or IT company usually have a primary topic: Windows (disambiguation) chooses that by usage and Apple_(disambiguation) chooses that by long-term significance. And Twitter has a primary topic as well, while the other topics are linked from a hatnote instead. NmWTfs85lXusaybq (talk) 13:25, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Moving the instant messenger to Telegram as a primary topic is another valid option, but it would be more disruptive to incoming links and overlooks the long-term significance of the traditional telegraphic message. I suggest putting the dab at the base name as a compromise. Certes (talk) 13:42, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

I will now support per [2]: The number of outgoing pageviews of Telegraphy from Telegram (disambiguation) is similar to that of Telegram (software). NmWTfs85lXusaybq (talk) 23:15, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Regardless of the same outcome, let me point out that we should look at all of these statistics instead to get a tad more comprehensive picture:

• https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Telegraphy (which includes the clickstream for the Telegram redirect, sadly without full distinction in the graphs) - where we see that there were 487 identified outgoing clickstreams to the telegram hatnote, plus 272 to the software hatnote, in May '23
• https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&start=2022-06&end=2023-05&pages=Telegram_(disambiguation)%7CTelegram - where we see that the title "Telegram" received 3,991 views and the hatnote destination page received 2,269 views in the same month
• https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Telegram_%28disambiguation%29 - where we see that ~2.3k people saw the set index and 493 people went to the telegraphy meaning, 458 to the software, and then a long tail of three other meanings with 10+ clickstreams (and possibly more beyond that).

This means that we have a disambiguation page that is not at a natural title yet still receives a lot of organic search traffic, which is suspect - it's legitimate to ask why are the users and the search engines visiting it so much if there's a primary topic. At the same time, it's also clear that there is no clear majority for the software meaning - a substantial part of identified traffic is people reaching for the telegraphy meaning. By usage, this would be a typical situation where there is no primary topic. --Joy (talk) 13:15, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support but keep the traditional use of "telegram" as the primary first mention on the disamb. page. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:32, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

  Good idea. New York makes a suitable model, with the two obvious meanings at the top and the rest classified normally. Certes (talk) 16:47, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

  New York does that because there are, uniquely, two primary topics. If we have to put one PTOPIC at the top of the DAB page, the bare term should just be a redirect. WPscatter ^t/_c 17:09, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

  If there's one PT then yes, the bare term should be an article or redirect. Technically we can't have two PTs, but if (as I believe) there are two outstanding candidates then we have plenty of precedents for giving them priority: ABC Television, Albany, Alcohol, etc. Certes (talk) 18:20, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. It is by far the primary topic by long term significance but less so by usage. I don't find the point about Twitter to be salient because "twitter" now, by and large, only refers to the website, which clearly isn't the case with "telegram". WPscatter ^t/_c 17:14, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

  Can you explain your assertion on long-term significance? It's not that obvious. The threshold per WP:PTOPIC is that the telegraphy topic would need to have substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with the term. --Joy (talk) 13:38, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

  At the risk of conflating usage and long-term significance, let's discuss the impact of the two main topics on the world population. The telegraphy article says that at their peak in 1929, an estimated 200 million telegrams were sent. Estimates of historical world population indicates that the population was ~2B at the time. A crude and generous interpretation would be that 10% of the population used the service. On the other hand, last year Telegram said 700 million active users, with a total population of a bit under 8B. A likewise crude interpretation there would be a bit under 9%. By this measure, they're already in the same ballpark, so the argument for notability and educational value of talking about telegraphy has to be pretty strong to meet the standard. --Joy (talk) 13:55, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

  I'm honestly baffled that I need to explain this, but telegrams were an entire method of communication. They were revolutionary. Telegram is a single app. A popular one, but still. Of course it's more significant long term, up to the present and likely into the future (though I understand that future speculation can't and shouldn't be an argument here).

