Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archives/2010/August

Australian place name convention

Should Australian city/town/suburb articles be listed at Town, State no matter what their status of ambiguity or should Australian city/town/suburb articles with unique names or that are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name be allowed to use an undisambiguated title? -- Mattinbgn\^talk 05:36, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I wish to see a modification in the section of this guideline relating to Australia to remove the concept of compulsory disambiguation. The current wording reads as follows:

Australian town/city/suburb articles are at Town, State no matter what their status of ambiguity is. Capital Cities will be excepted from this rule and preferentially made City. The unqualified Town should be either a redirect or disambig page. Local government areas are at their official name

I propose this section be reworded to read:

Australian town/city/suburb articles that are uniquely named or unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name can have undisambiguated titles. Where disambiguation is required, this will take the form of Town, State in the first instance. If further disambiguation is required—such as at Springfield, Victoria—this should be shown in parentheses as follows: Town, State (disambiguation). Local government areas are at their official name.

The practice of compulsory disambiguation goes against the principles of Wikipedia:Article titles which state that article titles should be recognisable, easy to find, precise, concise and consistent. To demonstrate how the current guideline breaches these principles, I will use the New South Wales town of Deniliquin, New South Wales as my example.

1. Recognisable: The town is not called "Deniliquin, New South Wales" by anyone. Locals, visitors, government documents, newspapers etc. etc. all call the town simply Deniliquin. No general reader (as opposed to Wikipedia editor) would look for the article under any other name but Deniliquin
2. Easy to find: The most natural name to look for and to link to is simply "Deniliquin", not "Deniliquin, New South Wales"
3. Precise: Names should only be as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously. "Deniliquin" does that sufficiently. "Deniliquin, New South Wales" is no more precise, for its additional length.
4. Concise: "Deniliquin" is more concise than "Deniliquin, New South Wales"
5. Consistent: While having all Australian place names at Town, State allows for consistency within Australia, it is inconsistent with the approach taken for place names everywhere else other than the US. The current practice with Australian articles is inconsistent with other Anglophone nations such as the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada—all of which manage to adequately maintain their place name articles without compulsory disambiguation.

Whatever rationale that may have previously existed to maintain compulsory disambiguation (and several have been provided in the past), none of these surely apply any more. Australian geographical features such as rivers and mountains are not compulsory disambiguated, I see no valid reason to continue disambiguating articles on towns where it is unnecessary. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 05:38, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with all the above arguments and support the proposal.--Kotniski (talk) 06:26, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the proposal because it seems to take into account problem places like Newcastle, where there are several places in NSW named Newcastle; Newcastle as defined by the ABS, the UC/L, the actual city and the suburb. --AussieLegend (talk) 07:50, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the proposal in principal, but will remain curious as to what happens to exceptions or oddities that might occur SatuSuro 09:37, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Other than Newcastle, Albury or Liverpool, do you have any specifics in mind? --AussieLegend (talk) 10:16, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Going to have to be a pest here and disagree for the following reasons:

• I don't see that there's any compelling problem with the status quo that would require the renaming of perhaps thousands of pages, along with all the maintenance work that that would create.
• The current naming scheme also neatly prevents disagreement as to whether Manly, New South Wales is important enough to not require a disambig compared to Manly, Queensland
• An advantage of the current naming scheme is that it also conveniently disambiguates from non-Australian locations. For instance, there is no overlap between the two "Manly"s above and Manly, Iowa. If you start eliminating the state names, you don't need to just worry about other locations within Australia, you need to worry about the rest of the world as well.

With that said, in cases like Deniliquin where the title is completely unambiguous, it makes sense to have a redirect to the longer article name. I remain open to argument, but I'm not convinced that this change is particularly necessary. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 10:24, 16 May 2010 (UTC).

I did try and anticipate your "Manly" concern by using the statement "unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name" in my new wording. "Unquestionably" being the key concept. With the "Manly" example, there is obviously room for reasonable disagreement about the relative signifance of the places named "Manly" and therefore the status quo would remain. Yes, there will be some disagreement at times, but the Canadian and UK projects seem to be able to deal with decisions like this in a mostly amicable way; I think we can too and I don't think we as a project should seek to use a workaround merely to avoid making what may be difficult decisions. Is there a compelling problem? I think, yes. The current guideline makes it harder for users (as opposed to editors) to find what they are looking for as quickly and easily as they should be able to. It may make editors' jobs easier (although I would dispute that too) but it comes at the expense of our readers. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 10:42, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

There's now a requirement that all new BLPs require references. However, as I understand it, this only applies to BLPs created after March 18, 2010. There's no requirement to retroactively apply {{prod-blp}} to all BLPs that aren't referenced, so do we really have to rename our articles to comply with a new convention? Surely we could word the convention appropriately:

Australian town/city/suburb articles that are uniquely named or unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name can have undisambiguated titles. Where disambiguation is required, this will take the form of Town, State in the first instance. If further disambiguation is required—such as at Springfield, Victoria—this should be shown in parentheses as follows: Town, State (disambiguation). Local government areas are at their official name. This convention applies only to articles created after 12 May 2024. Articles created prior to then may be at their disambiguated titles. These articles should only be renamed to their undisambiguated title where a reasonable need is seen.

We probably don't even need to go that far, as "can have" doesn't mean "shall have". --AussieLegend (talk) 11:34, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Seems a bit silly to set a cut-off date. Once we've decided that we no longer want to follow the old convention, it's surely desirable that all articles be brought into line with the new one, as soon as people can be bothered to spend the time doing it. Insisting on retaining a mixture of two systems really would be pointless inconsistency.--Kotniski (talk) 16:38, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

They've done it with BLPs so why not here, as an issue of practicality. We're not talking about a few articles here, we're talking about 5-10 thousand articles by my count. In any case, as I indicated, "can have" doesn't mean "shall have" so it wouldn't be case of mixing conventions since disambiguated articles fit right into the proposed convention. If we say we can't go to a new convention because we'd have to rename too many articles, we're stuck with the same convention forever. --AussieLegend (talk) 07:17, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't mean that we should insist on renaming thousands of articles overnight; I'm just saying that if and as people can be bothered to do the renaming (particularly in the cases of unique names, since potential primary topics will generally need discussion), then there shouldn't be a "rule" that hinders them in doing so.--Kotniski (talk) 07:31, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I'd support that. It seems very unnecessary to have Deniliquin as a redirect to Deniliquin, New South Wales if that's the only placename on Wikipedia with that name. How many Australians say "Alice Springs, Northern Territory", or any derivitave of "City, State", for that matter? The media doesn't, and I sure don't. I'm sure there'd be thousands of places with unique names —especially since probably more than half of Australian placenames are etymologically Aboriginal. Surely nobody is going to enforce a deadline for the renaming of these pages, but if the policy (or guideline) is there, people will follow it for new articles and the WikiProject Australian places can put the rest on their to-do list. Great idea, Kotniski. I actually wasn't aware of the current policy. Geelong, Victoria? Oodnadatta, South Australia? Cairns, Queensland? Townsville, Queensland? Wow! Night w (talk) 13:28, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I support Kotniski's proposal. It seems to me that forcing dismbiguation to a class of article names goes against the principle of using the most concise name for the article. IMO, disambiguated names should only be used if there is a chance of confusion by using the bare name. For a great many Australian place names there would be little chance of confusion, and even for the Manly example, I would use "Manly" for the Manly in Sydney, and "Manly, Queensland" for that town. Most people in Australia would assume in this case that "Manly" was the one that was named that way in the very early days of European colonisation. - Nick Thorne ^talk 22:25, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

And as for Manly, New Zealand and the other people and things called Manly? Orderinchaos 01:04, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

• I fully support the proposal, and would be happy to see it go further: dump the "unquestionably" stuff, and simply follow our SOPs on disambiguation and primary topics. Hesperian 23:53, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
• My view is the same as Lankiveil's - I see no compelling reason for the change, and a few hazards ahead if we were to implement such a change. One consequence would be to make suburbs in cities (which, checking on AWB, form slightly over half the affected articles) hard to find - the consistency provided by the present rules means there is no question as to where a suburb article may be found. Also when searching for our articles in wider cleanup lists it's easy to identify them and deal with them (it's something I've had to do a fair bit over the years). I've dealt occasionally with Auckland suburbs which follow something like the convention being proposed here and it is an exercise in hit and miss trying to find the damn things (which, when trying to do some quick research e.g. for a term paper, is a roadblock). Writing suburb articles when you have to look up, individually, every one of the articles needing to be linked (as one has to link between 5 and 12 of them usually) is a pain and, especially if one's motivation is weak, is a disincentive to wading into them in the first place. It became so much of an issue in South Africa that they ended up adopting our convention for suburbs of cities. I'm more open minded when it comes to larger towns or cities - Geelong being a good example. We already have an exception for capital cities and we could actually make that a bit wider without too many problems. Orderinchaos 01:03, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

• Question - "the consistency provided by the present rules means there is no question as to where a suburb article may be found" - Where would I put an article about the suburb of Newcastle? Certainly not at Newcastle, New South Wales. --AussieLegend (talk) 03:36, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

CBDs/"downtown areas"/city centres have always been a hazard, no matter where in the world they are - and I don't see any consensus or agreement forming any time soon. Orderinchaos 07:10, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

The proposal would solve that, Newcastle, New South Wales for the city and Newcastle, New South Wales (suburb) for the suburb. --AussieLegend (talk) 15:57, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

We implemented this for a perfectly good reason, and that hasn't changed years later. We had an absolute mess of a situation; articles disambiguated with no less than about seven different suffixes, making it absolutely impossible to find if Wikipedia did actually have an article on the subject. With this convention, anyone knows exactly where to find an article on an Australian town. Orderinchaos puts this better than I. Let's not go over this again. Rebecca (talk) 01:20, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

• We can address OIC concerns with more susscinct categories for the burbs so I agree in principle but before people start running around with awb we need to have a clear disambiguation format, and in cases where disambiguation is necessary rather we disambiguate in all cases rather than argue which is the primary topic. Look at Perth while ignoring Perth, Tasmania how does it get dab'd Perth, Australia Perth, Western Australia and then theres the burb Perth does that become Perth, Perth stay at Perth, Western Australia (suburb) or become Perth, Australia(suburb). Gnangarra 01:41, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

How do you mean "more succinct categories"? That doesn't help a reader in finding the article they want. I agree re capital city centres - that entire area has been a mess everywhere, I think, as I've seen disagreements about Melbourne and Adelaide, and uncertainty re Perth. Orderinchaos 02:11, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

• This is a little difficult IMO, Wagga Wagga, New South Wales should be at Wagga Wagga but how should the suburbs be (currently they use Suburb, State)? Should it be Suburb, City or left in the current form? Bidgee (talk) 04:02, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I think this should be made a pretty much universal rule (not specific to Australia or anywhere else) - suburbs should be disambiguated as [Suburb, City] if any disambiguation is needed. There may be some reason why some countries might need to use a slightly different scheme (for example, what happens if the city itself is ambiguous), but I see no reason not to adopt this as a default general rule. (Generally speaking, we should be working to eliminate any random differences in conventions between countries.)--Kotniski (talk) 07:59, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Australia falls right into the ambiguous area here. Not all suburbs are in cities and while no suburbs (in New South Wales at least) cross city boundaries, the WP:AUSTRALIA definition of a city would result in many suburbs being in cities when they actually aren't. --AussieLegend (talk) 09:34, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Which is why perhaps trying to fit into conventions used from other countries as suggested by Kotniski is by no means a good idea: also there seems to be an issue where helping a reader find what they want is seen as a guideline to be desired. When the title with a state name is used by people from North America to clarify which state the place they are talking about, that usage is seen as helpful to clarify (NY, NY is the city in the state) - I fail to see the differentiation being made here to remove a state name as an exercise for ease of use by enquirers maybe the usage of contra logic - the reverse might be truer in application? I fail to see the usage of Perth, Australia in commons for example as having any validity - it is either Perth, Western Australia (and if anyone is unaware - the usage of Perth alone has been interesting when reviewing 4 year old history of periodic arguments with geographically challenged scots) or Perth, Tasmania - and from that example and my personal general thinking believe removing state names is a bad move SatuSuro 12:01, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Agreed with AussieLegend - there's perennial arguments about which suburbs are in or out of which city, and some aren't actually in any - it's easier to just have the state. Also broadly agree with SatuSuro. (And yes, Wagga Wagga is a textbook case of when we shouldn't disambiguate - it's definitely more well known than what state it's in.) Orderinchaos 07:08, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

• I support Mattinbgn's proposal. We should have consistency with WP:AT, and compulsory disambiguation is not consistent. --TorriTorri(^talk/_contribs) 19:01, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Has anyone considered something similar to the Canadian style? Those conventions there seem like they would satisfy much of what is being proposed here. For example:

• Cities can be moved if they (a) have a unique place name, or (b) are the most important use of their name. A city's relative international fame, or lack thereof, may have some bearing on criterion (b), but it is irrelevant if the city qualifies under criterion (a) — if there's no other Flin Flon anywhere in the world, then it's not valid to cite Flin Flon's lack of international fame as a reason to keep the article at "Flin Flon, Manitoba".

Why can't we do the same with Australian places. What's the logic behind having unique names as redirects to a title with the state on the end? Night w (talk) 22:02, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Main problem is still finding them. Orderinchaos 07:08, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation for the three C's Clarity, Consistency, avoid Confusion when articles were being created it also addressed concerns over which was the primary name aka Newcastle, Manly, Guildford, Ashfield, Sorento, Brighton, Scarborough.......Gnangarra 07:36, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

• I don't see any Australia-specific problem that warrants the current significant deviation from the standard guideline. Melburnian (talk) 13:11, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I have to say I still haven't seen any compelling reason why we need to make such a massive change. Yes, for capitals and other large cities I suppose it makes sense to have an article without the comma for the urban area (Brisbane for the metro, Brisbane, Queensland, for its core suburb). But I think that the consistency that we already have is a bigger advantage than any perceived benefit to making the whole system inconsistent and arbitrary. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 23:48, 21 May 2010 (UTC).

I don't see how the change would have to be massive, based on the proposed wording. --AussieLegend (talk) 16:00, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Some people's interpretation of this change is to move 6000+ articles and change possibly 80,000 links within days of it being passed (assuming that it is). It's a level of chaos we won't be able to undo. It's, in my view, also a bigger problem for the suburbs than it is for the towns/regional centres - like I said, I tried to work with Auckland stuff doing research for an assignment and the random disambig status over there made it an exercise in patience and frustration. Orderinchaos 23:14, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I wrote the proposed change in a manner that would allow for minimalistic change in the policy for naming Australian places. My major concern was to remove the farcical rule that requires the compulsory disambiguation of articles such as Deniliquin, Cunnamulla, Manangatang, Orroroo, (See Talk:Orroroo, South Australia for some idea of the confusion this causes non-Australian editors), Dwellingup and Zeehan; i.e. the clear cut cases. I am personally not so fussed about Manly, Perth, etc. Just as easy to disambiguate if there is any argument or doubt. If disambiguation is required, then I strongly support the use of state names for this purpose in all cases. It is simple, clear and is consistent with the manner in which Australians generally think of place names (i.e. Postal addresses are formatted "Name, State" regardless of status as town/suburb/locality etc.). It should avoid OICs problem with finding suburbs etc.

I would not like to see the problem of CBD articles—how many CBD articles do we actually have, anyway?—hold up the common sense and minimal change proposed. If that requires further work to find a consensus, surely that should be a further discussion—it is not as if the current wording of the guideline provides any guidance on that matter as it is.

As for how any change would take place, well I see a gradual move over to the common sense names as editors identify articles that should be moved. I don't see the need to agree on a list beforehand and then using AWB to work through the list. I would be more comfortable with a manual process, but if editors want to use AWB and can be careful not to step on toes, then I wouldn't have too many concerns. I am not sure that the change can be described as "chaos"; the proposal is a minimal one. Still, someone will need to determine if the reasonable level of support so far translates to consensus for the specific change suggested. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 12:08, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

The discussion will have been open for two weeks on 30 May. The last comment not by the nominator was on 23 May. Are there any objections to me finding someone to close the discussion on Sunday? -- Mattinbgn\^talk 21:58, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Just noting that I agree with Matt on the CBD question being entirely separate to this one - we have at least six (Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane and Ipswich). No matter what system we came up with, these articles would be exceptions. Orderinchaos 22:28, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Ipswich? It's at Ipswich, Queensland! I agree they're separate issues, but in a perfect world I'd like to see the "comma rule" applied directly to state capitals as well. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 08:23, 28 May 2010 (UTC).

(Ipswich is at Ipswich, Queensland for the regional centre and Ipswich (suburb), Queensland for the gazetted suburb boundaries.) Orderinchaos 05:05, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure under the current policy why the exemption for state capitals applies. I agree, if we are for compulsory disambiguation it should be across the board - no exemptions. I suspect the exemption for the state capitals is an implicit concession that compulsory disambiguation can lead to what are frankly weird outcomes. If there is a rational explanation for the exemption only for state capitals, I have not heard it.

