The following discussion is an archived 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: not moved. The proposed title did not gain consensus. However, this looked like it may have been due to "hoax" not being deemed appropriate, so there is scope for a discussion around a better alternative, after which another RM could be tried. Personally I don't think "witticism" is used enough these days. Number 57 13:28, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Dihydrogen monoxide hoax → Dihydrogen monoxide (meme) – The claim that dihydrogen monoxide is a "hoax" violates WP:NPOV and is false. Dihydrogen monoxide is real. The dihydrogen monoxide petition is an Internet meme which, by design, portrays this stuff (H₂O) in the worst possible light while still being technically correct and accurate - a means to prove a point - but neither the claim that dihydrogen monoxide exists nor the claims that specific safety issues or even fatalities are associated with it are false. There's a huge factual difference between "I disagree with the premise that dihydrogen monoxide should be banned" and "Dihydrogen monoxide is a hoax". It's real, various groups ranging from Red Cross to Coast Guard are doing what they can to minimise the dangers. Inserting blatantly POV terms like "hoax" into article titles is neither encyclopaedic nor helpful. K7L (talk) 01:26, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Oppose Staszek Lem (talk) 03:04, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per WP:POVTITLE. Terms like "hoax", as statements of opinion, normally do not belong in article titles. K7L (talk) 03:39, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak Support - Strikes me as though "hoax" isn't really the right word for this. That said, I'm not 100% sure "meme" is either. NickCT (talk) 12:33, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong oppose - The argument is that it should be "meme" because water is real. If this article is about water, it duplicates Water and should be merged there, not renamed. If it's about a meme that is not the same as simply "water" then we have the right name already. It is a hoax because by the very first sentence of the article it's clear you're trying to elicit a response and fool people into thinking it's more than it actually is (it's the act of trying to elicit a response from someone by framing water as scary that is the subject of the article and once you tell someone "oh it's just water," they are no longer afraid -- hence: hoax). --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  12:36, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• @Rhododendrites: - This article is clearly not about water. It's about a "joke", "hoax" or "meme" or whatever you want to call it about water. I think it's a slightly more than a hoax, b/c there's a semi-instructive element to it which I don't think one usually associates with a hoax. NickCT (talk) 12:59, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• @NickCT: - (longish reply moved to #Discussion) --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  13:20, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong oppose, per Rhododendrites. There should be a policy or guideline preventing people who "don't get it" from nominating articles for such changes. That being said, if a better title is found, it might be worth considering, but I haven't seen it yet. It's a constructive/instructive hoax, not the type which one would associate with a scam or attempt to deceive for personal gain. -- Brangifer (talk) 13:37, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Facepalm This is the kind of stuff detrimental to wikipedia's credibility and the portrayal of its editors as humourless goons. The nominator's proposal is absolutely horrific, both from that aspect but perhaps rather more seriously that it is completely out of line with WP:AT policies & guidelines, chief among them WP:COMMONNAME, WP:NATURALDIS avoid parenthetical disambiguators and WP:CRITERIA #1: RECOGNISABILITY. Plus I'm dubious that it is really an internet meme sources please. If "hoax" is really absolutely intolerable, then I propose Dihydrogen monoxide prank. Cf. Prank (wikt:Prank) (redirect to Practical joke) and Hoax (wikt:Hoax). ^walk victor falk ^talk 13:47, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Would Dihydrogen monoxide meme be better in your mind (i.e. no parenthesis)? Plus, who said anything about an internet meme? I think it's just a regular old meme. NickCT (talk) 15:52, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Many people think that the concept of "meme" is a pseudoscientific babble, a false analogy which explains nothing. Staszek Lem (talk) 16:08, 21 May 2014 (UTC'

