Talk:It's Getting Better

Title Problems

Is it just me or shouldn't the subject line be called It's Getting Better (Barry Mann - Cynthia Weil song) instead? Yes, Mama Cass had the Hit with the song, but shouldn't an encyclopediac environment be presented in an unbiased manner? If it were as it is, then it should be speaking of ONLY the Mama Cass version. Mama Cass wasn't even the first to record it, yet it's presented in a way where she claims ownership, ...because she had the most popular version? Since there's no way (that I know of) to edit the title, I leave it to one of the main editors to reconsider and rename it, or at least give a reason why the title can't be as I suggest.

Fred Clemens FredClem (talk) 12:52, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm the editor who created the article and while I don't necessarily agree that its title should be changed - the song merits a Wikipedia article because of the Cass Elliot version - I wouldn't disagree either: as there's no current Wikipedia article entitled It's Getting Better except for a re-direct to this article perhaps there's no need for any parenthetical text in this article's title. Certainly a title may be edited although that step is not termed "editing a title" but rather "moving a page" and that option is only available to registered editors who can click the downward pointing arrow between the star and the search engine box and be enabled to move the relevant page to appear under the title deemed appropriate. That's pretty much it although if you wish you can read the detailed Wikipedia article on moving a page by clicking here. I actually could have moved the page in less time than it took to write this post but as I say I don't strongly feel this article's title needs changing: I think an editor who does feel that way should take ownership for seeing it through. --Cherrylimerickey (talk) 02:21, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

See WP:Naming conventions (music)#Bands, albums and songs under the "Disambiguation" heading. In the case of "It's Getting Better", one may argue no disambiguation is needed and it is unnecessary to even have a disambiguation term in the title; but it appears the song might be confused with the Beatles song "Its Getting Better All the Time", so the term is appropriately "(Cass Elliot song)" to differentiate it from other articles about other songs with the same or nearly the same title. You can see by looking at other song articles that generally the most well-known performing artist is used as the disambiguation term, not the composer(s), because that's generally how a song is best known. Cass Elliot's version is the most well-known as measured by chart position. There is talk page discussion about this, but there has not been a consensus to change the policy. An example from that talk page is if the song "Thriller" was to be disambiguated further, a reader would much readily recognize "Thriller (Michael Jackson song)" than "Thriller (Rod Temperton song)". --hulmem (talk) 18:37, 7 November 2012 (UTC)