• I think there is nothing wrong with the current system - it means that 99% of the time when editing, I can ensure I link directly to the article without having to check if there is a disambiguation page. For those towns/suburbs which are unique, redirects are free, you are allowed to link to them and they are probably not even noticed by most readers. If we go back to a "Name only", unless disamb is needed then "Name, State" approach (which I admit is the basic rule on wikipedia), I think it will make linking to Australian towns harder, not easier. I think this is a good example of Ignore some rules - ignore the wikiwide rule and keep our own. The bottom line is that a user trying to find Deniliquin doesn't have to know it's in NSW, as the redirect takes them straight there. The editor writing about a person from Deniliquin who is unaware of this rule can link to the redirect without issue, or those who know about can link direct to the name, state page. Doesn't matter. The advantage is that you if you know the rule, you don't need to do the "does it have a disambiguation page" check first, because linking to dab pages is bad, linking to redirects is OK. The naming of CBD/LGA/Suburbs issue is separate and exists in any system so is irrelevant to this discussion.The-Pope (talk) 01:57, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand this - the redirects would work both ways, so there's really no problem on this score whatever solution is chosen. You will still be able to link to [Place, State] even if the article title is just [Place].--Kotniski (talk) 05:58, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Some editors don't like linking to redirects, both for aesthetic reasons and to make sure the link survives if (for example) some Californian thought Deniliquin a neat name and proceeded to name a subdivision after it. Some readers don't like arriving through redirects. Their tastes are not yours, but we should still cater to them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:40, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

As I've pointed out when you've said this sort of thing before, it's a much better argument against redundant disambiguation than for it. (By making the short, natural name for something not correspond to the title of the article, we needlessly send many search-obox users through redirects; we also create more typing for editors who wish to avoid linking through redirects). All this is very unimportant in my view, but any weight it does have comes down on our side.--Kotniski (talk) 16:53, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't speak Strine; but in American, Matawan and Matawan, New Jersey are both natural names for the place - and the latter will be more natural from California or Nebraska, possibly even from NY or Pennsylvanis - in short, for the majority. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:54, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

• And a consistent choice among idiomatic possibilities is not inconsistent with general Wikipedia practice. Consider biographical artilces, surely one of our largest classes; they are almost always titled with full nmae. But the surname alone is always less typing, often more common, sometimes unambiguous (is there a notable Faraday other than Faraday? ODNB has none), quite often primary usage (how often do people mean a Jefferson other than Jefferson?); yet there they are: Thomas Jefferson and Michael Faraday. This, unlike Matawan, makes them harder to find if you don't happen to remember they are Tommy and Mike - and yet we use it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:19, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

• Oh, come on! You're stretching now. Faraday's name is Michael Faraday, not Faraday - which is shorthand. Deniliquin's name is Deniliquin, not Deniliquin, New South Wales. Using a subject's full name rather than a shorthand version, is not remotely comparable to adding a superfluous disambiguation to an already unique name. -- Mattinbgn\^talk

This is why we speak of article titles, not of names. (This page is slightly old-fashioned in that; but observe that the policy is WP:Article titles.) We are not deciding what Faraday's name was; we are deciding what would be convenient to call an article about him. Thus for example, we have no hesitation is calling an article Cicero, although his name was Marcus Tullius Cicero (and even there I've excluded Marci filius in the Fasti); similarly, we title an article Bertrand Russell, not Bertrand Arthur William, 3rd Earl Russell. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:17, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

We seem to be straying from the point when talking about people rather than places, but here too, our practice is more consistent with the non-use of redundant disambiguation. Inclusion of forenames would probably be thought of as giving a different, more encyclopedic form of the name rather than disambiguating - whereas true disambiguators, like "(musician)", are specifically not used when they would be redundant. We could do this - include extra information in all article titles so as to make them irreovcably and permanently unambiguous - but we don't, and having random thematic islands where for some reason we do (US places, Aus places, monarchs) introduces inconsistency rather than consistency into our naming practices. There may be some reason to do this with US places (common idiom) and even with monarchs (at least, as far as consistent with idiom - unfortunately we go too far there), but I don't see any particular reason to do this for Australia (though I too am not a Strine speaker).--Kotniski (talk) 11:12, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

• There's no apparent reason why Australian cities need deviate from the standard naming practices, as outlined in WP:AT. Where the place's name is unique, or the most important use, then the place name alone is required for the title. Wikipedia should be written for its readers, not to satisfy an editor's desire for "consistency". Jayjg ^(talk) 21:50, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
  • And it should not be written to satisfy one editor's desire for inconsistent [titles]. Do whatever is most convenient for the readers of Australian articles; WP:AT offers five desiderata - of which consistency is one. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:57, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
    • Indeed not. However, since no editor that I'm aware of has a "desire for inconsistent", your response is rather puzzling. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:46, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
      • Thank you; I have copyedited.
      • It may be useful to point out that the purpose of policy and guideline pages alike is to document what is actually done. Editing this page does not change guidance; editing WP:AT does not change policy - or every vandal would do so. The purpose of these pages is to describe policy; vandals introduce errors in that description. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:41, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
        • Alas, the response is equally puzzling, since no editor I'm aware of has a "desire for inconsistent [titles]". Also puzzling is your use of the term "vandal", which on Wikipedia has a very specific meaning (see WP:VANDAL). Have "vandals" been "introduc[ing] errors" in the "description" of policy? If so, which ones, and where? Jayjg ^(talk) 01:16, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
          • • Yes, of course they have. Every policy page which is not semi-protected - and some that are - gets vandalized. If any editor is indeed unaware of this, he should check some edit histories. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:12, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
              • You were writing as if referring to some very specific examples; I take it, then, that you were merely noting that policy pages get vandalized from time to time, like every other page? Jayjg ^(talk) 02:21, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
                • And that that vandalism does not change policy. Policy pages do not create policy; they record policy. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:24, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
                  • I see. Policy pages sometimes get vandalized, and vandalism doesn't change policy. Yes, we are in agreement. And how does that relate to the Australian place name guideline? Jayjg ^(talk) 02:35, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
                    • I have no idea; it wasn't me who chose to discuss general naming practice is this section. Whne others did, I had a counter-example. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:50, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
                      • Um. Anyway, as stated, there's no apparent reason why Australian cities need deviate from the standard naming practices, as outlined in WP:AT. Where the place's name is unique, or the primary use, then the place name alone is required for the title. Also, you're incorrect in your description of policy; policy is both descriptive and prescriptive. When the original content policies were formulated, it is doubtful that even 1 in 1000 articles fully complied with them. Even now, only a small minority of articles do. The policies didn't (and often still don't) describe actual practice, but rather describe ideal practice. As for guidelines, they are generally written for the express purpose of bringing uniformity to a multitude of practices, rather than describing any pre-existing standard practice. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:28, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

The titles of Australian articles are expected to satisfy the five desiderata specified in WT:AT, which does not set any standard form. The purpose of guidelines is to suggest standard forms which fulfill those desiderata as best as may be; a standard will, by nature, tend to satisfy consistency. Any standard which does a reasonable job on all five is acceptable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:39, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

The proposal was to get rid of compulsory disambiguation. Why is it necessary for a standard to have to be enforced at all? There doesn't seem to be any logic to having State/Territory names in titles like Geelong, Victoria, Alice Springs, Northern Territory. Why is it not possible for these pages to just be able to use the name of the place? Is it really just for the sake of consistency?

The names of many of these places are redirects anyway, which is a bit confusing when typing them into the searchbox. In order to get where you want as fast as you can, you don't know in which cases you're required to disambiguate. And ordinary readers? Traffic stats show that huge numbers go through redirects...just for the sake of consistency? I don't see why Canadian placenames don't require disambiguating, but Aussie ones do. Night w (talk) 22:49, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

It isn't necessary to disambiguate universally; if editors agree on a different standard, fine. But it may be useful; it will be least useful in Category:Towns in Northern Australia almost all of which are unique. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:12, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Exactly so, Night w. These unusual compulsory disambiguation sections of guideline defy logic, and end up pushing readers through redirects. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:34, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

No they don't; they permit readers to avoid redirects, by using a predictable naming scheme; a naming scheme for Northern Australia which dabbed nothing would be almost as effective, but that's not true even for all of Australia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:40, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

No, they permit editors (who are familiar with Wikipedia guidelines) to avoid redirects. Readers (the people for who we are supposed to be catering for) without knowledge of the naming guidelines will still end up at redirects - in fact they will end up at more redirects without any clue as to why they have been redirected. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 23:46, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. Jayjg ^(talk) 00:21, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

It might not even be predictable for the majority of editors. For example, I've editing on Wikipedia since 2008, but until this thread I hadn't been aware of the naming policy; mostly because I don't contribute to pages on Australian places. Even now that I am familiar with it, I'm far more likely to just type "Deniliquin" into the searchbox, than I am to type out "Deniliquin, New South Wales". So, what are the reasons for keeping the status quo? So far, the main problem I've heard is "Oh, but moving everything is such a bother..." Irrelevant: We're only talking about making it possible for moves to occur should editors at a specific page desire it, right? Night w (talk) 01:26, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, Order in Chaos, far above, is the only reader to comment - and he finds a systematic approach a great help in finding whether an article exists. It is readers that this entire encyclopedia is intended to help. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:55, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Huh? Orderinchaos (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) is a long-standing editor and administrator. Please explain exactly how the "systematic approach" helps a reader unfamiliar with this bizarre naming guideline find an article - as opposed to being shunted around to redirects? This naming guideline is a contrivance made to suit editors at the expense of readers, and it does not even work very well for the editors -- Mattinbgn\^talk 19:23, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Any reader should be able to observe, after seeing half-a-dozen instances, that we have a standard form - and so that our article on Manly, Queensland is either under that title or unwritten; the same for NSW. If we declare one Manly primary usage and delete the full form, then that assurance no longer holds; you have to look at Manly to see what the topic is, or whether it is a disambiguation - or perhaps a virility product ;->. That is a small but real advantage; whether it is greater than the penalty of typing (which is doubtful since the new search engine; type in Denili and Deniliquin, New South Wales is the only option) is the question that should be being discussed, without rhetoric or falsehoods. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:11, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Getting pretty tired of the continual insinuations of falsehoods. Disagreeing with you does not equal falsehood. Please assume good faith. Why should be expect a reader to look at six or so articles to pick up a pattern? Why shouldn't a reader find her article at the first place she looks, the first time she looks? Of course, your use of Manly is disingenuous - I expect Manly should be a disambiguation page under the standard naming guidelines and as such Manly, New South Wales to be the appropriate place for that article. One question however, why should Australian place names be 'compulsorily disambiguated and not, say Melbourne or Murray River or numerous other examples where the standard disambiguation rules apply and work well? -- Mattinbgn\^talk 20:34, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

This is the crux of the matter. However, as you probe this "foolish consistency", you will be met with more and more heated personal comments, and straw man examples of place names that would have been disambiguated anyway. The same thing happens with American place names; if you ask why, say, Baton Rouge, Louisiana must be compulsorily disambiguated, the response will either be "Springfield is multiply ambiguous" or "the United States is different". Jayjg ^(talk) 21:30, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

A reader who never looks at Australian articles will not be inconvenienced by whatever system we use. A reader who looks once will type in Denili and at that point be offered Deniliquin, New South Wales - and click on it - with assurance that it is what she wants and not an article on some homonym. A reader who looks six times will notice and take advantage of the obvious system; none are harmed, all are helped.

Beyond that, some readers find consistency and predictability useful; others don't. Some people are willing to tolerate what other people find helpful. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:44, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

So why does this principal only apply to (as far as I can tell) to Australian (and US, although I will abstain from further comment on that topic) populated places? If compulsory disambiguation is so useful why isn't it extended to other Australian topics such as rivers, highways, etc. Why can Murray River stand alone as a primary topic while Ballarat can't? We recognise Ballarat, Victoria as the primary topic anyway by redirecting to it then using a hat note to link to Ballarat, California. How does that help anyone? How does Canada, New Zealand, etc. etc. manage without compulsory disambiguation of populated place names while Australia can't. I honestly can't see why the rest of the encyclopedia can manage without this concept and, (almost) uniquely, Australian populated places cannot? The burden of justifying this exception to standard naming guidelines should be on those wanting to maintain this exception and I fail to see that they have done so. No one above has been able to explain why this topic - and no other - is different from the rest of the encyclopedia. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 22:21, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Exactly, Mattinbgn. I've been asking this question for 4 months now, and still have no logical answers. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:28, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Another form of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:36, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

One of the most over-linked essays, the statements made by Mattinbgn are bold and gets to the point. This discussion is really about Australian naming and not the US. I see little point in having Wagga Wagga, New South Wales when the city is known as Wagga Wagga and the same goes for most unique places in Australia. All newspaper/news websites articles overseas (not just in Australia) Wagga Wagga rather then Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, for an example The Irish Times and the NZ Herald. Bidgee (talk) 13:31, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Mattingly's question has a simple answer: this is not different than the rest of the encyclopedia. Where a systematic choice of name seems helpful, it is our best practice to use it; several examples are mentioned in the section above. In addition, all our battle articles are titled Battle of, even where, as with Plassey and Eylau, the corresponding placename is no longer in use. However, they are a minority; extensions of this kind are usually confined to cases where a majority of articles do need to be disambiguated, and in so doing establish a de facto convention. In such cases, it serves the reader both to use a uniform convention, and to apply where not strictly necessary, because the reader cannot and should not be expected to consult an encyclopedia to know whether or not it is necessary.

But no answer will serve those who are determined not to hear. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:36, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Why does the reader need to know whether or not it's necessary? And why are we forcing him to consult an encyclopedia to... oh OK, I don't understand that argument in the least - can you explain?--Kotniski (talk) 07:11, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Because as usual this is a tempest in a teapot. If we consider redirects, most of it goes away: whether we place the article at Deniliquin or Deniliquin, New South Wales, the other will redirect to it. (The remainder is primarily the points, like listings in categories, which make for uniformity.)

We therefore consider the reader who wants to get directly to the article, without redirects; he is the only reader for whom typing Deniliquin may not work. Under the proposed reform, it will be at Deniliquin, New South Wales if - and only if - it needs disambiguation. It will be at Deniliquin if and only if it is unique. Therefore such a reader must know if disambiguation is necessary. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 12:51, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree that redirects make most of the problems go away, but I don't think your hypothetical reader need concern us - this would be someone who (a) cares more about not seeing the little redirect notice at the top of the page than about saving himself typing; (b) is familiar with the detail of Wikipedia naming conventions. I think the world population of such people is close to zero, and the cost to any such reader of a change of titles is close to zero too. --Kotniski (talk) 14:17, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

You underestimate how many readers (I am not one) care bitterly about the redirect tag; it was a major part of the discussions. But if there is no such reader, then the only points which matter are those not reducible to redirects: consistency of categories and (to some extent) of templates. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:35, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, as I've said before, if lots of readers dislike going through redirects, then we should certainly not be doing redundant disambiguation (though I don't actually believe there are lots - hardened Wikipedia editors are not a great sample). We seem to be left with a question of which of two forms of consistency we prefer - a consistent general approach across Wikipedia, or several localized schemes each of which is highly consistent, but which are jarringly inconsistent with each other (for reasons that often seem to boil down to just the preferences of a few stalwart editors). Personally I prefer the globally consistent approach (which, the way Wikipedia's developed, is to disambiguate only where necessary), though I can accept that others' tastes might be different.--Kotniski (talk) 16:13, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

No, the two types of consistency are a local consistency - which is what editors actually do, and readers may generally expect; and a utopian fantasy, opposed by policy and (far more importantly) by practice. Editors will always name articles after similar articles; the best we can do is help evade the contradictions inherent in this approach. There is no question that the Battle of Eylau is the primary meaning of Eylau; and no question that Michael Faraday is the only notable meaning of Faraday. Get consensus to move them first and then we can discuss this hyper-Jacobin preference of yours. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:30, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

The Battle of Eylau is not and has never been known simply as "Eylau", it's known as the "Battle of Eylau". That the topic is displayed at [[Battle of Eylau]] is not for reasons of consistency; we have it there because that's the name of the event. Michael Faraday is not known as "Faraday", he's known as "Michael Faraday". He's discussed at [[Michael Faraday]] not for consistency, again; he's under that heading because that's his name. Similarly, the name of Broken Hill, New South Wales is not "Broken Hill, New South Wales", and that's not what it's known as in common speech ...just like the Battle of Broken Hill is not known as the "Battle of Broken Hill, New South Wales". The topics you've cited are under the headings that they are because 1) that's their name, and 2) that's what most people would type in when looking for information on them. Basing your arguments around crummy and irrelevant analogies shows incredibly poor reasoning and perhaps a touch of desperation. Do you mind if we stick to geographic names from here on? Night w (talk) 19:15, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I congratulate Night w on managing to diasgree with Napoleon: "At Austerlitz, at Jena, at Eylau, and at Wagram, it was the same." I will not enter into the metaphysical question whether Eylau is a name of the battle; we're not looking for a name; we're looking for a convenient article title. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 12:38, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

And as for your doubts as to the number of people who favour speedy typing over waiting for the options to show up under the search box: stats show that in May, under the current standard, 20% of people visited Broken Hill, New South Wales through the Broken Hill redirect (1, 2). Alice Springs is 30% (1, 2). Clearly, the current naming practice isn't working in that respect. Night w (talk) 21:58, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Which means that a strong majority did visit through the long form in both cases. Unlike Might w, I cannot read the minority's minds; if they were confident there was no other Broken Hill in the encyclopedia, and it was not a dab page, they were also lucky. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:18, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, Murray River, Stun Sail Boom River, River Thames, San Joaquin River form another convention of the same form. We could probably leave River out of all of them and have sole or primary usage. But the de facto convention is to use River - because most rivers need it - and not use state or country because most rivers don't need it (and there is no hope of consistency on which: many Australian rivers need disambiguation by State - but which State is the Murray in?). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:47, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Except the name of the river is "Murray River" (everywhere but South Australia where it is "River Murray" for local cultural reasons) and not just "Murray". Indeed, it is never shortened to just "Murray" but rather "The Murray" but I don't think anyone would argue differently. There is no lde facto convention to use "river" in article titles - WP:RIVERS have moved away from that convention - see Wikipedia:WikiProject Rivers#Naming and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers/Archive 2#River naming convention. Use of the term "River" is only used in where disambiguation is needed - i.e. Inn (river) - or in places like Australia (and I assume the US) where "River" is an integral part of the name. Unless you are arguing that "New South Wales" is an integral part of the name of the locality known on Wikipedia (but nowhere else) as "Deniliquin, New South Wales" I am not sure how the river example supports your claim. Again - like with the Faraday example above - you draw a false equivalency between adding a superfluous disambiguator and using a common name, rather than an abbeviated or shortened version. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 22:44, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

And, of course, San Joaquin Valley is more popular than San Joaquin River, and neither are typically called "San Joaquin" alone; rather, that's generally reserved for San Joaquin, California or San Joaquin County, California. These "examples" are proving the exact opposite of what they are intended to. Jayjg ^(talk) 00:52, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

As a complete aside, I just had to update over 300 articles to reflect a change in federal electorate boundaries in my home state. It was a breeze - load the list of anything vaguely related into AWB, filter on ", West" and I had a complete list of all towns and suburbs with articles on Wikipedia, which I then loaded into Excel and narrowed down by LGA. Couldn't have been easier. I don't actually know what the supporters of this proposal would suggest for maintainers in future. Orderinchaos 13:23, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

That's fine and I concede there are some benefits to mandatory disambiguation. I would make three points. One, the encyclopedia is written to be of benefit to readers. We could make plenty of changes to make articles easier to maintain but we should not do so at the expense of accuracy, except where unavoidable. For example, the title for the article Māori uses a macron. Given that my keyboard does not have a ā key it would be a lot easier for editors if we just called the article Maori but we don't because we are prepared to tolerate some inconvenience for the sake of accuracy.