• Not to be nitpicky (who am I kidding? that's exactly what I'm doing), what critics of memes (not to be confused with internet memes) complain is not that it is pseudoscience à la von Däniken and razor-sharpening pyramids, which can be dismissed in some of the most scathing words ever uttered by a scientist, das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch, but that it is bad science, as in difficult to test and falsify, and therefore not very helpful; a bit like string theory. Personally, I think a bit too much is made of the scientificness of a concept that Richard Dawkins intoduced a bit off-handedly at the end of a popular science book, and it should be considered more as a philosophical aid to help one adopt an evolutionary (R, V, S) weltanschauung. ^walk victor falk ^talk 03:46, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment How about dihydrogen monoxide (joke)? It's not a hoax as it's carefully worded to all be true, but are we such humourless goons as to not be able to accept a joke as a joke without becoming offended and screaming "hoax!" at the top of our lungs in mock righteousness and indignation? K7L (talk) 15:10, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It is your proposal that is a joke!! You are pov-pushing the dihydrogen monoxide agenda to present that terrible, terrible chemical substance as a harmless product that improves your mood and makes you laugh, like a good joke. In fact I suspect you are a paid shill of the dihydrogen monoxide industrial complex with a massive COI and should be summarily perma-banned forthwith. Dixit. ^walk victor falk ^talk 23:52, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It can't stay at "hoax" if both the substance in question and the senseless fatalities very much exist. I'd hoped the matter would've been addressed after the watergate scandal, but the whitewater controversy shows this is not the case. Nonetheless, if even one drowning can be prevented by pointing out the very real dangers of water instead of dishonestly and disingenuously dismissing them as a "hoax", the effort in finding a more truthful name for this page will have been justified. K7L (talk) 18:09, 23 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• • In this case it would be Dihydrogen monoxide joke - a term that indeed gets 10x more google hits than "dihydrogen monoxide hoax". By the way:

World English Dictionary

hoax (həʊks)

— n

1. a deception, esp a practical joke

Therefore I don't understand why you are so excited with the term "hoax", which is quite appropriate here. Staszek Lem (talk) 16:04, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak oppose. I get what the nominator is saying: it's not incorrect to identify water as "dihydrogen monoxide", and that by itself is not a hoax. However, the dihydrogen monoxide phenomenon is more than that: it's aim, through the deliberate use of chemical names that average people are unlikely to be familiar with, is to cause the misapprehension that the substance in question is something more/different than the common and familiar liquid that it is. (Would it work as well, or indeed at all, if one clearly identified to people that the substance was in fact "water"? Clearly not.) Therefor, insofar as the goal is to trick people through accurate but unfamiliar terminology into assuming something they otherwise would not, it's appropriate to identify it as a hoax. ╠╣uw [talk] 10:28, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - The article is not about dihydrogen monoxide, but about a hoax. As such, the current title is appropriate. TechBear | Talk | Contributions 11:39, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose; per wp:commonname and commonsense. I really can't believe this is a real proposal being discussed here. The article is about the old 'hoax' regarding water, not the chemical compound itself. The first time I saw it, it was on a mimeographed (look that up if you want to get an idea of how long this has been floating around) sheet. The premise is typical of a 'hoax' or 'con,' so the word, 'joke,' is no good, as it is not a joke with a punch-line. Also, 'meme' doesn't work at all, as this hoax was around way before the popular internet was, and meme was not a common term then. Subbing 'prank' for 'hoax' is not any better. Just leave as is. Regards, GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 11:34, 25 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: WP:COMMONNAME would place this article at water. The term "meme" dates to 1976 (per that article), an era when your precious mimeograph would have been very much still in use. K7L (talk) 17:34, 25 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, your logic is faulty. Commonname would place it at hoaxes involving water, NOT water, since it is about a hoax regarding water. Since that article doesn't exist, it's name is fine as it now stands. The word meme may, as you say "date" to 1976, but was far from any common usage until the mid- to late-90s. Oh, and my "precious" mimeograph is still in use even today (but not commonly), as they were in the 1970s (but not commonly and mostly in backwards, third world nations then). Cheers, GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 20:10, 25 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a hoax, it's a logical fallacy. Different beast. "Dihydrogen monoxide has destroyed entire towns, so H₂O should be banned" isn't a hoax (those villages are indeed gone) but is a logical fallacy if the proposed ban either doesn't solve the problem or creates new, worse problems. K7L (talk) 17:59, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it is a fallacy. But your this argument is a fallacy as well, the one of the kind "it is not wood, it is timber". Staszek Lem (talk) 16:47, 27 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Call to Close this Discussion. Can someone close this as there is not anything near consensus developing to change the article's title, and we're beating a very dead horse here. ThanX, GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 20:10, 25 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Any additional comments:

• Yes it is a hoax, i.e., (a) a deliberately fabricated falsehood (b) made to masquerade as truth. re (a): The falsehood in question is that DHMO is an extremely dangerous substance to be banned. re (b): all true facts about HDMO properties are extactly deliberate masquerading tricks. Staszek Lem (talk) 03:07, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• The danger is real. Thousands have drowned over the years. No hoax there. As for whether a ban would be helpful, that's purely a difference of opinion. As such, placing "hoax" in a title is POV and misleading. K7L (talk) 03:27, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, they drowned. Do you know that 97% of people who died of cancer ate cucumbers and 47% did thatat least twice a day in summertime? Staszek Lem (talk) 15:53, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • What do cucumbers have to do with anything (aside from their dihydrogen monoxide content)? Dihydrogen monoxide doesn't merely correlate with deaths by drowning, it causes them by mechanisms which are well-known and documented. Effectively, this stuff in sufficient quantities displaces oxygen in the victim's lungs and the victim dies. That's all been scientifically proven; do you need a WP:RS? I'm sure it could be sourced to either of the RMS Titanic enquiries (the US and UK each did one), which are reliable and any copyright on the findings has long expired. K7L (talk) 16:42, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • This article is not about dangers of water. It is about a joke. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:05, 23 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• @NickCT:: Re: "clearly not about water," I was just making a point based on comments like "the danger is real" below, which would seem to purport that this article addresses real dangers about water, which is not actually its intent (and if it were, it should be at water). Nonetheless, I do think hoax is still appropriate because there is an unstated fiction the whole idea rests upon: getting someone to believe dihydrogen monoxide is a harmful, unfamiliar substance (i.e. making sure they don't think you're talking about water). Looking at the Snopes link referenced in the article, people have been convinced to propose legislation on the subject -- a kind of notability that, to me, justifies "hoax." Two quotes from the article, the first of which comes from a New Zealand news source quoted by Snopes (and both of which happen to use the word "hoax":

  National MP Jacqui Dean has been caught out by a long-running hoax that seeks to trick gullible MPs into calling for a ban on "dihydrogen monoxide" — or water. A letter, signed by Ms Dean and sent to Associate Health Minister Jim Anderton, the minister in charge of drug policy, asked if the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs had a view on banning the "drug".

  In March 2004 the California municipality of Aliso Viejo (a suburb in Orange County) came within a cat's whisker of falling for this hoax after a paralegal there convinced city officials of the danger posed by this chemical. The leg-pull got so far as a vote's having been scheduled for the City Council on a proposed law that would have banned the use of foam containers at city-sponsored events because (among other things) they were made with DHMO, a substance that could "threaten human health and safety."

