Talk:James Farmer

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Untitled[edit]

Mr. Farmer's father was a prominent figure in Texas History, I recommend that we move the page to James L. Farmer Jr., if there are no objections.

-JCarriker 21:11, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed[edit]

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Fund for an Open Society Link Update[edit]

Fund for an Open Society — Preceding unsigned comment added by Epanasci (talk • contribs) 01:19, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Requested moves[edit]

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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: consensus to move the pages as proposed, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 08:27, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]


– Ok, so I'd like to address the two separate sections of this move request separately.

  • Name change
Per WP:Common name, this subject is best known as simply James Farmer. This is the name used in sources ranging from the FBI's files on him to the name he used for his own works to documents and coverage from the time he was most prominent to foreign coverage. While this is not clearly the case from raw numbers of google results, where a search for ""James farmer" civil rights" only gets about 15,000 more hits than one for ""James L. Farmer, Jr." civil rights", a search in google news or google books confirms that James Farmer is far more common in substantial, academic, and significant coverage (ie not just inclusion in a list or statistical data or copies of the Wikipedia page or unreliable sources). Even the middle initial loving New York Times simply uses James Farmer in his obituary. This page seems to have in fact been initially titled James Farmer, but was likely moved after an editor raised the concern seen at the top of this page around 10 years ago. Wikipedia policy, however, is to prefer the common name with disambiguation if necessary rather than a move to a less common name.
  • Primary topic
There's little need for debate on the notability of the subject -- as a member of the Big Six (civil rights) and one of the main leaders of the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–68) he's arguably one of the more significant figures in American history. However, there are numerous other pages named James Farmer or some variant thereof, so we need numbers to back up the argument that he is the primary topic. With incoming links, Farmer has over 300. The next highest has 72 (the basketball player) and the rest have under 10. Looking at page views, the argument seems incredibly clear. Farmer Jr. received 12344 views in the past 90 days (considering the subject has been dead since before Wikipedia was around I assumed it was safe to call the current period relatively unbiased). The rest of the pages have received under 1000 (many under 500) except for his father's, which received just under 2,500. While his father certainly does not earn his notability from simply his son, I think there is little argument that the son would obviously be the primary over the father.
Turning to the less clear cut numbers, I started with simply a google search for "James Farmer" in quotation marks. It was not until the third page of results that a result on any of the other notable topics came up, which was the website of James N. Farmer's company. The results then shift again to James L. Farmer Jr, with a few on his father peppered in. Google Books is a bit tougher for me to search (in part probably because I'm not good at it) since I keep getting unrelated results about farmers named James even when using quotes, but all the sources on the notable subjects, especially the sources that provide significant coverage, all refer to the civil rights leader.
I then moved on to using distinguishing terms to get a sense of google results, adding different terms after James farmer. Here are some of the results
  • Civil rights: About 1,050,000 results
  • Salford: About 90,100 results
  • Edublogs: About 5,490 results
  • Mavericks: About 126,000 results
Note - While I initially was including J. Doyne Farmer in my searches, since he is linked on the disambiguation page, I realized that not only does he not go by James Farmer, he is pretty much never even acknowledged with his first full name. While the same argument could be applied to Jim Farmer, with Doyne Farmer there is such a tangential link to the name James Farmer that I eventually got lazy and stopped including him. It is not mentioned on any of his official sites, and a search for his most common name on google (J. Doyne Farmer) does not bring up anything mentioning a full first name for at least the first 6 pages of results. It seems very unlikely that anyone would attempt to get to Doyne Farmer's page by including James, let alone excluding Doyne. But, to be clear I'm not hiding anything, I'll note that he has 30 incoming links from the article space and around 1800 page views in the last 90 days (I can't get the view site to load suddenly so please correct me on that if needed). Yaksar (let's chat) 12:14, 18 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@ Yaksar (prior to discussion comment); I am just curious as to why you would want to move a name that appears to be the legal name needing no disambiguation, to a name that is already listed on a disambiguation page, that will relegate this title specifically to a disambiguation page on a search.
I am a big supporter of the more common name as used in references but I am not a fan of relegating an article title to a disambiguation page (especially when it is already there) and I feel this title (person) deserves to be as naturally disambiguated as possible. To that end the title would have to be James Farmer (political activist) if it is thought this would better present the person.
I would suggest some immediate edits to the lead for better representation of what can be found in the article:
    • James Leonard Farmer, Jr., commonly referred to as James Farmer (January 12, 1920 – July 9, 1999), was an influential African American political activist, teacher, politician, theologian, author, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He was an organizational leader, civil rights activist, and leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He was the initiator and organizer of the 1961 Freedom Ride, which eventually led to the desegregation of inter-state transportation in the United States. ----- Otr500 (talk) 15:30, 28 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
User:Josiah Rowe explained it well below, but just to rehash -- The reason why we prefer James Farmer to the full legal name is that it is his most commonly used name in reliable sources. We aim to be an encyclopedia that best describes it's content, not just a database of full legal names. The reason why a parenthetical disambiguation like (political activist) is not needed is outlined at WP:Primary topic, but to sum it up the Wikipedia guideline is basically that when the overwhelming majority of readers using the term are looking for this topic, as indicated by the factors discussed on that page and the other factors noted above, it is preferable to "give the readers what they want".--Yaksar (let's chat) 20:31, 28 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Big Four vs. Big Six[edit]

Randy Kryn (talk · contribs) recently changed "big four" to "Big Six" in the "Later Career" section. That would seem to be accurate in terms of the article Big Six (civil rights), and Farmer's autobiography. However, "big four" was previously cited in the article to an obituary in Social Policy (magazine). I don't have access to that source, but other sources also refer to Farmer as one of the "Big Four". It seems that both terms were in use at the time. Here's what Farmer had to say in Lay Bare the Heart:

Beginning in 1963, [Stephen] Currier's Taconic Foundation called together and hosted meetings of the "Big Six". The press frequently referred to the group as the "Big Four", ignoring Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women, and John Lewis, national chairman of SNCC. Age bias and sexism were even more rampant then than now.

— Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart

(Our own article has A. Philip Randolph instead of Dorothy Height in the Big Six, but that's another issue.)

Since Farmer himself preferred the "Big Six" usage, I suppose we should do the same, but we should change the citation to one which actually uses the "Big Six" term. I guess I'll do that myself. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 02:49, 23 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Upon reflection, I decided that the article could just use both terms, with citations explaining them. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 02:58, 23 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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