Secondly, we need to weigh the advantage you gained from mandatory disambiguation in this infrequent event against the disadvantages that editors encounter every time they are required to use the longer than necessary title in a link or elsewhere. The inconvenience may be only be small for each single occasion but over time it adds up to a whopping imposition on our editors. On balance, I think mandatory disambiguation causes more harm and inconvenience than it purports to solve.

Thirdly, if mandatory disambiguation is so helpful in cases like yours, why don't we extend it to rivers, mountains, lakes etc. There has not yet been, to my mind anyway, a convincing explanation as to why localities—and nothing else—require compulsory disambiguation. Titles are not meant to be sort keys. if we require the sort of functionality you desire, them some sort of metadata would be preferable than bastardising article titles. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 22:51, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to close

There have been no new contributors to this debate for some time and nothing really new in the way of argument for a few days now. Unless there is violent objection, I propose that the RfC be closed and that an independent editor be found to assess this discussion for consensus or otherwise on the proposed change at the top of this discussion. Note that this discussion is about Australian place names only at this stage.

I was thinking perhaps one of the regulars at CfD would be a good choice to close this dicussion, Good Olfactory (talk · contribs) perhaps, if he/she is willing? -- Mattinbgn\^talk 01:51, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

I have no great objection to it being closed, but how can anyone possibly claim consensus after a bloody great argument (with neither side giving any ground) over a long-standing (and thus far, well supported, since this is the first real attempt to overturn it in the several years its been existence) guideline? Rebecca (talk) 02:26, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, I guess the consensus would be based on around twice as many editors supporting the proposal as opposing it. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:50, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

That's why I think someone outside the discussion should assess consensus. Personally, I think the burden of establishing consensus should be on those that are seeking to retain the exemption - but that is only my point of view and I would not bind an independent assessor by those terms. I should also note some editors (including me) have supported a change for some time; this is merely the first formal assessment of where the consensus lies. Either way, having someone independent assess consensus and close the discussion should clearly resolve this matter one way or the other. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 03:36, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

No objection to closing the debate. And while I whole-heartedly support any furthering of the proposal, I doubt that any changes agreed upon will have much of an effect in any case. Take the Canadian standard as an indicator: disambiguating place-names is not compulsory, yet the vast majority of articles are at [[City]], [[Province]]. Which I guess is fine, as long as editors have the option. Night w (talk) 04:32, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Most of the discussion here has not been discussion for (or against) the actual proposal made; it has been opposition to the governing policy WP:AT, which has a long-standing consensus. Until there is some consensus on what would be best for the titles of Australian articles, based on Australian conditions, there is nothing for an outside admin to adjudicate.

Nonsense. There has been plenty of discussion on the proposal as written, despite your best attempts at deflection. You might have used this discussion as a venue to defend your preference that US places should keep the Name, State naming protocol but outside your contributions most comments have been reasonably on-topic. -- Mattinbgn\^talk 12:44, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

As for the "option": this is a guideline. As it says at the very top, it should be applied with common sense and the occasional exception. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 12:29, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

• I agree that the discussion should close. I would point out to any independent assesor to be careful in assesing the relative weight of the arguments presented. One editor has contributed possibly more (in word count) than the rest conbined. However, this editor has really only presented and then repeated the one argument over and over, apparently trying to overwhelm his (her?) opposition by sheer weight of those words. However, I would trust that the independent assessor will recognise that the number of times an argument is put does not bear any relevance to the value of that argument and that it is quite possible that the great majority of editors (ie, the consensus) have a contrary opinion. - Nick Thorne ^talk 23:20, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

  There's only so much to say in response to let's ignore policy, I don't like it, even when several engage in it. I'm still waiting for (at least) this is why ignoring policy is good for readers of Australian articles; it might even persuade me. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:55, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

  But Pmanderson, the only editor here advising others to "ignore policy" is you. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:06, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

  That is a personal attack. This edit was a misquotation of policy. Both are from the same hand; both deny what policy is. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:17, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

  What delicious sophistry; to accuse others of advocating ignoring policy, but then claim it is a personal attack when it is pointed out that it is the accuser who is actually guilty of it. Please take the advice of the many editors here who actually understand the article naming policy, and who have explained why this special pleading for the titles of Australian and American cities does not comply with it. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:15, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

All policy has to say on this matter is that there are various criteria to be taken into account in choosing article names. It doesn't say how they must be balanced - in fact the policy was written descriptively, to take account of the fact that different naming schemes are in use. So in fact neither the present system nor the proposed system goes against policy (and if they did, that would merely be a sign that the policy page was written wrong). --Kotniski (talk) 09:03, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, policy says "there are various criteria to be taken into account in choosing article names". This guideline, however, mandates compulsory disambiguation by State name. Therefore, it violates policy, which says that one must take several criteria into account. This guideline arrogates for itself an authority greater than that of the policy, and forbids using criteria mandated by the policy. Jayjg ^(talk) 00:26, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Except that it can't "forbid" - if editors reach a consensus that the guideline is to be ignored in a particular case, then it will be. --Kotniski (talk) 09:33, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

The guideline does indeed forbid using criteria mandated by the policy. What you're saying is that editors can ignore or overrule the guideline. That's true; editors can overrule or ignore any guideline or policy they wish to, but that doesn't change the fact that the guideline itself mandates violating policy. Jayjg ^(talk) 11:57, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

(left)The guideline does indeed forbid using criteria mandated by the policy. This is a falsehood; the next time it will be a lie.

• The policy mandates no criteria; it requires a balance among five of them; the purpose of title guidelines is to set forth conventions which create that balance.
• This guideline does not forbid using any criterion; nor can it do so. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:40, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

So what is happening with this proposal? Is it being reviewed? It seems to have just trailed off into another fruitless discussion. Night w (talk) 16:10, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

That is what happens when there's no consensus. Rebecca (talk) 22:27, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

The vast majority here supported the idea for change. That, to me, is consensus, but there was also a proposal to request review from an administrator. I attempted to contact the nominator, Mattinbgn, but I haven't had any response. Night w (talk) 06:07, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Or rather, what happens when there's no consensus as to whether there is consensus. There clearly seems not to be consensus for the present convention; perhaps (since no admin seems to be forthcoming to adjudicate this) we could just put a note in the guideline to the effect that it is not clear what current consensus is on this point; then people wishing to rename specific articles could make proposals at WP:RM, and we might be able to see better which way things are going as a result of those discussions.--Kotniski (talk) 06:11, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

(I've boldly added such a note.)--Kotniski (talk) 06:23, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Kotniski! As long as something came out of the discussion, and we didn't all just waste our time. Night w (talk) 14:29, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Poll

For those who aren't aware, there is a poll on this issue at Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board#RM -- moving_forward. Hesperian 23:57, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Australian place move discussions

As well as the poll above, there are discussions taking place at Talk:Cunnamulla, Queensland, Talk:Mosman, Queensland, Talk:Coffs Harbour, Queensland and Talk:Nambour, Queensland. Mungindi has been moved to an undisambiguated name, but it is a bit of a special case. Contributions from a diverse group of editors at all these discussions (and at the straw poll) would be very welcome. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 23:59, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

LOL. You are supposed to move the articles not the cities. Talk:Mosman, New South Wales and Talk:Coffs Harbour, New South Wales. Needed a good laugh. Sorry Matt. Bleakcomb (talk) 01:54, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the pick-up. See, another reason to get rid of mandatory disambiguation - more opportunity to make mistakes! :) -- Mattinbgn (talk) 03:44, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Maybe we should reopen this for discussion and review first, and accomplish a more binding outcome. Night w (talk) 03:36, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

See the straw poll at Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board#RM -- moving forward where Gnangarra (talk · contribs) is trying to find some consensus. I am not sure that approach will work to anyone's satisfaction and that it will still come down to individual discussions in the end. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 03:44, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Borgo, Lazio listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Borgo, Lazio. Since you had some involvement with the Borgo, Lazio redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Bridgeplayer (talk) 17:23, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Borgo, Lazio

• Borgo, Lazio → Borgo (rione of Rome) (links to redirect • history • stats) 

This redirect (and all the others created for the rioni) should be deleted. Borgo is one of the original 14 historic quarters (rioni) of Rome. All over Italy there are hundreds, if not thousands, quarters and frazioni which bear the same name. This means that this redirect is - at the very best - ambiguous ,and therefore nonsense. Moreover, a rione is a part of a city (Rome), not of a region (Latium), therefore it should be superordinated to the city. If we want really to be precise, then we should rename the article to Rione Borgo (Rome), and then rename accordingly all the other Rioni. Alex2006 (talk) 13:44, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

• Keep - Though a newly created redirected, looking here it seems a plausible search term. I don't understand the nomination since this seems the only Borgo to which the redirect can relate? Bridgeplayer (talk) 17:38, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
• Comment I have copied below a question/ comment/reply from my Talk page concerning this

Hallo Skinsmoke

sorry to disturb you, I am writing about this redirect. Borgo is one of the original 14 historic quarters (rioni) of Rome. All over Italy there are hundreds, if not thousands, quarters and frazioni which bear the same name. You can google a little bit to discover it. Just to make an example of a town which I know well, the ancient part of Nocera Umbra, is called il Borgo. This means that this redirect is - at the best - ambiguous ,and therefore senseless. Moreover, a rione is a part of a city (Rome), not of a region (Latium), therefore it should be superordinated to the city. If we want really to be precise, then we should rename the article to Rione Borgo (Rome), and then rename accordingly all the other Rioni. I hope you got my point. Cheers from the Eternal City, Alex2006 (talk) 11:27, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Don't worry about disturbing me. On Wikipedia we determine disambiguation terms by what other articles we have; not by what potential articles there may be. We have articles on just two places called Borgo: one in Corsica, France; and one in Lazio, Italy. We have plenty of articles with Borgo as part of the name (18 in total): Borgo Santa Lucia in Campania; Borgo Tossignano and Borgo Val di Taro in Emilia–Romagna; Borgo Velino in Lazio; Borgo di Terzo, Borgo Priolo, Borgo San Giacomo, Borgo San Giovanni and Borgo San Siro in Lombardy; Borgo Pace in Marche; Borgo d'Ale, Borgo San Dalmazzo, Borgo San Martino, Borgo Ticino and Borgo Vercelli in Piedmont; Borgo Valsugana in Trentino–Alto Adige/Südtirol; and Borgo a Mozzano and Borgo San Lorenzo in Tuscany. However, all those 18 are pre-disambiguated (their name is not simply Borgo).

The example you gave in Nocera Umbra is somewhat irrelevant. Firstly, it is in Umbria, but more importantly we have no article about it, there is no redirect to it, and it isn't even mentioned in the article on Nocera Umbra. For the purposes of disambiguation, it is therefore irrelevant. However, in the unlikely event that an article was created, it would be under Borgo, Umbria.

If subsequently there was another article created for a Borgo in Lazio then, under the naming convention for Italy, the articles would be named under the Placename, Province format. If we had two within the province of Roma, then we would move to the Placename, Comune format.

As it is we only have to differentiate between two places in Lazio: Borgo and Borgo Velino.

One final point is that disambiguating by parentheses is deprecated for placenames, unlike (I think) on Italian Wikipedia. Your suggestion of Rione Borgo (Rome) would therefore be Rione Borgo, Rome. However, with the Rione in the title, there would be no need to disambiguate at all. There may well be an argument that all the rioni should be titled Rione Placename, but I am not sure you would find widespread support for that. We do not title articles on frazioni as, for example Frazione Borgo Santa Lucia, nor do we title articles on comuni as, for example, Comune Borgo Velino. I would hazard a guess that such a proposal would be met with widespread opposition

Skinsmoke (talk) 18:58, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Borgo, in this particular case, is not a regular placename. It's a part of Rome, which is more of a placename. Why not keep it simple: Rione Borgo? Antique Rose — Drop me a line 19:27, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

The basic question appears to be whether the rioni of Rome should be treated in the same way as the frazioni of any other Italian city or municipality; or should they be dealt with differently. If differently, how?

The naming convention for Italy currently reads as follows:

Italy

If necessary, places in Italy are disambiguated by one of the region, province or comune needed to identify it uniquely, as appropriate, not as Placename, Italy. Articles previously used the two-letter abbreviations for the provinces: these should no longer be used.

Examples:

• Two locations in different regions: Castro, Apulia and Castro, Lombardy;
• Two locations in the same province: Ronchi, Bra and Ronchi, Cuneo (both in the Province of Cuneo);
• Two locations in the same region, and a third in a different region: Manciano, Arezzo and Manciano, Grosseto (both in the Region of Tuscany) but Manciano, Umbria.

Province of Bolzano-Bozen

In the Province of Bolzano-Bozen (South Tyrol), the local authority recognizes equally two or more names from different languages, and English discussion is often so limited that none of the above tests indicate which of them is widely used in English. However there is an official linguistic survey of the area, by commune, which has the following advantages:

• It is available on-line, and officially published.
• The proportions of the various language groups are fairly stable.
• Most communes have a large majority, often a 90% majority, of one language group.
• In the few cases where there is a widely used English name, it is usually that of the majority language group.

Therefore articles about locations in the province of Bolzano-Bozen are placed according to the language of the linguistic majority, except where the widely used English name is adequately substantiated and is different from that of the majority language group.

The region containing the Province of Bolzano-Bozen is referred to as Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol.

Continued rione discussion

The previous discussion that led to the existing naming convention can be found at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archives/2009/August#Naming convention for Italian cities

Skinsmoke (talk) 09:48, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

The rioni are neighborhoods of Rome, not distinct localities that happen to be within the commune of Rome. Locations like Borgo, Lazio are completely absurd. Naming conventions should be discarded and modified when they yield absurd results. john k (talk) 14:44, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

• Comment Why is that completely absurd. Is it in Lazio? Yes. We are talking about disambiguating a title, not putting signs up on the boundary. It is no more absurd than Borgo, Italy would be as a page title. And how are the rioni of the City of Rome any different from the frazioni of the City of Naples? Skinsmoke (talk) 15:05, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

This question seems to come up from time to time in relation to different countries - I don't know if anything's ever been decided about any of them. My view is that parts of cities (if requiring disambiguation) should always be disambiguated with the name of the city, rather than with the name of any larger unit containing the city - I'd propose that as a universal convention.--Kotniski (talk) 15:20, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Hey, I agree with Kotniski. At any rate, frazioni are distinct communities that happen to be included within the commune of a larger city; rioni are merely wards of Rome. And Borgo, Italy would also be completely absurd, so I don't get your point there. Borgo is a division of Rome. The title should reflect that. john k (talk) 16:12, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Frankly, I really don't understand what's so wrong with Borgo (rione of Rome). I agree with Kotniski and John K that the title should reflect that Borgo is a part of Rome. Antique Rose — Drop me a line 22:29, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

I think that here we have two problems, one - particular - about Borgo, and the other - general - about the categorization of a quarter. The word 'borgo' is used in the Italian toponomastic in hundreds of cases to describe part of a comune. The fact that in Wikipedia there are not many article about borghi is irrelevant, since we should keep a convention which applies to all the articles, present and futures, not only to the existing ones. The main point here is that we are talking about a quarter, which means, an administrative or historical subdivision of a city, not of a region. This means that it must be categorized under the city to whom it belongs, not under the region. This is the only convention which makes sense, and it is followed elsewhere in Wikipedia. For example, we have, Watts, Los Angeles, not Watts, California, and San Giuseppe (Naples), not San Giuseppe (Campania). I hope that now the problem is clear. Solution in this particular case: we move all the articles of type XY (rione of Rome) to Rione XY / (Rome). OK? Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 06:04, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree with all of that except the last sentence; I would have thought that XY (Rome) or XY, Rome would be the normal Wikipedia way of doing it. (I prefer the comma, but if parentheses are used for parts of other Italian cities, then we should go with them, at least until that great day arrives when Wikipedia gets its article titling conventions properly unified.)--Kotniski (talk) 08:10, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Hallo Kotniski, I explain the reason behind the last sentence. There are rioni in Rome, whose meaning is not univoque in the city itself. For example, Esquilino is both a rione and a hill (and a hotel :-)) of Rome. That's why I proposed to put the term 'rione' in front of the name. About parentheses or comma, I am also open. By the way, here (please see photo on the right) an example of a part of a comune in Lazio whose name is borgo (and where a couple of restaurants serve great artichokes and pizza :-) ) Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 11:50, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

(1) We really do have some red herrings flying about here. We are talking about disambiguation. We disambiguate among the articles we have; not among those that may be created in some far-off time. If the article doesn't exist, we don't disambiguate from it. Simple!

