Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)/Archive 9

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New naming proposal on global cities

How about this proposal: All global cities (including ones with evidence of global city formation) are under the [Cityname] article, regardless of country. Cities requiring further disambiguation will be under [Cityname, State/Province/Etc.] --- Dralwik|^{Have a Chat} My "Great Project" 19:45, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Discussion will be closed two weeks after my post above (19:45, 19 February 2006 (UTC)), and if the proposal is adopted an administrator will be contacted to assist in city page moves.

Supporting proposal

1. Perfectly rational. --- Dralwik|^{Have a Chat} My "Great Project" 19:45, 5 February 2006
2. Support I agree ... in so far as it doesn't preclude simpler names for capital and other cities that are not in this somewhat contentious list (e.g., Canberra, Ottawa), which will variably be dealt with through specific conventions for those countries (a separate one to follow for Canada soon!), other overarching Wp naming conventions, or otherwise. Perhaps the proposal should be extended to include national capitals too? E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 20:06, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
3. Support - G-Man * 20:27, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
4. Support. I'm assuming this global convention would override any country specific convention. Paris should be Paris and Los Angeles should be Los Angeles, not Paris, France and not Los Angeles, California and not Los Angeles, California, United States. Same with Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Denver, Seattle, New Orleans, Houston, Dallas, etc., etc. These are all global city names. --Serge 19:35, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
5. Support - anything that mitigates the unfortunate, overreaching rule concerning U.S. cities has my support. --Yath 22:27, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
6. Support It's ludicrous to have the world's most influencial cities having to be lumbered with this system - we aren't talking Cairo, Illinois or Paris, Texas here but cities like Chicago and Paris. Robovski 23:22, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
7. Support josh (talk) 04:19, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Opposing proposal

1. Oppose. The definition of "Global City" is vague and there is no definitive list. There is no reason to treat certain ctities different than the rest. -Will Beback 18:14, 7 February 2006 (UTC) I also object to constant polls on this question. We just finished voting on a very similar question. -Will Beback 18:16, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
2. Oppose. Who's to say what's a global city? The global city article is already vandalized with frightening regularity by country bumpkins who think Fresno or Grand Rapids are global cities. As I already noted at that article, the problem is that most people simply cannot afford the "grand tour" of several world cities that completes the education of a sophisticated adult (e.g., London/Paris/Rome or New York/Los Angeles/Chicago, all of which I have visited). We do not need a rule that will be impossible to enforce and will lead to utter chaos in the United States city articles. --Coolcaesar 18:20, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
3. Oppose. "Global city" not sufficiently well-defined, and no actual value in changing article names anyway. Stan 18:48, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
4. Oppose: we already have a clear policy for cities in the United States and I don't want to suddenly have a few hundred page move arguments from Portland, Maine to Anchorage, Alaska over whether these meet a poorly-defined term like "global city". In the recent vote on Los Angeles, every editor commenting who was part of the Southern California project opposed moving it. Many others opposed because having a lot of exceptions to a general rule makes linking less intuitive, and it was defeated. All other similar move proposals recently, including for Chicago, were rejected. Jonathunder 19:32, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
5. Oppose jengod 19:45, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
6. Oppose Global city is way to ambiguous —Preceding unsigned comment added by Reflex Reaction (talk • contribs) 20:01, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
7. Oppose --mav 22:05, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
8. Oppose on two grounds: The proposal is POV and the current convention assists readers.
   • I have visited 12 of the cities presently named on Global cities, and the airports of three others. One of the intersting things I have learned is that in fact the names of these are not universally recognised without a qualification. I found it quite confusing to be in Canada and hear something about Sydney, and eventually discover that the speaker meant Sydney, Nova Scotia. And people in Toronto who speak about London almost universally mean London, Ontario.
   • When reading articles in Wikipedia that are not primarily about a place, but mention it, it is very nice to be able to wave the mouse over the city name and have the tool tip tell me the country/state/province to give the quick familiarisation I need. For articles mentioning British places which do not do primary disambiguation in general, I frequently have to open the article to find out which country the place is in.

   --Scott Davis ^Talk 23:31, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

9. Oppose it's all been said before. older ≠ wiser 03:11, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
10. Adamantly opposed. Too open to ambiguity, confusion, edit warring and page-move warring, POV, etc. ^BlankVerse 11:13, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
11. Oppose treating "global cities" different from any other cities. This way lies constant arguing on what is or isn't a global city. – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 17:37, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
12. Oppose — even the ill advised Wikipedia:WikiProject Location Format dedicated to undoing the comma convention has to say "London (England)" to differentiate in its text. I'm tired of the incessant re-hashing of the same proposals by a small minority. The naming conventions are chosen by country, there is no "global" standard. --William Allen Simpson 13:16, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
13. Oppose The simplest solution with the least exceptions is always best. Formal names should be prefered. If it has a unique name, then a redirect will work great. Cacophony 07:10, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
14. Oppose --cj | talk 01:57, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
15. Oppose Disambiguation is best, as the whole idea of "global city" is definitely a big POV and bias issue right there. Adam 1212 02:30, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
16. Oppose. ρ¡ρρµ δ→θ∑ - (waarom? jus'b'coz!) 03:20, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
17. Oppose. This proposal says that the naming of city articles should rest on arbitrary standards like "global city". Furthermore, Wikipedia is supposed to be a lasting resource. What happens when "global cities" are less well known in the future, and interested parties cannot find them?--Danaman5 23:19, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
18. Oppose. AFAIAC, the more disambiguous, the better. Link common names like LA, L.A., Los Angeles, to the article, but the article should be under Los Angeles, California (heck, include United States of America, too). Unless the city itself is ambiguous like Springfield in The Simpsons, the name of the article should include enough information that the post office could deliver a letter there (well, maybe not postal codes, but you get the idea). Cheers. --Enharmonix 00:27, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
19. Oppose. This proposal would lend Wikipedia's sanction to an arbitrary neologism which most people have never even heard of. What in the world is a "global city"? KleenupKrew 22:35, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
20. Oppose as per Will Beback et al. And could someone point me to the discussion that gave Chicago an exception to the current policy? -newkai t-c 13:11, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

• Comment. Pretty much the only cities that violate the above proposal are in the U.S. --Usgnus 03:25, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. That's because a bot was used to name all the incorporated cities in the U.S. using the [[city, state]] format and there is a gang of enforcers that imposes their values of "consistency" and "standards" (contrary to WP:NPOV) above common sense and the Wikipedia convention using the most commonly used/known name, except when there is a conflict, which is followed not only on all global city names, but also for every article name in Wikipedia. And this gang imposes their will on every single U.S. city article where anyone tries to make an appeal to common sense. It is a disgrace to Wikipedia, and, arguably, WP:vandalism. Chicago, Illinois, Los Angeles, California, ... These are absurd. Thankfully, there are enough people from New York City to outnumber the gang on that one page and keep untarnished from their antics, but for all other cities there aren't enough people interested. --Serge 04:30, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Quite possibly, this presents us with a standard that should be more widely followed, than one that should be watered down. Having said that, I regret that we didn't end up with New York, New York (boom, boom). ρ¡ρρµ δ→θ∑ - (waarom? jus'b'coz!) 04:56, 26 July 2006 (UTC) - actually, I take that back, there's a stack of them.

Yes, quite possibly, the standard should be followed if you're interested in making Wikipedia easier to edit. However, if you're interested in making Wikipedia be reader-friendly and encyclopedic, then any and all convoluted-for-the-sake-of-standard-naming conventions, like the [[city, state]] U.S. city name convention, that dictate article names be different from the most commonly used names (except when there is an ambiguity) should be avoided. --Serge 05:32, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

• Comment. Check out Category:Host cities of the Summer Olympic Games --Usgnus 16:58, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

• Good example. --Serge 13:51, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it is quite stark. ρ¡ρρµ δ→θ∑ - (waarom? jus'b'coz!) 23:15, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

• To be fair St. Louis would be questionable for St. Louis, Missouri, but not out of the question (Saint Louis would still point to the dab page). --Usgnus 23:50, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Abstentions

1. This proposal is too complex. It should stop at the first line ("All global cities (including ones with evidence of global city formation) are under the [Cityname] article, regardless of country.:). --Yath 07:39, 6 February 2006 (UTC) (stricken because the objection was addressed --Yath 22:27, 6 February 2006 (UTC))

U.S./Canada city name dispute statement

On 18:21 February 5 2006 ScottDavis removed the following statement, without any discussion on this page, from the United States and Canada section:

There is a dispute as to the general applicability of this convention, and the issue of whether it should apply to city names without ambiguity issues (like New York City and Hollywood) is currently being discussed and voted on. See the Talk page.

While the vote referenced had concluded, the dispute has not. That particular vote started on December 6th, 2005. Prior to that, the statement existed in the section in various forms for a long time, and I see no justification to remove it regardless of the outcome of this particular vote. Here is, for example, what it said back in August of 2005:

There is some dispute as to the general applicability of this convention and no real consensus to support it. See the Talk page.

The dispute continues, as is shown by the latest poll seeking a global city naming convention.

I have reverted the 12/5 statement, with a slight modification to reflect that there is no current ongoing vote, to this:

There is a dispute as to the general applicability of this convention, particularly whether it should apply to city names with well-known names and without ambiguity issues (like New York City and Hollywood). See the Talk page as well as the individual talk pages for such city names.

If you want to delete this statement, please discuss here. Until then, I will continue to revert any removals of it. --Serge 21:27, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I deleted the statement ont he Naming conventions page as the statement has no place there. It is not part of the convention. A vote was held (again), and the concensus was not to change. If this place worked as a democracy, then I'd say "a vote was held and the proposal to change was outvoted", but then I'd have to consider whether each voter was entitled to vote. Either way, there is no need for the Naming conventions page to say that you continue to dispute the outcome. --Scott Davis ^Talk 04:29, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Whether there is a "need" for a statement to say the dispute exists is a matter of opinion. I say there is; you say there isn't. But from a NPOV, the undeniable fact is that the dispute exists. And it's not only just me. And it's not only just those that voted in favor of the most recent proposal (which was unrelated to the statement you deleted, which existed long before I put that particular proposal up for a vote). It's also those who continue to question why well-known city names are named according to the convoluted format on individual well-known city name pages. The dispute is real, and it's not going away. The statement saying as much is true fact, and it should remain. If you want to remove the statement about the dispute existing, then create your own proposal/vote to determine if the dispute exists. --Serge 08:42, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I just updated the "dispute paragraph" to say the following:

There is an ongoing dispute as to the general applicability of this convention, particularly whether it should apply to city names with well-known names and without ambiguity issues (like New York City and Hollywood). A vote on a recent proposal to explicitly state that use of this convention is only required when an ambiguity existed failed to achieve a consensus. See the Talk page as well as the individual talk pages for individual city names.

I hope everyone agrees this is accurate and fair. --Serge 08:51, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

1. I don't see an "ongoing dispute" as part of the naming conventions, therefore the paragraph does not belong on the main page, only on this talk page. I have no intention of calling a vote to test this.
2. "Recent" is only true for a while.
3. There have been at least three votes to change this convention, none of which achieved even a simple majority in favour of change. I presume there was also discussion before the original convention was established.
4. The last sentence is unnecessary: The top of the page tells people to read the talk page, and most people will only have found this convention after being referred from a city talk page.

--Scott Davis ^Talk 09:40, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

The back-and-forthing regarding the dispute statement on the project page is rather moot. Why? First: it's debatable that the current convention for Canadian cities, rolled in with US ones, was arrived at through appreciable consensus in the first place. Therefore, prior votes that continue to insinuate this convention for Cdn. cities (which runs counter to overarching naming conventions in Wp) is unreasonable. Second: its unequal application (as evidenced by some notable articles like Toronto, Vancouver, et al.) is fodder for its invalidity. Lastly: users in the know (many of whom have expressed reluctance to implement it) are discussing its merits or lack of same here, so a statement of the obvious is frankly unnecessary.

As stated earlier, a naming convention solely for Canadian cities will be proposed shortly ... or I'll be bold and make said edits anyway. Stay tuned! E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 10:00, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

U.S. and Canada "convention"

The section for U.S and Canada currently states:

Cities in the United States and Canada, however, will be disambiguated with a format of City, State or City, Province (the "comma convention"). Those U.S. or Canadian cities which need additional disambiguation will be disambiguated with their County (e.g. Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina).

Says who? There has never been a vote to establish a consensus for this convention (which is why the dispute statement was there until it was deleted a few days ago), which blatantly contradicts the primary Wikipedia naming convention:

Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.

Another way to summarize the overall principle of Wikipedia's naming conventions:

Names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors; and for a general audience over specialists.

Because of the clear and blatant violation of Wikipedia's naming convention, and the lack of consensus for this exception, this false and baseless statement of convention for U.S and Canadian city names is POV and should be removed.

--Serge 07:51, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Dude, I initially thought you were reasonable, and gave you the benefit of the doubt for three months, but now you're just totally gone off the deep end. It's already clear that yet another poll has gone against you and the overwhelming consensus of English-speaking editors is in favor of the current City, State convention for U.S. cities. Someone should get Jimbo to permanently block Serge before he screws up the rest of Wikipedia! --Coolcaesar 20:09, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Be cool, dude. I realize it's not looking good for the home team here. I understand how this convention came to be, and understand why. I just think that a few key points were overlooked, and I'm hoping I can bring the issues to the attention of enough people for the mistake to be realized, and the decisions of the individuals responsible to be reversed. I realize it's unlikely, but I'd like to do what I can to help make Wikipedia be the best it can be (for the readers, not the editors), and will keep trying, because adherence to this arbitrary convention results is some really stilted Wikipedia U.S city article names. That reflects badly on all of us, but, more importantly, it reflects badly on Wikipedia. --Serge 23:53, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

---

I just fixed the grammar:

The canonical form for cities in the United States and Canada is [[City, State]] or [[City, Province]] (the "comma convention"). Those cities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish (for example Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina).

There is no confusion or dispute. Consensus has long been achieved. Language (recently removed) confirmed that "[O]ver 30,000 U.S. city articles are already in the form of "City, State" even if they do not need disambiguation." This conforms to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places)#Maintain consistency within each country.

--William Allen Simpson

If "consensus has long been achieved", then you should be able to cite where there was a vote to approve of the current U.S/Canada section wording (in concept is fine) that is in direct violation of primary Wikipedian naming conventions. Noting the 30,000 articles that are consistent with the convention is hardly evidence of a consensus, since they were mostly created by a bot. It is also apparent that you guys are putting the interests of editors over the interests of readers, which is also anti-Wikipedian. Noting that the consensus of the editors are in favor of this convention only makes this point. --Serge 23:25, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

By the way, ever look to see how the pros do it? Los Angeles, as listed at Britannica.com. If the pros at Britannica don't have a need to tack on the state, why do we? --Serge 23:57, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

As a group, we made a considered choice to do so. There is no confusion or dispute. There have been numerous straw polls to gauge consensus. There is no conflict with naming conventions. These titles are (1) "easily recognized," (2) "with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity," (3) "while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature."

--William Allen Simpson 13:58, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

This section should be renamed U.S. "convention" since Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal have since been moved to their correct names. This so-called "standard" violates the common names standard of Wikipedia policy. As far as I can tell, the United States is the only country left where major cities such as LA and Chicago have to have their state listed with them. The common usage is to just write the city name. The frequent argument seems to be that there are other cities with those names. Then by that logic, London should be moved to London, England since there's also a London, Ontario. It appears that the "standard" is to list major cities in every country in the world except for the United States under the city name, and cities in the US under city, state. Dbinder 15:55, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

You're preaching to the choir! :) I've already IDd this above, but it's good to know there's support for this. I'm on a wikibreak of sorts, but will draft a Cdn. specific policy in the next week or so ... stay tuned! E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 19:37, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

It annoys me too to be told that a consensus has been reached for Canadian naming conventions because 30,000 U.S. places follow the City, State format. I'm all for helping out on a Canadian policy! --Skeezix1000 17:56, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Consolidated Cities

User:Bearcat and I are having a debate over naming conventions for cities whose governments were formed as the result of municipal amalglamations, specifically in Ontario, Canada. As a result of municipal cutbacks in that province in the late 1990s, several city governments were merged with adjacent towns, villages and townships, and often the names changed. The examples brought up include:

• Greater Sudbury (formed as a result of the merger of the City of Sudbury with a group of smaller towns)
• Quinte West (formed by the merger of the City of Trenton with two other townships)
• Chatham-Kent (formed by the consolidation of the City of Chatham with Kent County)

I say that Sudbury, Trenton and Chatham respectively are still the most common terminology to refer to these cities, while Bearcat is saying that since they are now the legal names, they should take precedence, to the point where a list of Ontario radio stations lists Sudbury stations under G. What should be the correct use on Wikipedia? Kirjtc2 22:31, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

• This is not an easy one, especially considered the "G" problem. But I think that Wikipedia probably lists Burma as Myanmar, Siam as Thailand, Persia as Iran, and Upper Volta as Burkina Faso. So we should probably follow that logic. As to help people find their way around lists, put a "Sudbury -- see "Greater Sudbury"" and "Trenton -- see "Quinte West"". I could be convinced the other way though. Ground Zero | t 00:22, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Kirjtc2, before we even get down to debating the question you raise here, I need to point out that you're misrepresenting our initial dispute. You stated that "Sudbury" and "Greater Sudbury" actually designated two different things — your initial post on my talk page started out "Unless a meteor took out Coniston, Capreol, Hanmer, Chelmsford and wherever else, Sudbury does not equal Greater Sudbury." "Sudbury", in actual fact, does mean the whole city of Greater Sudbury, inclusive of Chelmsford and Coniston and Azilda — when people in the Sudbury area need to distinguish something in the old city from something in Coniston or Chelmsford, they don't contrast Coniston with "Sudbury", they contrast Coniston with "Gatchell" or "Minnow Lake" or "New Sudbury". Only people who don't know that the municipal amalgamation even happened use "Sudbury" to designate anything that doesn't include Coniston and Chelmsford and Azilda and Whitefish.