  If barely losing by usage and overwhelmingly winning by long-term significance constitutes no primary topic, then fine, I withdraw my opposition, but I wouldn't have thought that was the case. WPscatter ^t/_c 14:41, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

  The main issue with short-circuiting navigation is that the use of the word telegram has those two popular meanings but also a legitimate topic described in telegram style, which arguably demonstrates the long-term significance of the original telegraphy meaning, just like the software meaning in turn. The description of the use of the word in original telegraphy certainly has significance and is of educational value, but that particular meaning has been obsolete for longer than it has been popular at this point, so it's not necessarily clear why we should focus on the historical description so much that we overshadow its rhetorical children, so to speak. --Joy (talk) 19:00, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

  Note that I'm under the impression that we're generally a bit inconsistent about eponyms and eponymous topics. For example, recently we moved away the names Julia and Leonardo away from those article titles because so many other notable items were named the same way, yet I see equivalence to this sort of a case, as most of those meanings only came about because there was a prior meaning of significance. --Joy (talk) 19:20, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

  Telegram style deserves its See also entry but is really a PTM rather than a topic of the single word "telegram". Being the origin of a name is a factor but can be overridden, e.g. Boston was named for Boston, Lincs. Certes (talk) 19:27, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

  Hmm, I'm not sure I agree it's just a partial title match. If you ask the average reader these days what's a telegram, they'll probably assume it's a foremost a form of short written communication, while the information about electrical telegraph or teleprinter or similar is implementation details behind e.g. going to the post office and writing the message on a piece of paper to hand in to the clerk. IOW we could describe both in the telegraphy article or both in a telegram article. --Joy (talk) 08:23, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

  The printed output delivered to the recipient is definitely a telegram, and the form handed in by the sender requesting transmission is debatably one too. (Is a caterpillar a butterfly?) Both are in telegram style, but are a distinct concept from it. I think See also is a good place for borderline PTMs like this. Certes (talk) 11:07, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support, especially since Telegram is just a redirect to a section of another article and not an article in itself. Recent pageviews show Telegram (software) gets about 15 times as many hits as the entire article Telegraphy. With the Telegram redirect getting about 128 hits/day (high for a redirect), it seems the large majority of that number are looking for the software article. Telegram (software) is probably the new primary topic, but a dab page at Telegram is a step in the right direction. Station1 (talk) 17:39, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support I don't think there's harm in sending people to a disambiguation page, though I'd strongly oppose the software being primary for the term, of course. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 19:52, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
• I stand by what I said in #Requested move 15 March 2021. The difference today is that we also have WikiNav to analyze clickstreams, so it seems even more reasonable to disambiguate fully and then after a couple of months be able to see the actual pertinent reader interest and make informed decisions based on that. It's easy enough to restore the primary redirect or keep the disambiguation then. --Joy (talk) 09:19, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose - I'm honestly surprised that we don't have an independent article about telegrams, and I want to encourage someone to start that article by replacing the current redirect with content. Even now, the telegraphy meaning is the overwhelming primary topic by significance and so the current redirect is appropriate. -- Netoholic @ 12:21, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

  @Netoholic sadly, that's unlikely to happen. Redirects are extra functionality that is slightly obfuscated for new editors and which makes it that much less likely that they'll figure out that they can make an article in the same place. Right now, one would have to open telegram, then scroll back up near the top of the page, notice the small "(Redirected from Telegram)" notice and then click on that instance of the word which has a &redirect=no in the link, and then edit there. It just doesn't happen often enough in practice for us to consider this a generally encouraging environment for editing. By contrast, a disambiguation page would simply show the edit link and would be that much more inviting for people to start editing that (even if they mess it up as a set index as a result). --Joy (talk) 12:56, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

  I've made a suggestion to mitigate part of that problem at WP:VPIL#Redirect hatnote link. Certes (talk) 13:37, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

  I didn't imply that a "new editor" should make the article, so this feels like a tangent. -- Netoholic @ 13:41, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

  Oh, I just used them as the example of a demographic that has the potential to add this. If we want to consider if experienced editors have the potential to do it, existing history of 18 years of inaction isn't really indicative of much, either. In the two years after the previous curated discussion about this, there's been no interest in this, either (there's been more people complaining about how hard it is to navigate to the software instead). --Joy (talk) 14:03, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. Telegrams, significant for many decades, are still the clear primary topic. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:34, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

  At the risk of appearing to badger two people in a row, since we haven't heard much more two years ago either, I just have to ask - can you please explain this opinion. (Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion.) --Joy (talk) 13:04, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

  Nothing on that list comes close to the significance of the communications system that was vital to the world for well over a century. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:17, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support per nomination, NmWTfs85lXusaybq, Randy Kryn, Station1, ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ and per comments by Joy. There are 21 entries listed upon the Telegram (disambiguation) page, with no indication that the redirect to the sub-section header, Telegraphy#Telegram services, continues to hold such lasting historical significance that it overwhelms the combined renown of the remaining 20 entries. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 00:46, 27 June 2023 (UTC)