Talk:RAI

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Requested move 16 July 2024

RAI → Rai (Italian broadcasting company) – the common name is "Rai"; see the official site: https://www.rai.it/, the Treccani encyclopaedia: https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/rai-radiotelevisione-italiana/, and the it.wiki page: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai. JacktheBrown (talk) 22:01, 16 July 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. ToadetteEdit (talk) 18:00, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

• 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)

There is no difference in spelling here. It's just a difference in styling. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 14:58, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

• 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)

  @AVNOJ1989: see also the Treccani encyclopaedia: https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/rai-radiotelevisione-italiana/. JacktheBrown (talk) 01:07, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Weak support per comment from FOARP. 122141510 (talk) 16:13, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

In case of confusion here, 122141510 is the same user as AVNOJ1989. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 21:47, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

@BarrelProof: thank you. JacktheBrown (talk) 22:31, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

• 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)
• 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)
• Strongly Oppose the primarytopic takeover. Support Rai (broadcaster) or some such disambiguated title. Otherwise we're just making it more ambiguous, less recognizable, less precise. Dicklyon (talk) 05:09, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

  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)

  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)

  Thanks for that. Since we already have Rai (broadcaster), and since Rai (Italian broadcasting company) has been objected to by Cfls in favor of shorter disambiguator, I'd say I strongly support the Rai (broadcaster) alternative. Dicklyon (talk) 15:11, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

  @Dicklyon: very strongly support for Rai (broadcaster). JacktheBrown (talk) 20:40, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support—ick, that discredited "primary topic" nonsense. Tony (talk) 00:50, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
• 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)

  While MOS:ABBR does 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)

  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)

  Some pertinent observations (mostly for 122141510's benefit):

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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).

   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:43, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. It's an acronym and that's still how it's most commonly seen in English. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:55, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
• 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 there} 13:05, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
  • @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)
    • Well, sources in English appear to use RAI more than Rai, so you're probably correct, and you just might be disappointed. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 16:19, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
      • @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)
• Comment: it's counterproductive to keep "RAI", in capital letters; see "Fiat" (Fiat is also an acronym). JacktheBrown (talk) 13:50, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
  • And Fiat is used in lower case in the English-speaking world too. But RAI generally isn't. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:41, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
• 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:

• "Man held for 'mafia' attack on Italian Rai TV crew"
• "Sources at the Italian state broadcaster, Rai, have accused Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing government of wanting to bend the organisation to its will"
• "Zelensky confirmed during an interview that aired Sunday on Italy's Rai TV"

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)

• • @FOARP: exactly, keeping the name in capital letters means not updating. JacktheBrown (talk) 13:07, 26 July 2024 (UTC)
• 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)
  • 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)
    • @FOARP: full support. Your comment is objectively completely correct. JacktheBrown (talk) 21:05, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

@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)

@BarrelProof: I agree with the comment, nothing more; I replied to FOARP also, and mainly, because Justlettersandnumbers misunderstood my request to move the title (I will remove the bold because it's very ambiguous). JacktheBrown (talk) 22:22, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose: Just within the last couple of weeks, I see these:
  • RAI president Soldi resigns
  • RAI Taps Clear-Com for New Intercom Setup
  • John Travolta's logo-clad shoes land RAI a £177,000 fine
    • Italy State TV Fined for Travolta's Sanremo Chicken Dance Shoes ("RAI" in the part of the article body that's visible outside the paywall)
  • Italy: RAI switching to DVB-T2 HEVC in August
  • Italian government criticised for intimidation of critical journalists (consistently "RAI" in article body)
  • 'I would have been happy to continue': The Italian government is driving out foreign opera directors (consistently "RAI" in article body)

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)

• Oppose: Seems like unnecessary work. It's already widely recognized. Waqar💬 14:58, 10 August 2024 (UTC)