So, firstly, let's be clear: you didn't initially raise a "legal name vs. common name" issue with me — you claimed that "Sudbury" and "Greater Sudbury" weren't even the same thing in the first place. You didn't characterize this as strictly a common-usage matter until you raised it here — at the time, you misinterpreted the names as actually designating two objectively distinct things. In actual fact, if you had raised the issue as strictly "common name vs. legal name" from the beginning, I probably wouldn't even have objected to your edit; what I objected to was your false characterization of the names as actually representing two different things.

That said, Wikipedia does not have a rule that common names always trump accuracy. We have a preference for common names whenever possible, but there are situations where using the common name creates an unacceptable level of confusion or ambiguity. The city's article is at Greater Sudbury, Ontario; the title Sudbury, Ontario exists only as a redirect. I have no objection to Ground Zero's alternate proposal above, but I also don't particularly see why it's worth objecting to Wikipedia using a community's actual legal name. Bearcat 02:27, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I apologize for the confusion in my original post on your talk page (it's hard to think straight at 3 AM on a Friday :)), I had intended it as a common name-vs-legal name issue all along. I had never meant to characterize the City of Sudbury, as existed before 2001, as being equal to the City of Greater Sudbury, they are assuredly not. The question is that Sudbury is still a settlement, only that it is now under the supervision of the City of Greater Sudbury; and that the common term for the city in general is still "Sudbury". Highway signs, the local media websites, Canada Post, etc, still use "Sudbury" (this would be different from, say, Miramichi, New Brunswick, which have supplanted the Newcastle and Chatham names to the point where some people now call them Miramichi West and Miramichi East).

From my perspective (an outsiders', admittedly), "Sudbury", "Copper Cliff", "Coniston", etc. are seperate settlements that now share one municipal government, which was created for administrative purposes only. Geographically and culturally, they are still seperate places. This would put it more along the lines of the Halifax Regional Municipality, where the former local place names (Dartmouth, Bedford, Cole Harbour, etc) are still used as widely as before the merger, and the official name refers only to the entire metro area or the municipal government. As well, just like outsiders call still say "Sudbury" to refer to the area, they still also say "Halifax". My objection is that your edits (on the page in question and elsewhere) is that all references to "Sudbury", with respect to the former city, have been changed to "Greater Sudbury", unlike the Halifax example where the former names have mostly been left alone. Would it be safe to say that my position is that geographical and cultural references should trump the legal designation and yours is the opposite? Kirjtc2 03:11, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Nova Scotia Regional Municipalities are not cities. They are more like shire level government in the UK. Halifax and Cape Breton RMs include huge tracts of rural land, including farmland. Halifax RM is bigger physically than PEI. The issue here is that, in a Canadian context, the category needs to be about "100 biggest municipalities" not "cities." There is no City of Halifax, not according to the municipality, to Provincial statute, or according to the federal census. There is just HRM, a huge, rural, suburban, urban, county level government that has to pass laws about handling of livestock and the spreading of farm fertilizer, and then the next moment debate whether to allow 27 story office towers in the heart of the old heritage district. In time, it may become Halifax. Thank your lucky stars they did not change the name to Chubucto, it was discussed! Even if the guideline is common name (ie New York rather than Greater New York), the fact is that the whole area is referred to as HRM and Halifax Regional Municipality. There is a community called Halifax in HRM, but what is amazing is it is becoming known as "the peninsula" and "the Capital District".

I have to add that there is a concern about consistency in the Nova Scotia pages. No one ever calls Cape Breton RM "Cape Breton" because that would be wrong! Cape Breton means the whole island. Halifax, here, means the old city, not the new RM... WayeMason 03:32, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

That's also what the City of Greater Sudbury (and Chatham-Kent too) is. There isn't another level between city and province anymore, since the City of Sudbury was merged with all of the other towns in the former Regional Municipality of Sudbury (which was basically like a county). The other thing to note is that there is a Halifax, Nova Scotia (former city) article, but there is no such Sudbury, Ontario (former city) article. Kirjtc2 03:53, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

The other thing to note, which I haven't clearly stated so far, is that I have no qualms about there being a Greater Sudbury article, except that I'd prefer that there be a seperate Sudbury, Ontario article like there is about Halifax (and just like my opinion about Halifax, the history/culture/etc sections should be moved to that one IMO), and that references on other pages (unless referring to the municipal government or the area/population of the municipality as a whole) be just to "Sudbury". Same with Chatham, Napanee, etc. Kirjtc2 04:49, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

The City of Greater Sudbury is not analogous to a shire or county government, or to Halifax; it's analogous to (albeit a lot smaller than) Metropolitan Toronto becoming the city of Toronto, or Ottawa-Carleton becoming the current city of Ottawa. Regional municipalities in Ontario are not comparable to regional municipalities in Nova Scotia — they have a different structure, function and purpose, and are not strictly analogous to counties. And in Ottawa, Hamilton, Toronto and (Greater) Sudbury, the RMs were later merged into single unified cities because for all intents and purposes that's really what they already were, with only arbitrary political boundaries actually separating one part of the RM from another.

Sure, it's accurate to say that Copper Cliff is a distinct settlement from Coniston, that Garson is a distinct settlement from Hanmer, that Lively is distinct from Minnow Lake, and on and so forth, but it's not accurate to say that any of them are distinct from Sudbury, any more than it would be true to say that Cabbagetown is a distinct community from Toronto or that The Glebe is somehow separate from Ottawa. There's no one part of the city that constitutes a distinct "Sudbury" for Copper Cliff or Lively or Minnow Lake or Coniston to be distinguished from. You can't divide the city into "Sudbury" and "Not Sudbury". You can't divide the city's history and culture into "Sudbury" and "Not Sudbury" — it's all Sudbury. They're just different parts of Sudbury.

I'm not disputing that. They're all part of one big metro area. What I am disputing is the use of "Greater Sudbury" in cases when "Sudbury" is still the most common way to refer to the city. Your original argument seemed to be that "Sudbury" (without the Greater), for all intents and purposes, no longer exists. Doesn't the very definition of the phrase "Greater Sudbury" mean "Sudbury and its surroundings?" It seems to me that was the definition they were going for. In addition, most people from outside Ontario might not be aware of the amalaglamation, so they think the "City of Sudbury" still exists, and at the very least would just call the whole area "Sudbury".

Even when the Regional Municipality of Sudbury existed, in actual practice, people already used "Sudbury" to refer to the whole thing, and used their specific neighbourhood to denote which part they meant. You couldn't have gone to Copper Cliff and said "I'm from Sudbury" to mean you didn't live in Copper Cliff, because you hadn't even left the city limits. You couldn't even have gone to Valley East and said "I'm from Sudbury" to mean that you didn't live in Hanmer, any more than you could have said "I'm from Ottawa" to someone from Nepean to mean that you didn't also live in Nepean — it was an arbitrary political distinction that didn't mean very much in actual practice. "Sudbury" or "Ottawa" effectively meant the whole thing, so you had to be more specific.

That's exactly what I'm getting at. Even today, if someone from Sudbury goes to Toronto, does he/she say they live in "Greater Sudbury" or "Sudbury"? (with Sudbury in this case obviously not meaning the former city, but the general area.) My guess is the latter. The newspaper isn't the Greater Sudbury Star now.

And I have not changed references to the former city of Sudbury to "Greater Sudbury"; I've changed references to the current city to "Greater Sudbury". Alex Trebek's article, for instance, doesn't say he was born in Greater Sudbury, because it wasn't called that when he was born; it says he was born in Sudbury. Daryl Brunt's article, on the other hand, says he lives in Greater Sudbury, because he lives there now and that's what it's called now. In any Sudbury-related edits I've done, I've always used the name that is more appropriate to the time frame in question: if the Sudbury connection is current or time-independent, I say Greater Sudbury; if it predates 2001, I say Sudbury (or Walden, or Valley East, or whatnot).

What I won't do is let things like "The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory is located 20 km west of Greater Sudbury, Ontario..." stand uncorrected; the observatory is west of downtown Sudbury, but still within the city limits. And we can't just say it's 20 km west of Sudbury instead — what boundary between "Sudbury" and "Not Sudbury" could we measure this distance from? There isn't a "Not Sudbury" and a "Sudbury" that can be distinguished from each other in any useful or objective way the way one can distinguish "Halifax" from "HRM-but-not-Halifax"; there's one Sudbury and a few different ways of referring to it. And unless you're seriously proposing that we treat Toronto, Ottawa and Hamilton the same way you're proposing we treat Sudbury, with some kind of arbitrary division between the former city and the current one, I can't favour treating Sudbury as some unique case, because the only thing that makes Sudbury any different from the other three is the fact that the amalgamated city had the word "Greater" appended to its name. Are you actually going to propose that every single time any city in the world annexes a suburban town or two, we start a separate article for each individual boundary adjustment? Bearcat 06:20, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

The city added Greater to its name to reflect that it now includes the surroundings of the former city, but that does not mean Sudbury has been totally wiped off the map. Just like "Ottawa", "Toronto" and "Hamilton" have always been and will presumably always be the terminology to refer to the entire area, "Sudbury" is as well, Greater or not. It sure is from my east-coast vantage point. As I said before, even the city's own literature still uses "Sudbury" frequently, with the "Greater" either in smaller print or not used at all. Wouldn't this be an admission by the city that "Sudbury" is still the common term for the area?

As for the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory article, Greater Sudbury is fine by me. It was never in the old city but is within the new one. Perhaps we could include what former town it was in, though. On the other hand, all Canadian Idol literature and graphics just listed "Sudbury" as Daryl Brunt's hometown, and I think the article should reflect that. But if he was from Coniston, however, I could see where you could say Greater Sudbury.

With regards to the radio listing that started this, Sudbury was listed as Greater Sudbury, but others like Chatham and Trenton were still as is until it was changed in the edit war. That's where some confusion on my part arose. Since most people looking for local stations on this list would likely be looking under "S", I think they should be listed there. It is in cases like this that I don't think Greater Sudbury should be used. (Trenton vs Quinte West might be a different matter since the name was completely changed - I've heard the local media has started using the new name as well a la Miramichi). Personally I think stations should be listed by BBM market (or something close to it) rather than strict city of license (like I have been doing on my Atlantic and Prairie lists) so confusion like this doesn't happen.

I guess to sum up, my position is this: "Greater Sudbury" referring to the city government (StatsCan stats, for example) and people/things in the new city but not in the old city (the phrasing of the Inco Superstack article sounds right to me), and "Sudbury" to refer to the city/area when no formal disambiguation is required or wanted (the radio market), and people/things still in the centre of the former city. Kirjtc2 01:03, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

You're still misunderstanding my point. I'm not disagreeing with you that people more commonly say "Sudbury" than "Greater Sudbury" — I'm saying that the term "Sudbury" is interchangeable with the whole city of "Greater Sudbury", while you're suggesting that the city has a "Sudbury" portion and a "Not Sudbury" portion, and thus has to be treated more like a county than a city. And the Inco Superstack, for the record, is a particularly bad example to cite — Copper Cliff and the Stack were both inside Old Sudbury's city limits.

The point is, you're still implying that "Sudbury" and "Greater Sudbury" are two different things, which they aren't. They're two strictly interchangeable alternate names for the same thing. Bearcat 03:26, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Wading into the debate a bit late, but here's my opinion. Sudbury, and Greater Sudbury are not exactly the same thing. I like the way the articles are set up now, with "Sudbury, Ontario" redirecting to Greater Sudbury, Ontario. In that article, the difference between 'Sudbury' and 'Capreol', for example, are dealt with. It is correct to say that something in Capreol is in 'Greater Sudbury'. It's not correct to say it is in 'Sudbury' though.

Lets look at another, well-known example. The City of Toronto now encompasses North York, Etobicoke, and several other communities. They've got one town council. It's accurate to say that something in Etobicoke is part of the Greater Toronto Area. It's more accurate to say it's in Etobicoke. I'm not convinced that it's accurate to say things in Etobicoke are in 'Toronto'. I believe that if something is in Capreol, then it's ok to say it's in 'Greater Sudbury' but not in 'Sudbury'. ColtsScore 08:02, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Still wrong...a person in Capreol couldn't and wouldn't say "I'm going to Sudbury this afternoon" to mean she was heading downtown to go shopping; it would be a meaningless statement. She'd have to just say she was going "downtown". There is no part of the city that is distinguished by the name "Sudbury" from a non-Sudbury part of the city. To mean that you're in the old pre-2001 city, you can't just say you're in "Sudbury"; you have to say you're specifically in "New Sudbury" or "Minnow Lake" or "Lo-Ellen". I grew up there, and I've never had a conversation in my life in which "I'm in Sudbury" would have been understood to mean "downtown Sudbury or Minnow Lake, but not Val Caron or Lively or Capreol"; it could only be understood as "maybe downtown, maybe Val Caron, maybe Lively, maybe Garson, maybe Capreol, but not North Bay". Bearcat 06:36, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Violations of the naming convention

Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver violate the naming convention. How shall this be addressed? Acegikmo1 00:04, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Has there been previous discussion on the talk pages? As with any important pages, they shouldn't be moved without discussion. -Will Beback 10:17, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there has (e.g., Toronto, and more recently resurged): as above, this is the choice of Canadian editors. And, arguably, it is the American cities that are in violation of the overarching common naming convention. There is no apparent consensus (at least it hasn't been demonstrated) to justify the grouping together and similar treatments of Canadian and American cities (q.v., the UK/Ireland?). Though mildly tardy, I'm working on a proposal to cleave the Canadian cities from the American ones and will place it shortly or I might just go ahead and do it. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 10:55, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I would counsel against significant movement of pages about cities and towns in Canada (other than in accordance with the current published conventions). I suggest the best spot for an initial discussion about changing the Naming convention currently on this page would be to take it to the Canadian discussion board and hold most of the conversation there where a wider range of Canadians can be involved with less interference from us foreigners. Once consensus is reached there, it would be reasonable to just put a note here linking to that discussion and then update the conventions (if required). --Scott Davis ^Talk 05:05, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I concur with ScottDavis's analysis. I do not have any problem with the Canadian Wikipedia editors going differently from American editors on this issue, if that is what they prefer, but such a drastic change should be discussed first. --Coolcaesar 05:14, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I do not necessarily disagree – discussion is always prudent. Throughout, however, I believe a question that has remained unanswered is the nature of the consensus leading to the current convention for Canadian cities and why it was bundled with the American convention. At face value, it seems unbalanced. If it is routed in consensus, it has never been demonstrated. If it does not exist, discussion regarding the current convention and its applicability might be moot anyway. In any event, an apt and revamped proposal will stem from this. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 05:20, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

There are some special legal units in Canada which complicate the usual [city, province] arrangement, so it's worth reviewing the issue to see if a more definite, yet still flexible, guideline can be developed. Is there a "Canada" wikiproject that could bring in editors with a broad view? Not to offend to anyone, but I've seen instances where primarily editing just one city article can give editors a narrow view of the issues. These issues cross all the english-speaking countries because so many place names have been re-used. Vancouver is one example which has which has naming repurcussions for the U.S. city as well. -Will Beback 07:28, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Anomalies exist in any jurisdiction, hence conventions judiciously applied and discourse. As well, the comments above presuppose that the status quo for Canadian cities is routed in consensus – I see no evidence that it actually is; even if it is, I see little reason to maintain/impose an arguably imbalanced convention that lumps Canadian cities with American ones when other apt examples exist (e.g., UK/Ireland). Moreover, the current convention does not at all accommodate for bilingualism in Canada – e.g., many Quebec locales share the same name, accented, in English and French. In any event, the imminent proposal will accommodate for this, extraterritorial commonalities (including the overarching common naming convention), et al., and will be noted on the Cdn. Wp noticeboard. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 06:25, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

How do you handle bilingual place names? This being the English Wikipedia I'd have thought that you'd simply use the English version. Are the French versions made into redirects? -Will Beback 07:06, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, all official place names in Canada are those prescribed by the appropriate jurisdiction (federal, provincial, or territorial) and are generally those that prevail locally. All of these are maintained by the feds and contained/searchable within the (online) Gazetteer of Canada. Only very few of the names – those of pan-Canadian significance – have dual bilingual versions. If the name is French, it is generally rendered that way even in English (e.g., Montréal-Nord, Quebec, not Montreal-Nord). Other toponymical details are outlined in The Canadian Style, a style guide produced by the federal government. (Other style guides may vary.) Of course, sometimes popular usage translates or renders a name with no formal English equivalent (and v.v.) and have varied use (e.g., Montreal is common, whilst 'Montreal-North' is not). In any event, these are the sorts of things that should/will be embraced in a Canadian naming convention while being cognizant of over-arching ones. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 07:30, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

It is tricky, no doubt. When I checked the Gazeteer for Montreal the only name they have is " Montréal". I think that south of the border the USGS and US Post Office have both frowned on accents or punctuation in place names. -Will Beback 09:29, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

The naming convention as it stands is "city, (province, state, county, whatever)" if disambiguation is necessary, but "city name alone" if it's not or if the city at hand is overwhelmingly the most significant use. Nobody's actually violating the naming conventions; the cities noted here are all obvious and inarguable "primary meaning of the name" cases, whereas cities like London, Ontario or Buffalo, New York are equally obviously "disambiguation required". The convention specifically allows for either naming format to be used depending on the specific situation. Bearcat 06:49, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

dab international city names

The city name Hyderabad is common to both India and Pakistan. The dab CITYNAME, COUNTRY is too similar to the US convention of naming international cities. We prefer the dab style CITY (COUNTRY). This dab style applies to only Indian cities with share similiar names with other international cities. We hope to put this into policy by this week. Thanks and regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:24, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Since there is no opposition to this. I will put it up on the project page. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:44, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

India should not have special rules. I will remove this from the project page. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 00:01, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

It is unreasonable to announce without reason that a 2½ - month old proposal reached the "wrong" conclusion, and remove the result from the guidelines page without opening a new discussion. Nichalp waited ten days for discussion - you waited 7 minutes. --Scott Davis ^Talk 00:43, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

You are wrong, it is very reasonable. Because he stated there was no opposition, but very well knew that there was opposition by me to his India-city-moves he was making a misleading statement here.

