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 section.

The result of the move request was: Moved. Clear consensus in favor of moving. (non-admin closure) — KB3035583^talk 01:06, 1 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Donegal → Donegal (town) – see below for rationale. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:25, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I changed the name of this page to Donegal (town) and User:Onel5969 changed it back again saying, "No. You need to have a discussion of a move of this magnitude" I will now start that discussion.

I propose that the name of this page be changed to Donegal (town)

The page Donegal should be a redirect to the page Donegal (disambiguation)

There are many reason for doing this:

1. Most people would assume that you mean County Donegal if you just said "in Donegal". For example, several articles refer to "hurricanes off of Donegal". They clearly mean the county.
2. In fact, some of the links that existed went to the town when the county was intended. I have fixed a lot of these mistaken links.
3. There are many many Donegals as we can see on Donegal (disambiguation). It is not at all clear that the town should be singled out as the default link for all references to Donegal.
4. The name Donegal (town) is consistent in style with County Donegal. One wonders why the editor who originally made the decision for the town to be the default did not choose the county instead. It was, in fact, an arbitrary decision with no forethought involved.
5. The user interested in things Donegal will be taken to the town by default and may not notice that there are a lot of other pages that start with that name. Not all WP users are sophisticated enough to know what a disambiguation page is or even notice that it is mentioned at the top of the page.
6. To make things even more confusing, there are pages with the spelling 'Donegall'. These are listed at the page Donegall (disambiguation). It was to try to clear up some of the massive confusion that I renamed the town page in the first place and then created the two disambiguation pages.
7. No harm is done by letting the name Donegal redirect to the page Donegal (disambiguation). This is what most editors who used the name on their pages intended in any case. But not all of them as I mentioned above. Nothing changes.
8. I am gradually changing all the appropriate links Donegal to Donegal (town). In the process, I run across lots of links where the town is clearly not intended–and those I fix. Usually the confused editor wants the county and thought that Donegal would link to Donegal County.
9. Most important reason: A naive user may be looking for something asssociated with Donegal town or county and simply be taken to the town page and then conclude, "Well I guess that is that. There seems to be no page for the Donegal entity I was looking for." This in fact is why I worked to hard to clean all of this up. A colleague was looking for one of the Donegal pages and simply could not find it.

I strongly urge that the page be changed back to Donegal (town) for the reasons stated above.--Toploftical (talk) 15:11, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Support move. I think Toploftical's rationales above are quite sound. Even when I came across the change, I tended to agree with it, however I don't think that 1 or 2 editors should make a change of this magnitude without discussion. And that's exactly what would have happened if I had simply allowed the page move to stand, and gone about fixing the over 500 dabs it created.Onel5969 ^{TT me} 16:10, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. The town is not the primary topic for the term "Donegal". I would go further and move the dab to "Donegal". That will leave links pointing to a disambiguation page, but it's less wrong and easier to detect than pointing to the wrong article. Thanks to Toploftical for mending links. I've edited the only template which linked to the town, which will fix several article links. We should probably notify WikiProjects such as Disambiguation and Ireland. Certes (talk) 17:21, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Support move. It's consistent with, for example, Cork (city). Would also support moving Donegal (disambiguation) to "Donegal". I would go further still and merge the "Donegal" and "Donegall" dab pages. Scolaire (talk) 18:38, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Support move. A good idea; thank you for taking this initiative. With kind regards; Patrick. ツ Pdebee.^{(talk)(guestbook)} 17:39, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - people say "County xxxx" when referring to the counties of the island of Ireland, so there is no confusion with the town of Donegal and no need to move the article. Cork is a different case, as it can easily be mixed up with the stopper, or the material the stopper is made from. Mjroots (talk) 18:19, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Per WP:DABCONCEPT the county is named after the town which probably makes a stronger case for treating the town as primary among other uses. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:45, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I think this merits a broader discussion. We have Galway, Limerick, Waterford, Sligo, Roscommon etc at their own name. But Tipperary (town), moved there last year as "massively ambiguous with County Tipperary" by @BrownHairedGirl: (pinging for hopefully a comment here). For Tipperary and Donegal towns, unlike my other examples, neither is their county town or largest town. In common usage: "I'm going to Donegal" would (to me) imply the county. But "I'm going to Galway" implies the city. "Donegal Town" refers to the town in conversation (always disambiguated). All my own experience, so bordering on WP:OR. I'm on the fence here so far. Declangi (talk) 20:51, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Support It might be worth re-examining all these cases just mentioned, but one additional argument is that, unlike most of these other towns, Donegal is not even the largest town in the county named after it. PatGallacher (talk) 18:40, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per nom and User:Declangi's observation above. (Similar cases are Antrim, Leitrim, Louth and Tipperary.) Note a recent RM discussion at Talk:Antrim, County Antrim. —  AjaxSmack  20:55, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Except that both Donegal and Antrim have few substantially unrelated uses on the other hand Limerick and maybe Waterford (an in particular Cork which "(city)" prevents colfusion with corks in Ireland) do but its not the point of disambiguation to provide the very most specific article sought, if readers find themselves on the town, they can find the related topics via wikilinks per WP:DABCONCEPT. A lot of topics have subsidiary meanings such as Eye/Human eye and Liverpool/Liverpool F.C.. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:47, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • If so, then County Donegal should be the DABCONCEPT page, not the town page. Making the town the primary topic because the "county is named after the town" does not serve readers well and is not based in policy. —  AjaxSmack  01:11, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. The county is far more important than the town and like most Irish counties is frequently referred to omitting "County". -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:20, 27 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. Primary topic is County Donegal, unusually despite the county being historically named after the town. For too long, the town has been unimportant, not the capital city of the county, and internationally the county is known simply as Donegal. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:20, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  That may sometimes be true even within Ireland. A dab would highlight errors such as one I fixed the day before this RM opened. Certes (talk) 10:38, 30 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. Just to make my support official. Who determines when a consensus is reached?--Toploftical (talk)
  • It's supposed to be processed after 7 days. This request is now in the backlog at WP:RM. --Scolaire (talk) 18:53, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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.