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.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. After 18 days with one relisting, last !vote cast 5 days ago, slight recent trend towards "Oppose", I cannot see a consensus for the proposal. Favonian (talk) 16:12, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Taraxacum → Dandelion – "Tis about time, for Dandelion". Wine, I may add, the name of Ray Bradbury's 1957 masterpiece Dandelion Wine. Notice it's not named Taraxacum Wine. A widening 5-1 advantage as the plant's common and most recognized name in English, arguments prepare anew from the no-concensus 2019 RM, 'tis about time (dedicated to Ray and his grandfather). Randy Kryn (talk) 14:51, 13 March 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. Reading Beans, Duke of Rivia 17:01, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. Nothing has really changed fundamentally since the that last RM, and a google hits search really wouldn't matter in that context. There's really no way to make this proposed move without running against WP:COMMONNAME because the name is used both for the overall genus and specific species.

Common names are generally better suited for individual species, which this is not, so dandelion is ambiguous. It can mean the genus, or it can specifically mean Taraxacum officinale as mentioned at the top of this article in addition to Taraxacum albidum or other species that also use the common name dandelion. If someone searches the term dandelion, we don't know if they are looking for the specific common weed species, or the group in general. Under WP:COMMONNAME and WP:PRECISION, we generally defer to the scientific name when there's ambiguity and the the redirects handle that appropriately currently.

WP:FLORA, which is our defining guideline on this subject that generally says defer to the scientific name unless we have strong consensus that ambiguity issues, etc. are addressed in common name usage. Taraxacum officinale technically also gets called dandelion (and common dandelion) in addition to the genus as a whole.[1][2][3], so that's where the problem in WP:PRECISION policy comes in. Outside of this specific move discussion, I'm fine with Taraxacum officinale becoming common dandelion and assessing the other species on a case-by-case basis for common names. However, there's just too much ambiguity with genus and species sharing the same common name to use that single word alone in a species article or this current genus-level article. KoA (talk) 15:33, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Naming the mentioned page Common dandelion makes sense, while at the same time changing this one to Dandelion does as well, because of the wide differentiation in the n-grams. Common names do mean something on Wikipedia, and "dandelion" is such a common and understandable name that Wikipedia titling criteria favors it. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:52, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The common dandelion name would work there because it's not ambiguous in sources for that species that I know of. For this article though, that isn't the case because dandelion by itself is an ambiguous common name for this genus article. Name changes elsewhere wouldn't change that underlying issue in sources for our purposes on this page unfortunately. KoA (talk) 15:58, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:COMMONNAME appears to say the opposite "Although official, scientific, birth, original, or trademarked names are often used for article titles, the term or name most typically used in reliable sources is generally preferred." and WP:PRECISION does not appear to say that. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:49, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That would significantly deviate from our guidance on naming in organism articles. Ambiguity in common names is a core reason for instances of where the a common name is not appropriate where we then default to the scientific name that doesn't have that ambiguity. All this is summarized in the very beginning of WP:FLORA and shouldn't be anything new to those to frequent plant name discussions when it comes to navigating WP:CRITERIA. The reasons for why the scientific name is defaulted to when there issues with vernacular names like in this instance are outlined pretty well in our guidelines on this. I'm not seeing any significant change in sources recently or reason to deviate from our WP:PAG on this. If sources only referred Taraxacum officinale as common dandelion and not simply dandelion, there wouldn't be as much of a policy and guideline problem with calling this genus article dandelion since the recognizability argument overlaps with the species people see in their yard too much. It was made pretty clear that dandelion was not a viable name for this article on the Taraxacum genus in the past RMs. This article is not about the term dandelion, which is different than the current subject of this article. KoA (talk) 18:50, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It would not significantly deviate from our guidance, it does not deviate from PAF, it is a viable name even if you don't like it. Those are all red herrings. Please keep your responses concise. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:30, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I did a little more digging in sources again, and it's increasingly looking like reputable sources are often referring to not the overall genus (this article) when using the dandelion common name, but instead the single species Taraxacum officinale.[4][5][6] It does look like there is a case to be made that the species article is instead in contention for WP:PRIMARYTOPIC (at least to the point this article as a common name is not a clear cut primary topic) due to its invasiveness and just plan ubiquitous when dandelions are discussed. There's really no way to dismiss the ambiguity in names from sources at this point. KoA (talk) 23:31, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support, in scientific botanical works such as the Flora of North America the common name given for the genus is dandelion. Likewise in Flora of the Four Corners Region. While there are other common names for the genus they are all fairly obscure, for example the the French pissenlit, which is very occasionally used in English. WP:PRECISION does not require that there be no ambiguity whatsoever, otherwise every species would be at its scientific name because English abounds with synonyms for practically every botanical taxa. This is a comparable case to that of the tulip genus. Edit to add: Oxford English Dictionary's first definition is "A well-known Composite plant (Taraxacum Dens-leonis or Leontodon Taraxacum)", for the genus as a whole rather than T. officinale specifically. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:33, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm concerned about PRECISION being glossed over here. No one has ever claimed there be no ambiguity whatsoever and that would become a strawman argument we need to avoid. No one is disputing that dandelion is used as a common name for this genus. The issue here and in past RM discussions is that the dandelion common name is also used for other subjects in addition to this genus and is a sizeable source of ambiguity. That is why the current title has remained as the strongest WP:PAG-based name if we're following WP:FLORA. Besides FLORA mentioning Other principles in play here include precision and consistency. Both of these lend further support to the use of scientific names, and the latter leads to standardisation on certain orthographic points., it also mentions dispute sidestepping by using scientific names, especially in cases of invasive species names like we're dealing with here. Whether we like or not, the individual species that's invasive in many areas of the world makes using a vernacular name for the genus messy at best.