1. he moved may 1 [1]
2. I reverted may 5 12:59 [2]
3. he moved may 6 8:15 [3]
4. I reverted june 1 [4]
5. june 24 8:53 he moved again pointing to his newly introduced rule [5]
6. I discovered his move and his new special India guideline not before today

I have no oppostion should comma be changed to parathesis, but not on a country by country user by user approach. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 01:44, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Belarus

Initial bid:

1. Major cities (voblast (province) capitals) by the most common English usage
2. The rest by national rules
3. Exceptions always exist; may be discussed case by case.

See List of cities in Belarus. `'mikka (t) 03:22, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable and fair. abakharev 03:44, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

By national rules do we mean Lacinka, or one of the many Belarusian translit systems or the officially state preffered language of Belarus - Russian? --Kuban Cossack 05:04, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Neither Russian nor any other languge should be a medium for Belarusian names. Original source should be used firstly. By the way Belarusian language has Łacinka script based on the Latin alphabet, with some diacritic signs, which has deep history, established rules and spreading sphere of usage. If official regime of Łukašenka doesn't applies it, this cannot be a reason for denying it in wikipedia. --Zlobny 20:04, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Belarus Article titles

Mikka suggested a sensible set of rules which in the absence of WP:Dick-like behavior would have been enough already (plus a separate issue on the translit system but let's not throw everything together). However, just to make this clear to all:

1. First, we are discussing only the article titles here, right? Not an in article usage or the names listed in the first line following the article's name. Let's be clear that this is about titles only and discuss those other two issues separately. So we are discussing the article titles only.

2. The issue still consists of two subissues. Which name name we choose and which transliteration system we choose if there is no established English usage. If there is an established English usage, the issue of transliteration is moot. If there is none, we transliterate from the Belarusian name according to the transliteration rules discussed separately (please discuss them separately and not at the same time)

3. Exceptions always exist, as Mikka says. As long as there is good faith and old feuds are put aside, they can be discussed case by case.

Let's discuss the details (like what constitutes an established English usage, what transliteration system we use, etc.) separately. If we just agree on these points, some articles can already be sorted out. --Irpen 05:39, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

The problem with Belarusian names is that I feel we have a Kiev/Kyiv scenario for ALL titles, the only difference is that the official Minsk is not attempting to have the latter installed. That means we have to look at this realisitically. Do we title Kazan or Qazan? No because the Tatar name is not widespread. That is why we have to respect the use of names in English language. --Kuban Cossack 13:32, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Shall we continue here Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Cyrillic)#Proposal for Belarusian. I have proposed to remove Lacinka from wiki altogether. It is just archaic and compleately unsuitable for wikipedian use. There are other many Belarusian translit systems, we need to identify which one is more widespread and use it (presentely ALL are more widespread than Lacinka). --Kuban Cossack 13:54, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Neither Russian nor any other languge should be a medium for Belarusian names. Original source should be used firstly. By the way Belarusian language has Łacinka script based on the Latin alphabet, with some diacritic signs, which has deep history, established rules and spreading sphere of usage. If official regime of Łukašenka doesn't applies it, this cannot be a reason for denying it in wikipedia. --Zlobny 20:04, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Spreading usage has to take place before it can be used in Wikipedia, President Lukashenko has nothing to do with this. Wikipedia shall not be a platform to encourage Lacinka's spread. The admin board will back this point. --Kuban Cossack 14:03, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I propose to use the official transliteration system applied by State Cartography Committee. It is not exactly Lacinka (although it has most features of it) and is actually used on maps. The official transliteration should be in the article's name - all other former and Russian names shall be redirects. We have Mumbai as the article's name - and not Bombay, don't we? Even if Bombay used to be the traditional and most widespread English name for the city. So, I think, it would be logical--Czalex 12:50, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I propose we stick not to official or unofficial titles but to the names that have the most common English version - by checking the ones sources like encarta, Columbia and Britanica use. NONE of which have anything to do with Lacinka and all are BGN/PCGN. --Kuban Cossack 14:03, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Belarus transliteration system

Which one? Lacinka? Official (aren't there several official systems)? Let's discuss this separately in this section to make it all easier. --Irpen 05:42, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Official iz one: http://pravo.kulichki.com/otrasl/zem/zem00063.htm . You know others? Lacinka is not official.

Cities in Turkey

I see three articles in Category:Cities in Turkey have a non-standard form of ", Turkey" instead of the usual disambiguation "(Turkey)" so it might make sense to add a sentence or two about Turkey. Ah, and since it's Eurasian/mainly Asian in its geography, put the new sub-heading under "Asia"? Any thoughts?--Mereda 10:15, 20 June 2006 (UTC) Whoops, got that wrong! But maybe have a look at Sinop anyway for an example of city/province names. --Mereda 11:40, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Spilt Canada and USA conventions

While not wanting to reopen a recurrent topic, the edit on 17 June by Bearcat appears to have been intended to add Toronto as a Canadian exception to a convention that covered both Canada and USA cities. This seems to have had a perhaps unintended effect of changing the semantics of the documented convention for USA cities. Does anyone object to separating the two national conventions into separate subsections, so they could (if required) develop separately, and restore the USA to the pre June 17 version? --Scott Davis ^Talk 07:41, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I have no objection. --Coolcaesar 09:48, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree. There's no reason that Canada and the United States should be treated together. Due to the complexites and variations among municipal and town districts we almost need to have state/province-specific guidelines. -Will Beback 10:05, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I guess I agree. I'd rather we just ditch the stupid American convention altogether. But at the very least we shouldn't force the Canadians to abide by our stupidity. john k 11:36, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Firstly, I don't think I've ever seen any notion that the American convention is to go with a strict "city, state" at all times with no exceptions under any circumstances whatsoever. And even if that is the convention, New York City is still out of sync with it. But other than that, I have no objection to splitting Canada and the United States into separate conventions — I agree entirely with Will Beback above. Bearcat, away from home and not logged in 02:37, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I guess you weren't here when we had to fight tooth and nail to prevent New York City from being at New York, New York to accord with the convention. When, on the basis of that silliness, some of us tried to work out a more flexible convention for US cities so that major ones like Los Angeles, Chicago, and such like could also be listed without state name, we got pretty much nowhere. john k 19:17, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I have split that section into separate sections for each country, and attempted to faithfully represent Bearcat's edits for Canada, and the previous status quo for the USA. I don't know if "county or parish" is the right phrase for either or both countries, so kept it. There may need to be other minor tidying up now that the two are separate. Thankyou. --Scott Davis ^Talk 03:04, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation of Italian towns and cities

Following a lengthy debate in Talk:Syracuse about another matter, discussion has turned to the best way to disambiguate Italian towns and cities. With less than 50% of all Italian comuni completed, this is an opportune time to revisit an existing policy in relation to this matter to ensure that it is in fact the very best policy for en.wiki. The current policy is to follow the it.wiki practice of using the official two letter abbreviation of a province, e.g. Augusta (SR). While this approach has merit (in terms of being an effective format for disambiguation consistent with another major wikipedia project), the discussion at Talk:Syracuse and Talk:Syracuse, Italy makes the following points: 1. we would often effectively be mixing the Anglicised form of a name with the official Italian abbreviation in a title; and 2. for the most part, English speakers would generally not be familiar with these abbreviations - indeed in many cases the town/city name would be more familiar to them than the name of the province itself. The suggestion is that the full name of the region would be an effective form of disambiguation, certainly in the vast majority of cases, e.g. Syracuse, Sicily. I have actually come across all three formats (including [[town/city, Italy]], and I think it is appropriate that one format be used consistently, being one that is readily understandable to the English speaker. I would like to propose that the format:

[[town/city, region]] replace the current policy of [[town/city (XX)]], e.g. Syracuse, Sicily. ρ¡ρρµ δ→θ∑ - (waarom? jus'b'coz!) 06:14, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Discussion will be closed two weeks after my post above (6:14, 7 August 2006 (UTC)).

Supporting proposal

1. ρ¡ρρµ δ→θ∑ - (waarom? jus'b'coz!) 03:54, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
2. Well, I agree, obviously. john k 18:37, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
3. Support. I think this is a very reasonable proposal. older ≠ wiser 01:29, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
4. Support. ^BlankVerse 14:30, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Opposing proposal

1. Oppose.--Serge 19:08, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
2. Oppose use of comma, okay with spelling out province abbreviation; e.g., Syracuse (Syracuse) instead of Syracuse (SR) (current standard). --Usgnus 19:19, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

   I am not sure if I explained the proposal well enough, but it is to combine the name of the comune with the region, e.g. Syracuse, Sicily rather than Syracuse, Syracuse. ρ¡ρρµ δ→θ∑ - (waarom? jus'b'coz!) 23:51, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

3. Oppose, on balance, and especially where we are disambiguating two Italian communes. Quite happy, however, for this system to be used to distinguish between (say) the two Syracuses.

Discussion

I see no value for readers in imposing a consistent naming standard, even for disambiguation. Each Wikipedia article should be considered on a case by case basis, and the most commonly understood/recognized form for that article should be used, period. The need for a "standard" naming format is an understandable gut instinct artifact from paper encyclopedias when format determined the ability for users to find various articles, but has no application in modern on-line encyclopedias with wide open search. It's contrary to Wikipedia policy and philosophy for us to hold ourselves hostage to such arbitrary shackles. --Serge 19:12, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that we throw out all naming conventions? john k 12:48, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

No. I'm okay with the naming conventions and guidelines that allow for using the most commonly used/recognized name, which is most of them. I am suggesting we throw out the arbitrary, counter-intuitive standards-for-the-sake-of-standards anal-retentive format templates like [[city, state]] and [[community, city, state]]. --Serge 00:34, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Serge, I've asked you before to stop calling your fellow editors "autistic". It's a personal attack and it doesn't help your argument. -Will Beback 17:41, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I am not quite sure. But I would begin by noting that there are two different kinds of case where disambiguation is needed.

1. The first case is where there are at least two Italian comuni with the same name. There is a Brione in the province of Brescia and another in the province of Trento. In this kind of case I would see a very strong argument for using Brione (BS) and Brione (TN) as the disambiguating titles because, in effect, Brione (BS) and Brione (TN) are their common names.
2. The second case is when the name of an Italian comune clashes with other article names: Gavi is uniquely (IIRC) a commune of the province of Alessandria. But it is also the name of a wine and the name of an island. In this case I guess that I would vote for Gavi (Italian commune). I would find Gavi (AL) a little odd (albeit not indefensible). I would find Gavi (Piedmont) a bit useless, though, as the wine (though not in this case the island) is also Piedmontese.

Hmmn. I am becoming convinced that the simplicty and consistency of the current convention Gavi (AL) has a lot to be said for it. I am aware that Turin (TO) would be idiotic. But are there any actual cases where we would have to mix an Englished name with a targa suffix? The only one that springs to mind is Florence: is she in Tuscany or in the Magic Roundabout? But in that case Wikipedia has already decided that the major Florence is Tuscan.

Verging on voting against—but happy to be covinced otherwise ≠Ian Spackman 23:12, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi Ian - the unique two letter province identifier certainly has the advantage of working pretty much every time there is a need for a disambig. So ultimately, if we don't mind the look of it too much (since, as you point out, Turin (TO) is likely to confuse as much as elucidate) the current standard does serve that primary objective very well. The way it's going, we are probably likely to keep it - and as long as we all know where we stand, I'll be happy enough to run with it. I just want to know the best way to go before I do too much more work in this area, because as I have said, I have come across three disambig formats in actual use (in relation to the Italian comuni), and at least one more has surfaced in this discussion alone! ρ¡ρρµ δ→θ∑ - (waarom? jus'b'coz!) 23:57, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, how can I be so thick? Syracuse is the particular example of of a problem. I think I would just say treat it as a special case and call it Syracuse (Italy) Syracuse (Sicily) or Siracusa. I don’t see that it greatly matters which. But nor do I think that this special case has to determine a general rule on Italian comuni. ±Ian Spackman 23:56, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

The current policy is clear though, and it does favour Syracuse (SR). However, and I think this is where you are coming from, because we are not really talking about an ambiguity between Italian comuni as often happens, but rather between cities in different countries, that an alternative form of disambig for Syracuse would be acceptable. Have I got that right? Would that reasoning apply even within the context of the current policy? ρ¡ρρµ δ→θ∑ - (waarom? jus'b'coz!) 00:02, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, Pippu, I was (still am) thinking rather than voting and hadn’t reached a consistent position. I believe we all want to avoid Syracuse (SR)—in my case because mixing the English word with the Italian-language convention feels clumsy. That means, at a minimum, relaxing the current convention in the case of Syracuse and any other similar cases. If indeed there are any. The seven cities with Anglicized names which I checked out had no problems: we have squatters rights on Rome, Florence, Turin, Venice, Naples and Milan, while Leghorn points you to Livorno on the basis that the English form is archaic. (Which made me feel perfectly ancient.)

I tend to think that the simplest solution might be to use Siracusa for Syracuse. But if we did go for Syracuse (Italy), or Syracuse (Sicily) I would not want to use that as a basis for a general disambiguation convention: Gavi (Italy) could refer to the island as well as to the comune. While Barolo (Piedmont) isn’t the most obvious way to distinguish the commune from the wine. (Wine clashes are going to be common, and very often the wines will be better known than the villages.)

Well, that’s my 5 (ancient or modern) centesimi. —Ian Spackman 23:54, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

In terms of province name abbreviation, I can understand that this is natural in Italy, but I don't feel like any native English-speakers would have any sense of what the abbreviation means. On the other hand, I think a lot of people do have a general sense of the Italian regions, and so long as there's not too much repetition, this seems like a sensible way to disambiguate. I am indifferent to whether it is done with a comma or with a parenthesis. john k 12:48, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

English form of the Italian word comune

Following on from the last discussion, this is a separate but related issue, and once again, it is an opportune time to think about it before more headway is made on completing all the Italian comune. As one can see from this link, this Italian word translates pretty accurately as "municipality", and that is what we started using for our categories in the Sicily Wikiproject. But someone alerted me to the fact that "commune" is a legitimate English word to describe this. In the Sicily Wikiproject we had initially discounted its use because of its hippy meaning. I note it is used to describe all the French communes. So this isn't a suggestion, because I really don't know which way to go, but I am looking for a show of hands of the best word to use to translate Italian comune: commune or municipality? Obviously, I do not ask this just for Sicily Wikiproject, but rather, to be applied to all Italian towns and cities. ρ¡ρρµ δ→θ∑ - (waarom? jus'b'coz!) 06:30, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

My hand rises for commune. (Two syllables good; six syllables bad.) —Ian Spackman 08:42, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

As I've said elsehwere, I also prefer commune. john k 01:04, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

My vote for "commune". Bolivian Unicyclist 18:35, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

What do Italian government English-version websites and documentation translate "comune" as ? THEPROMENADER 17:09, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

• Why translate it at all? instead of just using the local word if it were English? We don't translate many administrative divisions that have imperfect counterparts in English: Okrug, Oblast, Canton, Krai, Frazione, Arrondissement, etc., although we do translate those which do: (German) Gemeinde->municipality, Kreis->district, Bundestaat->state; (Italian & Spanish) Provincia->Province, etc., etc.. Probably many more of the latter than the former, but that's (IMHO) more of a sacrifice of accuracy to ease of use.
• Query: does Italian comune have a counterpart in English? If so, it's certainly not "commune" which in English conjures images of hippies and literally communal living; so the effort to commune-ize comune is more of a Francization rather than an Anglicization.
• If we use comune to mean what in Italy it means, the obvious next question is what's the plural? I say in English, it's comunes, like the plural of Okrug is Okrugs, Oblast is Oblasts, Krai is Krais, etc., regardless of their Russian plural forms. Yes, "comunes" differs from the native, but so does pizzas (rather than pizze), basilicas, operas, violas, and any number of words of Italian origin. "Comuni" would be the obvious alternative, and if we stopped translating things imperfectly, the prefered form, but then we'd have to have revamp how and what we translate -- not the worst thing to do, but just very time intensive. Carlossuarez46 17:39, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
• For what it's worth the Italian WP entry it:comune gives the UK equivalent to a comune as "county wards" and "cities". I can gather what a city is, but county ward has no meaning on this side of the pond. Carlossuarez46 21:52, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Canada

Trying to get consensus on wording for naming convention. It's not too different from the new (July 23) split-out version: Wikipedia:Canadian wikipedians' notice board/discussion#City naming convention poll 2 --Usgnus 17:55, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Why don't we adopt for Canadian cities the same convention that applies to Australian cities?: that is, all town/city/suburb articles are at Town, Province no matter what their status of ambiguity, except for capital cities, which may be unclaused where no ambiguity exists.--cj | talk 05:46, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

The reason to not adopt any fixed-format convention for any country is because having a standard for the sake of having a standard is a lousy reason for imposing a standard. In particular, imposing an arbitrary standard on any article name should never override the main Wikipedia naming convention: to use the best known or most recognized name. --Serge 20:34, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

A much better system is one where cities are placed at their name alone when they're the best-known city with that name. It works for the rest of Wikipedia, and it works for cities too, where it's allowed. And frankly, it's surprising sometimes when a well-known city ends up at some long disambiguating name (e.g., Chicago, Illinois). It makes one immediately wonder: what, there's some other well-known entity named "Chicago"? Oh, no there isn't, how mysterious. In that case, the encyclopedia deviates from the reader's expectation, but for no good reason, apparently, other than some editors' exaggerated fear of squabbles in a few cases (when the most prominent entity with a certain name isn't obvious). --Yath 21:32, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Australian political geography is different than that in Canada. In Australia, each state has one major city that dwarfs all the others in population, and that city is also always the state capital (and if I'm not mistaken, the 6 largest cities are the 5 mainland capitals plus the federal capital of Canberra). It's not that cut-and-dry in Canada. The 2nd, 3rd and 5th largest metro areas in the country aren't even capitals of their own provinces (the 4th isn't either, but it's the national capital). Meanwhile, the largest city and capital of PEI is smaller than 30-40 cities in Ontario. The question then becomes, where do you draw the line? It's a lot more ambiguous here. Kirjtc2 18:03, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Cities in the United States whose titles have no state suffix

Anyone able to explain why Canada is allowed to have cities with no province suffix in their title besides Quebec City but the United States doesn't besides New York City?? Please make sure you know what difference there is between the two countries so that it can be understood. Georgia guy 22:20, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

There is no objective reason, of course. The real reason is pathetic: there is a gang of editors that favors the [[city, state]] format for American cities, because they care more about ease of use for editors than Wikipedia being encyclopedic or reader friendly, or abiding by the Wikipedia naming policy to favor the most used/recognized name, that is large enough in number to force or outvote any effort to stop them on any given city, except for New York City (but believe me, they've tried there too - it's the only place they failed). This is blatant violation of WP:NPOV, but for any given city but one, there aren't enough people who care. --Serge 23:53, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

gang of editors? Cool down. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 00:57, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Serge. The forced <city, state> titling does not reflect what the city is actually called. At a minimum, it should only be used when disambiguation is necessary. Furthermore, the use of a comma does not even make it easier for editors as opposed to the use of parentheses since the latter are amenable to the use of the pipe trick. It is much easier to type [[City (State)|]] rather than [[City, State|City]] to create a wikilink for "City". --Polaron | Talk 23:17, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

gang of editors? Cool down. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 00:57, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

New "General rules"

User:Tobias Conradi made a series of 5 edits to the guideline page this morning (just after midnight 7 August UTC) to remove India and Africa sections, introduce "General rules" and rename "By country" to "Special rules". I believe this has changed the tone of the guideline (and maybe the meaning for some cases), without any discussion here first. Are other regular participants in discussions here happy with his changes? My specific concerns are:

• I thought there has been a general preference to avoid "place, country" in preference of either "place (country)" or "place, state"
• The specific India guideline was proposed here for 10 days before being added, but was removed (and the resulting guideline changed) on 7 minutes' notice.

