Talk:Lameroo, South Australia

Requested move 21 March 2017

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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not Moved.(non-admin closure) Winged Blades ^Godric 16:47, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

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Lameroo, South Australia → Lameroo – unecessary disambiguation, the town is clearly the primary topic for this name. Hack (talk) 05:21, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

• Support. Sole entry which bears this exact title, with Lameroo currently redirecting to Lameroo, South Australia. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 08:18, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
• Support. Per nom and Roman Spinner. --В²C ☎ 16:27, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose unnecessary change. Longstanding convention was that all Australian town articles would be qualified by their state to reduce the risk of future conflicts with articles that had not been written yet. WP:NCAUST was more recently watered down to permit unqualified article names. Articles that don't currently exist, but might one day for example and would be referred to as "Lameroo" in their context include: Lameroo Regional Community School, Lameroo Hawks, Lameroo railway station etc. --Scott Davis ^Talk 00:50, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Taking into account "articles that don't currently exist, but might one day..." is called a violation of WP:CRYSTALBALL, especially considering the town is likely to remain the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC of its name if articles for those topics with derivative names are created. --В²C ☎ 01:17, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
  • A glance at Category:Towns in South Australia reveals scores of stand-alone entries which bear unique names, starting with "A" — Alawoona, Allendale East, Angle Pole, Angle Vale, Arkaroola, Arthurton, etc. This categorized list, however, also includes a number of other places which, similar to Lameroo, have unique names, but still carry the add-on ", South Australia". Some of those, such as Bookabie, South Australia don't even have redirects, so that Bookabie is currently a redlink. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 01:37, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
    • Yes, there are many others to fix. But one at a time improves a bit at a time. --В²C ☎ 01:57, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

    There have been a few spates of users (including the one from the Philippines that moved most of the pages you've identified) trying to remove comma-state from town articles. In general, it became accepted to stop trying to move pages back-and-forth, and if an author created a page with a short name, it could stay there, but articles with state name would not be moved either.--Scott Davis ^Talk 04:36, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

  • Also, WP:NCAUST has been "watered down" over five years. In this version from 2012 it already says: "the undisambiguated Town is also acceptable if the article has a unique name or is the primary topic for that name" [1]. --В²C ☎ 02:03, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per ScottDavis. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:45, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. All small towns in Australia are rendered generally unrecognisable if not comma disambiguated by State or Territory, or by city if it is a town enveloped by suburban sprawl. The few town names that are recognised as sounding like town names are usually ambiguous with the British place that it was named after. Incoming links to towns will use this comma format commonname (see Julie Anthony (singer)) or will name it in the context of its state (see Billiatt Conservation Park). Category:Towns in South Australia contains hundreds of these, and surreptitiously reducing them to the short non-introductory local-only name is disruptive. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:06, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

  Most, if not all, small towns around the world may be said to be unrecognizable without a comma and some additional identifier. Whether the towns are in Australia, Austria, Argentina or Albania, those that have unique names, allow such names to stand alone unless a very specific guideline (e.g. WP:USPLACE and reliance upon the AP Stylebook) specifies otherwise. WP:NCAUST, however, does not specify in no uncertain terms that Melbourne or Adelaide may stand on their own in the same manner as AP Stylebook's Chicago or Philadelphia, but that Lameroo, South Australia or Bookabie, South Australia must have further disambiguation in the manner of uniquely-named Beekmantown, New York or Kaycee, Wyoming, with all four of the last-named places redirecting to their respective (place, state) selves. As far as incoming links are concerned, redirects attend to all forms such as London, England; Paris, France; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania or Sydney, New South Wales. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 08:14, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

  • Small towns around the world may be said to be unrecognizable without a comma and some additional identifier. Exactly right. What motivates the titling minimalists in their crusades to minimise titles at the expense of recognizability is beyond me, and I've looked hard at every reason offered. None are directed at improving the product. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:30, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
    • SmokeyJoe, what you and a few others like In ictu oculi don't seem to understand or appreciate is that your interpretation of recognizability - to make titles of obscure topics recognizable to the general reader - is contrary to WP tradition and convention. The fact that small towns in most countries around the world with unique names have always been titled with just the unique town name, and no other information in the title, demonstrates that this is not because of what you denigrate as "titling minimalists", but because of traditional WP convention to use just the name of the topic, no matter how obscure, as the article title whenever possible. Trying to change this no matter how honorable your motivations may be is a major upheaval and one of dubious merit, IMHO. What makes more sense to me is to fix the outliers by removing unnecessary disambiguation (or additional information for enhanced recognizability, if you wish) where it exists. Like in this case. See also: User:Born2cycle#Examples_of_naming_consistency. --В²C ☎ 17:48, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