If we were going to suspend PRECISION (which isn't really feasible in reality given it's the core issue), then Taraxacum officinale would be the clear choice to have the name dandelion instead of its less frequently used common names like common dandelion. Honestly that article would come out ahead in that instance over this genus article. Most of the general public outside of us botanical-minded folks would be talking about that species and not the genus when using the term.

Instead, if you search dandelion, the note at the top of this page says "Dandelion" redirects here. It may refer to any species of the genus Taraxacum or specifically to Taraxacum officinale. That takes care of all the ambiguity right there starting at this top-level article and directing people to the primary invasive species article if needed. To quote Maproom in the previous RM, Why use an ambiguous title when an unambiguous one is available? The hatnote already disambiguates for us, so there's no surprise while quickly detailing the IRL conflict in naming issues. If we move to using dandelion for this article, it's only going to create more problems compared to what we have now as a decent balance of naming criteria. KoA (talk) 19:39, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am not glossing over precision. I disagree with your interpretation of "precision" and "unambiguous". These are always subject to interpretation because language is imprecise. Even scientific names are imprecise because there can be legitimate differing interpretations of the rules of priority. As I understand precision, dandelion is unambiguously the genus Taraxacum. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 21:36, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand precision, dandelion is unambiguously the genus Taraxacum. The problem is that would violate the spirit of WP:OR policy. If your personal perspective contradicts sources, we still go with the sources. In this case, there are plenty of sources that treat the species as the common name in addition to the genus. We can't' just dismiss that, and this isn't a case of WP:MONOTYPICFLORA where we can get around that easily. Even I can't use my expertise in plants to give a preference to one or the other. I have to check that at the door and just acknowledge that there are significant sources using the dandelion common name for both genus and species. KoA (talk) 17:49, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Support per WP:COMMONNAME. Rreagan007 (talk) 06:04, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose There is a wide consistency of use of scientific nomenclature for plant species on Wikipedia and the fact that one genus and/or one species has an English name in common use does not, in my opinion, detract from that. Anyone searching for Dandelion will inevitably land on the correct page through redirects, so there is no benfit to functionality by changing the article title.  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   09:44, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Support per WP:FLORATITLES: "Scientific names are to be used as article titles in all cases except when a plant has an agricultural, horticultural, economic or cultural role or use that makes it more prominent in some other field than in botany; e.g. apple, flax, rose." Note that Apple and Rose are also genus articles. Wiki-ambiguity is not an issue here because we've already determined that Dandelion is a WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT. Non-botany uses predominate with this plant, so let's use the more familiar, WP:COMMONNAME. Dohn joe (talk) 16:57, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  You left out the part of WP:FLORA right after mentioning general preference for common names, Other principles in play here include precision and consistency. Both of these lend further support to the use of scientific names, and the latter leads to standardisation on certain orthographic points. We have weigh all of that guideline and not leave out parts that outline when common names causes issues and aren't preferred.

  I wasn't going to comment until I saw the comment on WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT, which seems to be at odds with the article's history. This page was set as the primary redirect because of the very bit of guideline I just quoted related to article navigation as the genus article. This page was never determined as the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, which is something very different than PRIMARYREDIRECT.

  The redirect only comes here because we're using the scientific name framework. Without that, we'd just be weighing what the PRIMARYTOPIC is between this article and Taraxacum officinale without any pre-existing preference for either. In order to get consensus for the current proposal, it would need to be demonstrated that this article is the primary topic over the species article that primarily uses the same common name of dandelion in sources. That's a very steep hill to climb that I haven't seen laid out at all yet, and it's also partly why those of us working this page just settled on the scientific name for some article history background. The reality is that this is a complicated naming subject that is not as simple as portrayed (and why it's taking so many characters to try to get others up to speed on the background of this article). KoA (talk) 23:01, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. Nothing new since the last attempted name change, see archives. The name is most often tied to one species complex and the other species have added qualifiers.Hardyplants (talk) 16:48, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose - having looked through the previous discussion, I don't see any reason for changing now - MPF (talk) 21:55, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Opposee per WP:PRECISION, the current title is the precise name for the subject of this article. If there are changes to the status quo here, it should either be making dandelion into a disambiguation page or retargeting it to Taraxacum officinale (or moving that article). While the current title is precise, there is a lot of content in this article sourced to references that only mention T. officinale. Not having dandelion redirect here would likely help to keep this article from attracting content specifically about T. officinale. Plantdrew (talk) 20:06, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]