--Scott Davis ^Talk 01:01, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

• I thought there has been a general preference to avoid "place, country" in preference of either "place (country)" or "place, state"
  • if so than please state this in the guideline. I thought once have read somewhere that the general rule is comma. This also is what I mostly see in WP.
  • if there are no general rules one would have to set up rules for each country, province whatever. I stronlgy favor a general statement.
• The specific India guideline was proposed here for 10 days before being added, but was removed (and the resulting guideline changed) on 7 minutes' notice.
  • The special-rule-for-India proposal was made by Nichalp, who was aware of opposition.
    1. he moved may 1 [6]
    2. I reverted may 5 12:59 [7]
    3. he moved may 6 8:15 [8]
    4. I reverted june 1 [9]
    5. june 24 8:53 he moved again pointing to his newly introduced rule [10]
    6. I discovered his move and his new special India guideline not before today

Tobias Conradi (Talk) 01:50, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm. The intro is clearly rather too short on this convention. There is a better general intro on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places). The intro here should give a better explanation of purpose than it does, then note that there are specific rules for towns and cities in a number of countries detailed below, then what the default naming convention is for town and city articles not covered by those country-specific guidelines.

The next question then is exactly what we think is the default naming convention for towns and cities not covered by specifics. If there is no ambiguity, it appears to be the common English-language name of the place if there is one, or the local language name if no English name is common. Ambiguity could be against other places in the same or different countries, objects, people or concepts. A number of countries have adopted [[place, state/province/county]] as the style of disambiguated names - some (e.g. the USA and Australia) have chosen to do this for all town names, and others (e.g the UK) have chosen to only do it when required. African places have chosen to use [[place, country]], although South Africa appears to ignore that, and use the province name more often than "South Africa" (but is not consistent). India seems to have a leg on each side of the fence at the moment. I thought I had seen [[place (country)]], but I'm failing to find many of these now that I'm looking for them. --Scott Davis ^Talk 02:59, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not surprised that Tobias has acted unilaterally without discussion. I had proposed this on the Indian wikipedians' notice board, without opposition, and later over here, again without opposition, before I modified the conventions for India-related cities.

Disambiguation can also be effected with the use of parenthesis, and it a perfectly acceptable way of separating identical terms. One problem with using the comma for dab is that we feel is that is that is conforms to the local (not Wikipedia) US style of nominclature, where the use of CITY, STATE for US places, and CITY, COUNTRY for international locations are used.

Secondly, we have a number of Indian cities that have the same name, and are located in different states. So to maintain consistency for India-related places, we'd prefer to use the comma when the city when it conflicts internally (ie CITY, STATE), and use CITY (COUNTRY) when it conflicts internationally. To add to this point, it's obviously inconsistent to have Hyderabad, India and Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh when we're talking about places in India. They both aren't at the same hierachy level to merit the same comma for the international dab.

Lastly, Wikipedia *recognises* regional diversity for naming conventions, that's why we have the use of British and American spellings here. --Nichalp (logged out) 12:59, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

• I'm not surprised that Tobias has acted unilaterally without discussion.
  • so you knew your action deserved being reverted without discussion? Why than have you done it?
• I had proposed this on the Indian wikipedians' notice board
  • I am not an Indian Wikipedian thus not reading this board. I still want to use Wikipedia. I told you so several times before.
• _we_ feel is that is that is conforms to the local (not Wikipedia) US style of nominclature, where the use of CITY, STATE for US places, and CITY, COUNTRY for international locations are used.
  • who is this _we_? IMO it is hard to explain to the reader why WP uses "City, State" and "City (Country)" for Cities in India, while allmost all other cities use only comma. Shall we say some people felt soething, that's why we use () for these cities? Of course I acted "unilateral" if you add such stuff in a guideline without informing opponents. You were well aware of the opposition.
• To add to this point, it's obviously inconsistent to have Hyderabad, India and Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh when we're talking about places in India.
  • this is done so in several countries. We can change this, but I don't see why India should be treated different. Furthermore since you deleted the comma it is not clear anymore that the article is about the city. Could now also refer to the Hyderabad District, India.

Please come out from your India-is-so-special-island and work with other editors. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 13:19, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Calm down Tobias. India is not the only country with its own section in this naming convention. It's been quite common in other countries to hold most of the discussion about naming conventions on the national noticeboard, wikiproject or similar place, then post the consensus decision here or wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places) and update the guideline. That seems to be what Nichalp did.

Nich, What's wrong with Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh? Providing a link to the previous discussion is fine. --Scott Davis ^Talk 14:37, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I know, there are also other people that think they have to re-invent the wheel 100 times around the world. It's just not good for WP to have 100 dab styles. Nichalp did something special: He knew! that there was opposition. He could have informed me. But he probably wanted to get it through as quick as possible.

For him nothing is wrong with Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, but he prefers Hyderabad (India) over Hyderabad, India. I am fine if this is implemented worldwide. But I disagree to do this only for India. And I am absolutly not fine to introduce it hiddenly. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 17:07, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

From what I've seen of other naming conventions, the use of parentheses is more frequently restricted to non-settlements, such as schools and physical features. -Will Beback 21:00, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

naming conventions (toponyms)

moved to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (toponyms) Tobias Conradi (Talk) 13:37, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

settlements

should this be called settlements? including village, towns, cities ... Tobias Conradi (Talk) 14:36, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was Move. New name seems a little cheesy to me. Hopefully folks can find a better alternative but, if everyone is satisfied with this new one for now... —Wknight94 (talk) 11:01, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

WP:RM

• support other conventions use NC (places) so it should at first be NC (cities). No need to put ...names. But this would not include the very similiar with respect to naming villages, towns, hamlets. neighborhoods etc. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 11:54, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose change to "settlements", as that word has a fairly specific connotation. I don't think any native speaker would consider New York, London, or Tokyo "settlements". I would support a move to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (place names) (but not "toponyms", as that seems a bit overblown) . Kafziel 11:51, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
  • we already have NC (places).
  • the word settlement is also used at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(categories)#State-based topics
  • "inhabited places" would be an alternative for the natives that have problems with their language. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 11:55, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
    • How is that an improvement on the current name? Countries are "inhabited places", too. Kafziel 12:27, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
      • it is broader. But if it includes countries it's too broad. And mountains can be inhabitad too ;-) But this is NC (landforms). I came to this proposal because of getty.edu (geo-researh currently offline, will have to re-check)Tobias Conradi (Talk) 12:59, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
      • Berlin (inhabited place), source getty.edu [11] - Tobias Conradi (Talk) 14:35, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose the suggested name (per Kafziel), but not very happy with the existing name either. Why not Wikipedia:Naming conventions (cities, towns, villages)? I have seen the collective name "populated places", but I'm not sure if that's acceptable. -- Eugène van der Pijll 12:41, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
  • would not like such a long name, does not include hamlets, neighborhoods, CDPs. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 12:59, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
• Support Of course New York and London are very large settlements. The convention already covers the full range of "cities or town", so the renaming only makes it more self-evident. —Michael Z. 2006-08-14 13:00 Z
• comment "city or town" is a recent addition to this page (I put it there), although I believe the intent had always been to include any populated places worthy of articles in Wikipedia. I think "(populated places)" is most likely to be a dialect-neutral term to accurately describe the intended coverage: named concentrations of habitation, either official or unofficial. The problem with any more precise terms is that they either mean different things in different places, or the list of names of types of places grows extremely long to be all-inclusive. --Scott Davis ^Talk 14:29, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
  • are countries and mountains places too? populated is not the same as inhabited, is it? A building can be populated during day and not so during night. But anyway, what about former/abandoned settlements? These probably are not populated nor inhabited anymore, but still would qualify as (former) settlements and could be included. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 14:42, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

But you simply can't delineate the range of this naming convention in one or two words, so you have to take something that comes close. As for your original proposal, Liebeck v. McDonald's Corp. is a settlement too. Eugène van der Pijll 15:30, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

yes. Initially I forgot that settlement is used not only in geography but also in law and similiar in finance. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 20:28, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

• Neutral. Regardless of what it is called, it is superfluous. The standard naming conventions provide for more consistent conventions than do the country-specific sets of rules that have developed into the inconsistent mess we have now. In the vast majority of cases where there are no ambiguity issues, cities, villages, communities, etc. should be named according to their most common name: Tokyo, New York City, Los Angeles, Paris, Moscow, Hollywood, etc. In the cases where there is an ambiguity issue, additional specific information should be in parenthesis: Moscow (Idaho), Paris (Texas), etc. Simple. Consistent. Anything else is in violation of WP:Naming. There is no need for any city-specific or settlement-specific conventions. They only lead to inconsistencies between countries, and bizarre unencyclopedic entries like Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. --Serge 15:23, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
  • somehow agree. Especially I am not to much a fan of country specific aproaches. The only diff with standard naming is the comma convention and the pure quantity of ambigous places names that maybe need more pre-emptive dab/linking. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 20:28, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
• Support. "City" is way too narrow. I would rather prefer "inhabited place/locality", but "settlement" is acceptable as well.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:03, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
• Support to prevent NC(town), NC(hamlet), NC(village), etc. (SEWilco 19:30, 14 August 2006 (UTC))
• Support. It may not be ideal, but the reasoning for why "settlesments" is better than the alternatives is convincing. -Will Beback 19:41, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
• Comments 1) I searched the "Naming conventions (city names)" article last night and found 'settlement(s)' only appears in it once, while 'city' or 'cities' appear about 22 times. 2) I always thought one of the cool things about Wikipedia was the ability to do redirects. Why not just put in a bunch of redirects to whatever name is decided on and add all other possible names to the article - something like "Note: this also includes cities, towns, boroughs, villages, hamlets, etc.". 3) The convention mentioned by Serge above is in conflict with the WikiProject Rivers naming guidelines for Rivers in the United States, Canada, and Australia at least. In the following sentence (quoted from the Project page) the first example is a river, the second example is a town: " For example Indian River (Michigan) not Indian River, Michigan which is actually a town." I also think local usage trumps (or should trump) everything having the same format. Very few Americans would think to search for "Moscow (Idaho)" before "Moscow, Idaho". So I agree it needs a better name, can't think of one myself though. Hope this helps, Ruhrfisch 18:58, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Renamed and reverted

Note that the poll above continues in parallel with the following discussion.

I asked whether this should be moved, found no opposition and did it. William Allen Simpson reverted and edited the target, so now admins have to do the move. Why did he not discuss? Why did he not give reasons against the renaming itself? He said it was not official. But hearing this from him, who altered a whole guideline by inserting his point of view is not something I believe in. [12]

William can you please state what are your real reasons? Is it because I uncovered so many of your false claims that now you want to revert as much as possible of what I do? Would you have reverted someone who is not me? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 11:54, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

William doesn't have to explain his reasons. You made a unilateral move and were reverted, as is proper. You say you asked and had no opposition, but I don't see your request anywhere. Can you point it out to me? Kafziel 11:59, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

He does not have to but to die. There are millions of what you call unilateral actions. WP would not be here without them. Your posts are unilateral too.

The question was made at [13] Tobias Conradi (Talk) 12:15, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Unilateral moves are permitted, but so is reverting them if anyone disagrees with them for any reason. That's why we have the Requested Moves page. Those who revert unilateral moves do not need to defend themselves, and you should assume good faith in that regard rather than attacking his character. Kafziel 12:27, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

but he did not provide any reason against the renaming itself. And just move back and claiming at other places the move was undiscussed (I proposed it, if nobody comes to discuss, so what?) is borderline disruptive. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 12:54, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Please refrain from making personal attacks against other users in your edit summaries. Those are meant to be used to describe your contributions, not to post unanswerable jabs at others. He is not required to specify a reason for reverting. It's an accepted part of the move process, and it happens all the time. Kafziel 12:58, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

for me it is not acceptable that people just revert others without giving true reasons or making claims like "undiscussed, unauthorized": [14] for me this looks only like disruption. I should maybe have choosen another edit summary, thanks for pointing this out to me. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 13:41, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Let's wait a bit for the straw poll to come to completion. A week should be sufficient. -Will Beback 19:41, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[I separated this discussion from the straw poll so poll editors can deal with the poll issues rather than this discussion about a past action.] (SEWilco 21:06, 14 August 2006 (UTC))

When do certain place names always have a disambiguating term?

-- moved back to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places) since this question addresses a statement on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places), not Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names).--Serge 15:27, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

....you are right, my mistake. sorry Tobias Conradi (Talk) 21:16, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

not all populated places are dabed with comma

---

copy from Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places) Not all populated places are disambiguated with a comma - which not? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 13:52, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

• For places outside the U.S. (and some other places), the comma-separated convention for disambiguation is not as well established. For example, Wah (Pakistan), Punjab (Pakistan), Jamalpur (India), Seoni (Himachal Pradesh), Mandi (India), Mataram (city), Malamir (Iranian city). Usage seems to be inconsistent outside of those countries where long-established, centralized postal service customs have made comma-separated disambiguation almost second nature. I'm really not so sure it is a good idea to impose such a format on articles about places where such a custom is not readily recognizable. older ≠ wiser 14:20, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Also Tongan towns appear to be disambiguated where necessary by the island in parentheses. e.g. Mu'a (Tongatapu), Ha'afeva (Ha'apai). There are several lists of redlinks in that format, so the minimal articles in categories do not represent the full work of changing that. --Scott Davis ^Talk 15:18, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Punjab (Pakistan) is actually a province. The other towns are a mess. Recently someone argued India towns should be "Delhi (India)" but "Sompur, Pradesh". (pradesh = state). The latter, he argued is more common for inner-Indian dab. So we could well "impose" the general city-dab rules. About Tonga, I don't know. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 19:24, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

---

• I wish you'd stop moving discussions from one page to another. I just pulled Punjab (Pakistan) out of Category:Cities and towns in Punjab (Pakistan) -- it wasn't top-sorted, so I assumed it just another entry like all the others in the category. As for "imposing", it would be best if the folks who care about the articles for an area and edit them regularly (and are likely to notice any new articles being created) buy into the naming conventions. It doesn't especially bother me that places outside the U.S. use different conventions, so long as there is reasonable internal consistency amonst places of the same type within an area.
  • I am of course concerned that readers can easily use WP-city pages and this on a cross border level. What is your definition of "within an area"? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 21:11, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

• • • A good starting point for an area to have internally consistent naming conventions is a country. That is how this convention has been organised, is a layer in the category hierarchy for city articles, and generally is a level of focus for editors with either a wikiproject or noticeboard to attract discussions. The way places are identified locally often changes at national boundaries, too. Nearby countries are likely to have similar conventions, but not always identical, and larger countries often have similar conventions, but different to smaller countries. To help readers, we need to have redirects and disambiguation pages/links to help them easily find what they are looking for from whatever article they found. --Scott Davis ^Talk 02:27, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
      • In-country dab rules do not help that much in a worldwide WP. Nice if Liechtenstein never dabs their cities, but how does this help the readers WP? Secondly the articles are not written for the inhabitants of those settlements but for readers worldwide. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 18:32, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Canada and U.S.

I merged the 2 sections back into one to make this consistent with the consensus-reached move from Chicago, Illinois to Chicago. However, someone reverted me. Any discussion?? Georgia guy 00:39, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

The separation was to allow the two to develop independently if required. Perhaps you intended to add Chicago to the parenthetical exception, and initiate a discussion somewhere about modifying the US rule by establishing some sort of guide as to which (few) cities should be at the primary name? I'd suggest the discussion should be on Wikipedia talk:U.S. Wikipedians' notice board or a subpage (since WikiProject U.S. cities seems dead) with a note here (and on possibly-affected city talk pages) to point to the discussion, and a later note to link to any conclusion. Most people who care will be watching one of those places.

