The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was move. Interesting discussion for AfD. It should probably have been a RM, but hindsight is 20/20. In any case, the consensus here is that the general is the primary topic and should be moved to the base title. The dab page (which this AfD is about) will therefore be moved and deleted at Paul Van Riper (disambiguation) per WP:TWODABS. It will be moved first so that it can be more easily recoverable in the event more Paul Van Ripers become notable. Jenks24 (talk) 08:00, 25 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Paul Van Riper[edit]

Paul Van Riper (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Per WP:TWODABS. Neither of these people are known as plain "Paul Van Riper", but Paul K is the primary topic, so "Paul Van Riper" should be deleted and redirect to his article with a hatnote for Paul P. Using AfD because RM would not work (nothing is going to be moved). Nohomersryan (talk) 14:42, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Disambiguations-related deletion discussions. /wiae /tlk 14:56, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment, Neither of these people are known as plain "Paul Van Riper" — actually both are more commonly known by the name without the middle initial. Just check the references in the articles. That plus the page views suggests the article on the general should be titled simply Paul Van Riper with a hatnote linking to the academic. Further the academic's article perhaps should be titled Paul Van Riper (professor) or something similar. older ≠ wiser 15:21, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• You appear to be right, my results were diluted by Wikiclones. Guess the initials were a weird way of WP:NATDAB. The PRIMARYTOPIC/TWODABS thing still stands Nohomersryan (talk) 15:42, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Move Paul K. Van Riper to Paul Van Riper and hatnote to the professor. The Marine is definitely the primary topic, and furthermore it appears his common name doesn't use the middle initial. -- Tavix ^(talk) 21:02, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I don't think the determination of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC should be implicitly decided just by looking at the page views of two articles that don't match the term. Instead, it should be decided by analyzing e.g. https://www.google.com/#tbm=bks&q=%22Paul+Van+Riper%22 On a quick skim it looks like the general is more popular, but someone should invest a modicum of effort to make sure he's so substantially more popular that it doesn't make sense to have people looking for him click twice. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:53, 28 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep perhaps as it may perhaps be applicable for the chance someone is not familiar with the middle initial and thus searches for Paul Van Riper. SwisterTwister talk 21:55, 3 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@SwisterTwister: Yes, but that's not the issue at hand here. It's really a question of whether or not Paul K. Van Riper is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for the title "Paul Van Riper." If so, we would either redirect the title to Paul K. or move Paul K. to "Paul Van Riper" and hatnote to the professor. If the answer is, "yes, Paul K. Van Riper is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC," then the disambiguation page in question would be unnecessary per WP:TWODABS. -- Tavix ^(talk) 21:59, 3 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.