(2) As for Esquilino, we have two articles: the rione and the hill. The article on the hill is at Esquiline Hill. And are we ever going to have an article on the hotel? Not a problem, no matter how much some people may try to make it into one.

(3) Kotniski may wish that we had a convention that all parts of a city/municipality were disambiguated in the format Placename (City) (a form which is deprecated in the naming conventions for places), or even Placename, City; but we have no such convention, and it was specifically rejected by those who were involved in drawing up the current convention for Italy.

{4) While Rione Borgo may be a standard term in Italian, it is not in English. We are mandated to use English terms. The equivalent would be Rione of Borgo or Borgo Rione: either are acceptable terms in the English language,

(5) There may well be a case that the rioni of Rome should be treated differently from everywhere else in Italy. I'm not sure that that case has actually been made. Repeating parrot fashion that such and such is absolutely ridiculous without explaining why it is ridiculous does not constitute a reasoned argument.

(6) If there is a feeling that the rioni should be treated differently, then the simplest form should be used. That would be, for example, Borgo, Rome. Where there is no need to disambiguate, the article should go under, for example, Prati. This would conform to the overall naming conventions for places, where disambiguation by parentheses is deprecated as it is reserved for natural features such as rivers and mountains. It could also be easily written into the naming convention for Italy. Skinsmoke (talk) 05:00, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Hallo Skinsmoke, thanks about your explanation. Maybe they are not red herrings, :-) but it is just that we set our respective focuses on different aspects: you on disambiguation, I (we) on categorization. I agree about points (1), (2), (4) (about that, once an American tourist told me that the most beautiful place in Rome was romano. He meant foro romano => roman forum , interpreting the noun as an adjective, and vice versa :-) ) (5) and (6). About (3), I agree with Kotniski.

Here we have a series of articles (about quarters of a city), and I think that we handle them in a consistent way. If we cannot reach it through disambiguation, we have to do it changing consistently the names of the articles. Then I propose to change the name of all the articles from XY (Rione of Rome)to "Rione of XY ". For an example, please see how the Contrade of Siena (analogous to the Rioni of Rome) are handled singularly in the Italian Wikipedia. Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 15:08, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Yesterday I made a short experiment with three colleagues of mine (all Romans), asking them to guess the subject of the article Borgo, Lazio. All of three told me that the article would deal with some village in Latium (Please see http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borgo_%28geografia%29 for the Italian meaning of Borgo)

I am happy to go with the Rione of Placename option if that's what others are happy with. it would also get round the problem of some being disambiguated and others not, which is the current position. The way Italian Wikipedia deals with the contradi is, of course, the same way we deal with the Italian provinces and the London Boroughs. Are people happy to go along with this? If so I can cobble up some wording to add to the naming convention. Skinsmoke (talk) 21:17, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

OK, then let's wait for the meaning of the others. :-) .Just a small correction: contrade, not contradi. It is feminine :-) Cheers, ãnd have a nice Sunday, Alex2006 (talk) 07:56, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

It may be that Antique Rose and Alex2006 and others may want to create a special category for either the rioni of Rome or rioni in general, since they are always specific to a city and not to the region or province. While I think that Borgo, Roma is fine in the particular case since Antique Rose asserts that there is more than one Borgo in Lazio, and that format complies with the existing guidelines; it may in fact be better to make boroughs of cities city specific always. See, for example, Düsseldorf#Districts, where someone renamed them all with hyphens. Regardless, the edit by Antique Rose on 3 July 2010 moving Borgo, Lazio to Borgo (rione of Rome) is not correct; and it would be simplest if the editor who made the edit corrected it. --Bejnar (talk) 17:22, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I made a technically incorrect edit, while reverting Borgo, Lazio back to Borgo (rione of Rome). As for Borgo, Rome, it works for me. Antique Rose — Drop me a line 17:47, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

About Dusseldorf, this (City District) is the standard German way to name district. Anyway, for me both solutions: a) Rione of XY, or b) XY (Rome) are OK. The main points which have to be reached are a) Avoiding a misleading disambiguation; b) Obtaining an homogeneous naming for articles belonging to the same set. This point should be reached linking the articles to the smallest entity to whom they belong This means, in case of quarters, their city. Not Borgo (Lazio) but Borgo (Rome). Not Spada (Umbria), but Spada (Foligno); Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 06:17, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Historical "Foreign" Names

According to the NCG :

The lead: The title can be followed in the first line by a list of alternative names in parentheses: {name1, name2, name3, etc.}.

• Any archaic names in the list (including names used before the standardization of English orthography) should be clearly marked as such, i.e., (archaic: name1).
• Relevant foreign language names (one used by at least 10% of sources in the English language or is used by a group of people which used to inhabit this geographical place) are permitted and should be listed in alphabetic order of their respective languages, i.e., (Armenian name1, Belarusian name2, Czech name3). or (ar: name1, be: name2, cs: name3). As an exception to alphabetical order, the local official name should be listed before other alternate names if it differs from a widely accepted English name.

It seems to me that this wording can be used for a variety of nationalistic or absurd reasons. New York was called New Amsterdam and this is covered under history, but the name is not given in the Dutch language. Would it be according to policy if next to New York we had a long list of alternative names given in the languages of all people who used to and still live there (German, Chinese, French, Italian, Korean, Spanish etc)? Should we place next to many European placenames the historical Greek, Roman, Goth or Slavic names they had in the respective languages? There are Balkan places (most actually), which now are called by the names given by the governments that control them but in the 17th to the 20th centuries had Bulgarian, Greek, Turkish, Jewish, Aromanian, Serb populations living together or not. Should we expect that all these placenames will be given in all the respective languages in the lead? I think that the implications will be many. Any ideas or comments?

GK (talk) 10:51, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

The guidelines permit alternate names to be placed in a separate name or history section which is usually done with big articles. Kostja (talk) 10:59, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

It actually isn't done. You are one of the very few who use (or misuse) this guideline. New York is inhabited by people from over 100 ethnicities and so, I guess, they have the right to add one hundred different versions of "New York" in their own languages. If we add to this all native dialects, we would have a very interesting example of guideline misuse. Most Bulgarian toponyms have alternative Greek and Turkish names and it would be hell if we tried to add them in their native - not transliterated to English form. Anyways, this is why I called for a discussion. GK (talk) 12:36, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

In practically all cases where it's appropriate the Greek names of Bulgarian articles have been added. Kostja (talk) 12:49, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

In most of the articles about Dodecanese islands (formerly ottoman and italian possession) italian and turkish names are now added at the end of the introduction. since we did so, greek attacks to the articles almost stopped. Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 14:28, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Country subdivisions

I suggest to include the following table into the convention, directly below the current text in the section WP:NCGN#Administrative subdivisions / WP:NCCS.

Rationale: Give editors a fast overview of what is currently done with respect to country subdivisions. Currently all this is spread among several guidelines or not written down at all.

---

Formats of article names for articles on specific country subdivisions without disambiguation

Category	A	Typename of A	Typename A	A Typename
States	A	State of A	State A	A State
Territories	A	Territory of A (e.g. Territory of Hawaii)	Territory A	A Territory
Provinces	A	Province of A (Italy, Spain, Prussia, and some minor)	Province A	A Province
Governorates	A	Governorate of A (two in the Russian Empire)	Governorate A	A Governorate
Departments	A (e.g. in France)	Department of A (e.g. Department of Alaska)	Department A	A Department
Districts	A	District of A	District A	A District
Cantons	A (Switzerland)	Canton of A (Switzerland, France)	Canton A	A Canton
Municipalities	A	Municipality of A	Municipality A	A Municipality
Counties	A	County of A	County A (e.g. in Ireland)	A County
Parishes	A (e.g. Barbados)	Parish of A	Parish A	A Parish

Legend:

• font: normal - used in article text / strike through: not used in English / bold: used in articles titles
• background color: green - used by more than 80% / red - used by less than 10% ... of the articles in that category

With disambiguation , compare Category:Country subdivision name disambiguation pages there may exist:

• by type: A (typename), e.g. Georgia (state)
• by type and place: A Typename, Placename, e.g. San Carlos Municipality, Cojedes, A Typename, (Placename) e.g. La Rioja Province (Argentina).

---

Schwyz (talk) 16:46, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Insofar as I can follow this it would seem to involve the renaming of innumerable articles. You have provided no rationale, and the idea seems to contradict current practice. Ben MacDui 07:23, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Prince-Bishop

We're having a minor revert war over the name used for the prince-bishop of the place now known as Olomouc, which was known as Olmütz in German. This prince-bishopric was a vassal of the Bohemian Crown within the Holy Roman Empire.

If anyone has strong feelings on the matter, they may wish to contribute to the conversation at Talk:Prince-Bishop#Nationalist / anti-nationalist place naming, where I am trying to seek consensus. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 13:49, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation: a worldwide view?

A number of fiercely argued discussions in various parts of the world suggests a need to restate the naming convention for cases when disambiguation is needed and there is no primary topic. The present guidance is needlessly vague, and although various national systems are acknowledged, some of the variations seem to be unnecessarily inconsistent with the wider guidance. Also, some of the guidance seems to disregard how places are disambiguated in ordinary writing or speech outside Wikipedia.

Can I suggest something along these lines (I have not muddied the waters by including natural features):

• Places should be disambiguated by the country in which they lie, if this is sufficient. In the case of places in the United States, Canada and Australia, the state, province or territory should be used in place of the country (unless the place lies within more than one such entity, in which case the country should be used). (Note that in the US at least, this rule should rarely be needed, because local convention is that articles are usually entitled Placename, State, even when Placename is not ambiguous.)
• If disambiguation is needed within a country, places should be disambiguated by an appropriate subnational unit (province, state, county etc), to be determined for each country. If there is an established practice in a country to disambiguate by a particular unit, for example for postal purposes, we should use that unit.
• If disambiguation is needed within a subnational unit, an appropriate lower tier unit should be used, failing which diambiguation can be by compass direction or nearby settlement or nearby natural feature.
• In the case of neighbourhoods or districts within a city or town, places should be disambiguated by the city or town, unless common local usage (that is, outside Wikipedia), for example in mailing addresses, is to disambiguate by another entity.
• With the names of cities, towns, villages and other settlements, as well as administrative divisions, the disambiguating tag is preceded by a comma, as in Hel, Poland, and Polk County, Tennessee, unless there is a different national convention, which should be followed.

I think such a restatement would give a framework, not too rigid, that everyone could fit into. It would avoid some of the article titles which some editors find odd or counter-intuitive (Borgo, Lazio or Lincoln, Lincolnshire, or possibly even Oxford, Oxfordshire, Manchester, Greater Manchester or London, London which current conventions would seem to require if Oxford, Manchester or London were not primary topics).

Any views? --Mhockey (talk) 14:13, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, the challenge I've been facing with Ethiopian geographic names has been that the same name not only is duplicated on the same sub-national level (e.g., two woredas having the same name), but also on different levels (e.g. when a town or village has the same name as a woreda). Add to that such lovely complications as multiple towns & woredas in different parts of Ethiopia (do a search on "Kersa" to see one challenge), or multiple towns with the same name in the same Region or Zone (here I'm thinking of "Idaga Hamus", Tigrigna for "Thursday Market", which is not only the name of three settlements in Tigray Region, but also the name of an Eritrean soccer team), & you'll see why I've avoided trying to create certain articles which would remain stubs for a long while. Any hope I might receive guidance when to use a comma & when to use parentheses? In a few of these cases it would make my job at disambiguating settlements easier. -- llywrch (talk) 20:48, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

How do Ethiopians distinguish two places with the same name? (I guess it's tough being a postman there.) It looks as though region might be the way to disambiguate two places with the same name, unless there are two disambiguated places in the same region, in which case you would use the woreda. The usual practice seems to be to use commas to disambiguate settlements by larger unit, unless there is a contrary local practice. But to disambiguate between a settlement and a woreda of the same name, WP:NCDAB suggests that you either use a longer name of one or the other (x Woreda or x Town), or if that conflicts with local usage, use brackets. --Mhockey (talk) 11:46, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

If I knew how they distinguish between two places with the same name, my job would be a lot simpler. What I generally see is when a settlement has the same name as a woreda or geographic region the settlement is referred to as "X Town" -- which I admit I personally don't like, but more importantly I suspect would confuse most people who aren't familiar with the practice. I'd really like to get a number of opinions on this matter -- hopefully informed ones -- before I try to follow any one standard. As for your postman question, most of these places don't have mail service, which the locals don't notice because the vast majority are illiterate. If more people could read & write, they'd send more letters -- which would force the Ethiopian authorities to provide a solution for people like me to use. :) -- llywrch (talk) 19:41, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

England: suburbs of towns

Resolved

 – Guideline updated 18 August 2010

Discussion moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography

I notice some localities have been moved, or had requested moves, from Place, County to Place, Town because of the phrase "although for districts and suburbs within towns and cities, placename, Town/City should be used". Has any attempt been made to define what town/city means for the purposes of this? There is potential , for the guidelines to be interpreted either way in many cases. MRSC (talk) 20:08, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

There was some discussion on this in the discussion here which led to the current guidance at WP:NCGN, and in the discussion on Southampton that preceded it. I would have thought that the only reasonable way to interpret the guidance is to use Placename, Town/City to disambiguate any place within the boundaries of the borough or other administrative area representing the town or city, so that it is an objective test. So we have Chilworth, Hampshire but Shirley, Southampton. Are there any cases where this does not work? --Mhockey (talk) 21:03, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

This would be a comprehensive unpicking of our established policy. MRSC (talk) 21:47, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I would have thought WP:UKPLACE was the established policy. It was thought to be uncontroversial when it was introduced! --Mhockey (talk) 22:12, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

If this policy means that any place [requiring disambiguation] that is located in a borough should be renamed to use the name of the borough not the county, then it is not uncontraversial and would result in a large number of places being misnamed under our current guideline. MRSC (talk) 05:45, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

I think the current guidance was introduced for that very reason, because there was so much inconsistency. I haven't repeated the survey that was done last year, but you'd probably find more articles observe the current guidance than do not - although there seem to have been one or two articles wrongly moved since April 2009 to comply with the old guidance, presumably by editors who did not realise that the policy had changed. --Mhockey (talk) 10:59, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

So what happens when a town also gives its name to a unitary authority e.g. Milton Keynes and Milton Keynes (borough)? If you look at the town's boundaries they are much smaller than the wider borough. So while I agree it is right and correct that a village within the town's boundaries should be named according to the guidance e.g. Woolstone, Milton Keynes, I think it is crazy if you apply this naming convention to a village in the borough e.g. Warrington, Buckinghamshire which is 12 miles away across large tracts of open countryside i.e. physically separate from the town itself. --Simple Bob (talk) 09:38, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

That's a fair point. In the case of MK you could apply it for places within the Milton Keynes urban area. I think you need an objective test. Another problem might be the City of Canterbury, which also includes rural areas. But I would have thought a few practical difficulties should not detract from the principle that districts of a town should be disambiguated by the name of the town. I think the current guidance is right. It just seems a more natural way to disambiguate - the clue is in the phrase "districts or suburbs of a town", we are unlikely to talk about "districts or suburbs of a county" when we were referring to places in a town.--Mhockey (talk) 10:59, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

We need to make the guidance clearer and less open to interpretation or this is going to come up again and again. I'm not convinced urban areas/urban subdivisions are a satisfactory way to define towns. What town exactly does "Reading/Wokingham Urban Area" define? In practice these are really conurbations, not towns and cities. We could specify the slightly more generalised "continuously built up area". This can be objectively tested for, although with fringe cases it might be possible to argue either way. Another alternative is to think in terms of parishes and unparished areas, this would work with City of Canterbury where I believe only the city proper is unparished and the remainder forms part of other parishes. MRSC (talk) 14:14, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

To clarify, I would only suggest using a unit like "urban area" if the borough or city was wider than the town, i.e. it would be an exception for cases like MK. I don't see why you would need it for Reading. And bear in mind, we're only talking about articles needing disambiguation, so there may not be many such exceptions.--Mhockey (talk) 14:21, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

The other thing to consider is how this would work in metropolitan boroughs. Places such as Greenacres, Greater Manchester would be renamed to Greenacres, Oldham under this policy. How do we decide there where Oldham (town) ends and Oldham (borough) begins? MRSC (talk) 14:32, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

According to the Oldham article, the ONS seems to be able to deal with this quite satisfactorily in the census. --Mhockey (talk) 09:00, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

For clarity, this is the process that led to the change:

• Discussion of April 2009
• "where this is inappropriate [[placename, Town\City]] should be used" Added to guideline 13:44, 20 April 2009
• "where this is inappropriate [[placename, Town\City]] should be used" Removed 21:24, 12 April 2010
• "where this is inappropriate [[placename, Town\City]] should be used" Reinstated 13:35, 27 April 2010
• replaced with "although for districts and suburbs within towns and cities [[placename, Town\City]] should be used" Amended 07:03, 28 April 2010

MRSC (talk) 14:38, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

End of section moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography

The edits in April 2010 were not discussed, and originated from an editor who seems not to have been aware of the conclusion of the April 2009 discussion, so I do not think much weight should be attached to them - although the wording after the edits better reflects the April 2009 conclusion, I think. --Mhockey (talk) 09:22, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

The April 28 edit is not discussed, and I am sure was in good faith trying to clear up any ambiguity. However, it hasn't been a success and the guideline is no more clear for it, nor does it reflect established practice. MRSC (talk) 10:29, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

The reason for the 28 April 2010 edit was discusssed in April 2009. The current guidance is maybe more of a success than than the guidance before April 2009, which was observed very inconsistently. The main problem with the current policy is that some editors have not realised what it is.--Mhockey (talk) 11:38, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

It's interesting that when we need to disambiguate districts or suburbs of London, we use Place, London, which is consistent with the convention Place, City, and not Place, Greater London, which is what you would expect if we were to use Place, Ceremonial county as the convention for all places in England. --Mhockey (talk) 09:00, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

WP:London decided a long time ago to use the region (called "London") rather than the county, otherwise we would disambiguate to Place, City of London and Place, Greater London as the London region forms two ceremonial counties. MRSC (talk) 10:29, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Is that really why we use London to disambiguate places in London? Are you saying that it was decided to use the region to disambiguate because of the technicality that the City of London is a separate ceremonial county (I cannot find any articles on places in the City requiring a disambiguation tag, but if there were I don't think anyone would seriously object to the use of London rather than City of London, although either would be fine with me.)? I suspect that it was decided to use London because it best decribed the city - most people think of London as a city which includes the City, rather than a region.