Incidentally, you should fix any double redirects as part of renaming Chicago, Illinois to Chicago. One advantage of linking to the qualified name is that it saves someone having to scan the links to the primary name to guess which ones would better point elsewhere. --Scott Davis ^Talk 03:02, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Scott's right. The Canadians would like to go their own way on the naming of city articles. As a matter of courtesy, most American editors (myself included) don't mind. --Coolcaesar 04:06, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Among other things, the merger changed the U.S. convention on how to name cities, a change which we haven't addressed. While two cities have been named in exception to the convention due to the decision of the editors of those articles, the overall convention is to name all U.S. cities in the same manner, without a general exception for "unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name". -Will Beback 07:28, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any discussion of the Canadian convention in the discussion of the move from Chicago, Illinois to Chicago. In any event, even if it had been discussed, that would not be the appropriate place to discuss eliminating the separate Canadian convention. Skeezix1000 20:32, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Naming communities withing cities

There have been quite a few debates on how to name communities within a city. Recent examples include Hollywood, La Jolla, and Anaheim Hills. There is a new poll on naming communities within cities at Wikipedia:Communities strawpoll. Participants on this page should add their votes and comments to the discussion so that hopefully there will be a clear consensus and that will then stop most of the interminable debates on this issue. ^BlankVerse 11:50, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

primary topic

• how come that Augusta, Georgia get's the Augusta link? Can this one really outweight all the other Augusta?
• how come that Zaragoza, Spain is at Zaragoza? Can this one really outweight all the other Zaragozas?

Tobias Conradi (Talk) 22:50, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Augusta seems unjustifiable. Augusta, Maine, as a state capital, is arguably as important as the one in Georgia. Augusta is also a personal name held by various royals. I think there's a very good case to move Augusta (disambiguation) to Augusta.

Zaragoza, though, is perfectly appropriate. The other Zaragozas are named for the one in Spain, which is also by far the largest - it is the fifth largest city in Spain, while the Latin American and Philippines cities of the same name are of only minor importance. john k 23:14, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Augusta (disambiguation) should be moved to Augusta, definitely. Bolivian Unicyclist 19:06, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

In accordance with my own advice, I have just listed in on WP:RM. See Talk:Augusta (disambiguation). Bolivian Unicyclist 03:12, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

What is historically named for what is at least by the Naming conventions absolutely unimportant. E.g. me, I was surprised to see the Spanish city as primary, knowing that there are others around and even a province exists, which has more inhabitants than the city. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:24, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Spanish and Italian provinces are always named for the largest city in them. The province belongs to the city in such cases, not the other way around, it is the Province of Zaragoza, that is to say, the province of which Zaragoza is the capital. Florence, Naples, Rome, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, and so forth are all both the names of provinces and of cities in those provinces, but we use the main space for the city, not the province, as well we should. Someone going to a small town in Zaragoza province would never say they were going to "Zaragoza". The name, without modifier, indicates the city, not the province. This is pretty standard stuff. The other Zaragozas, as I noted before, seem to be quite small and unimportant. john k 23:31, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with John k. Augusta seems like a good case to be the disambiguation page. I note that there are very few links direct to Augusta, and several of those I think are intended to be ambiguous (like the one from State of Kanawha), as well as from conversations like this one. I disagree with john's reasoning about Zaragoza (about the one in Spain being first), but agree with the conclusion. The name is occupied by the most prominent use of the word and the largest competing article. --Scott Davis ^Talk 00:42, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Being first isn't the only consideration, but it's worth noticing. It's certainly one of the reasons that a significant number of not so big English towns get to count as primary topics (and some of those are much more dubious, I think. Durham, for instance, is the article for the English city, even though the city of the same name in North Carolina is actually considerably bigger.) In the case of Zaragoza, though, I don't see how there can be any dispute. john k 01:28, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

The most prominent use does not justify primary topic status. If the importance of the others topics combined is bigger, the plain title should be the dab page. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 01:08, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, it is not. Zaragoza overwhelmingly refers to the city in Spain. The name of the province is not a competitor, but a testimony to that - the province name merely indicates that Zaragoza is the capital. The other places named Zaragoza are tiny and unimportant - all of the articles on them are minuscule stubs. This is a very clear case of a primary topic. john k 01:26, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

• overwhelmingly - you mean 70% of all mentions in the world refer to the city?
• of course the province is competitor, since it has the same name as the city but is not the city. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 20:21, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

  I have no idea what percentage. And the province is named for the city. It is the province of the city. There are tons of cities in similar positions. We never disambiguate a city because there's a province named for it. john k 21:46, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Never say never. Bremen (city), Namur (city), Groningen (city), Appenzell (city). But in all these cases except Appenzell, most of the other provinces in the country are not named after cities, and so the provinces are not seen as the "territory" of the capital city. -- Eugène van der Pijll 11:01, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. The Bremen issue is interesting because the state of Bremen is almost equivalent to the city of Bremen. Bremerhaven was originally essentially a colony of Bremen. The issue of the other three are quite different from Zaragoza, in that Namur, Appenzell, and Groningen are essentially medieval entities. They are named for a town, it is true, but each also has a long and distinctive history of its own. The same is not true for Spanish or Italian provinces, or Russian oblasts, or whatever, which are purely administrative entities, with no real distinctive history of their own. (And the same can be said for Bremen, as well, which as a city-state goes back to the middle ages.) Belgian, Dutch, Swiss, and German primary subdivisions are, I think, of a different order of importance from Spanish or Italian provinces. The only comparable Spanish examples, I think, would be Valencia, which refers to both the city and the region (the province of Valencia is, I think, comparatively unimportant), and perhaps León, again for the (former) region, now combined into "Castile and León", and not the smaller province, which is not terribly important. I don't think there's any good Italian examples. Administrative entities dating back to the 18th or 19th century aren't really comparable to medieval polities with their own distinctive history. john k 11:48, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

• • it is irrelevant what is named for what. What counts is current importance distribution. If noone can approximate a percentage, it cannot be verified whether it is really sufficient important. Until this is not clear Zaragoza should get dab. In doubt, dab. Dab do avoid future problems. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 22:37, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
    • To dab "to avoid future (potential) problems" is in violation of Wikipedia policy, which is to use the most common name unless there is a (known, not potential) ambiguity issue. --Serge 22:53, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

What's this bizarre emphasis on quantitative estimates? I wasn't even aware that the other Zaragozas existed until yesterday, and the province issue is not unique to Zaragoza, and difficult to resolve by any quantitative means, at any rate. There are thousands of political units that are named after cities. In general, our policy is to disambiguate the province, and to reserve the main title for the city. In such cases, also, one is unlikely to use the name alone to refer to the province. If one said one was going to Zaragoza, without further elaboration, one would assume the city, and not the province, is meant. The same goes for other similar units. The problem here seems only to exist in Tobias's mind. john k 23:30, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't even aware that the other Zaragozas existed until yesterday - but now you are. And here is more: the province has more inhabitants and economic power than the city. Furthermore: the province is not only mentioned in contexts like "going to Zaragoza". You may read country subdivision and related articles to get more insight into where names of states, provinces, counties etc might be used. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:40, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

To be fair, the "problem" does exist in the minds of a few others that comprise a gang of surprisingly significant size, mostly of folks who come across as pretty reasonable and well-meaning. It's like they managed to convince themselves that the problem of dabbing was significant enough for cities that it warranted a "predab" solution, and they came up with this scheme to predab city names, "just in case". This turned out to be appealing to those who like to see all the names look the same. After all, that city, state format is so uniform and tidy. They just forgot, or overlooked, that the purpose of the encyclopedia article title is to specify the most common name used to refer to the subject of the article, which naming cities according to the city, state format violates. The gang was large enough to overwhelm most attempts to stop them on an individual city basis (notable exception: New York City). They certainly caused a lot of chaos along the way, but eventually wore down those who objected. One after another the proper city names fell, ultimately for no good reason. But now, finally, I believe enough people are waking up to the havoc that this gang has wrought. I sincerely hope Chicago was a sign of many more corrective improvements to come, not a rare exception. --Serge 00:16, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

please provide evidence for your claim that the problem is only in my head and in the heads of a gang. I.e. all persons that follow "city, state" and are not me, are in a gang. Otherwise withdraw this allegation, as it could be considered that you stick to a false claim. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:34, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I think this is about people who have training in object-oriented programming methodology versus those who don't. OOP is quite a clear and rational method for approaching probles once one invests the time into understanding it, which is why it is the dominant programming paradigm today. For example, C++, Java, and C# are all OOP languages. --Coolcaesar 02:46, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Cool! I'm a gang member.

Of course, the point of being in a gang is to fight against another gang, in this case the people led by Serge who want to overturn widely accepted naming conventions for articles about cities and towns, particularly in the USA.

Coolcaesar: Which gang is OO and which are procedura / functional / declarative / aspect-oriented? --Scott Davis ^Talk 07:30, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Community (City, State) Setup

Anaheim Hills (Anaheim, California); La Jolla (San Diego, California); Hollywood (Los Angeles, California)....etc...... How about Community (City, State)? Does Anyone like that set up? It still defines the community independently, but tells you the city and state on the side. Sounds like a good compromise to me!! Ericsaindon2 03:12, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I understand. I do think it looks a little odd. BUT, there would be no exceptions under this (so no more arguements). All I want is to end these silly arguements on the community pages, and the only way that can happen is finding a compromise. It is rather practical in identification, and I do think, that while people let it sink in, it will be a winner choice. I do not like the (community, city, state) set up, but I would go along with it per consensus. I dont really like any of the choices all that much, and thus far, nothing really has come about that would be a compromise. I believe that Community (City, State) would allow for the most common middle ground. Since, it is clear, that the choices people like are Choice 3 and Choice 1, those are the two that need to be compromised to reach a consensus. Now, the people voting for choice 3 argue that a community is referred to as just Community for simplicity. But, Choice 1 supporters think that this would be the most precise way to name the communities from an outside point of view. Community (City, State) takes into account both views. It would allow the Choice 3 people to say that the communities are still being refered to in their most common form (Since just Community outside the parenthasis would indicate the common name), and the people who think City and State should be included would still have that there as well. If it were up to me, I would not include city anywhere in the title, but it is not up to me. We need a compromise, and this would provide a compromise. Obviously, if the community name is outside the parenthasis, that would indicate what people refer to the place as, however, with the city and state being in parenthasis, it gives a little more information and precision to point out the fact that it is just a community. I think it is the perfect compromise, and I think it will satisfy everyone. Plus, it would also eliminate exceptions. Places like Queens could still have Queens in their title, but it would be Queens (New York, New York) or Bayside (New York, New York). It allows Wikipedia to indicate the community, the city, and the state, while still enforcing the most common name outside the parenthasis. Ericsaindon2 20:52, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Some examples might be Hollywood (Los Angeles, California), Westchester (Los Angeles, California), La Jolla (San Diego, California), Anaheim Hills (Anaheim, California), Harlem (New York, New York)....etc. Ericsaindon2 20:59, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Your suggestion does not address the issue of disambiguating when there are no ambiguity issues. You're still suggesting "predisambiguation", which is inconsistent with fundamental Wikipedia naming conventions, and problematic for at least some of us. --Serge 00:52, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

South Africa

The guideline on this project page says "Comma Country" for cities in Africa, but Category:Towns in South Africa is a mish-mash between "Comma South Africa" and "Comma Province". Does anyone have any arguments against standardising on Comma Province (for South African cities, not the whole of the African continent) and amending this project page accordingly? Bolivian Unicyclist 19:41, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I do. To be consistent with the fundamental Wikipedia naming conventions, the standard should be to specify only the name of the subject (city or town) in the title, not any other information, including location information like province or country. That information belongs in the text of the article, not in the title. If there is a name collision, then the name should be disambiguated, preferably with a standard parenthetic remark containing whatever information is appropriate for disambiguation given the nature of the particular name collision. --Serge 03:56, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I was insufficiently clear. I meant as a disambiguation method, only when disambiguation is necessary: preferring the format Douglas, Northern Cape, over Aberdeen, South Africa. Johannesburg would stay where it is. Bolivian Unicyclist 15:37, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I support "Comma Province" for South African cities and towns. You should seek confirmation on a South African noticeboard or wikiproject, as the people there are most likely to have an opinion on usage, and are the editors most immediately affected. --Scott Davis ^Talk 04:17, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. There's an African noticeboard, but I don't know of a South African one. Bolivian Unicyclist 15:37, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Purpose

Serge has continued to assert that the purpose of a page title in Wikipedia is to specify the commonly used name for the topic of the article. Can anyone identify where this stated beyond this page? I thought the purpose of the first sentence was to specify the commonly used name. The title is to provide an unambiguous way of referring to the page/article. --Scott Davis ^Talk 04:17, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

This is more an interpretation than anything. thepromenader 06:15, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

First, I think there is a basic concept that is so obvious that no one has bothered to state it explicitly. That is: the name of the article should be connected to the subject of the article. Otherwise, we could just use unique randomly selected tags to provide an unambiguous way of referring to each article.

If the purpose of the title is not to specify the name most commonly used to refer to the subject, then what is the purpose of the title?

Here are a few examples off the top of my head of articles (including particularly notable cities) that clearly specify the most common name in their titles: Cher, Jimmy Carter, Paris, New York City, Iron, Dog, United States. I can't find any articles that use the first sentence to specify the commonly used name. Maybe it's not stated explicitly, but this is clearly the purpose of the title not only throughout Wikipedia, but in all encyclopedias I've ever seen.

Beyond all that, WP:NC(CN) does say, Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things..

But, you bring up a good point... that the purpose of the title is to specify the most common name is not actually stated explicitly anywhere. It is obviously implied by usage and assumed in many of the naming guidelines, but it's not actually stated... perhaps it should be. I think it would help settle a lot of naming disputes... --Serge 07:20, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

That is: the name of the article should be connected to the subject of the article. Otherwise, we could just use unique randomly selected tags to provide an unambiguous way of referring to each article.

Article content would not need even the slightest change between Chicago, Illinois and Chicago namespaces - the rest is nonsense!

If the purpose of the title is not to specify the name most commonly used to refer to the subject, then what is the purpose of the title?

You're attempting to put the answer of one debate into a question on another. "Name" is Gdańsk vs.Gdansk, "Convention" is City, State. "Title" is a mix of both.

"Most common name" is "name", not naming convention. I think I made this clear above.

WP:NC(CN) is about name, not convention. Again the Gdansk example. Thanks for the link though: I found the info there useful for another debate. thepromenader 09:06, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

What IS city, state?

When a city is referred to as city, state, like San Francisco, California, Denver, Colorado, or Dallas, Texas, what exactly is it referring to?

a) The name of the city.
b) An alternative name of the city.
c) The location of the city.
d) The name and location of the city.
e) Something else (please specify).

Choose all that apply.

--Serge 04:42, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

• How about adding the information that is listed on the city's seal? This shows the reader something about how the place considers itself. Vegaswikian 06:25, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Hehe! Props to you, Vegaswikian.--Atemperman 23:41, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Survey

• What is this supposed to accomplish? -- tariqabjotu 04:48, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
• Wikipedia's "City, State" is a naming convention, not a name in itself. Trying to judge the 'reaction' to certain conventions through questions on local comon usage is rather besides the point and will only serve to fog the debate even further. thepromenader 06:04, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
• This page is to discuss the naming convention for naming Wikipedia articles about cities and towns. It is not about naming the city or town itself. --Scott Davis ^Talk 06:45, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
  • But you must agree that the name of the article should be related to the name of the city or town, yes? What then, do you believe the relationship should be? Can you specify this relationship in simple terms? I can: the name of the article should be the name of the city, ambiguated only if necessary, according to standard Wikipedia disambiguation guidelines. --Serge 07:25, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
  • But your 'specification' is just your own opinion on what you think convention should be. thepromenader 08:42, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
    • That is a large part of the problem -- Serge has this misguided and unsupported notion that the Use Common Names principle somehow takes precedence over any other naming convention. That is simply not the case. I strongly believe that leaving the current U.S. city naming convention in place for most U.S. cities is pretty important (by most, I mean unambiguous world-class cities can be at their simple name). Without this convention, there will be a naming free-for all. One important purpose of a convention is to make it easy and consistent for readers/editors to know what the proper title of an article should be. With this convention, it is fairly straightforward. Without, the calculus for what the city name should be becomes considerably more difficult. older ≠ wiser 12:37, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
      • Can you (or anyone?) explain why, for all cities where [[city]] redirects to [[city, state]], you think the alternative to using the city, name convention is a "naming free for all"? The alternative is city. How is that a "free for all"? --Serge 18:24, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
        • No, the naming free-for-all relates more to your suggested alternatives for disambiguating cities. Things like Placename (Statename), or Placename (city), or Placename (city Statename) to differentiate from Placename (river Statename) and other such bewildering options. older ≠ wiser 20:45, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
• I think I more or less agree with Bkonrad, although I'm perhaps willing to tolerate a larger group of cities without any disambiguation. I certainly agree that City, State should remain the basic format for any ambiguous US city. john k 12:42, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm not opposed to a somewhat more expansive group of such cities. I'd just hope for two points: first, that the criteria are reasonably clearly spelled out and not too subjective and second, that it is clear that the City, State format is the default and that departures from that convention should be treated as exceptional and require some justification. older ≠ wiser 17:23, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I concur. Also, the point of saying city, state is to indicate that the place with such a city name is located in a particular sovereign state. This is because of the unique federal nature of the United States, where the states and the people of each state are the plenary sovereigns, while the federal government is one of limited powers. --Coolcaesar 06:38, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

What does "Cityname" define?

There seems to be a big "grey zone" in city naming conventions - many seem to be unsure what [[Cityname]] should cover. One would think that [[Cityname]] should concern the referenced definition of [[cityname]], that is to say its official administrative borders, but some seem to be persuaded that [[Cityname]] should cover the concept of that city. There is nothing stipulated on this subject in the (settlement) convention pages: this lack of definition is sometimes prone to abuse, especially by those in a "big city" competition, or locals pushing a "suburbs are the city too" agenda.

It is of course granted that we speak of [[Cityname]]'s urban growth (suburbs) in a general article on [[Cityname]], but what of an article "[[Subject X in Cityname]]" ? I am currently in a (sometimes quite heated) debate in an article whose content is 70% outside of the city of [[Cityname]], yet a few would defend the "[[List of X in Cityname]]" title.