      I think editors who contribute to article space have as much right to have an opinion about what helps readers as editors who do not. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:52, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

      You're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. And the facts about how articles have always been titled on WP and the very limited role recognizability has played in determining titles is plain to anyone who clicks a few times on SPECIAL:RANDOM. --В²C ☎ 18:18, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

  • It is widely recognized, that most towns in Australia, like in the US, are comma disambiguated. The minimalist "tradition and convention" was a minority opinion and a bad idea. It appeared to gain traction because the minimalists behaved as a motivated political minority, making noise, colluding to achieve isolated local victories. A false consensus in Wikipedia consensus. Very very few content writers choose to title in with the ambiguous brevity favored by minimalists. It is not a style helpful to any reader. Minimalists roving obscure articles like this, on which they have no actualy personal interest, are driving disruptive upheavals. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 19:18, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
    • The "minimalist 'tradition and convention'" is not a minority opinion - it is the principle by which the vast, vast majority of our articles are titled and always have been. Again, this can be quickly verified by clicking on SPECIAL:RANDOM a few times. Here we go, are these recognizable to you? Ptilophora ala (plant or animal kingdom??), Doctor Lautrec and the Forgotten Knights (film, book, play, band, song, album???... nope a 3DS game), Elga Balk (place in Iceland, movie, cartoon character or what?), Demodara (wtf?), Abura kiri (how recognizable is that), etc. etc. etc. Minimalist titles are the default, the standard, the way the vast majority of our articles have always been titled. Stop labeling anyone who is simply trying to maintain consistency with how articles have always been titled on WP as someone engaged in some kind of aberrant behavior. Trying to make or retain articles titles that don't need further disambiguation to be more recognizable is what is out of the norm. --В²C ☎ 20:48, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
      • You are misusing "minimalist" when you apply it in such a broad way. Minimalist titling seems to be your personal goal, but it does not describe policy. Omnedon (talk) 21:10, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
        • I'm not talking about written policy - I'm talking about the way the vast majority of our articles are actually titled and have always been titled. Written policy is supposed to reflect that, but it's not perfect, and can be easily misinterpreted. See, for example, User:Born2cycle#Is_Bothell,_Washington_more_concise_than_Bothell?. You can interpret some parts of policy to contradict minimalist titling, but the unavoidable fact is that the vast majority of WP articles are titled in accordance with minimalist policy and this can be quickly verified by anyone by examining any reasonably sized sample of SPECIAL:RANDOMly selected articles, skipping those that are disambiguated because they ambiguous and not the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. My personal goal is to retain and consistently title our articles according to this forever and widely-held WP convention: if it's unambiguous with any other uses with articles on WP, or the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, the title should be the WP:COMMONNAME of the topic. --В²C ☎ 21:27, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Hm. I've seen this SPECIAL:RANDOM trick done before on similar RMs. Why does it never produce completely mystifying and misleading article titles when I click it? Lameroo is a place name which exists in two states the opposite sides of Australia. Hence leave it alone. In ictu oculi (talk) 21:34, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

"It is widely recognized, that most towns in Australia, like in the US, are comma disambiguated." If that is so, why has WP:NCAUST not been revised to explicitly state that Australia follows the same naming conventions as WP:USPLACE? Is there no consensus for such a revision? Furthermore, why is it "widely recognized" for Australia and not for Canada or New Zealand or South Africa? For that matter, why not propose such a form for France, Germany or Poland? If it is helpful for users, why not around the world? Each nation has subdivisions of one kind or another. Belgium and Switzerland have linguistic and confederational demarcations. Surely indicating those for towns would be helpful. There could be disambiguations from here to eternity if we let them proliferate. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 21:46, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

WP:NCAUST was watered down in response to a concerted effort by people like you a bit over ten years ago, to avoid us all wasting time on numerous RMs back and forth across every article that someone thought should be named with or without a comma. In fact, you will find that the vast majority of towns, villages and localities in the vast majority of federal countries and some others with widely-known second level government structures have wikipedia articles with the state in the title of the article. Australia, US, UK (using the county name) come to mind quickly. --Scott Davis ^Talk 22:08, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

