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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.
Support. This does make sense from my point of view. I would also like to note that just because another Wikipedia Language (such as the Italian one) doesn't really count/prove the point that the common way the company spelt is spelt "Rai" and not "RAI" at all really. Soafy234 (talk) 00:36, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose per WP:TMRULES. As "RAI" is an abbreviation with meaning, the noncapitalization is a stylization, which Wikipedia is in the (annoying) habit of rejecting. Most Wikipedia policies regarding stylized capitalization are behind the times when it comes to recognizing how common stylized caps have become in most media, industries, etc. (add in backronyms, and stylized acronyms such as we see here, and these policies just don't have a chance of being consistently enforced) and need revisiting. AVNOJ1989 (talk) 00:48, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support to move but a more concise name in the brackets may be better. I believe "Italian broadcasting company" is too long here. Cfls (talk) 03:32, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Move to "Rai" By Pageviews analysis of the disambiguation page for "Rai", this broadcasting company gets more traffic than everything else by that name with the exception of athlete Rai Benjamin who is not commonly known by his first name. It is legitimate to make this the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and put other uses in the disambiguation page. I agree, the organization is stylized "Rai" not "RAI" and there should be a move. Bluerasberry (talk)15:45, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also note that the supports above mine were for the disambiguated title originally proposed, before the proposal was changed to be a primarytopic takeover. Dicklyon (talk) 05:11, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I reverted the confusing change of the proposal. Proposals should (at least generally) not be changed after a significant amount of discussion of them has already occurred, since this creates confusion over what was being discussed. Alternative suggestions can be discussed without going and modifying what has already been recorded as the original proposal. — BarrelProof (talk) 12:24, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: It's an acronym, for Radio Audizioni Italiane, so capitalized as an acronym per MOS:ABBR. The fact that the entity no longer uses that full name is irrelevant. NAACP remains "NAACP" not "Naacp", despite the fact that they no longer use their original full name. There are many other cases like this. E.g. IKEA. We also do not lower-case things to match excessive lower-case stylization in marketing materials like logos, per MOS:TM: it's Macy's and Pyrex, not "macy's" and "pyrex". — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 16:24, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While MOS:ABBRdoes necessarily oblige NAACP since it is almost always read as N-double A-C-P, but almost no one pronounces IKEA as I-K-E-A. I don't see how IKEA is a case of ABBR. Wikipedia primarily uses IKEA and NAACP, and not Ikea or Naacp, because IKEA and NAACP are the WP:COMMONNAME. 122141510 (talk) 16:18, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My impression is that it is also common for this company's name to be pronounced as R-A-I (at least in English) – probably more common than for it to be pronounced as a word. — BarrelProof (talk) 19:06, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Some pertinent observations (mostly for 122141510's benefit):
What pronunciation style a given abbreviation of any kind (acronym, initialism, contraction, truncation, or mixture of these approaches) usually has is completely immaterial to what WP will do with it stylistically. (And for many cases these may vary by speech community anyway, by time period, by geography, by social group, etc.). In this, we differ from some external publishers. E.g., there are several news publishers that insist on writing "word acronyms", acronyms pronounced as if words, with a leading capital only ("Nato", "Nasa", etc. – even "Aids" despite "acquired immune deficiency syndrome" not being a proper name, so even in a "write like words" style, "aids" should be called for just like "scuba" and "radar"). WP does not do this. And WP simply doesn't care what random off-site publishers are doing. They follow their house styles, we follow ours, and ours is much more sensible, and based on a great deal of consensus wrangling, and for many things based on what the preponderance of independent reliable sources are doing.
When it comes to foreign subjects with non-English names, what is done in, say, Italian (either in speech or writing) is immaterial; we only care what is done in writing in English.
Our standard is not "use the letter-case that is found in a slight majority of sources" (which might change literally week by week). It is (for trademarks): When deciding how to format a trademark, editors should examine styles already in use by independent reliable sources. From among those, choose the style that most closely resembles standard English – regardless of the preference of the trademark owner. Exceptions may apply, but Wikipedia relies on sources to determine when an unusual name format has become conventional for a particular trademark; only names that are consistently styled a particular way by a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are styled that way in Wikipedia. (emphasis in original, at MOS:TM).