This is problematic for many reasons, but the most obvious is that no other reference would list objects in a [[Cityname]]'s suburbs as being "in" [[Cityname]] - making the content unverifiable. If I were to look for the address of one of the objects in question, I would never find it in [[Cityname]], but in another placename entirely.

Any ideas on formulating a policy on this? thepromenader 10:06, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Just to note, the problem is not always that the urban area is larger than the administrative unit. In England, for instance, municipal boundaries are often huge, including rural areas, and the city proper generally seems to be fairly well defined (from previous municipal borders, for instance). It makes sense to have City of Leeds about the administrative unit and Leeds about the city proper. john k 13:07, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

That has to be the first time I have seen a "city of X" that is actually larger than "X". This situation seems to have arisen through many transformations - and it seems that "Leeds" refers to the city agglomeration - officially? So technically "in Leeds" could refer to... anything within the administrative city?

Would you believe that for Paris just the opposite was suggested? it was many times proposed (by one contributor) that the article be split between two - a Paris article speaking of everything within the Paris aire urbaine, and a City of Paris article dealing only with the administrative city itself. The idea that an area bigger than a région can be called simply "Paris" is a quite personal invention that defies every reference, border, tradition, convention and place-name in existence, yet I think it is the lack of definition about what a city name should "cover" that allows this sort of inventiveness to develop. thepromenader 15:13, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

This question is also a matter of regional variation. Most major Australian cities are made up of multiple local government areas. The meaning of the unadorned cityname is ambiguous in common usage - it refers to both the metropolitan area and the central LGA. I live in an outer suburb of Adelaide. If I say "I'm going to Adelaide", I mean the CBD ("downtown" for Americans), City of Adelaide. If I say "I'm going to Melbourne" (about 750 km away), I could mean any (or all) of the metropolitan area. In regional areas, the Rural City of Mildura for example includes a number of separate country towns. --Scott Davis ^Talk 16:06, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Understood, but one question: If I was to look up "Melbourne" in a geography textbook, would it say the same thing? thepromenader 16:21, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

It would be Melbourne. City councils are relatively unimportant in Australia as the state government (not each city) provides police, education, health, electricity, water, sewerage,... in general.

In answer to the original question, in an Australian context, Transport in Adelaide for example covers the entire metropolitan area. Categories and Wikiprojects are all set up that way. A hypothetical Transport in Mildura would be about transport in Mildura, Victoria, not transport in Rural City of Mildura. And to tie back to this talk page's major topic, nobody would ever say (as distinct from write an address) "Mildura, Victoria". If needed, they'd say "Mildura in Victoria". --Scott Davis ^Talk 23:40, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, that answers an important question, because it maintains that reference is still applicable here. The "in" in "in Name" would be within "name"'s texbook definition. Quite simple, really, yet it is unmentioned in any convention. Does this have to undergo a vote to get there ? THEPROMENADER 12:46, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Promenader, to answer your question: Most cities, and most articles on cities, will refer to cities that aren't the center of a major metropolitan area, or have a certain "concept" or "idea" attached to them. These articles are straightforward. An article on Madison, WI doesn't need to discuss the smaller satellite towns around it, except perhaps in a brief section titled "Surroundings" or "Madison and surroundings". This information is relevant for someone who wants to learn about Madison, but it should be kept in a separate part of the article to make it clear that the rest of the article refers to Madison per se. If the metropolitan area itself is especially noteworthy, say, the San Francisco Bay Area, then it should get its own article, with a brief summary of the separate article as a section in the city proper's article. This would probably be especially true if the legal borders of the city were small relative to the metropolitan area that is generally known by the name of the city. This solution works both for those who think that articles titled "Cityname" should be about the legal entity and what is (and was) within its borders, and those who think that articles titled "Cityname" should be about what people mean when they say "Cityname". Even though when someone says, "If I lived on the West Coast, I'd rather live in San Francisco than L.A.", they probably mean the Bay Area rather than the L.A. area instead of the S.F. and L.A. proper, I think it's better to have one article titled "San Francisco" and another "San Francisco Bay Area" than to have one titled "San Francisco (city proper)" and one "San Francisco". --Atemperman 2006-08-28T02:00:26

• OK, tell me what an article on Las Vegas should cover. Vegaswikian 01:43, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

It should cover the Las Vegas city and then mention that some of the really cool stuff like the Las Vegas Strip is in unincorporated townships like Paradise and point readers to articles on those townships. --Coolcaesar 06:30, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Clearer and clearer. And what should a "List of Casinos in Las Vegas" contain? THEPROMENADER 07:50, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

An article on Las Vegas should cover the subject which is commonly referred to as Las Vegas - which is the city and its unincorporated surroundings - and all that is relevant to it, including the strip and casinos. --Serge 23:31, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but that wasn't my question. The article part I agree with, a fact I outlined even in my first question, but here I explicitly ask:

What should a "List of Casinos in Las Vegas" contain? -- THEPROMENADER 08:25, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I was answering Vegaswikian's question above. A "List of Casinos in Las Vegas" should contain a list of casinos that exist in the area commonly referred to as Las Vegas. --Serge 17:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Commonly referred to - by who? I could only agree if this common use is already reflected by reference, as in the Sydney and Adelaide examples above. THEPROMENADER 23:29, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

How about List of Las Vegas casinos? john k 00:19, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

That's pretty vague : ) Let me mull a but though... THEPROMENADER 21:29, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

What is the scope of an article, in particular a city article?

The broader question is: what does the title define for any encyclopedia article? Every article has a subject. The title of the article is the "name" of that subject. Is this not self-evident? The text of the article covers the subject, including that which is related to it. The article on John F. Kennedy is not limited in scope to talk only about him - it also discusses people, issues and topics related to him and his life. Similarly, a city article should be an article about that city, including whatever is relevant to say about that city. If that includes the suburbs, so be it. Am I missing something? --Serge 18:33, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Please, Serge, there is no broader question. "What is a city name in reference" is pretty clear. THEPROMENADER 18:46, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Serge, you are attempting to read too much into what the title of an article signifies. older ≠ wiser 20:47, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Too much? I'd be happy with just about any reasonable explanation at this point. I can only come up with one, and nobody else can come up with an alternative. That's "too much"? Your argument seems to be that even asking the question is "too much". That leaves "anything goes". Q.E.D. --Serge 21:07, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

You're being disingenuous. The title of an article is simply brief representation of the content of the article. older ≠ wiser 21:12, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

The title is related to the major topic of the article, but it does not specify anything other than "the title of the article". --Scott Davis ^Talk 23:40, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Would you guys mind if one of you or I move everything below my last question to its own "what is read into a city name" (or something of the like) section? I'd like to wake up to an answer to my question tomorrow : ) THEPROMENADER 21:35, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I must hit the hay but don't want to be impolite by axing anything without your permission. Serge, please think twice about adding anything off-topic to this discussion, because my question really has nothing to do with your case. Thanks for your understanding. THEPROMENADER 22:36, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead. Everyone else does it. --Scott Davis ^Talk 23:40, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand why you thought my original answer was irrelevant to your question. The article on John F. Kennedy is not limited in scope to talk only about him - it also discusses people, issues and topics related to him and his life. Similarly, a city article should be an article about that city, including whatever is relevant to say about that city. If that includes the suburbs, so be it. Am I missing something? Clearly, the article about Las Vegas should include all of what is commonly referred to as Las Vegas, and not be restricted to only what happens to be within the political and largely irrelevant political/municipal borders. This is another reason it should be called Las Vegas, and not Las Vegas, Nevada. --Serge 21:35, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I think you are missing something - rather, missing it in looking at it through the perspective of your own question. We need not complicate simple questions needlessly. Sorry to move you once again. THEPROMENADER 23:07, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

You're the one looking at my answer through the perspective of my other positions. What part of a city article should be an article about that city, including whatever is relevant to say about that city and [should] not be restricted to only what happens to be within the political and largely irrelevant political/municipal borders is not an answer to your question or has anything to do with the naming controversy? --Serge 23:28, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

My question couldn't have been more simple, yet your reply wasn't at all an answer to it. I asked about list content, not article content. Apologies, but the shortest route to a clear answer is a coherent on-topic flow in discussion - please read more carefully next time. THEPROMENADER 08:32, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Now you're referring to a subsequent question of yours when I answered Vegaswikian's earlier question, and made which question I was answering clear in my answer. But this still doesn't answer why you thought my original post did not address your original question that started the above section, and which you moved into this newly created section on the supposed grounds that it was irrelevant. Your original question wasn't about lists, but about articles, and scope, and that's what I addressed. --Serge 17:58, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

If you want to answer an earlier comment , then insert your reply below it and not at the end of the discussion. This way all will understand. THEPROMENADER 23:32, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

At the time I answered it, there was Vegaswikian's question, coolcaesar's answer, and your follow-up question, each indented one level deeper. I didn't want to insert my answer above coolcaesars, since he answered first. I also didn't want to insert my answer between his and your follow-up, because that would make it look like you're responding to my question. So, I indented my answer to be even with coolcaesar's, to indicate it was in response to the same question from Vegaswikian, and even rephrased Vegaswikian's question in my answer to clarify which question I was answering[15]. Then you indented my comment in two levels and made it look like I was answering your follow-up question [16]. Please don't do that. --Serge 00:12, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

But your outdenting your comment at the end of the discussion made things even less clear. I wouldn't have done what I did out of pure spite, you know : ) THEPROMENADER 00:46, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

This is a reply to my earlier comment... THEPROMENADER 08:39, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I didn't outdent, I indented to the same level as another response to the same question to which I was responding. The purpose of indenting is precisely to make clear which response goes with which previous comment, in case you have multiple comments from different people responding to the same earlier comment, mixed in with multiple responses to those. It's helpful if all participants understand this in these discussions. I've reverted your incorrect indenting. Look at in now and see if it makes sense to you yet. --Serge 01:16, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

And this is my reply to yours. THEPROMENADER 08:39, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Out of control

I'm sorry but I think this talk page is getting out of control. If someone wants to actually get an organized change made to the U.S. policy, I suggest they make a separate sub-page for a poll and another separate sub-page for discussion, etc., etc. There are so many discussions and surveys and sub-surveys going on here simultaneously that nothing is going to get accomplished IMHO. —Wknight94 (talk) 15:36, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Among other things, the original poll is like 100 KB back in this page and is almost completely obscured now. Someone please archive this at the very least... —Wknight94 (talk) 15:37, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes this whole page has become a single debate. Perhaps a special page? I just asked a question of my own and I doubt that many will make it all the waaaaaaay down here to answer. Unless of course someone sets up a couple rest stops along the way. THEPROMENADER 18:15, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I created two subpages: /One international convention is for discussion of the idea of one international convention and /U.S. convention change (August 2006) is in regards to changing the U.S. convention specifically. -- tariqabjotu 20:02, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I almost believe the U.S. convention, albeit short, should be on its own page, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (U.S. settlements), so at least this type of discussion would end up there. -- tariqabjotu 20:15, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Name Changes going on with individual cities

I've never been active in this discussion before, but I always thought changes like this were supposed to be discussed to consensus here first? Agne 04:24, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

• Talk:Boston, Massachusetts
• Talk:San Francisco, California
• Talk:Calgary, Alberta
• Talk:Winnipeg, Manitoba
• Talk:Flin Flon, Manitoba
• Talk:Seattle, Washington
• Talk:New Orleans, Louisiana —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Agne (talk • contribs) 04:24, 29 August 2006.
• Talk:Augusta (disambiguation)
• Talk:Vancouver (disambiguation)
• Talk:Korsnäs, Finland
  • Korsnäs AB
  • Korsnäs, Finland, a municipality and town in Österbotten
  • a stadsdel in Falun, se Korsnäs, Falun
  • a småort in Uppsala Municipality, see Korsnäs, Uppsala kommun
  • bosättningsområde i Östersundoms by i Sibbo kommun Nyland
  • town in Nagu kommun Åboland
  • town in Sagu kommun Egentliga Finland, finn: Korsniemi
  • town in Vemo kommun Egentliga Finland, finn: Ristinkylä
  • :: it's striking how ignorant Serge and his crew are. Serge made very good points, but supporting moves like these certainly is not a good idea. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 00:20, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

"it's striking how ignorant Serge and his crew are" -- it would be helpful if you could review Wikipedia:No personal attacks. Thanks. Skeezix1000 00:57, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

• Talk:Valencia (city) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Polaron (talk • contribs) 04:40, 29 August 2006.

• The proposed moves for the Canadian cities conform to the existing naming convention. --Usgnus 04:33, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

All of those raise issues, but it seems that the community commenting on the talk pages is willing to deal with this on a one on one basis. It does not matter that the change may or may not conform to a guideline. Personally I believe we need to adjust the policy. It is clear that the curent policy is losing consensus. The US and Canada having different policies when they share city names is also somewhat confusing to many. Vegaswikian 05:26, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Not sure what the confusion is. Different countries, different policies. Skeezix1000 00:53, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

On the contrary, Vegaswikian, it appears to me like the community is split on whether to deal with this one-by-one or at the same time here. The support !voters, for obvious reasons, seem to be okay with the one-by-one approach, while the oppose !voters, for the most part, seem to prefer coming up with a consensus here. In fact, it seems like several of the oppose !voters are going oppose for that reason alone – that the forum, and not necessarily the move rationale, is incorrect. How is the article for Flin Flon, Manitoba, population 6,267, less than twenty-four hours away from being moved, but the article move for global city San Francisco, California is being shot down? It simply does not make sense; a convention is no substitute for taking a close look at individual situations. -- tariqabjotu 01:21, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

And if the policies for the US and Canada were reversed, where would the Talk:Vancouver (disambiguation) discussion be going? My point is that the different policies are not the best solution. A policy granting use of a name in one country but not another leads to conflict. This is compounded by the way we request moves. The notice goes in the article that is going to be moved, but not in the article that may have a stronger claim on the name space. This is the normal case since most editors avoid the larger problems by moving to a dab in the main name space. These names are frequently not unique to one country and when the locations are not well know world wide it is hard to say which would be at the undabd name. Right now it is policy based which generally gives US locations the second string dabed location. Vegaswikian 18:49, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I think I finally understand your point. What you're saying is that under the current conventions, a tiny village in Ethiopa, or in any country that allows city when there is no name collision, could claim Boston because the U.S. has Boston, Massachusetts. Good point. --Serge 22:52, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Large City Strawpoll Construction

I am trying to work on a large City Strawpoll to end the feuding about larger cities in the United States. Please visit the page, User:Ericsaindon2/Sandbox and leave comments on the talk page, but dont edit the actual page. After it has been modified to satisfy the community, I will go ahead and open it. But, please review it and comment, to avoid controversy over its structure. I hope to open it in a few days after discussion, so please be timely in making your comments. Thanks. --Ericsaindon2 05:45, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

The Case for Convention

tariqabjotu touched upon a strong sentiment behind opposition to the individual cities name change--that the forum of each individual city is not the best place to make patchwork consensus. The rationale for the name change does indeed deserve fair consideration and there are are obvious holes in the current guideline. Guidelines are meant to be changed as emerging consensus calls for it.

The problem with the current name change attempts is that it generates more inconsistency through the band-aid solution of poking more "exception holes"-ala New York City. As I read more and more about the naming convention discussion, I realize that Consistency should be what we are striving for--consistency not just for the US but also across the board. As a project, our long term goal is to produce a quality Encyclopedia. As a community, we realize that despite the "choatic" nature of Wikipedia's development we need some sort of framework that will keep us moving forward towards that long term goal. Hence the reason why we have Manual of Style and naming conventions. They serve the purpose of maintaining some consistency--which is going to get us closer to our long term goal.

As I said before, I think these current name change attempts are band aid solutions trying to use the auspices of "exceptions" as a substitute for consistency and convention. As one of the name change proponents noted on the Seattle talk page the definition of what makes an "exception" is not defined. Another user brought up the point that the presence of a bunch of exceptions means that there is an overarching problem with the guideline and adding more and more exceptions just makes the problem worse. So it's obvious that the better choice of action is to work on a guideline that truly reflects the consensus of the Community and one that can serve as a convention for consistency-rather then a wedge for exceptions. Agne 02:34, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Valid points. I have no problem with conventions at all, and I believe it's essential to keeping Wikipedia organized. But, conventions should (and already do) allow wiggle room. The U.S. convention, too, allows wiggle room (that's how Chicago got where it is now), but because that wiggle room is not explicitly stated, like in the Canadian convention, and the daunting exception word is used, we have this issue. Regarding the one-on-one move requests, I think it would be better if the convention were changed first to clarify that there is leniency in the U.S. convention (as with all conventions) when deemed reasonable. However, in the end, I feel a one-on-one method would be the easiest way to decide which cities would get the move as it's difficult to come up with concrete criteria for "major" cities. -- tariqabjotu 03:20, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, valid points. But what's missing here is that the current U.S. city guidelines are contrary to the conventions adopted by the rest of Wikipedia, including those used by city articles in other countries, and the majority of editors who care enough about the convention to vote are unwilling to fix this. In particular, the practice to not name the article with the most common name that is known/used to reference the subject of the article, when there is no ambiguity issue, is, well, unconventional. It's inconsistent with Wikipedia conventions. That's the root problem, and why we constantly have conflicts and upheaval, and will continue to have conflicts and upheaval, until the U.S. city guidelines are corrected to no longer violate the general conventions in this manner, in the name of consistency.