(ec)There are tedious debatable answers to all of that. Stupid non-productive theory-battles that content writers steer clear of. Theses battles are fought at the boundaries in Canada, as a front for USPLACE. NZ & SAfrica tend to have more distinctive sounding placenames, and are further from this battlefront. Europe? Towns there all have historical significance as old as their languages, place names are entrenched in the languages, there is much less of naming places after other places or people. Yes, even in Switzerland, comma disambiguation by place would be helpful to readers, but much less so than for little towns in vast wildernesses of outback Australia, and more importantly, the most applicable policy here is WP:TITLECHANGES. The minimalist titles fanatics should stop this time-wasting endless guerrilla warfare in backwaters trying to create their imagined but unobtainable consistency of minimalist titling. The consistency only applies to a titling theory, and is completely invisible to readers. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:18, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Ultimately, the only constant here is inconsistency. Australia now has a mix of stand-alone place names, some of which are randomly standing alone, while others are randomly saddled with a comma and state name. Such inconsistency is not evident in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand or, for that matter, in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Wight or the Isle of Man. It should be one or the other for Australia but, as this discussion demonstrates, if consensus was obtainable, it would have already been obtained. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 23:02, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Everything you just said is wrong. There are many constants, and inconsistency is not one of them. I certainly dispute your allegation of random. There is a history to all of this, and it is not even complicated. NZ has NZ-type names, Canada is the same as Australian, and everything else is non-applicable old Europe. It need not be all one or the other, and it cannot be all undisambiguated. We cannot have the town of Orange, for example. Just as the US has the AP Stylebook, with its underlying excellent logic, major well known cities, cities that I would describe as of international recognition; Canberra, not Canberra, ACT, Sydney despite it being ambiguous is OK because its recognition dominates the other; Melbourne similarly though less definitely, but we are not going to get the international significant capital of Darwin at its basename. Instead, there should be, there must be, a spectrum. International-level cities, like Chicago, and comma disambigation by region. Comma-state for independent cities and towns, comma-city, for old towns enveloped by suburban sprawl and suburbs. Parenthetical disambiguation for places is reserved for geographical locations, not settlements, although frequent co-location under the same name in a merged article can confuse. What you and B2C remain silent on, is value to the reader, per WP:PPP and placing your overvalued propped up policies last, and WP:TITLECHANGES which says leave these things alone unless there is a good reason to change them. Changing things without good reason is disruption. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:25, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

I simply stated the facts and, as В²C already pointed out above, "You're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts". The inconsistency begins with the first alphabetically-ordered entry at Category:Towns in South Australia — Agery, South Australia [the stand-alone entry, Agery is, as of this writing, a redlink]. The second alphabetical entry is the stand-alone Alawoona, with the analogous entry for Agery, South Australia — Alawoona, South Australia — existing as a redirect to Alawoona. These are just the first two entries of a pattern which carries such inconsistency throughout the nearly thousand entries in this category. I assume we all agree that a "stand-alone entry" is one that would not otherwise require disambiguation, thus your example of Orange is, of course, inapplicable. I invite you or anyone to find any such random — and "random" is the correct term since there is no pattern — collection of stand-alone/disambiguated place names in US, UK, NZ, SA, etc. If one, two, three or more of such forms are found, that is welcome, for those can be immediately corrected. For Australia, however, the random inconsistency continues. There are three choices — US-style comma, state name or UK-style stand-alone place names such as Ambleside or the currently-existing random inconsistency. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 00:21, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

I am not sure which of your facts that I dispute you want to debate. A lot in dispute is not "fact", although randomness is a mathematical / information science topic subject to proof subject to accepting some assumptions. Happy to call it opinion that most Australian towns are disambiguated by state except for those subjected to titling minimalists' action. Admittedly, that will turn into tautologies before proof and fact. I would not call Agery a "town", but a locality outside Moonta, South Australia. But you ignore my challenge: How is the proposal helpful to reader? And if you can articulate something, how does it pass TITLECHANGES? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:42, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Agery was already under Category:Towns in South Australia when I came upon it, but it can always be recategorized under Category:Populated places in South Australia or Category:Places in the unincorporated areas of South Australia. While only the nominator can explain how Lameroo was chosen among all the possible places in Australia to nominate for renaming, I concede that a single change of this nature will do little to influence the overall state of affairs other than as a symbolic gesture that В²C described as "Yes, there are many others to fix. But one at a time improves a bit at a time". The consensus, such as it is, for the USPLACE form remains a grudging one and a mass nomination for Australian place names may meet sufficient resistance to result in no consensus, although any reasonable solution is preferable to the present unresolved state. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 05:17, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