• --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  13:20, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Why would an article about drowning or lifesaving be at water? There's enough there to stand alone as a separate topic. Individual incidents involving this stuff get articles if they're historically notable - and many are. K7L (talk) 15:02, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • re "why ... at water" - by the virtue of wikipedia:Summary style. Staszek Lem (talk) 15:55, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • That makes no sense. Water and drowning are two separate topics, each of which can stand alone - and already does stand alone. Then there's Category:International maritime incidents... you intend to list each of these in the main article on water? Article scope needs to be constrained to manageable levels. Furthermore, that still doesn't address the inherent WP:POV in titling an article about a dihyrogen monoxide warning as dihydrogen monoxide hoax, where "hoax" is a very loaded term and inappropriate if what's here is technically entirely true. K7L (talk) 16:28, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes it makes sense. If someone wants to create a summary section, "Dangers of water", which may include "drowning in water". Something makes me think that you did not click the link wikipedia:Summary style. Do it now. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:11, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Furthermore, by your logic "joke" is also a very loaded term, why did you suggest such title for something "entirely true"? Staszek Lem (talk) 17:14, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • OK, I got it. You are trying to perpetrate the DHMO hoax in the context of wikipedia, right? Staszek Lem (talk) 17:08, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • What hoax? Dihydrogen monoxide doesn't stop being real just because you personally oppose the dihydrogen monoxide ban proposal. All we can do is present reliably-sourced facts in a WP:NEUTRAL manner and let the readers decide for themselves whether this stuff should be banned. K7L (talk) 17:44, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • <ROTFL> Staszek Lem (talk) 19:13, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • I concur. I get the feeling we're being meta-pranked. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  20:44, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Surely we can find a more neutral term than "hoax"? It'd be difficult to find a less neutral term, short of creating articles with titles like "nonsensical Darwinian monkey business" or adopting the pro-death and anti-choice terminology of the abortion debate. 2001:5C0:1000:A:0:0:0:8D7 (talk) 20:59, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• I have tried to think of a more descriptive term than hoax, since it is a bit ambiguous and therefore open to misinterpretation. The phrase practical joke comes to mind, although, if used alone, it suffers from the same problems. That concept seems to be a fairly close description of the intent of the website, but it has an added dimension not included in the phrase. They wish to trick gullible people for the purpose of teaching them a lesson in critical thinking and scientific skepticism. They are aiming at people who "don't get it" because they are scientifically illiterate. Can we find a term which combines these ideas? -- Brangifer (talk) 03:07, 22 May 2014 (UTC) Ignore the edit summary. It's a copy/paste error.[reply]
  • You may want to post a question at Language log. Then we can add pages like Turboencabulator into a new category described by this elusive term. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:11, 23 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Anything from dihydrogen monoxide panic to dihydrogen monoxide parody to dihydrogen monoxide spoof to dihydrogen monoxide ban petition is better than what's there now, although still POV to some extent. Using a loaded term like "hoax" is a little like telling those aboard the RMS Titanic that they should stop complaining because water is harmless. To a drowning person, water is anything but harmless. Perhaps just move this back to plain dihydrogen monoxide if this is the only context in which that name (as opposed to the WP:COMMONNAME) is used. K7L (talk) 11:38, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Check the archives of this Talk Page, if you haven't already - this topic has been much chewed-over in past years with no consensus reached about an alternative to "hoax." Changing the article back to plain old dihydrogen monoxide has been rejected previously, which doesn't mean it can't be considered again - although I would vote against that, since the article isn't about the term or the substance but about the entire ... well, hoax. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 18:37, 23 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Either K7L is pulling our leg or they don't understand our WP:NPOV policy. The HHMO is called "DHMO hoax" and "DHMO joke" is reliable sources, i.e., it is "officially" recognized as such. The issue of neutrality might have been on the table if there were equally weighted opposite opinion about DHMO, kinda "DHMO threat" or "DHMO danger". However this opinion is propagated only by pranksters and stupid marks, therefore we dismiss it as an option for the main title per WP:FRINGE. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:59, 23 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• • Do you understand WP:FRINGE? Elvis did 9/11 and the CIA is covering this up is WP:FRINGE if it can only be sourced to a supermarket tabloid, a claim that over 1500 people actually did drown (and are very much dead) in the wake of the RMS Titanic disaster is not. I doubt that any WP:RS is seriously disputing that there have been fatalities on the water, nor that better safety measures could prevent drownings.

I'd be fine with the term "dihydrogen monoxide effect" which thefederalist.com describes with "the gluten-free fad depends on the 'dihydrogen monoxide' effect, the famous stunt in which people were convinced to sign a petition to ban water, good old H₂O, by rebranding it with a scary-sounding name."[1] Effectively, bury something behind a heap of scientific jargon and it sounds more dangerous or more intimidating, as a psychological effect. That still applies even if the underlying claims are technically true. Likewise, the Great Falls Tribune's claim that "The point here is that it’s easy to make anything sound like it’s scary. People drown in water every day, and water is used as a flame retardant. People tend to assume that things with scary names and vague descriptions are bad for you"[2] acknowledges the claims about DHMO are true while insisting they're more hype and sensation than useful data (in this instance, using DHMO as a rhetorical device to downplay Coca-Cola’s phase out of BVO, brominated vegetable oil, from their products). A similar theme from consumeraffairs.com, "Search online for information about dihydrogen monoxide, and you'll find a long list of scary and absolutely true warnings about it: used by the nuclear power industry, vital to the production of everything from pesticides to Styrofoam, present in tumors removed from cancer patients, and guaranteed fatal to humans in large quantities."[3] but concluding it's safe to drink this stuff. Dihydrogen monoxide effect, because it's the terminology and the reaction (psychological, not chemical) to vague, pseudoscientific jargon that's at stake. Just lose the word "hoax" as that is POV and wrong if this is deliberately constructed so that all the claims technically are true. K7L (talk) 11:22, 24 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• It's not a hoax, it's a logical fallacy. Take a look at Cherry picking (fallacy), an informal fallacy. Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention, the most common example of which is the confirmation bias. Cherry picking may be committed intentionally or unintentionally... K7L (talk) 18:39, 26 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The confusion here occurs because the article is not about (a) water by another name, nor is it about (b) people who don't understand that DHMO is water; but it is about (c) the process of deliberately obscuring the name of water and fooling people into thinking that the name involves some other chemical - i.e., people committing a deliberate hoax of other people - in order to make one or more points. That's why the title is appropriate for this article. - DavidWBrooks (talk)

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.