The "exceptions" of New York City, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, etc. are, or would be, artificial, because they are "exceptions" to a corrupt convention that requires Cityname, Statename even when , Statename is not required to disambiguate. I say corrupt because, again, that "convention" violates basic Wikipedia conventions which dictate that the names should be Cityname unless there is a known disambiguation issue. --Serge 07:54, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

The convention page is just a documentation of existing convention. If consensus has created a new convention, than the convention page should be updated to reflect this. THEPROMENADER 17:31, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree, but the problem is that the same gang of editors argues that names of cities like San Francisco, California and Boston, Massachusetts should not be changed because of the documented convention - and there are enough of them that argue that that usually the name cannot be changed, and so the convention cannot be changed. The underlying problem is that a bot created the city, name convention, by mass-generating thousands of city articles according to that naming format. They were not created according to natural evolving usage one article at a time. Then that artificially created "convention" was documented as a guideline, and here we are with this unnatural and unconventional (but documented as a guideline) "convention" that is inconsistent with all other Wikipedia naming conventions. Because of that, we constantly have conflict and upheaval over these names, and will continue to do so, until the guidelines are changes. As soon as the guidelines are changed, the gang will no longer have an excuse to insist on the city, state format for any city article without name ambiguity issues, as the basis for disagreement (the documenting of the unconventional convention) will have been eliminated. But until that happens, the conflict and upheaval will continue. It's only natural. --Serge 17:48, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually I have been saying change the conventions and provide some criteria for doing this. If you do just a few cities, you leave the majority of the problems out there. The objection for most editors is that we are just changing without a style guide. If the US changes, then do we also need to a policy that would allow US places to get the undabed locations that other places now occupy? If done as a requested move, the votes would be againist, no matter how right the move might be. Vegaswikian 18:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

All articles, including all U.S. city articles, fall into one of two categories: either they have a known dab issue, or they don't. For those that don't, we're done: just name them city. Now, for those that do, name them city (state), unless they're the most notable use of that name (in which case the city name would already redirect to the existing city article, and the other name user would have already been dabbed). For those that develop a dab issue in the future, deal with it then on a case-by-case basis. Guess what? If you do that, that is following the existing general Wikipedia naming policies. How is that "changing without a style guide"? The "style guide" exists and is used throughout Wikipedia, including cities in just about every other country; we've just been ignoring it for U.S. cities. So, if we all agree to eliminate the existing artificial U.S. specific naming convention, and fall back on the consistent/general ones, we're done. Simple. What's the problem? --Serge 19:25, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

That is a change in the guideline. If that's the direction to follow then the guideline should be changed. However given that common useage is still city, state in the US I'm not so sure that this would gain consensus. The problem is dealing with exceptions to the guideline epecially ones that might be in conflict with other country guidelines. Vegaswikian 22:12, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I'm not following your point, especially your last sentence. What are the "exceptions to the guideline" with which there is a problem? Existing ones like New York City and Chicago? Or potential ones like Boston and San Francisco? Anyway, why is it a problem dealing with any of them? And what do you mean by "in conflict with other country guidelines"? What exceptions are in conflict with other country guidelines? How could a name like San Francisco, for example, conflict with other country guidelines? Do you mean conflict with names of cities in other countries? That would be just a standard name collision and should be handled with standard dab rule, no? --Serge 22:29, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Serge, your war for Portland (Oregon) is going to swallow up any chance of getting things changed. I strongly object to the current version, but it's preferable to having three different possible conventions for US cities. If we want to disambiguate, do City, State. If we don't need to disambiguate, just do City. That's all. john k 00:14, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

John, it's not a war for Portland (Oregon)! I really could care less, and I'm personally okay with using City, State when required for disambiguation. However, while it seems to work for other countries, for some reason there are a lot of editors who seem to think that if some U.S. cities are named according to the City, State format, then all U.S. cities should be named according to that format, "for consistency". I think this sentiment stems from the fact taht City, State is not an obvious disambiguation, like City (State) is. Therefore, as long as we have some cities named according to the City, State format, there are always going to be folks insisting on a more consistent naming convention: using City, State everywhere. At the same time, there will always be the other faction calling for at least some cities, if not all, that have no name collision issues, to be named City only. So, if we don't ditch the comma convention completely, even where disambiguation is required, I don't see how this fundamental problem can ever be resolved. But perhaps you can? --Serge 01:29, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

English, Canadian, Australian, etc. cities all use the "City, larger entity" (city, county in the English case; city, province in the Canadian; city, state in the Australian) disambiguation in a perfectly reasonable way - it is used in cases where there's ambiguity. This is what I'd prefer for US cities. john k 18:25, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Beyond that, I think the thing to be emphasized is that the US cities naming standard is itself an exception to the normal naming standards for cities pretty much everywhere else in the world (Japan seems to have some similar convention, with unnecessary article titles like Fukuoka, Fukuoka and Nagoya, Aichi.) At any rate, it seems to me that what needs to be reasserted is the primacy of the more basic rules. When the specific naming convention conflicts with the more general one for no good reason, that means the more specific naming convention should be done away with.

Here's my question for those in favor of the current conventions: if there were no convention, what arguments would you make to defend the idea that we need to have US cities like Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc., disambiguated by state name? Imagine we were designing conventions from scrap. What argument would you make to convince people that we need to have lengthy, pre-emptively disambiguated titles like Los Angeles, California, when we don't have similar titles for cities in most other countries - no Toronto, Ontario or Sydney, New South Wales, for instance; no Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, no Tijuana, Baja California or Monterrey, Nuevo León, no Munich, Bavaria or Florence, Tuscany or Barcelona, Catalonia, no Kolkata, West Bengal or Mumbai, Maharashtra or Nanjing, Jiangsu. john k 00:28, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't hold your breath waiting for an answer... --Serge 01:29, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

OK - I'll bite. City/town articles tend to have a lot of incoming links, compared to other kinds of subject like people, mathematical functions, or minerals. This makes it much harder to change the name and create a disambig page later if required. Reasons to later require disambiguation for towns are varied - other places with the same name, other objects named after the same person as the town, famous people, major events related to the town (is Waco a place or an event? - here most people think of an event that's hardly mentioned in the article). Serge's assertion that there are no equivalent conventions for articles about other kinds of thing miss the naming conventions for people and plants, for example. In a way, the US, Australia, Canada etc naming convention for towns follows real-world use - letters always include a state in the address, not just a city/town/neighbourhood. I presume this is true in the USA, I couldn't just address a letter to

Serge

Chicago

and expect it to find him. Personally, in the interests of consistency, ease of use, and clarity, I'd like to see this convention extended to more countries, rather than less. I also frequntly read the tooltip of links to towns, and decide I don't need to branch off what I was reading, based on getting the context from that tip. --Scott Davis ^Talk 09:44, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

The page at Waco had historically been a disambig page. At the time I wrote the above, it was a redirect to Waco, Texas. I have subsequently reverted it to a disambiguation page.

Scott, I suspect that the problem with a letter to "Serge" in "Chicago" is that Chicago is a gigantic city, with many people named Serge in it. The lack of street address and zip code (and, to a lesser extent, surname) is the problem here, not the lack of state. Note also that if you write the zip code, you can probably get away with not writing the city or state at all. I would add that the idea of possible future disambiguation is fraudulent - we already have articles on basically every place in the United States, and probably have articles on most places in the Anglosphere (UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, at least). Any articles that we do not yet have are going to be for places so small that they will not disturb our calculus for whether a particular city is the "primary topic" for a given name. Do we really think that at some point in the future we're going to see a need to disambiguate "Los Angeles" or "Oklahoma City" or even "Nashville"? As to "Waco," I think people know that it is a location in which a particular event occurred. At any rate, Waco currently redirects to the city in Texas, without even so much as a disambiguation notice, so what's the precise issue here? Beyond that, I simply don't understand why the state that a city is in is considered such a basic reference that it needs to be included when there's no reason to do so for sake of disambiguation. john k 18:25, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Very nicely put. Thanks for the clarity. And I agree. Some folks seem to be getting caught up in interpreting the Use Common Names principle as if it were the single most important in all of Wikipedia. older ≠ wiser 12:39, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

It is the most important naming principle in all of Wikipedia, surely? john k 18:25, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps, but it is only a general prinicple, NOT the one inviolable rule. It is after all only one aspect of naming conventions, which by their very nature are somewhat arbitrary and should be flexible enough to adapt to various contexts. older ≠ wiser 19:57, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, and the utter lack of flexibility of the current US city conventions is what concerns me. john k 00:20, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I concur. Well done Scott. I also have to wonder about the logic of how the "Common Names" principle is being applied here. Over on the Seattle talk page alot of discussion was made over how the listing Seattle, Washington was the incorrect name in that it implied that the city was called Seattle, Washington instead of Seattle. That sentiment struck me as quite odd in that the City, State format is really analogous to a First, Last name format. If my name is Jane Smith then more likely then not I'm going to be called "Jane" more often then Jane Smith. Around people I know, that's fine. But in every other respect from the name on my credit cards, to legal documents, to applications I fill, etc my public face with be that of "Jane Smith".

In the same way a city (like Seattle or Chicago) is known by the common "first name". The more popular you are, the more people you know just like a bigger city is more well known. However, in public presentations (like Scott's example of writing a letter to someone in that city) you will see City, State. Including the "last name" state is not a form of pre-disambiguation, it's simply presenting the public face of that city. It just as correct and I would say just as common as listing a person's first and last name. Agne 16:05, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

In response to the points made above by Scott et. al...

• Scott claims that high link counts "makes it much harder to change the name and create a disambig page later if required". I suggest that the link count to Chicago, Illinois was relatively high as far as cities go, and that name was recently changed without difficulty. As of right now, Chicago has hundreds of links and so does Chicago, Illinois. Even Chicago Illinois has a couple dozen links. As long as they redirect to the main article, which is trivial to set up, there is no problem. This point is often repeated and is completely overblown.
• The mail address argument misses the point. The entire address specifies a geographical location for the destination of the letter; that specification includes various components, including not only the name of the city and the name of state that the destination is in, but also the postal/zip code, street address, and country for international mail. The , state part in an address is not part of the name of the city - it's the name of the state that the destination address is in. Indeed, it is conventionally specified by 2-letter abbreviation anyway. A city article title specifies the name of the city. The location of the city, including the name of the state it happens to be in, is gist for the text, not the title of the article. While the state is a reasonable information to use for disambiguation purposes, specifying it in the familiar city, state format actually complicates matters because it makes it unclear whether , state is part of the name, or if it's disambiguation information.
• Scott claims that I ignore other naming conventions, like for plants. I'm sorry, but in Wikipedia, like in the real world, a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
• Scott says he would like to see the comma convention extended to other countries. It's nice for him to share that opinion, but the fact is that editors from all over the world are constantly requesting moves of articles from names using the comma convention to names that are not, when there is no disambiguity issue. That natural tendency is what creates convention. The "convention" in the U.S. would never have developed naturally - it was created artificially by a bot. It seems to me that referring to this artificial creation as a "convention" that others should also follow is disingenuous. The whole point of a convention is when a vast majority does something a certain way, that others should follow in the minority cases for the sake of consistency. That's fine. But in this case the "vast majority" of cases was created automatically. That makes it an illegitimate convention in terms of one having credibility to cause others to follow it.
• older ≠ wiser claims that some of us are getting "getting caught up in interpreting the Use Common Names principle as if it were the single most important". He seems to think that within a system principles are independent and contradictory, subject to prioritization, and one needs to pick and choose among them when naming an article, and indeed, sometimes ignore some (like Use Common Names) when others cannot be satisfied. That's very convenient, but the fact is that a principle is rule that should not be violated - that's what makes it a principle. Despite being wiser he does not seem to differentiate ignoring principles that are not applicable in a given context vs. ignoring them "just because", as he advocates with his promotion of the comma convention over the Common Names principle. If you have a system based on conflicting principles, then you have a broken system. Thehttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_%28settlements%29&action=edit&section=44As of right now, Chicago has hundreds of links and so does Chicago, Illinois. Even Chicago Illinois has a couple dozen links. As long as they redirect to the main article, which is trivial to set up, there is no problem. naming principles in Wikipedia should be, and, except for the U.S. city comma convention, are complementary, not contradictory. That's the problem with using the city, state convention at least in cases where there is no name collision, and, arguably, even in cases where there is a collision, because it violates a fundamental principle. It's inconsistent. The only fix to a fundmanetal inconsistency is to get rid of one or the other, and I don't think even older ≠ wiser is suggesting we toss the Common Names principle.
  • I'm not sure where you deduce that I "think that within a system principles are independent and contradictory, subject to prioritization, and one needs to pick and choose among them when naming an article, and indeed, sometimes ignore some (like Use Common Names) when others cannot be satisfied." Use Common Names is a very general principle. There are cases where specific naming conventions do not use the common name. There is no problem if a specific naming convention provides more detailed convention, even if by some stretches of the imagination the more specific convention is not perfectly consistent with the more general convention. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. The comma convention is familiar. And that familiarity lends itself to a greater ease of use--not sometimes I can link with only the city but sometimes I need the city and state, and there's no way to know for sure until you check whether the link goes where you expected. Sure Chicago is the easy case. But you and I wrangled over Indian River, Michigan, a more problematic case. There are hundreds, if not thousands of such places names. I'm not and have never suggested tossing the Use Common Names principle. But I don't see that the U.S. city naming convention inherently contradicts it (the U.S. convention can use some adjustment vis a vis large cities, but not totally discarded). older ≠ wiser 19:57, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
• Agne tries to compare the city, state format to the first, last human name format. Yet when people are accustomed to referring to someone by name only, like Cher, that's what we do. We do it with cities too. In fact, only in vary rare cases, for example maybe with Paris, Texas, is the state included in most references to the city. With people, the last name is much more commonly associated with the name of the person. Not so with cities. Agne see the , state part not as a predisambiguation, but as part of the "formal" name of the city. That's one opinion. It's not one that is commonly held, however, not even by proponents of that convention (many of whom do see the state part as disambiguation information).

That's the problem: the comma convention is inherently ambiguous and inconsistent. That's what makes it problematic, and, because it's inherent, this will never be resolved, until it is ditched. Mark my words. If we don't have the wisdom to change the usage now, others, perhaps some of us, will still be here 5, 10, 20 years from now, arguing about whether it's a disambiguation or part of the name, or required when there is no ambiguity issue, or whether it's in conflict with the Common Names principle, and, if it is, whether that's a problem. Why put Wikipedia users and editors through this? --Serge 17:25, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Some thoughts...

• Your comment to Scott "As of right now, Chicago has hundreds of links and so does Chicago, Illinois. Even Chicago Illinois has a couple dozen links. As long as they redirect to the main article, which is trivial to set up, there is no problem." '. You seem to imply that as long as the City, State redirect to "City" work, then everything is good. It's trivial. What about the reverse? As long as the "common" city name redirects to the main article with City, State name--why is there a problem? To refer back to the Seattle talk page where a reasoning for the move was "Seattle already redirects here", why is not equally as valid to contend with Chicago that "Chicago, Illinois already redirects here"? My point here is not to get into devil's advocate debate but to rather point out that Scott's point on redirects should not be dismissed so lightly. The same logic you are using is equally valid in reverse.
• Cher like Madonna is actually a brand, which is common for celebrities when their identities and persona become larger then themselves. Marilyn Monroe and Oprah Winfrey are also brands that happen to include a first and last name. In fact, you could even argue that Oprah is more common then the Oprah Winfrey using the same logic you are doing here with City, State. Yet I suspect that you would be shot down quite quickly if you requested a move to just Oprah.
• I strongly suspect that the heart of the matter is the assumption that City, State is "uncommon" and hence the frequent claim that it violates WP:NC(CN). To that effect maybe consensus should be sought on whether or not to edit that guideline for clarity on the matter? Agne 18:02, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Agne,

• There is no problem in reverse either. But no one is arguing the reverse - that, for example, Chicago should not be renamed to Chicago, Illinois because it "makes it much harder to change the name and create a disambig page later if required". We are arguing that city articles, like all Wikipedia articles, should be named by the name that is most commonly used to refer to the subject of the article, and that Scott's argument that we shouldn't partially because changing to that "makes it much harder ..." is baseless. Also, the point about Seattle already redirecting to Seattle, Washington is used simply to illustrate that there are no known ambiguity issues with Seattle, not as sole justification for the move. Surely you understand the distinction.
• The point is, for all articles (except, currently, for U.S. city articles), we use the most common name to refer to the subject of any article. Many subjects are referenced by multiple names; the fundamental Wikipedia naming principle is to use the most common name. Whether the article about Oprah Winfrey should be named Oprah or Oprah Winfrey should center around which name is most commonly used to refer to that person. With her, it's a tough call. With cities, it's not. --Serge 19:01, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
• It's not that Cityname, Statename is an "uncommon" way to reference cities, it's that Cityname alone is the most common way, and Cityname, Statename is not the most common way. If you get consensus to say that City, State is not an uncommon way to refer to cities, that would be pointless. Of course it's true. Even I would agree with that. But it's not relevant to the issue, and the fact that you "strongly suspect" that it is the "heart of the matter" explains much. --Serge 19:01, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Is there at least wide agreement that there are some major US cities whose names are unique and/or the primary usage of that term, and that these cities might be better off using their simple name? If what it takes is to define specific criteria for which cities can be excluded from the current guideline, then let's do that. Can't we all try and work towards a common ground here? --Polaron | Talk 20:07, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Some of us are working to try to find common ground here: Wikipedia:City Naming Strawpoll (US), and pointing out why that's problematic here: Wikipedia talk:City Naming Strawpoll (US). --Serge 20:22, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I still don't understand how the "common usage" argument applies here - it should only apply to a name, not the convention built upon it. Again, Gdańsk is a name, Gdańsk, Poland is a naming convention. THEPROMENADER 20:27, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I will try to explain. First, it's not the "common usage" argument that applies here; it's the "common usage" principle that applies here, as it does for all Wikipedia article names. Also, City, State and City, Country are naming formats which may or may not be established as conventions. Gdańsk, Poland is not a naming convention. Gdańsk is the name of the city, and the current name of the redirect page to the article about the city. Gdańsk, Poland is the current name of the article about the city. The Gdańsk, Poland article name follows the City, Country naming format. How the "common usage" principle applies here is that naming a city article according to the Cityname, State or Cityname, Countryname format violates the "common usage" principle: which is to specify in the title the name most commonly used to reference the subject of the article. Does that help? --Serge 22:03, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Hey, all the comments in the right places, but - er, no. Again you're making the "City, State" convention a "common usage" issue - it would be nice if they were one and the same, but they are not. THEPROMENADER 08:28, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) There seem to be three main factions:

1. Keep the U.S. city naming convention as it is
2. Modify the U.S. city naming convention so that some cities can have the simple name
3. Toss the U.S. city naming convention out entirely