The US solution avoids inconsistency in that the titles are always in the same format, with a few clearly-specified exceptions. That would be a good solution here too. Omnedon (talk) 00:40, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that is the de factor titling at present for Australian cities and towns. There can't be firm boundaries though. Some towns are now suburbs, and the suburbs don't even match official local government areas. And some towns are no longer, and some are merged with their locality. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:45, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

The same thing happens in the US. Omnedon (talk) 00:47, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Absolutely, of course it does. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:58, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you Roman Spinner for noticing that the redirect at Agery was missing. I will fix that. The general consistency is proved by the fact that you found an article created almost two years ago by an editor who still has less than a hundred edits, but it was named according to the convention so nobody had an issue with it. As far as "random" articles named without ", South Australia", you would have to ask the couple of editors who went on grand renaming sprees how they chose which articles to move. I don't know if it was random, or if it is front-weighted to small places early in an alphabetic sort. --Scott Davis ^Talk 02:04, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

You are most welcome and here are a few other such redlinked redirects — Australia Plains, Benbournie, Billiatt, Binnum, Brownlow KlBrownlow KI, Charra, Chinaman Wells, Coomooroo, Couch Beach, GingealpaGidgealpa, Kainton; also Coorong redirects to Coorong National Park, without a hatnote for Coorong, South Australia and, as point of interest, there is Currency Creek, South Australia as well as Currency Creek (South Australia). Also, since there is no USPLACE-style consistent guideline, the individual editors you mention have greater leeway in furthering inconsistency. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 05:17, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Currency Creek is the sort of place that will defy attempts at consistency. A town that "never really thrived". Named after a seasonal stream, after which is named the locality, all covered in the one little article. It is a town that is not a town, not by any normal definition. Real life doesn't divide into nice matching boxes. A pain in the neck for categories more so. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:32, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I think they are all fixed now. I feel a little annoyed with myself that two of the missing redirects were to articles I initiated, but both Wikipedia searches for the short form put the right article at the top of the list. I've made two disambiguation pages, one of which needed inbound links fixing for places not in Australia. I also fixed two spelling mistakes in your list. I upgraded the hatnote at Coorong (since the targetted article gets nearly ten times the hits of all others combined). Currency Creek is already a properly constituted disambiguation page, although at the moment Currency Creek (South Australia) (the stream/inlet) is a redirect to the locality article. In practice, very few editors attempt to buck the trend of qualifying Australian town articles with the state name (as evidenced by Agery above). --Scott Davis ^Talk 11:11, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Glad to have been of some assistance. Gingealpa/Gidgealpa was, of course, a typo, with the Gidgealpa redirect already in existence. The Brownlow KI redirect was not yet in existence, but the Brownlow KI/Brownlow Kl confusion resulted from the substitution of lowercase "L" for uppercase "i" in "KI". While on the subject, here are a few additional South Australia redlinks I neglected to include in my previous posting — Emeroo, Etadunna, Mount Willoughby, Mullaquana, Pureba, Secret Rocks, Waukaringa, Whyalla Barson. Also, as far as keeping lists of such similarities, unlike the Currency Creek redirect, Wedge Island, South Australia and Wedge Island (South Australia) are two separate articles. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 16:12, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose removing the Australian state doesn't improve reader experience any more than it would for US. Current titling is helpful to all readers. And Lameroo Baths aren't even in the same state. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:40, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per In ictu oculi, SmokeyJoe and Scott Davis. Omnedon (talk) 18:41, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose while recognising that the guidelines indicate that we should remove unnecessary disambiguation. The guidelines should be changed to allow cases such as this. Perhaps broaden the scope of wp:USPLACE? Andrewa (talk) 10:25, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

I created Draft:Lameroo a few days ago, to see what it could look like. I did not install it in place while this conversation is ongoing. --Scott Davis ^Talk 13:23, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

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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.

For anyone watching this discussion - the same is playing out at Nhill, Victoria if you have opinions there. The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:02, 30 March 2017 (UTC)