It's also a debatable point whether a WP project for a local area should determine how to disambiguate places which are unambiguous in its area, but are ambiguous within England. You could end up with unnecessarily different policies for each metropolitan county. Differences to deal with local administrative arrangements are fine, but not if they unnecessarily conflict with wider policies--Mhockey (talk) 11:38, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Back to the point in hand, we need to either reword or remove the guideline relating to suburbs. It just isn't clear at the moment and is leading to all these lengthy and pointless debates. So, any suggestions of how to word this? MRSC (talk) 14:11, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

section break 1

How about:

"In England, place names requiring disambiguation should go under [[placename, ceremonial county]], except

• disambiguated place names for districts and suburbs within towns and cities, which should go under [[placename, Town/City]]. The boundaries of the borough, city or civil parish (which has declared itself a town) should generally be used to determine whether a suburb or district is in a town or city, but if a borough or City contains rural areas, places in rural areas requiring disambiguation should go under [[placename, ceremonial county]]. Urban areas defined by the Office of National Statistics can be used to determine whether a place is in an urban or rural area.
• disambiguated place names in London/Greater London, which should go under [[placename, London]]. Thus Rainham, London not Rainham, Greater London (which is a redirect page). Where two places exist within London, use the London Borough (in short form), so for the two Belmonts, they become Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow.

Where further disambiguation is needed (i.e. there are two identical [[placename]]s within the same county or town/city), use the local government district or ward.

Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."

One issue I can think of: do any boroughs or cities include more than one urban area defined by the ONS? If so, I can think of some wording, but I don't want to propose something if it is purely hypothetical.--Mhockey (talk) 18:46, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Can I say that the first exception point is far too complicated to be useful for anyone trying to work out what to use. Personally I would drop it altogether in favour of not defining city/town suburbs and just go for the much simpler county disambiguation. Keith D (talk) 10:19, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I think the principle of disambiguating a district, neighbourhood or suburb of a town or city by town or city is a pretty straightforward principle. The discussion above on the rioni of Rome suggests that in various parts of the world it accords with common usage and that the alternative of disambiguating a city district by a wider local government unit is counter-intuitive. That is what was behind the inconsistencies which led to the change in the guidelines in April 2009. If you went back to disambiguating by counties, you'd soon end up back with the old problem. It's better to go with the flow, and as far as possible use disambiguation tags that people use naturally. It's only complicated in England because people want a bright-line test, which the English system of local government does not easily give them - everyone knows what a "town" or "city" is until you have to define it precisely. In other words, use common sense, and in most cases you'll comply with the guidance. You should only need the precise test if editors disagree on what "common sense" is.--Mhockey (talk) 11:10, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Keith D. This whole suburb thing has caused more problems than it has solved and should be dropped. It was installed on the loosest of grounds in the first place. MRSC (talk) 14:06, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Here is my proposal:

"In England, place names requiring disambiguation wherever possible go under [[placename, ceremonial county]] or [[placename, London]] for the City of London and Greater London combined.

Wherever further disambiguation is required, because of more than one place of the same name in the same county, local government district (and not county) is used, for example Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow.

If further disambiguation is required, because of two places of the same name in the same district, then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass ordinals are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations within the district.

Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."

MRSC (talk) 14:42, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm in full agreement with MRSC and Keith D. As has been discussed ad nauseam before, for a lot of places there simply is no definition of the boundaries of a town or city. Yes, the ONS produce some data on "urban sub-divisions" but they do not claim that these are accurate representations of the extent of the settlement. Disambiguating by town/city would change a huge number of existing names, and potentially leads to much animosity where it is disputed if one settlement is part of another. Quantpole (talk) 15:40, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

The latest proposal probably needs a tweak to cover Unitary Authorities and counties without districts. Keith D (talk) 17:07, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

"In England, place names requiring disambiguation wherever possible go under [[placename, ceremonial county]] or [[placename, London]] for the City of London and Greater London combined.

Wherever further disambiguation is required, because of more than one place of the same name in the same county, local government district (and not county) is used, for example Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow.

If further disambiguation is required, either because of two places of the same name in the same district or because the county has no districts, then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass ordinals are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations.

Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."

Done. MRSC (talk) 17:55, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I like this. Is there an example (or two) we could use for the "further disambiguation" part though perhaps? --Jza84 |  Talk  18:04, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

One example would be Woolston. Quantpole (talk) 18:55, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

"In England, place names requiring disambiguation wherever possible go under [[placename, ceremonial county]] or [[placename, London]] for the City of London and Greater London combined.

Wherever further disambiguation is required, because of more than one place of the same name in the same county, local government district (and not county) is used. Example: two Belmonts in London become Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow.

If further disambiguation is required, either because of two places of the same name in the same district or because the county has no districts, then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass ordinals are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations. Example: two Woolstons in Shropshire unitary authority become Woolston, north Shropshire and Woolston, south Shropshire.

Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."

Version with examples. MRSC (talk) 04:53, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Before we make yet another change to the policy, can we consider these points:

1. Of the countries which have a specific policy for disambiguated districts or neighbourhoods of cities, all except one use the convention Neighbourhood, City. They are: Canada, Japan, Poland and (I think) Germany. The exception is New Zealand, which uses Suburb, New Zealand (or the official name of the suburb if it is ambiguous within NZ). The usual practice for the United States is to use Neighbourhood, City (see Category:Neighborhoods in Boston, Massachusetts and Category:Neighborhoods in San Francisco, California. The usual practice in Ireland is to use District, City (see Category:Towns and villages in County Dublin and Category:Geography of Belfast. I suspect the reason is that people naturally identify a neigbourhood or suburb with the city of which it is a part, before any wider administrative unit. I can see no reason why the same should not apply in England.

2. The policy before April 2009 was a mess - full of inconsistencies. That is why it was changed. Why go back to a mess?

3. Can anyone point to some specific examples of where, under the current policy, there has been a difficulty in deciding whether a particular place is a suburb or district of a particular town or city? The assertion that "this whole suburb thing has caused more problems than it has solved" is unsubstantiated. Can we have some evidence, please? I am aware of inconsistencies because some editors had not appreciated what the current policy is, but that is not a good reason for changing it again.--Mhockey (talk) 20:47, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

The difficulty is we all cannot agree on the boundaries of English towns. We all have our own ideas and there is nothing definitive to draw on. It is ridiculous to have a guideline that offers only vague guidance that can be interpreted any way the reader pleases. Can you explain how disambiguation is better served by using a completely subjective and impossible to follow guideline as you suggest? It is far better to use something crystal clear that can be followed in 100% of cases and one that reflects the vast majority of actual cases. MRSC (talk) 08:37, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the disagreement is here, but if it's about how to treat districts of towns and cities, then (regardless of which country we're talking about) it's far more natural and helpful to disambiguate using the name of the town or city than by using (just) some wider region.--Kotniski (talk) 08:42, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks, I see the issue now the above post has been expanded, but still I don't think that the possibility of having to make judgements should cause us to adopt a rigid convention that will often give poor results (many of these places are unambiguously districts of some town, and disambiguating them in a way that omits mentioning the town is unnatural enough to potentially confuse readers).--Kotniski (talk) 08:51, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't work in the English system because we don't have commonly agreed boundaries of most settlements. Most places only exist within a larger administrative division. Although there is (perhaps) something to be said for disambiguating everything by local government district (the smallest unit). The only problem with this is may produce unexpected results (although any disambiguation system might do that). In defence of using local government district, this is what Ordnance Survey do for all places in England that are not part of a two-tier non-metropolitan county. A final thought, we could adopt their system. MRSC (talk) 08:48, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I may be not fully aware of what this is about - we're discussing whether an article like (for example) Weston, Southampton should be renamed Weston, Hampshire - is that it? I can see the possible difficulties, but I think we can allow ourselves the possibility of judging whether a place is commonly thought of as a district of a town ("Where do you live?" "Oh, Weston, that's in Southampton") or as a separate locality ("Where do you live?" "St Peters, that's in Kent, next to Broadstairs"). I know it looks a bit messy, but I find trying to impose a rigid one-size-fits-all solution on a whole set of articles leads to many titles that jar with common usage and expectations.--Kotniski (talk) 09:05, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Here is a comparison of our system and what Ordnance Survey use.

Place located in...	Ordnance Survey [1]	Our system
Unitary authority	Rochester, Medway	Rochester, Kent
Two-tier area	Ashford, Kent	Ashford, Kent
Metropolitan county	Sefton, Sefton	Sefton, Merseyside
London borough	Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea	Chelsea, London

MRSC (talk) 09:03, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't like the OS system - perhaps works for their purposes, but not for ours, where we're trying to be as helpful as possible to the general reader (who is going to look at Sefton, Sefton and just gawp).--Kotniski (talk) 09:07, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

section break 2

The problem we have is the definition of where the town ends and the district it is in begins. This is especially difficult where the district and town/city share the same name. I believe this to be the nub of the problem. However, in around 45 cases we consider the town/city and the district of the same name to be identical. We express this by having only one article for the town/city and the district, rather than the usual two. The implication of this is that all places within the district are suburbs of the main settlement. The districts that this applies to are:

Birmingham, Blackpool, Bournemouth, Bristol, Cambridge, Cheltenham, Chesterfield, Christchurch, Dorset, Corby, Coventry, Crawley, Derby, Eastbourne, Exeter, Gloucester, Harlow, Hastings, Ipswich, Kingston upon Hull, Leicester, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, Liverpool, Luton, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Newcastle upon Tyne, Northampton, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Peterborough, Plymouth, Poole, Portsmouth, Reading, Berkshire, Redditch, Sheffield, Southampton, Southend-on-Sea, Slough, Stevenage, Tamworth, Watford, Wolverhampton, Worcester, Worthing, York

Is there any synchronicity between this list and the places that want to "break away" from the usual county system? If these two lists are the same, we can easlily codify this into the guideline - and it would be clear to follow. MRSC (talk) 09:29, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Although Wikipedia currently has only a single article on Preston, I don't agree that in this case the "town/city and the district of the same name to be identical". Preston district contains a number of rural parishes and only the unparished area (a minority of the total district area) could be considered to be the urban settlement, and probably only places within the unparished area should be considered as "suburbs of Preston". I can't speak for other places on the list above. -- Dr Greg  talk  11:07, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Preston came up as a fringe case when reviewed these, why don't you split it? I've removed it from the list here as it is no longer listed at WP:UKDISTRICTS. MRSC (talk) 11:15, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to, but I currently don't really have enough time to spare to do a decent job! One day... -- Dr Greg  talk  11:20, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Here is how that would work as a guideline:

"In England, place names requiring disambiguation use ceremonial or administrative divisions wherever it is possible.

For the City of London and Greater London combined [[placename, London]] (the region) is used. In local government districts consisting of a single town or city (see WP:UKDISTRICTS) [[placename, district]] is used. Elsewhere in England [[placename, ceremonial county]] is used.

Wherever further disambiguation is required, because of more than one place of the same name in the same county, local government district (and not county) is used. Example: two Belmonts in London become Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow. If further disambiguation is required, either because of two places of the same name in the same district or because the county has no districts, then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass ordinals are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations. Example: two Woolstons in Shropshire unitary authority become Woolston, north Shropshire and Woolston, south Shropshire.

Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."

MRSC (talk) 11:31, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

This looks like a reasonable compromise here, particularly if the Preston article is split. Preston is an interesting example of how the guidelines have worked. If you look at Category:Geography of Preston, places in rural areas have been disambiguated by county (except Barton, Preston, because Barton, Lancashire is ambiguous). The suburbs have mostly been disambiguated by Preston (except possibly Brookfield, Lancashire, Cadley, Lancashire and Fulwood, Lancashire).

I would prefer to see the wording on London simplified to "For places in Greater London and the City of London, [[Placename, London]] is used".

I would also suggest that we add that disambiguated places which are unambiguous in England should be disambiguated Placename, England. I think this only affects Lincoln, Lincolnshire at present, which would not sit well in the new guideline.--Mhockey (talk) 12:12, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

The City of London is part of Greater London. ("The area comprising the areas of the London boroughs, the City and the Temples shall constitute an administrative area to be known as Greater London." – section 2(1), London Government Act 1963 – though that does raise the more obscure question of whether the Temples are part of the City!) The allusion to London as a "region" perhaps raises more questions than it answers.

"For places within Greater London (including the City of London), [[placename, London]] is used."

Incidentally, I think the debate on suburban places has overlooked that most of these evolved from rural settlements that merged into an urban agglomeration as the main town grew. Some people will wish to assert a place's historical independence, whereas others will see the place only within its current urban context. Neither view is likely to be consistently supported by current administrative boundaries and, in any case, there will always be marginal places where a town has a fringe or the edges of two towns approach each other. The county disambiguator has the advantage of being well defined and historically more stable (because ceremonial counties match to ancient counties for much of England). The town disambiguator is more intuitive for contemporary navigation. Our dilemma is that articles must contain both contemporary and historical intuition. Neither rule will cover every case and for many places the choice will be subjective. Not that recognising this helps much to resolve it!

— Richardguk (talk) 12:23, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

The City of London is not part of the Greater London ceremonial county, but I can see where region will confuse, so I'll omit that:

"In England, place names requiring disambiguation use ceremonial or administrative divisions wherever it is possible.

For the City of London and Greater London combined [[placename, London]] is used. In local government districts consisting of a single town or city (see WP:UKDISTRICTS) [[placename, district]] is used. Elsewhere in England [[placename, ceremonial county]] is used.

Wherever further disambiguation is required, because of more than one place of the same name in the same county, local government district (and not county) is used. Example: two Belmonts in London become Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow. If further disambiguation is required, either because of two places of the same name in the same district or because the county has no districts, then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass ordinals are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations. Example: two Woolstons in Shropshire unitary authority become Woolston, north Shropshire and Woolston, south Shropshire.

Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."

We've never used placename, England before. I will look to the archives, to see why... MRSC (talk) 12:34, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I would imagine Christchurch, Dorset, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, Reading, Berkshire would continue to be disambiguated in the same way, as they are being disambiguated with the next administrative division "up". MRSC (talk) 12:43, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Christchurch is ambiguous within England, so Christchurch, Dorset needs to stay. I had overlooked Reading, Berkshire. I see that we used Lincoln, England and Reading, England until 2004, but I cannot find a discussion of the pros and cons of the move. The point here is what disambiguation is most likely to be recognised outside England. Americans know where England is, but may not recognise Lincolnshire or Berkshire, so England is more helpful to them to distinguish from their own Lincolns and Readings. It also accords with the general principles in WP:NCGN#Disambiguation. --Mhockey (talk) 13:34, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Looks like they were moved at the same time. The ", England" disambiguator does not reflect any of our current practice. I can't see a case for putting in the guideline. MRSC (talk) 13:47, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I suppose it depends what you mean by "our current practice". We use Placename, Scotland for disambiguated places which are unambiguous in Scotland, and most countries also seem to follow the general principles in WP:NCGN. I suggest that the onus should be on us to say why England should be different, if that's what we think.--Mhockey (talk) 14:00, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Guidelines are somewhere between what we are doing and what we should be. I don't think the USA uses the country disambiguator. MRSC (talk) 14:20, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

You're right, the US disambiguates by state and this is recognised at WP:NCGN#Disambiguation (although this is rarely needed because US placename articles are usually titled Placename, State anyway, in line with US practice for referring to places). The difference is that US states (also Canadian provinces and Australian states), being large territories, are well known throughout the English speaking world, whereas English and Scottish counties are not.--Mhockey (talk) 17:21, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I still think we lack the unitary authority case where the disambiguation is needed. This could be solved by inserting this as per -

Wherever further disambiguation is required, because of more than one place of the same name in the same county, local government district or unitary authority (and not county) is used. Example: two Belmonts in London become Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow. If further disambiguation is required, either because of two places of the same name in the same district, unitary authority or because the county has no districts, then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass ordinals are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations. Example: two Woolstons in Shropshire unitary authority become Woolston, north Shropshire and Woolston, south Shropshire.

Keith D (talk) 14:26, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I see. I've added this with a modification:

"In England, place names requiring disambiguation use ceremonial or administrative divisions wherever it is possible.

