Talk:Keaau, Hawaii

Okina

The GNIS spells the name Keaʻau, so I propose spelling it that way again in the article, instead of using the old simplified spelling. W Nowicki (talk) 03:31, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Can you find Keaʻau or Kea'au at factfinder.census.gov? This is a census-designated place, so by definition it must go by the Census spelling. Nyttend (talk) 00:59, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, indirectly. When I go to http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/gazetteer it says: "This dataset is derived from the Census GICS and does not contain unincorporated place names. For other geographic entities, try searching the USGS Geographic Names Information System." and as noted above, GNIS uses the ʻokina. See feature ID 360892, U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Geographic Names Information System. The more basic question is if this article should be about the place (commnity, town, populated place, whatever you want to call it), which was established long before any census, let alone an old database with historical limitations, or just the CDP. The article title is not "Keaau-CDP, Hawaii". The Census is merely one way of measuring this place. It sounds like we have differing opinions, so need mediation to avoid edit war. I think a very reasonable compromise is to have the article title not use the ʻokina, and perhaps even the infobox title if you insist, but the body of the article governed by the Hawaii Manual of Style instead of your personal choice. W Nowicki (talk) 03:29, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Many sources omit diacritics for the sake of simplicity even when they properly should be there. Try going to Place Names of Hawaiʻi, an authoritative reference (available online at [1]), and what do you find? Keaʻau, not Keaau. The fact that it is a CDP is irrelevant, we're not talking about two different places. In fact, different places may be distinguished by the presence of diacritics, e.g. Mana (on Molokaʻi) and Mānā (in Kaʻū on Hawaiʻi). KarlM (talk) 11:03, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

"Keaau CDP, Hawaii" is not the Bureau's name for the community; the type of community is always given after the name, as you can witness at Oklahoma City city, Oklahoma. It is an error to state that "Kea'au is a census-designated place" as you propose; by going by a different name, you're effectively saying that the Census Bureau — which is, by the way, using English as used by English speakers in the vast majority of the world — is unreliable here. Do you suggest removing the data dependent on the Census Bureau? The GNIS describes a populated place with indefinite boundaries and population; nothing can be said about it demographically or geographically except the coordinates and elevation of its center. Nyttend (talk) 00:17, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

No, I am suggesting that you read the style guide before making changes that do not comply with the consensus of the project. If the census database from ten years ago had limitations, then those might be explained. In each article might be overkill, but you are the CDP expert, so if that is what you want, it might make sense to discuss before edit warring. If it were me I would just explain in the article that defines what "Census-designated place" means (it is not a term I ever heard of before working as a Wikipedia editor!) that the database from ten years ago had some limitations, such as dropping what is considers "punctuation", (even though ʻokina is actually a letter, not punctuation) much like the post office does. I think reasonable people are very used to this. The CDP article aready notes the special case of Hawaii not having any separately incoporated cities. I would also suggest we follow the convention of every other encyclopedia I know of and use the CDP data as one aspect of describing what is notable about a place. If you want to make sure the name in the infobox matches precisely what is in the CDP database, as is done for example with National Register of Historic Places listings, that would probably be acceptable if proposed in the style guide. Perhaps the lead could say something like: "Keaʻau is a community in the Puna District of Hawaii County, Hawaii, United States, which is identified by the Census-designated place Keaau, Hawaii." This article so far does not include anything besides CDP data, but I was writing articles on the parks and history of the area and was about to add some. I do not want to waste my time if the changes will just be backed out.

The comment about "English" does not seem relevant. Keaʻau is not an English word (not in any dictionary I know of). It is a word in the Hawaiian Language. For towns like Mountain View, Hawaii we do use the English name instead of the Hawaiian one. Place names in Spanish, French, and even Irish (where English is one of the official languages, as in Hawaii with two) in Wikipedia are spelled with non-English characters in the body of the article. Avoiding them in article titles is also proposed in the Hawaii manual of style. Why overrule the policy for Hawaiian Language place names but not European languages? My interpretation of Wikipedia policy is that European languages should deserve equal respect with those spoken by other races. W Nowicki (talk) 03:19, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

We should use the name form which corresponds with the more general approach of encyclopedic information preferably. It seems a little strange to me that the naming policy of the authority responsible for the aspects of statistical and demographic purposes should be granted priority over the more general approach of geography which includes historical, cultural, and other aspects of human settlements. I think Nyttend is right stating that GNIS describes a populated place with indefinite boundaries and population, but for historical, cultural, and many other references the exact coordinates and elevation are adequate for localization and therefore effectual tools for research and interconnection with other data and information. In the same way the name form used for CDP is not the source of demographic data itself but merely allows the appropriate correlation with the respective data, e.g. using the search of the database at factfinder.census.gov. Therefore the significant notion of Keaau, Hawaii being the relevant name form for the CDP should be sufficient and provides the exact information for the reader of an encyclopedic article. --ThT (talk) 20:27, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Because nobody opposed to my proposal I added the information about the populated place in the GNIS database considering the MOS:HAWAII as well. --ThT (talk) 19:40, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

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