Question. According to the lead, this broadcasting company hasn't been known as "Radio Audizioni Italiane" since 1954 – if the acronym is so important, then why is their logo lowercased, as in "Rai"? Seems like it's time for some catchup. P.I. Ellsworth , ed.put'er there13:05, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Paine Ellsworth: exactly, but native English speakers don't know Rai in detail, so the article is likely to remain at 1954 as far as the name is concerned, which is very disappointing. In Italy, and Rai is Italian, the name is almost always written in lowercase. JacktheBrown (talk) 13:33, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Paine Ellsworth: readers who see the logo in lowercase and the title in capital letters will probably wonder why; although I may be disappointed, it's the encyclopaedia's problem, not mine; I have done my best. JacktheBrown (talk) 18:02, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Tentative support move to Rai - I need to see evidence that "Rai" has become the common name **IN ENGLISH**. Evidence of it being an official name in Italian is irrelevant. Looking through, though, I do see some evidence that this is the name used in English. For example:
Based on that, whilst I personally find this kind of re-branding annoying, it does appear to have become the common name in English used in reliable secondary sources, and this appears to have been going on for some years. FOARP (talk) 11:13, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Some evidence" of usage of the "Rai" version in English is not our standard. I would think that every single participant here already expected to find "Rai" versus "RAI" in some English-language materials. To repeat MOS:TM verbatim: When deciding how to format a trademark, editors should examine styles already in use by independent reliable sources. From among those, choose the style that most closely resembles standard English – regardless of the preference of the trademark owner. Exceptions may apply, but Wikipedia relies on sources to determine when an unusual name format has become conventional for a particular trademark; only names that are consistently styled a particular way by a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are styled that way in Wikipedia. [Emphasis in original.] That standard is not at all met here, as "RAI" (versus "Rai") abounds in English-language source material, so it simply is not possible for the name of this to be "consistently styled a particulary way [as 'Rai'] by a substantial majority" of those sources. (For these purposes, a "substantial majority" demonstrating "consistently styled" is around 90% or higher.) The normal English practice with acronyms/initialisms, from NATO to ATM, is to give them uppercase, unless they have been reassimilated as words and the average person doesn't know they originated as acronyms (laser, radar, scuba). Redoing "RAI" as "Rai" would be an "unusual name format ... for a particular [acronymic] trademark", and we have a procedure to follow for considering that possibility. We have considered the evidence for it, and it does not pass muster. — SMcCandlish☏¢ 😼 04:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The first page of this Scholar search has seven hits for the broadcaster and three false positives (people called Rai). Of those seven, all use the uppercase acronym in the text, but one (Penati) uses the title-case stylisation in the article title; a quick look at the publisher's website shows that to be an error in transcription by Google. Acronyms and initialisms are capitalised in English, even when commonly pronounced as a word (DEFRA, NATO, FAO); yes, this may differ from Italian usage. Even if this were not always the case, we wouldn't move the page to a disambiguated title because of WP:NATURAL – using an alternative name is preferred to disambiguation. As for the primary topic thing, it really doesn't seem to be this: the Italian broadcaster appears exactly once in the first 25 results of this JSTOR search, which suggests (unsurprisingly) that the primary topic is the music genre, followed by Lala Lajpat Rai. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:28, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Most of those aren't recent, the one that is (2020) is clearly an Italian-language document. The case being made here is that Rai has become the common-name in English, not that it has always been the common-name in English. It is not clear why any of those references should be chosen over the BBC, the Guardian, and other high-quality English-language sources, which now appear to be using "Rai" as the name. FOARP (talk) 20:26, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@JackkBrown: That comment is a bit confusing (as are a couple of your other comments that contained boldface). It looks like an expression of support for your own proposal. See WP:RM#Nom: "Nomination already implies that the nominator supports the name change, and nominators should refrain from repeating this recommendation on a separate bulleted line." I see that you were actually/mostly only supporting comments and suggestions by others in those remarks, but they could appear to be expressions of self-support. — BarrelProof (talk) 21:44, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In some cases it looks like the company is referred to with all-caps, while the service offerings are branded as "Rai" (as here). This company's name is a three-letter acronym. The usual way these are rendered in English is uppercase, so very consistent use of the alternative would need to be demonstrated. Here it hasn't been demonstrated (also noting Justlettersandnumbers' check of Google Scholar). Many high-quality sources use uppercase, so Wikipedia should too, per MOS:TM. — BarrelProof (talk) 14:58, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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.
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