For the City of London and Greater London combined [[placename, London]] is used. In local government districts consisting of a single town or city (see WP:UKDISTRICTS) [[placename, district]] is used. Elsewhere in England [[placename, ceremonial county]] is used.

Wherever further disambiguation is required then the district/unitary and not the county is used. Example: two Belmonts in London become Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow. If there are two places of the same name in the same district/unitary then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass directions are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations. Example: two Woolstons in Shropshire unitary authority become Woolston, north Shropshire and Woolston, south Shropshire.

Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."

MRSC (talk) 14:41, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

We've been at it for some time and appear to have worked through wording that is acceptable. I'm going to update the guideline at this point and discussion of any further changes can take place in a new section. MRSC (talk) 07:00, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Inappropriate timing

It seems to me that it was unreasonable for half a dozen people to discuss a long-standing convention in the middle of August (when many people are on holiday or relatively inactive) and decide to change it. The revised text is unclear: I shall assume however that it does not seek to change the convention that districts and suburbs of a city/town are disambiguated by the name of that city/town. Furthermore, the decision to ignore a reliable source, the Ordnance Survey, is highly questionable – see the RS, OR and SYN policies. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:03, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

No, we don't need to use the exact same naming system as any reliable source (particularly when there are many different reliable sources, with different ways of doing things, which anyway suit their needs rather than ours). What do you find unclear about the text? I thought it was quite a good solution, though there may turn out to be cases where it gives a visibly wrong answer, in which case we'll need to go back to it.--Kotniski (talk) 10:15, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

UN short English-language Names for current UN-Recognised national members

Partly just to make editing easier, I am adding this new section and we can carry on here. Same basic subject, but I thought it would also help if I put this more accurate section title, to make it clear exactly what we are talking about.

One or two points arising from the discussion above that may require additional research for clarification:

• Rockpocket asked about the UN being able to duplicate names. I have checked the UN list [2] carefully and there are no current duplicates. I am searching the site currently to see if there are documents describing how a new name would be accepted. I presume it doesn't arise all that often, but looking at newer members, it does appear likely that the UN is guided by the new member state's government. It may be stating the obvious, but clearly the UN would find it difficult if two states had exactly the same name, so maybe this might be an issue in the future, even if not currently.

• Origins of current article country names in en-WP. I suspect that in most cases, the UN official name has been accepted de-facto primarily because it is the name most widely used in other sources. Clearly, existing well-established or historical states have chosen names to be represented at the UN that chime with their well-known names. I only raise this as it of course goes to layers of verifiability.

• "Odd" names like Myanmar. I only raise this one as an example, not as being particularly "odd". We could get into a battle of sources, but it does seem pretty clear that these are the official names those states wish to know themselves by. The UN name is the name of the country that that government has selected. Many quality media sources in turn use those names but as we know with the usual reminder. ("Myanmar formerly known as Burma"). We can do the same in various ways. Surely though, the onus is on us to have a very good reason not to use the official country name when we don't.

• Primacy. In cases like Georgia, the main issue within Wikipedia is Primacy. In fact, this is often ambiguous in practise, hence the hugely complex debates on those. I would ask that we resolve one issue - that if a UN official scheme was approved for this specific category of UN-recognised-nation-state-members (henceforth shall we use the acronym UNRMs for short?), that the Primacy debate would or would not be settled. This seems key.

• Historicity. China, Ireland, Iran and others overlap with historical names. Here, the key point is the distinction between an article that describes a UNRM and an article that describes the history of the well-known territory currently governed by that UNRM. I hardly need to point out that this is the norm in other encyclopedias like Brittanica - the real question for research / discussion is why it is not the norm here. I propose that the reason for this is editor POV conflict and not verifiability.

Thanks for all comments so far, very interesting - there is still more work to be done to build a convincing case for this and I am just exploring it, but I appreciate that it's taken seriously and editors think about it. Thanks. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 11:57, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Uhuh. And you're still proposing that we have Libya @ Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Syria @ Syrian Arab Republic, Laos @ Lao People's Democratic Republic, etcetera? Those are the English "short names" used by the UN. I hardly need to point out that this is not the norm in any other encyclopaedia. The idea is ridiculous. Nightw 12:55, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Not quite as you put it. I'm proposing that there be an article for an official UNRM. As I said above, that doesn't rule out there being, for example, Syria - it's just that that isn't the UNRM. In fact, as we see with complex subjects in Wikipedia, there are often lots of articles with very similar names. There is a distinction between the historic and widely known country name and the official name for the UNRM. At the same time, all editors must be careful to consider the difference between what they were "raised and educated" to know a particular country as and what it's own people or government wish it to be officially known as in English. I personally have odd feelings around the name Zimbabwe, not because I object to it, but because I was brought calling it by a different name. It would be pure POV for me to insist it be called by that name in Wikipedia? Why? Primarily because that's what the government there wishes it to be officially called. That is, by the UN name. I don't like that government. But I don't campaign for the name to be changed for the reason that I feel uncomfortable about it. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 13:14, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

You've misread Rockpocket's point. The UN doesn't have to disambiguate between states and other entities. Such as Ireland the island and Ireland the state. Or Georgia the state and Georgia the U.S. state. We do. And re your last bullet point above, Ireland the state doesn't currently govern the entirety of the island of Ireland. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 13:21, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

That's the Primacy issue I was suggesting we clarify above Bastun - I do understand it. Yes, we have disambig problems and in the case of national articles for UNMRs, I am proposing that name takes Primacy, purely as a standard starting point, for the reason that national entities are key building blocks of the world we have, much like SI units and plant species names, we shouldn't make them up. And usually the disamb result is not about mere abstracts but about POV battling. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 14:09, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia uses the common name in English, not the official name. We do not and should not use, for example, Syrian Arab Republic, instead of Syria. You're assertion of primacy with regards to Georgia is precisely at the core of the protracted debates there and your proposal to default to one by fiat does not address the legitimate objections to such assertions of primacy. older ≠ wiser 14:35, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Lots of assumptions in there. If it's always the common name, then why isn't for example, Ireland the State? So it is self-evidently more complicated than that. Clearly there has to be a basis for determining Primacy in the case of multiple uses for the "name" and I am making an NPOV proposal on that. Until one gets accepted, battling will continue. It also isn't true that Wikipedia does not use the official name for things - it very frequently does actually. It might not in the case of UNMRs, but that's because of POV, not WP rules. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 17:21, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Because disambiguation is sometimes necessary, obviously. There is guidance for determining primary topic, which in appropriate wiki manner utilizes discussion and consensus, not arbitrary declarations. One person's NPOV proposal is another persons attempt to promote a particular POV. Given the open nature of wiki editing, there are some issues that editors will simply have to agree to disagree about. Yes, of course Wikipedia does sometimes use the official name for things, but generally not instead of well-recognized common names. older ≠ wiser 18:45, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I really don't see what problem we're trying to solve here. Naming articles on countries is hardly ever a problem, except in a few special cases which are special cases (i.e. they can be handled individually, without the need for any rule). Is there anything broken with what we have at the moment (except that some people disagree with some of the consensus decisions reached - e.g. I can't understand why the article on China isn't called China)?--Kotniski (talk) 13:36, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Because the nation that lives there isn't "China" - it's the PRC. Perhaps Rockpocket can say if I hit the mark, but his comment "we simply can't name two distinct entities the same thing, but the UN can" is what I was discussing - clearly the UN doesn't call two UNRMs the same thing, which is the point I was making. On the solving problem requirement, there have been huge past debates over some of them, However, even if this wasn't a huge problem, I believe it would still be worth thinking about, since at the moment the imprecision around it allows full play to people's POVs, at least in some cases. Many editors forget that Wikipedia is not just geared around their own backgrounds, national identities, predisposed views, etc. These are particularly strongly felt on things like national identities. I am proposing a way of working on that. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 13:46, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I think Bastun interpeted my comment correctly. My point was that the UN can call the state of Ireland, "Ireland" without having to worry that there is an island with the same name. Likewise "Georgia", the European state without concerning itself over the the US state. We, however, are an encyclopaedia and have a problem when apples and oranges have exactly the same name. This is a major issue for a few states. If I understand you correctly, it sounds like you are suggesting that sovereign states, as named by the UN, should have automatic primacy over that name on Wikipedia ("for the reason that national entities are key building blocks of the world we have"). Is this correct? I'd need to consider this more before I would endorse it or not, but its certainly something solid for the community to discuss. However, you then go on to say that it would serve "purely as a standard starting point" for determining primacy. Herein lies a problem. To take Ireland as an example, you will find strong opinions that will argue ad infinitum that there is evidence showing that either the state or the island have primacy (and others still will argue that they are the same thing). It seems to me that this project wide solution (to what is essentially a few problem articles) will not actually do much to resolve the issues on those few articles! For this to be effective, I would argue that either the primacy of sovereign states would need to be absolute, or else - in cases where primacy is disputed - there is a standard disambiguation protocol based on UN names (i.e. Foo (state) and Foo (other entity) with Foo as a disambiguation page). Rockpocket 14:05, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree there should be a standard disambiguation style, such as Foo (country) (which would work for Georgia, unlike state). Whether or not the other topic is primary Foo or not Foo (whatever) is unrelated. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 14:18, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts Rockpocket. I don't know if the Building Blocks argument works but perhaps something based on it might? I agree that Primacy debates are important, but I also wonder if we do not have some overlooked flexibility in Wikipedia in these situations to come up with a better modus operandi than we currently have. I suspect we might be able to use that flexibility to come up with a new structure for UN-recognised nation-states' article titles. I am thinking for example that there could be something like China (UN state) as opposed to China replacing what is now at PRC and so on. Alternatively, more subtly, there could be something like China becoming what was the PRC article and China (country) replacing what was the China article. Something standard and wiki-wide that says "this thing is a UN state" and something else standard and wiki-wide that says "this thing is an historic country". Part of the reasoning behind this is that it is often unclear to a lot of editors what makes a country - vs - a national state and the definition of UN membership is the most crucial one used in the wide world. Right there is a building block. Another part of the reasoning is that common names are often misleading and not used in Wikipedia for that very reason. The common (en) name for China is China and so that one's "right" in the sense that the UNRM article would sit at that title - the common name for North Korea is North Korea and that one would be "wrong" as far as the UN state-name goes. I am sensitive to the slipperiness in some of this but I actually am beginning to think that in many cases we need several articles more than we currently have. Another part of the reasoning is that on quite a few key national articles, editors are having all kinds of struggles because they are really trying to write two articles in one. They successfully divided this at China/PRC but not in some other key cases. Disambig struggles within articles are not pretty to watch, although pleasure can be gained from watching antlike behaviours under a glass slide. (this last is meant to be a joke.) Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 17:47, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

The full list of names used by UN that can be controversial:
UN short name [common short name]:

• Bahamas [The Bahamas]
• Brunei Darussalam [Brunei]
• Belarus [Byelorussia] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aotearoa (talk • contribs) 19:02, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
• Myanmar [Burma]
• Timor-Leste [East Timor]
• Gambia [The Gambia]
• Islamic Republic of Iran [Iran]
• Côte d’Ivoire [Ivory Coast]
• Republic of Korea [South Korea]
• Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [North Korea]
• Lao People’s Democratic Republic [Laos]
• Libyan Arab Jamahiriya [Libya]
• The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia [Macedonia]
• Federated States of Micronesia [Micronesia]
• Russian Federation [Russia]
• Sao Tome and Principe [São Tomé and Príncipe]
• Syrian Arab Republic [Syria]
• United Republic of Tanzania [Tanzania]
• United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland [United Kingdom]
• United States of America [United States]
• Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela [Venezuela]
• Viet Nam [Vietnam] Aotearoa (talk) 19:00, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I am working on a proper table of probable redirects, disambs, etc that would result from this, so nobody need rush into the detail just yet, it deserves good treatment. Suffice to say in the meantime that (jolly tone of voice) out of 192 UN member states (UNRMs), Wikipedia uses the official UN name in almost all cases! That is to say, all but 22! Which is 89% of the time. So at least it's some kind of guide, regardless of the burden of Common Names and Primacy, which we always ignore in Wikipedia! (sophisticated attempts at humour). Jamesinderbyshire (talk)

However that 89% really has no bearing. I assume the names weren't taken directly from the UNRMs... they just happen to coincide. Because if you use that as a basis, as I count them up, wikipedia uses the official US name in all but 2 cases... 99%. So there's a better guide for you to go by. I didn't check UK, Canada or Australian official usage comparisons at this english version wikipedia but I'll bet they also are used more than the UN for naming conventions. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:56, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I suspect the US bias simply reflects the POV of the majority of en-WP editors, who are after all, US-based. However, the overall reason is that the simple names UN member states' governments announce themselves by in each language are pretty widely used by pretty much everyone, UN, EU, governments, media, etc, pretty much everywhere - except Wikipedia and also, as you say, the US government. BTW, if you are using the US State Dept website, they mainly use UN names but also have some exceptions based on US governmental hangups. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 21:20, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

It is not used by pretty much everyone except at a UN meeting. Media is all over the place and US, UK, Australia and Canada don't conform either. The UN POVishness is well documented and your "US government hangups" shows bias of your own. Just because one political entity like the UN gives carte blanch doesn't mean political entities like the US, UK, etc also have to do so. No one here at this english wiki gives a hoot what China or Andorra call other countries and it's why chinese and german wikis read differently than english and italian wikis. One size simply doesn't fit all no matter how much we try. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:10, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Actually I couldn't care less what the UN says they are either. It's just that Wikipedia already in the main uses the UN names, so that got me wondering why we don't on some - clearly the "why we don't" is varied, but sometimes it's because of battles between POVs. So as to my reasons - I am simply wondering if we can find a standardised way of thinking about this that excludes the POV in-fighting in some articles. As for what non-EN speaking countries call nations, clearly that's irrelevant to this discussion, so your point about German and Chinese Wikinames for the nation states doesn't affect this and neither was I claiming it did. The "US hangups" I was referring to are about specific issues, for example the tendancy to not accept what "socialist" and "small African" countries call themselves. This bias is very widespread in Western media generally, not just US, so I was kind of using "US" as shorthand for "US, Britain, the Anglosphere and Lots of Others". A good example is Libya - that tricky word "Jamahirya" (invented I think if I recall correctly by Gaddafi) is frequently not used in Western media outlets. Clearly this is a mix of some POV, some shorthanding for reader convenience (Libya shorter and easier than SPLAJ or LAJ) - and bias - dislike of Gadaffi. My point is - shouldn't Wikipedia aspire to NPOV, and therefore to using names that evade all these biases? I am trying to think of a good analogue from outside of nationality to elucidate - so far haven't come up with a cracker, but working on it. :-) Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 07:11, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

How do you get NPOV from what you're suggesting. It would have the PRC at [[China]], completely ignoring the perspective of 22 states, which all hold that the ROC is "China". There will be inherent POV in every naming policy. The one you're advocating just happens to be also impractical in an encyclopaedia. Nightw 15:32, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Of course there will always be problems with any given scheme. As there are (huge ones) with the current scheme. As regards China, to turn the question around, how exactly is it NPOV to give the name for the current state as a different one to the one they are known as internationally? On both Commonnname and Primacy grounds, it should be China - but that currently points not to an article about the state, but to what is really an extended disambig page. Why? Because there has been a sustained saga there of wiki-compromises to the perspectives, not of "22 states" as you put it, but to the POVs of various factions of Wiki-editors. Nothing will ever convince me that this is an NPOV solution - it's so far away from NPOV that the status quo really brings Wikipedia into disrepute on such an important point. See for example Brittanica [3] which merges the current PRC state into the China article. This goes for a lot of other articles too - they are really trying to disambig within the page by conflating UN state with traditional country where those share namespace. Strange that something as smart as Wikipedia has to handle these namespace clashes so crudely when we have the tools to avoid it. See my forthcoming table for a planned solution! The megalomania of it! Seriously though, there must be a better way. I'm not saying this is neccessarily it, but it's something like this. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 17:03, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

The thing is you seem to be advocating one pov for another pov. The UN is at least as pov as any nation state so it would be better to use the US or UK version here in an english wikipedia if you want some sort of uniformity. Fyunck(click) (talk) 18:12, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

That's the key point here. There is no such thing as 'neutral' when it comes to country names. The UN system, for example, lets members decide their own names. The US state department bases its names on US foreign policy (as, presumably, do other countries). On wikipedia we deal with all this through consensus, with the hope that whatever gets chosen is the generally acceptable name used amongst english speakers. Pushing this system or that will only result in a skewed neutrality. --RegentsPark (talk) 18:16, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I think you may be conflating "country" with "UN recognised state". The latter uses the correct name by definition. The name of the former is a shifting sea of cultural, historical, national, racial and other perspectives, some of which you mention. The problem is that in Wikipedia (as well as in reality) these two are sometimes confused. Result: chaos. So, no, this is nothing whatever to do with any UN POV. It's to do with the most widely used definition of what constitutes a modern nation-state and the name used. When you think about it, it's actually quite wierd that anyone in Wikipedia would think they know better what the name of the latter should be than the nation-state's own government. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 18:23, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

No. I mean that the name used as a UN recognized state is a political choice and we should not, in the name of consistency, choose to follow the political choices of that, or any other, body. Better to leave it to consensus to work out what is the generally accepted name of a country or an appropriate title for an article on a country that makes sense to the english speaking world. Consensus seeking is a strength of wikipedia, and an important way in which it differs from the traditional notion of an encyclopedia and we should not be seeking to jettison what is one of our key strengths, or pillars if you will. --RegentsPark (talk) 20:36, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I would suggest we are talking about two different things here RegentsPark. On the one hand, we have UNRM states. The names for those are unequivocally known I am afraid. This is because the UN names them by agreement with the host government. That's why a list of the names appears quite correctly at UN Current Members. Entirely separate to this concept of UN state is something else. That something else is a "country". A country is something that is endlessly battled over. I hardly dare mention for example Israel/Palestine. Countries are vague entities. UN member state names are not. They are as much a given as are SI units and it would just as ridiculous for us to query them as it would be for us to query the name Kilogram. Your and other editor's points here simply allude to this clash between a country name and a UN state name. Unfortunately, sometimes the same name is given to an article that covers both and sometimes the wrong name is given to one or other. That's really the nub of it. It isn't anything to do with anyone's POV, the rights of Wikipedians to name things, the 7 pillars of Wikiness or anything in between. It's about the difference between the Lost Vagueness of countryishness and the Super-cool Slimline All-UN MegaNames. (joke) Seriously, they are different. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 21:11, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

<cr> The UN recognized state is correct by definition? what? There is no necessary correspondence between a nation's name for itself and the name outsiders bestow upon it. When France writes it's dictionaries they call Germany as Allemagne and the Germans call themselves Deutchland. Heck I think the Swiss have 4 different names for themselves. Countries have no right to tell us what we should call them in english and they have no right to tell France what to call them in french. The UN needs to have some point of reference so interpreters can communicate with their respective entities but here in a English encyclopedia we don't need that. It seems weird that anyone would want to force a UN view on an English encyclopedia to me. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:01, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Em - it's not a "UN view" - it is the internationally agreed name as used by the UN and the country itself. "Countries have no right to tell us what we should call them in english" - actually we are here to reflect, in an encyclopedic way, the way the world is and English usage changes over time and sometimes over space too. There is no way that any system is going to eliminate POV-pushing or debate, but the advantage of using the UN-recognised name is that there is a starting point that those who wish a change would need to argue for. By "us" in practice you mean the prejudices of whichever happens to be the most numerous national group(s) in any given debate. That isn't going to change anytime soon either, but it seems to me that the proposal has the potential to reduce the grief. Ben MacDui 19:37, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

By "us" I meant native english speakers writing an english encyclopedia. All name usage changes over time, not just english, and I'm still saying I see no difference in using the UK names as a starting point in an english encyclopedia than the UN version. The UK names are more in line with wikipedia than the UN. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:02, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I think that the group most qualified to tell us what they want to be called actually is the countries! I wouldn't want to be going around with people calling me by the wrong name, neither do other countries. And the Deutschland argument is a strawman, Germany uses Germany as its official English name. I highly doubt the UK is more in line then the UN, the UN names were chosen to try and be neutral, they being the UN. The UN's view on neutrality between member states if as strong, if not stronger, than wikipedias. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 00:01, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Countries do not tell us anything. If Chipmunkdavis means the governments of the several countries, he is arguing for the adoption of the official point of view - which is contrary to policy, and has been rejected several times. We use East Timor, not Timor Leste - because the English-speaking world does, although the present government would prefer otherwise. If for no other reason, governments come and go, and their preferences change even more quickly; but there is of course a better reason: we are not here to proliferate the compromises of the United Nations, nor to disseminate any government's propaganda.

I should add that there is no reason to believe our country articles were originally titled from the UN nomenclature: many of them derive from the 1911 Britannica and other works of general reference; when a country has come into being or changed name recently, we have usually followed English press coverage until the event has been recorded by works of general reference. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:49, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

"Timor Leste" just means "East Timor", so it's not exactly propaganda, unless you detect a hidden propaganda in the use of another language. This is of course apparently not a problem at Côte d'Ivoire! The inconsistency of all these positions is what must seem rather baffling to casual readers. Why for example is China not the state when nearly everyone else on the English-speaking planet says it is? Not submitting to propaganda? Or submitting to some editor-POVs here in Wikiland? The latter I suspect. Yes, governments come and go, and so do the official and UN names of states, but we are capable of changing the names of articles. I am not arguing for a one-size fits-all approach but trying to turn a spotlight on all the inconsistencies. Arguing for example that the UN name is some sort of instrument of government propaganda in some cases, but not others, to suit one's views. (Not you specifically Pmanderson, but the overall current position.) On the origins question, the synchrony between the bulk of article names and the UN official name is mostly because that is also the most widely used name internationally and so is reached for as the Commonname. The exceptions to that like China, Ireland, etc, are rather glaring. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 19:59, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Because China is one country with two governments (one of the few things on which the two governments agree, btw); therefore the article is about the country, not either government. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:25, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Not according to Common Names - one is China, the other Taiwan. Even more puzzlingly, if your argument is about Taiwan, Taiwan is at Taiwan. Of course, this is nothing at all to do with Wikipedia standards. It's merely to do with fudging internal battles and sysops having no powers over content. The simplest of standardisation arguments - that the common (and it just so happens UN name as well!) name should be respected - falls on the back of POV battling in both this very important national article and a number of others of less world importance. Oh dear. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 07:03, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Your proposal has not been met with consensus. As to why it should be considered, are you going to bring up any new arguments, or just the same biased absurdities? Nightw 07:25, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, it wasn't even a proposal, more of a question really. :-) On the "bias" point, I think the truth is we all have biases when confronting issues of nationality and nationhood. Those who just claim others have them are overlooking the mote in their own eyes. For my part, despite the inumerable biases I doubtless have, I am actually trying to encourage a dialogue about de-NPOV'ing this issue (state names) but of course we can expect vigorous refusal to engage from many quarters. Wikipedia should not be a play-pen for POVs but on questions of racial, religious and national identity and on top political issues like climate change, it sadly is. System and policy is the only way forwards. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 08:11, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

We do have a system and a policy - by and large it means following common usage in a large body of reliable sources (except when issues like ambiguity need to be resolved). Using title X for article A (i.e. effectively telling people that X normally refers to the subject of A, and the subject of A is generally referred to as X) is not a POV if it is demonstrably true (by looking at what the entire body of sources do). It would be a POV (well not so much a POV as a lie) if we based the choice of title on only one cherry-picked source, ignoring all the other sources readers would be expecting us to reflect. --Kotniski (talk) 09:57, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I have been watching this discussion without feeling the need to comment. I do however feel the need to defend Jamesinderbyshire against any accusation of bias. As far as I can see he is attempting to put forward a proposal (or ask a question) that could possibly help eliminate any bias, and putting it far better than I ever could. There may be many who will disagree with him as is their right, but I don't see any part of his argument that could be termed biased absurdities. In saying all that, the only worry I have with this proposal (question) is that if we follow the UN on this will it then be perceived by editors that a UN source as a reference will trump all others throughout Wikipedia. Jack1297 (talk) 09:59, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Quite agree with Jack1297 re "biased absurdities" allegation. It's not my view that any weight be given to the UN in any way other than the special case of national articles. The problem with COMMONNAME in this context is that it gives undue weight to sources from anglophone countries with large populations relative to the expressed wishes of the governments - and by extension peoples - of the countries themselves. There will always be problems, but in effect COMMONNAME is, in some circumstances, simply a cover for bias - our large country calls you this more often than not and so what if you have a problem with it? One almost looks forward to the eventual triumph of Indian English and an end to these debates. Ben MacDui 17:45, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

An excellent point well made, Ben MacDui. I am also looking forward with interest to see what Hinglipedia will be like. :-) The other aspect of bias in relation to the UN to bear in mind is that it is often viewed with hostility in the US, especially from the right in that country - not really sure why this is, as the US started the organisation along with Britain, but I suppose it's essentially because the UN sometimes serves as a platform for criticism of the US. Given the US domination of en-WP, I would expect their to be reflex hostility to any suggestion of using UN naming systems as a base from some quarters, regardless of the factuality inherent in the fact that UN recognised states are by definition named as in the UN system. This could at least form an acceptable basis for our discussions and an onus on those who disaprove to show why, rather than the current (actually rather absurd) set up where every editor's POV comes in on what should be a straight-forward matter. It's true that this isn't a comprehensive solution, but we need to work on a way to make it better than it currently is. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 18:11, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

UN names in English for countries

Apologies if this has been discussed before or I am in the wrong place - if the latter, I would be grateful to know the correct project page. Thanks for any help and comments.

My subject is this - UN official names for countries. The UN website helpfully lists these in each language on it's website. [4] These names are also widely used in other major official websites like the EU, the US State Dept, IMF, UN sub-organisations, etc. I am curious about the article names for countries in Wikipedia. In many cases, like France, Germany, China and so on, Wikipedia articles do use the UN-en names. In a few significant cases, notably, Burma (which should be Myanmar), North Korea (which should be Democratic People's Republic of Korea), Georgia (country) (which should be Georgia) and Republic of Ireland (which should be Ireland), we do not. This seems (a) rather inconsistent and (b) confusing to the reader. Would it not be better to have an overall policy of following the official UN english name for each UN-recognised nation state in Wikipedia article titles? That would require some disambiguation, but that seems a small price to pay for precision. I ask because, when investigating exceptions to this, it appears that various POVs have intervened to generate the non-UN article name. Comments gratefully received, in particular, has this been discussed before as a Wikipedia policy? Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 12:32, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I strongly oppose any serious debate to be held on this matter at this stage. ARBCOM has ruled that there should be no page move discussions relating to Ireland article names until September 2011. Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Ireland_article_names#Motions_2, i believe a wider debate on country names which could have a serious implications for Ireland articles would violate that ruling. In general i also think it is unworkable to have a single rule for all countries, there are special circumstances for several, but if this is to be properly debated it should be done after all ARBCOM rulings have expired. BritishWatcher (talk) 12:50, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

That's about Ireland, not the general point. Agreed that Ireland is a case, but it isn't the general issue. I am seeking clarification as to the general issue. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 12:53, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

A wider debate on country article names could have serious implications for the Ireland articles and people need to be aware of the ruling. I am ok with a debate on wikipedia country article naming policy but it should all take place after all rulings relating to country names have expired. BritishWatcher (talk) 13:00, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

At the moment, this is simply about seeking views on the overall policy. You are jumping about five leaps ahead raising the Ireland Arbcom ruling. When I want to challenge that, I will announce it. :-) Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 13:09, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Views on the overall policy is fine, but any formal proposals about a policy for article names that would include Ireland should not take place prior to Sep 2011. Even if we exclude Ireland so the debate can take place, such a policy change for all other articles could also still have a big impact on the debate about Ireland article names in future, much better to hold a wider debate on it all in a years time. BritishWatcher (talk) 13:19, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

(od + ec)You say that "this seems (a) rather inconsistent and (b) confusing to the reader". However, it is inconsistent only if the intention was to follow UN names which is not the case. Our naming policy focuses more on common english names and France, Germany, Burma, North Korea are consistent with that. Second, you say that this is 'confusing to the reader'. It would be confusing only to that particular reader who happened to be familiar with the UN given names (I doubt if there are many such readers). Most readers are not familiar with that system and would be far more confused by Democratic People's Republic of Korea than by North Korea. Article titles are driven by reader expectations rather than formal systems of naming (of which there are many, and there is no particular reason to choose one over another). --RegentsPark (talk) 13:06, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

(2 ec's) I support this, but I do believe the occasional exception must be made. In general, wikipedia uses the shortform name of a country, not the long form. Hence United Kingdom instead of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Australia instead of Commonwealth of Australia. As for the two Koreas, their official short names are both exactly the same, Korea. Obviously they cannot be the same, and picking one over the other would be serious POV. The current options, North Korea and South Korea provide the short term names with a commonly associated distinction. The UN has decided to just skirt the issue completely and use the long names, we do not have to follow. Similarly for Ireland, the country shares the name with an Island. It was decided the Island was primary, covering more area, and not potentially pushing a POV that Ireland the state controls the whole of Ireland the Island. So like with the Koreas, another shortform option was raised.

So my opinion is that UN shortform names should be followed, unless there is a conflict with another area's name. This would also apply to East Timor (UN name Timor-Leste). As a counter-example Cote d'Ivoire is already at the UN name. If you include that clause about conflicting common names in the discussion, the Ireland issue should be covered. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 13:07, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Is there any particular reason why you think this is a good idea? It will make the folks at the UN happy, but, beyond that, I don't see anything wrong with our current naming policy on countries. Using the UN as a standard will conflict immediately with our common english name policy, will lead to endless discussions on exceptions (Georgia is on my mind), and is, anyway, just another naming system. Why not, for example, use the US state department system instead? --RegentsPark (talk) 13:15, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I like it not only because it is official names, but also because it is probably the most WP:NPOV list of names out there. Of course, there are other wikipedia guidelines to consider. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 13:26, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

The thing is, if we are to make several exemptions, i do not see the point in going by the UN list at all, if it means there would be no change to almost all articles anyway. BritishWatcher (talk) 13:27, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Well I covered all the exemptions in just one clause, described above. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 13:30, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

What about China and Taiwan both of which are not at their country names. What about the fact Georgia the country is not the clear primary topic. If you look at the page views for the two Georgias, they are not that far apart which suggests disam is fair. What about Burma, that is still the widely known name in English rather than its official name. BritishWatcher (talk) 13:36, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

China is the name of both countries, Georgia is the name of two areas. The clause I mentioned above is that we use the UN list unless a conflict comes up like these ones. But on the other hand I doubt Taiwan would be on a UN list. The alternative seems to be to go by the countries official short name (with the same clause), which the UN list follows, except in situations like the one described above.

As for Burma/Myanmar, this guideline would change it to Myanmar. I'd disagree about the widely known name, I think Myanmar is sufficiently known worldwide. I've read through the archives, different google results show different amounts of usage, so that was inconclusive. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 13:41, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

But all these examples highlight its best to agree to each article on a case by case basis as there are different types of issues and reasons for exemptions. BritishWatcher (talk) 13:47, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Taiwan is not a UN-recognised nation-state, so it's outside the scope of this discussion, which is about UN nation-state names. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 13:49, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

China is though and there for the Republic of China (Taiwan) is impacted. I think it would be wrong to treat UN member states a certain way whilst allowing completely different policies to dictate non member states naming methods. BritishWatcher (talk) 13:54, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Using the UN system, there would be no change to the Wikipedia named article China and therefore zero impact on anything related to China. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 14:03, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

That UN list calls it China. Our article at China is a summary of the Chinese civilization. The country article is located at People's Republic of China. In the same way Taiwan is about the island whilst the country is at Republic of China. BritishWatcher (talk) 14:05, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Oh yes, OK, sorry, I was mistaken about that one. Under a UN-names scheme that would have to change to China (historical country) or similar. Taiwan could remain Taiwan as it's not a nation-state. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 14:16, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

The [list linked to is a list of "Member States of the United Nations". Although the list contains countries, it is not "a list of countries" per se, as it excludes several countries. Not least those countries that comprise the UK, because they are not Member States of the United Nations in their own right. Daicaregos (talk) 13:15, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Must you bring that up? It's a list of countries using country as a synonym of sovereign state. Anyway, DRPK is the name used there. I notice that it uses "Democratic Republic of the Congo" too, which wikipedia uses. This however may be because there are no widely used shorter names for it. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 13:22, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

To whomever that comment addressed Chipmunkdavis, it just sounds rude. Daicaregos (talk) 14:05, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, by definition, anything that isn't a UN nation-state would not be derived from the list of UN nation-states. All that means is that the list would not be a guide to anything else other than UN-member nation-state article names. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 13:32, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Avoiding getting bogged down OK, I see that some editors want to try to bog the issue down in Ireland-related issues from their POVs and although that's their privelege, it's essentially a distraction, as that is all just POV. Regents Park makes the interesting argument here, which is about consistency. What this discussion ought to be about is that it there clearly is a serious problem of POV affecting a few nation-state articles. Reference to the UN-list is an easy, internationally-accepted, consistent and widely used source we can refer to in order to NPOV the nation-state article space. Redirection is a well established and easy-to-use method of avoiding reader confusion in those few cases (like Burma and North Korea) where widely known names are not the same as official UN english-language short names, thus giving the casual reader the added information that when they type Burma they interestingly get the official name Myanmar. The issue of Ireland is a well-known controversial one and is anyway under Arbcom injunction, so all we are seeking to do here is establish if the UN list is a useful NPOV source to serve as a basis for future use. Consistency is an issue, but it is plainly illogical to seek consistency from what are UN short-names, such as France and Germany and then avoid it elsewhere in a few cases, because of POV. Consistency also matters because Wikipedia is now the number one online factual source. Official nation-state names matter and it is absolutely muddled to have some of them drifting away arbitrarily from the most accepted international usage. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 14:12, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I do not want to bog this down on the Ireland issue, however any agreement in this area could have serious implications for the Ireland articles and that is something i wish to avoid. The problem is there are exceptions and some serious history/disputes that we have not been involved in, a blanket policy is simply going to be unworkable. And if this debate is bogged down by Ireland right now, when people arrive with their strong views on all the articles/areas which would be impacted by a change (there are alot) its going to look more like World War 3. Everyone will want exceptions made. Ireland matters must have exception because Arbcom rulings and the fact the country took its name from an island which existed long before the state. There is a strong case that Georgia the country is not the primary topic, considering page views show both articles get around 5000-7000 a day. The country gets slightly more than the state, but not by enough to demand the primary spot. The history with China/Taiwan is very messy and the present way of dealing with it is far more neutral than allowing the peoples republic of China to be at China. Such an agreement should be tied to doing the same with Taiwan / Republic of China, but this debate is focued only on UN member states (of which Taiwan is excluded because the UN is not neutral). There are many complications and exemptions, trying to resolve it all in one central place is going to be far more difficult than you imagine. BritishWatcher (talk) 14:23, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

If we are to continue i think the first step is to create alist of each country that could be impacted. It is also not just a case that the country with the name is impacted, but like in Irelands case, the United Kingdom is seriously impacted because we share the island of Ireland and of course there are multiple articles connected with their titles. So Sport in China for example. BritishWatcher (talk) 14:30, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

You are bogging it down in the Irish issue. That cannot be touched until September 2011 so its going to be an exception regardless. What is obvious is that is no general guidelines so when a particular issue is brought up its fraught with conflict. --Snowded ^TALK 14:31, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

List of countries potentially impacted

• Republic of Ireland - Also impacts on the United Kingdom
• Republic of Macedonia - Something that has also gone to Arbcom, editors from Greece heavily involved.
• China / People's Republic of China - Situation linked with Taiwan / Republic of China.
• North Korea clearly linked with South Korea
• Burma
• Georgia - Also linked with the United States as its one of their states.

I think theres probably more that i may have left off. But just that above group makes this a huge issue and a one size fits all policy very unlikely. BritishWatcher (talk) 14:40, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Given how many UN states there are, that's actually not a very big list. Also, just because there will be fights over exceptions, does not mean those fights are not worth having. A starting point to ending those fights would be to accept the validity of the same external source almost every other major organisation in the world also uses. I will be coming on by the way to explaining how the UN develops those names (they call for comments from every other existing nation state plus other things) and who uses them (almost everyone, including almost everyone Wikipedia regularly cites as a quality source) and how. We will also need to discuss the many lists and tables that already make use of the UN names and then confusingly pipe them to non-UN names. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 14:44, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

East Timor would be affected as well. But I think a one size stretches to fit all policy sounds like a good idea. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 14:46, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

All the other UN member states titles are fine, all of those in that list are the controversial ones or have issues. We can not apply a single rule because it works for most UN countries, to these ones. There has to be exceptions. And if we are to give many of these cases exceptions, then there really is no point. BritishWatcher (talk) 14:53, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Also.. If we were to follow that list then the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland would have to be the title rather than the United Kingdom.

Also.. Syrian Arab Republic rather than Syria.

Also.. Iran (Islamic republic of) or Islamic Republic of Iran instead of Iran. BritishWatcher (talk) 14:49, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I will produce one list of all impacts and post it tomorrow by which time we will be 600 pages of comment further on and everyone will have forgotten what we were originally talking about. :-) Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 14:53, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

This is the best reason I've seen for why this discussion is pointless. :) --RegentsPark (talk) 14:56, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

As far as Ireland is concerned? we should wait & discuss this in September 2011 (per Arbcom ruling & community consent). GoodDay (talk) 14:55, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

The trouble is even if we simply exclude Ireland from the debate for the time being because of the ruling. It is absolutely clear that a blanket agreement here on how to deal with all other countries would have serious implications for the Ireland articles as soon as they become unlocked. There for whilst "officially" this debate may exclude Ireland to avoid ignoring Arbcoms rulings, i do have to take into account the implications for it. I am having to dust off the cobwebs from my Ireland files a year early. :(. I also think a post at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ireland Collaboration to alert them of this debate will also be appropriate. BritishWatcher (talk)

FWIW, I still support Ireland for the country, Ireland (island) for the island. GoodDay (talk) 15:08, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

When that particular debate does unlock (BW), what better than to be working from pre-agreed standards? Anyway, don't panic. I am simply seeking to obtain general views at this stage. Later on we can go to fully enforced strong-arming with 8-year topic blocks for all segments of unionist opinion. :-) Seriously, we get that you don't like it. But there's more here at stake than just Ireland. Enlisting another 100 editors who share your opinion or not won't help with that, and it also won't help if you repeatedly come up with varied objections every 5 seconds - we already here that you don't like it. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 15:11, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

When that particular debate does unlock (BW), what better than to be working from pre-agreed standards? - exactly why this debate should not be taking place until September 2011 at the earliest. BritishWatcher (talk) 15:18, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Oppose. Obviously. The naming policy of the United Nations has no practical value in an encyclopaedic context, and it's not a neutral system. There'd be massive violations of WP:NPOV. There is the already mentioned issue of "Ireland", but there are others aswell: It uses "Myanmar" over "Burma", and "China" for the PRC. I think most editors here can imagine the uproar at WP:NC-CHINA if People's Republic of China was moved to China.

"Congo" should clearly be dab'd, but the UN uses that as the short name for the Republic of the Congo, while using "Democratic Republic of the Congo" for the other. There's no rationale behind that; it's simply that Brazaville became a member first.

The idea behind WP:COMMONNAME is that we use the name that most English speakers would expect to find, thus avoiding annoying redirects. A reader is not going to type in "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" or "Lao People's Democratic Republic" or "Russian Federation" into the search box (yes, these are the official "short names" under the UN naming system), nor is an editor going to type such names when linking. I'm not sure that you actually realise what you're proposing.

• Vietnam → [[Viet Nam]]
• Tanzania → [[United Republic of Tanzania]]
• Syria → [[Syrian Arab Republic]]
• Libya → [[Libyan Arab Jamahiriya]]
• United Kingdom → [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland]]
• And don't forget [[The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia]].

Can you imagine the number of hits going through redirects? Where's the benefit in establishing a naming policy that will have easily forseeable problems. There'll be flaws in any system we use, but the UN naming policy? Really... Nightw 15:14, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Given that the UN are in charge of UN-recognized country-names (by agreement with all member nations), they are actually the source for such names. The position is analagous to SI units. Nobody in Wikipedia would think of renaming Kelvins to Heat Thingies because a bunch of people can find those in Google. As for the detailed changes, well, so be it. That's what redirects are for! I find the argument that this will all be infuriatingly difficult to be nonsensical. If it's right, it needs to happen. Which it is and it does. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 15:19, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

It won't Nightw 15:25, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

On the subject of WP:COMMONNAME, why is Burma not Myanmar? GoodDay (talk) 15:20, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Because nobody has proven that Myanmar is the commonname of that state in English to such a degree it gets consensus for a page move, so the status quo remains. BritishWatcher (talk) 15:24, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Okie Dokie. GoodDay (talk) 15:25, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

The general idea behind WP:COMMONNAME is a good one, but the obvious disadvantage is that in a few cases it leads to complex, highly-charged and polarised discussions. Jamesinderbyshire's suggestion is to my mind perfectly sensible. The default position should be the UN-recognized name, which is presumably the one that the government of the country concerned favours - surely a significant consideration. There are and will be cases where something different should be used, and the official names becomes a redirect. I doubt whether many arguments would be raised in favour of "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" as the primary name as there are probably only a small minority of UK citizens who could tell you that that is the officially recognised name. There is no easy way to avoid arguments, and Ireland is obviously a complex conundrum, but I can't for the life of me imagine why we would want to call a country "Burma" if that is not its name and I fear that in the special case of country names COMMONNAME is the cause of rather than the solution to arguments of this nature. Ben MacDui 16:03, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

The Burma/Myanmar debate apparently was agreed to be dropped until after the elections there, whether through community consensus or arbcom i do not know. It's because the US and UK governments choose to call it Burma as far as I can tell from the arguments. And yes, it might be good to have an overall guidelines, with specifics being debated. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 16:07, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

All the more reason we should handle things on a case by case basis. I see little point in having a rule that we should follow UN usage, unless its in a list of exceptions, those exceptions will be the whole problem in the first place so why bother agreeing to a rule thats already in use for the non controversial issues anyway. Whilst i support Burma remaining the article title, that being changed is far less problematic than some of the other examples. BritishWatcher (talk) 16:13, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Actually the reverse is true. An agreed framework for UN-recog-state names would serve as a butress against the local POV wars that afflict such articles and remove the need for controversy. In fact, it is hard to see why Wikipedia should not use the UN official names (and redirects of common names) in all of these cases, other than either a local article-bias POV or else a POV that the UN does not hold sufficient status. The latter is clearly not operating very fully, if so, as most articles to in fact use the official UN name. We are talking about why there are exceptions to this and I for one don't find the arguments for that put forward so far to be convincing. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 17:08, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

The United Nations does not have to take into account ambiguity problems be it with an island or with a place in another country. BritishWatcher (talk) 17:44, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

And it's not just naming issues. Once you start using the UN as the end-all for naming then what's next? There are many rulings the UN makes, other than naming, that are not popular for a plethora of countries especially those in an English-centric wikipedia. Yet a slippery slope will have been initiated with a naming convention and others arguments will point out that UN policy rules around here. No thanks. Overall I don't think the average reader finds wiki articles so confusing and they realize that some names are simply controversial. Confusing are articles like global warming or maybe Cyprus, but usually things things look pretty good. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:30, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

There are various interesting aspects to this. The slippery slope argument with respect to you Fyunck is unconvincing, because I am not suggesting we do anything more than Wikipedia already widely does - use official UN documents as valid quality sources. One source amongst many, that is true, but a particularly solid one. I will be explaining more to justify that position, but if you are arguing that UN nomenclature is a no-no for Wikipedia because it opens a can, you'd better start attacking about a trillion references all over the shop plus some other very large number of article names drawn on UN agencies, efforts, campaigns, statements, actions, policies, etc, etc. So no. That's not where to go with this argument. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 19:47, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

In naming countries, the UN does not have the deal with the same disambiguation issues as we do. We simply can't name two distinct entities the same thing, but the UN can. How to your propose to deal with that issue (which is a major problem that underpins much of the debate)? Rockpocket 23:11, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

James - Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that articles can't use UN nomenclature, sometimes it works well. I am saying to insist on using it to blanket wrap things in a neat package opens up a can of worms and a slippery slope. And Wikipedia doesn't just use UN documents as valid quality sources, it uses about a trillion other valid references as well. You are the one writing that we should use the UN source as the only viable source for country names so as not to be "inconsistent" and "confusing to the reader" and I say I'd rather use a multitude of sources to come to an agreement and take it article by article. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:15, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I see no reason to bind our naming practices to one particular source. There are zillions of reliable English sources for country names (and other criteria for deciding article titles than commonness) - to blindly follow a single source out of all of them would be very dubious both policy-wise and usefulness-wise.--Kotniski (talk) 07:02, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

These arguments are just aunt sallies. The UN list is surely the single most authoritative source - unless you can think of a better one. Other than the luxury of allowing endless POV discussions, why would we choose to start with one or more of them on a random basis? I have, for example, no interest in "Burmese" affairs but what is it that is gained by having a system that starts with a POV about "common names" when a perfectly credible, very reliably sourced alternative exists? Ben MacDui 08:01, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Why do you think common names is POV? Surely it's equally much a POV to say that this source is the most authoritative?--Kotniski (talk) 08:27, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Because it's not practical in this context. The naming system of the UN is politics. This is an encyclopaedia. There's a practical value to having a case-by-case basis for article naming. We have to deal with ambiguity, neutrality, and what name readers expect to find a subject under. Nightw 09:06, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

We do however need some structure. At the moment when an issue is controversial we end up with long (oh so long) pages of arguments etc. Having something which said if the UN Name and the Common Name are the same then its not an issue, or some other ranking of criteria would make sense. --Snowded ^TALK 10:23, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I think going for the official shortname of a country would be the best option, unless there is a conflict, such as in Ireland the Koreas and Georgia, in which case a suitable way to distinguish the conflicting names is found. Georgia solves that well, Ireland, I guess, solved it somehow. The two official "Korea"s just had a slight distinguisher tacked on to each one. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 10:26, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Individual country articles have to handle it the best way they can, there may be one or two that need changing but by making this a single debate instead of dealing with those one or two cases where a page is justified is creating more work and a lot more conflict. Some central rule which dictates we follow a UN standard is simply not going to work unless we provide a lot of exemptions, and if we are going to provide lots of exemptions what is the point? BritishWatcher (talk) 10:48, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

[5] This is a list of countries official short names by the ISO. Now if we followed this list yes we would not have to change the United Kingdom (as we would if we followed that UN source) but there are many that would still need changing. Syria and Iran as mentioned before on that clearly do not state them as their official short names, so they would have to be moved. Such a move would defy logic. BritishWatcher (talk) 11:00, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

If you think there are long pages of arguments then wait until they all take place in one location, which is what a central debate on this matter will cause. And as soon as you grant one group and exemption another group will want one, it will be like a chain reaction. BritishWatcher (talk) 10:47, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

A general set of principles would reduce the temperature a lot BW, it would give something to reference. --Snowded ^TALK 10:49, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

But it wont because almost all countries with issues will require exemptions, so it would be pointless. What this potentially will do is force countries like Iran and Syria from their common names to their official names. The only thing i think this would accomplish which people here may want is moving Burma to its new name, id rather go there and support a rename than go through all this just to get that outcome. I see strong justification for exemptions for all other cases. BritishWatcher (talk) 10:52, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Not many countries would require exemptions, just those that come under the usual disambiguation problem. Syria's official name is syria [6], so I don't know why that's a problem. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 11:00, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

(ec)BW you are over reacting again. Guidelines might (for example) say common name first, then UN name. It would also be very very useful to have some editors here who are not involved in the Irish and other debates) have a think about some general rules for disambiguation. --Snowded ^TALK 11:03, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I do not think i am over reacting sadly. Guidelines saying Common Name first, then UN name. Which articles would be impacted by such a guideline? it would be useful for editors both involved and uninvolved in different disputes to contribute here. Im not going to sit by and watch some agreement reached which has serious implications for several articles, especially when one of them at the moment is locked by ArbCom for another year. BritishWatcher (talk) 11:11, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Well i dont know if that is a reliable source, but i notice Iran on there does not have an official short name, so that article would have to be moved at least. I think a lot of countries would require exemptions, most of the ones where there have been serious issues or disputes. What do we do about China and Taiwan? BritishWatcher (talk) 11:04, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

As I said before, if common names conflict, we could just use wikipedia's disambiguation policies. Alternatively, we could say if two common names are the same the long name could be used. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 11:17, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Not a good idea. Taking the UN as a prime source is really not the great idea it sounds like. UN naming principles aren't really based on principles of neutrality; they're based on diplomatic agreements or often on lack thereof. They use the term "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" because Greece objects to "Republic of Macedonia". Should Greece be allowed to effectively decide the name of its neighbour on Wikipedia? Hell no! (Though they sure did try to.) Other similar situations could be named.

Taking the UN names doesn't really serve our readers well, anyway. The determining factor should be exactly what our policy already says: most common name in English. Our readers are better served with the common names "North Korea" and "South Korea" than the long form names used by the UN. (I'd kind of like to not have to have the article title as "People's Republic of China", either, but that's kind of a complicated situation and I haven't thought of a better solution as yet.) The UN name can be a factor in deciding naming, but should not be authoritative. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 07:33, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, should the UK be allowed to effectively decide the name of its neighbour on Wikipedia? Well, here on Wikipedia, the answer is Hell yes!. --HighKing (talk) 19:21, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

That one may be wrong, too. I tend to think it is, though there's a better case for "Republic of Ireland" being the most common name in English that's not ambiguous than there is for the term "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" being the same. Either way, the point is that no source like the UN, the UK, the US or any other state or international organization should be authoritative; comon names in English should be. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 07:26, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

That's because in a number of important cases (most notably, China and Ireland, but there are others) we aren't really following Commonname, but instead using a fudged solution designed to prevent further battling (temporarily) between utterly opposed POVs. Without reference to an external point of reference, POVs have full play. Simplistic assertions that it is all the result of Commonname don't help. At the moment, the reverse is true - WP core policies are not being implemented. When you get into it, it's the reverse of NPOV i those cases and the reverse of Commonname. I agree wutg Heimstern though that it's can't be totally comprehensive. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 19:32, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

The Irish government is the one that made Republic of Ireland the official description of the state in the Republic of Ireland Act 1948. Many sources use Republic of Ireland today, hell even the Irish football team plays under the name Republic of Ireland. It is not the UKs fault the Irish government chose to copy the name of the island it did not fully control, creating an ambiguity problem. Most nations stick a Republic or Kingdom in their full names, i wonder why the Irish government chose not to. BritishWatcher (talk) 19:29, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately an irrelevant point on two fronts, because if we are discussing Commonname, it's Ireland and if official UN name, it's Ireland. The name chosen for the article is another fudge sadly. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 19:32, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

We would not have the current name of the article if it was not for the Irish government making it the official description of the state and if many different sources did not use the term. If it was not for the Republic of Ireland Act 1948, the country article would be at Ireland (state). or country. BritishWatcher (talk) 19:54, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

All very interesting I'm sure, but irrelevant to the point at hand. The official name you refer to (probably easier to describe it as the "long official english name" is in almost every other national article highlighted in the introductory text in bold and stated to be the official name. This isn't to say you're wrong about the facts, just that you are misunderstanding the context of this discussion. Following WP standards, it would be at Ireland with the official name Republic of Ireland in the intro text and a disambig link in the header to Ireland (other uses). The standard is not applied entirely and 100% due to the POV battling of rival camps of editors (in which you enthusiastically join BW amongst many others) and not any sort of rationale. No further point to this part of the discussion, although you will of course want the last word. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 20:16, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes i would like the last word thanks. The point is, if the article was not at Republic of Ireland it would be at Ireland (state). There is no justification for the country which has existed for less than 100 years to have the primary spot whilst there is an island that has the same name, has existed for longer and has a larger population. Under WP rules, the state can not have the primary spot. The issue of what to call the country article was always a secondary issue for me, id accepted a compromise of a different name like Ireland (state) a couple of times. But under no circumstances whilst the Irish state does not control the whole island of Ireland, will the country belong at Ireland. I can understand concerns about the ROI title, but i honestly do not understand how people can expect the country article to have primacy over the island. BritishWatcher (talk) 20:25, 27 August 2010 (UTC)