Personally, I'm fine with #2, and I think that *could* garner a clear majority if we can agree on criteria and agree that in principle that the convention is an acceptable default naming convention for most U.S. cities/towns/villages/etc. I think many find the tactic recently employed to request moves on a one-by-one basis to be troubling. I think some other supporters of #2, find it difficult to support these moves on a one-by-one basis without any clear criteria AND with the tactic being seen as a wedge used by some zealots of #3 to undermine, and ultimately, undo the convention. older ≠ wiser 20:38, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd be okay with #2 as well, except that there are so many people who obviously feel strongly that if some U.S. cities are named according to the city, state format, then all U.S. cities should be named according that format. --Serge 22:03, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Those people actually just feel that all cities should be named by that format. john k 22:06, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I think we're talking about two groups of people. Based on how they express themselves, I really think for many the goal is consistency, and they're really bothered by having both Portland, Oregon and Seattle, because they're not consistent. This is because in the City, State format it is not obvious that State is there only for disambiguation purposes - ironically, because it is also a fairly common format for referencing the city: it looks like , State is part of the name. This is why I favor the City (State) format for disambiguation cases: Portland (Oregon) and Seattle don't look inconsistent because, with this format, (Oregon) is obviously there only for disambiguation purposes. Seeing Portland, Oregon and Portland, Maine makes many of these people even want to move New York City to New York, New York or to New York City, New York, but I seriously doubt seeing Portland (Oregon) and Portland (Maine) would make them want to move New York City to New York City (New York), or to anything else. It is the only path to peace on this issue that I can envision. --Serge 22:16, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

The problem with this theory is that there is nobody I'm aware of who opposes moves of major cities, while leaving smaller, ambiguous places where they are, but also approves a complete change in naming policy that would lead to Portland (Oregon). Can you point to anyone who has taken this position? john k 00:16, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

My comment about moving pages is that moving a page from "A, B" or "A (B)" to "A" is fine, with just leaving a redirect, and nothing much happens. Moving it from "A" to "A, B" or "A (B)" means someone should look at all the incoming links and ensure there were not some that were to a short name that was obvious it needed disambiguating before, but now looks like it delberately links to a city. I tend to call ", State" qualifying information, rather than disambiguation - does that help at all? --Scott Davis ^Talk 23:38, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I like "qualifying information", but the question remains. How is a reader supposed to know from a title like Portland, Oregon that Portland is the name most commonly used to refer to that city, while , Oregon is just "qualifying information", rather than Portland, Oregon being the name most commonly used to refer to the city? There is no way for him or her to know. Beyond that, "qualifying" names like New York City, New York and Chicago, Illinois has proven to be so problematic that they have been decided by consensus to be unqualified. Which raises the question: how do we decide which cities require "qualification", and which are better off without? The only practical/reasonable solution I see is to equate "qualification" with "disambiguation" - that is, only "qualify" those names that require disambiguation. But, then, regardless of what criteria you use, you're still stuck with those people who are irritated by the apparent inconsistency of havingPortland, Oregon and Seattle, and you're right back square 1: a debate that is now going on, what, at least 5 years? The only way out I see is to ditch the comma "qualifying" convention altogether, even for cities that require disambiguation (and use the parenthetic remark instead). But maybe someone sees better than I. --Serge 23:59, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I think this discussion of consistency is a bit of a red herring, especially regarding whether Portland, Oregon or Portland (Oregon) would result might be more or less acceptable among some hypothetical group of consistency acolytes. I think the big hurdle is first demonstrating consensus for the idea that for at least some U.S. cities, the U.S. naming convention does not need to be strictly adhered to. The second hurdle is determining some general criteria for such exceptions. Trying to simultaneously introduce a radically different manner of disambiguating the cities that would entail renaming nearly every single one -- is just adding confusion to the matter and leading people who might otherwise accept some degree of change to reject it altogether in favor of the status quo. older ≠ wiser 00:52, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with older!=wiser. While I may be one of the few people here who actually believes that Serge's scheme is the best, I think that from a tactical standpoint we should focus on a battle that can actually be won in the short term, namely, allowing San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, etc. become unqualified.--Atemperman 21:23, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Japanese cities naming debate

I know all you guys love a good naming convention debate. Here's a discussion I started at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles) about the Japanese city naming style. It will probably end up similar to the current debate here along the usual lines. =) --Polaron | Talk 07:49, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Most Common Name as Useful Information - the case against the comma

Does anyone disagree that specifying the most common name used to reference a given article subject is an important and useful piece of information to convey to the reader? Is this not the one and only purpose of the article title? If anything, the most common name is specified in the title, and the more formal name is specified in the first sentence of the article (which may or may not be the same as the most common name). As evidence of this fact, I give you the bulk of the entire Wikipedia encyclopedia, outside of the area of U.S city articles.

Challenge: Show me an article whose title does not reflect the most common name used to refer to the subject of that article, and I'll show you an excellent candidate for Wikipedia:Requested moves.

Edit: Obviously, an article where there is a real controversy over what the common name is for the subject of the article might be an exception to this. Note that that is not the case for cities, where, except for maybe cases like Paris, Texas (and, even then, most people probably refer to is as Paris once the context is known), the most common name is always just the city name.

And when we name a city article according to a comma convention, we are failing to specify this important and useful information to the reader. When we name an article as Seattle, Washington, for example, what's the most common name used to refer to that city? Is it Seattle? Or is it Seattle, Washington? The reader has no way of knowing, and we have failed in our obligation as editors to make this useful information clear. Note that if we name the article Seattle (Washington) the common name is as clear as it is in any other Wikipedia article disambiguated with the standard method of putting disambiguation information, not part of the most common name, in a parenthetic remark in the title. --Serge 22:10, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm mostly in agreement with you, but there's at least one category of exception: the likes of Mormon Church Jun-Dai 22:41, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

That's a pretty special/messy case, but, still, a reasonable argument can be made that the title of the article that Mormon Church redirects to should not be Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but should be moved to a disambiguation of Mormon Church, like Mormon Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). Doing that would clarify that the name most commonly used to refer to the subject of that article is Mormon Church, while at the same time specifying that that particular article covers only the specifi'c denomination, and not all of Mormonism, for which Mormon Church is also commonly used to refer to. Anyway, there is a strong argument to be made to make Mormon Church a dab page. --Serge 23:21, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like the discussion on Catholic v Roman Catholic. Vegaswikian 23:59, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I think this is a pretty pointless exercise, but Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. older ≠ wiser 00:55, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The point of this section was not the challenge, which was mostly meant to be rhetorical. But, now that you mention it, Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom sure seems like a prime candidate for a move to Elizabeth II, which redirects there. --Serge 01:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

The monarchy issue is incredibly involved. I would note that Isabella II of Spain could theoretically be called "Elizabeth II," although, to my knowledge, she never is. But Louis XIV is completely unique, and yet the article is at Louis XIV of France. I wouldn't suggest trying to get that changed, though. One problem in that instance is that, unlike cities, non-ambiguity doesn't tend to go hand in hand with well-knownness. I'm not sure how many rulers there have been called "Friedrich Günther," but it seems to me that it is useful to indicate in the title that we are referring to a Prince of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt (or whatever). I would prefer a parenthetical disambiguation style for monarchy, like the German wikipedia has, but that seems unlikely to ever come about. So we're stuck with Louis XIV of France and so forth...but it'd be fun to see you try to get it changed. I imagine you'll have even less success than you're having here. Royalty naming convention people are an ornery lot. john k 01:41, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

For some reason a lot of English Wikipedia editors dislike parentheses. Reasons I've heard include "it looks ugly" or "nobody calls it that way" (referring to the entire disambiguated title including parenthetical term). It will probably take a bit more time for the parenthetical disambiguation style to be more acceptable. --Polaron | Talk 01:47, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. I used to be that way, but the link piping trick has made me come around. Also, if parenthetical disambiguation is done in a more regular fashion, it won't look weird. john k 01:56, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

A frivolous response to the challenge above: User:Serge Issakov is a page about a person more commonly known as "Serge" (and most people call me "Scott", but my userpage is User:ScottDavis). Seriously, this is the case for most cities and towns with articles named using the comma convention and most people. I repeat something I think I said somewhere earlier in this page: the purpose of the title is to unambiguously name the article, not to specify the most commonly used name for the subject of the article. It is probably unknowable, but I'd expect that on any given day, the number of spoken and written references to the town that is the subject of the Paris, Texas Wikipedia article that refer to it as "Paris" would far outweigh the number of references to "Paris, Texas" in exactly the same way that the number of people who call you "Serge" on a particular day far outweighs the number who call you "Serge Issakov". The first sentence of Paris, Texas is

Paris is a city located 98 miles (158 km) northeast of Dallas in Lamar County, Texas, in the United States.

This clearly states in the article that the most common name is Paris. There's even a Paris, Texas (disambiguation) page to separate the three Wikipedia articles with a claim to the article name Paris, Texas! Examples of historic people who's commonly-used name is now unclear are Henry Young (many of the links to that article are piped from Henry Fox Young as that is the form used in source material) and Edward John Eyre. --Scott Davis ^Talk 01:15, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Fine. You've convinced me. Even Paris, Texas should be at Paris (Texas), to clarify that the most common name used to refer to that town is Paris, not Paris, Texas. As far as historic people, or most people for that matter, the name most often used to refer to them is their full name, so I don't see how those are counter-examples. And the User space examples are completely irrelevant, since we're talking about article naming within the main encyclopedia name space. --Serge 01:33, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Both the movie and the rock band are named after the town, and chose the comma convention as the most common way of referring to that town specifically. This is an example that in the real world, when the name "Paris" is ambiguous, the choice is a comma, not parentheses to disambiguate that town, yet this example convinces you to want parentheses!?

I accept that now those people are referred to by full name (or surname only), but when they lived, they would have been commonly addressed by first name only. My point was that the titles of the articles about those people do not identify the most common name - in Henry Young's case, I think most links (possibly only about half) to him are piped. He is quite possibly better known as Henry Fox Young (neither his full name, Henry Edward Fox Young, nor just first and last names), but the naming convention says the article should be at Henry Young. --Scott Davis ^Talk 02:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

A proposal

I already posted this at Eric's sandbox page, but I'm not sure who's reading that, so I thought I'd repost here. Basically, I'd propose a change to US cities naming as follows:

1. Set up a floor based on population. Cities below a certain (fairly high) threshold would remain where they are now, regardless. Where exactly the floor would be would be up for discussion. Two years ago, in proposing something similar, I suggested minimum population 100,000, or else a state capital. That's fairly inclusive (certainly as inclusive as I'd want to go). A narrower criteria that excludes more places would also be feasible. We could vote on what we wanted the floor to be.
2. Determine which city names are undeniably ambiguous, either due to sharing name with other places, or to sharing their name with something else that is not a place name. These will also remain where they are, regardless.
3. Then go through the remaining articles and weigh them on a case by case basis, with the criteria being whether or not they are a true "primary use" of the proposed alternate title. For instance, the judgment on whether to move Los Angeles, California to Los Angeles would be on whether the primary use of "Los Angeles" is to refer to the city in California. At the other end of ambiguity, we could do the same thing for, say Nashville, Tennessee - is the principal use of "Nashville" to refer to the city in Tennessee?

This would be a plan that'd require some effort, but it seems to me that it would be basically satisfactory in assuring that most places stay where they are, and that we not move any cities that would be ambiguous. Thoughts? john k 02:16, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

There's a question of whether metro area or city proper populations should be used. I am leaning more to using metropolitan statistical areas since administrative boundaries developed differently in different parts of the US. However, the population floor should probably be raised to 1 million if using metro area populations. --Polaron | Talk 06:37, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed - if population is the metric, then metro area is the unit people outside the immediate area would know. --Scott Davis ^Talk 06:52, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

What about places like Oakland, California and Fort Worth, Texas? I agree that metro area is the most important metric (or, alternately, urban area), but when there's more than one major city in a metro area, it gets more complicated, no? john k 10:56, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

There's an objective way to identify other major cities (aside from the main city) in a metro area -- there are officially designated "principal cities" for each metropolitan statistical area. --Polaron | Talk 16:30, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

That sounds plausible to me, but the question is how to determine what the most important of them is. john k 17:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

• Support. A very reasonable compromise that should put an end to much of the squabbling. --Serge 03:48, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
• Cautious support. I suspect 100,000 is way too low. I expect there are dozens of cities in the USA that most people outside the USA don't know about. The Australian convention has about 6 cities that are considered important enough (as capitals) to be excluded from the convention. The smallest of those is Hobart at over 200,000 people. Neither Hobart nor Canberra at over 300,000 would likely have been excluded if they weren't state and national capitals respectively (mind you, Canberra wouldn't be that size, either). --Scott Davis ^Talk 06:23, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, 100,000 was just a suggestion. I think you'd find, though, that most of the smaller places wouldn't qualify anyway, because their names are ambiguous. For other possibilities, I'll note that the List of U.S. cities by population lists the top 100 cities, which also happen to be the 100 cities with population >200,000. Anyway, I'm fairly flexible about it. I notice that including above 200,000 includes Chula Vista, California, which apparently has a unique name but which isn't terribly well known. Doing it by metro area (with some provision made for important secondary cities in metro areas) or setting a higher total might be a good idea. john k 10:56, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

• I like this proposal in general. I'm not sure about specifics such as using 100,000 as a cut-off, but something along those lines will work for me. I wonder if there is any interest in trying to use Consensus Polling [17] as suggested by Angela in the context of another contentious naming convention dispute also going on elsewhere in Wikipedia. Though, I'm not sure if we want to use a difficult issue like this as a trial run for it. But, then again, it might be a more productive approach than these seeming endless debates recurring on multiple pages. older ≠ wiser 17:19, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Consensus polling seems a clever idea. In terms of the particular threshold, as I said, I'd be flexible. Another possibility is urban area, which, being smaller than metropolitan area and based on population density rather than political boundaries, tends to match our sense of what a "city" consists of better than a metropolitan area, which often includes vast areas of mostly empty farmland, does...you can see a list at User:John Kenney/U.S. urban areas by population, which I created but never finished and actually moved into an article space. I'm not sure what the best cut off would be - perhaps those over 500,000, plus state capitals? Again, though, well known secondary cities might not appear - Fort Lauderdale, for instance, is somehow not in the name of the Miami area, although it is clearly included within it. But I'd be interested in trying the conensus polling. john k 17:53, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

A Proposal Question

I don't want to derail the discussion/survey above, so I'm posting this in a separate subsection. What I cannot understand is what bearing how well known a given subject is, like the city of Chula Vista, to the question of whether its article title should be qualified with additional information (e.g., the state it is in) or not. Outside of the domain of cities, are there any examples of subjects whose names have been qualified in the article title with additional information beyond the name most commonly used to refer to the subject, when that unqualified name is unambiguous? Do we qualify an author's name with , author if an insufficient number of books of his have been published? Do we clarify the state in which a governor has governed in the title of the article about him if that state is under some threshold population? Why is city population, or how well recognized a given city name is, even a factor here? --Serge 14:49, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest that in most smaller places, people would qualify their mention of the city by the state. Somebody would say "I'm from San Diego," but their cousin would say "I'm from Chula Vista, California," to somebody from outside the area. Basically - some cities are well known enough that people don't have to say what state they're in when saying where they're from. Others, though having non-ambiguous names, are almost always found in association with their state name. This is true for most smaller places. john k 16:43, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but if someone is having lunch with James Gleick, he might tell someone else that he's having lunch with "James Gleick, the author of books about technology and science writtten for the layman", but that doesn't mean we should qualify the name of the article about him in Wikipedia accordingly. That's what I don't get, why, in the case of cities, and only in the case of cities, does anyone favor qualification to be part of the name? Why is the first sentence of the article the place for qualifying every other subject that has no ambiguity issue, but the title must be used for qualifying unambiguous city names? Sorry for being so dense, but it just doesn't make sense to me. --Serge 17:41, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Surely a distinction can be drawn between these particular types of explanation. john k 17:43, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Of course, but would drawing such a distinction be relevant? Would it address my questions and points? In other words, the argument could be made that titles of articles about authors should be qualified with, say, , author. If you did, you can expect squabbles over issues like this: Do we really need to qualify Stephen King, author? And next thing you know you have a separate Talk page for discussing naming conventions for authors, and when author names need to be qualified, and when they don't. There will be some that argue all author names should be qualified without exception. There will be those who believe strongly that only those whose names collide with other people should be qualified, and those who believe that only articles about authors who are not sufficiently well known should be so qualified. It would be a mess. Sound familar? And you know how we avoid it? By not having an inconsistent naming convention for authors. And that's the only way we can avoid a mess with city naming: by not having an inconsistent naming convention for city names. Yet many of you support it. I don't get it. --Serge 17:59, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

The population limit should, in my opinion, be set at 250,000. -- tariqabjotu 20:55, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Municipalities of over 250,000, I take it? john k 21:10, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, indeed; I meant 250,000 as a lower limit. State capitals, as you mentioned, should probably be up for consideration as well. -- tariqabjotu 21:31, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

With all respect, a 'population limit' seems a horribly complicated answer to what should be a simple question, and probably will add yet another "in-out" barrier that no doubt itself will be taxed with 'exceptions'. Rather than seek to make a compromise between a few Wikipedians involved in a discussion happening most probably unbeknownst to much of the community, we should simply take into account how Wikipedians contribute as a whole, and apply this majority rule so that readers, no matter where they are from, will know what to expect from one article to the next.

To be honest I see little practicality in anything between a full-fledged neighbourhood-to-country chain and a single name. "This, that" to the uninformed reader looking up "this" is of little use to him if he doesn't know what or where "that" is; country he has more chance of recognising (added: than a province or State). Just my two centimes. THEPROMENADER 08:28, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

You're suggesting either Charleston (which can't be used because it's ambiguous) or Charleston, Charleston County, South Carolina, U.S.A.? Would we have to have Hempstead, Hempstead, Nassau County, New York, U.S.A. as well? Your two proposals are the least practical positions imaginable. john k 09:09, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you totally: The cumbersome 'whole chain' is impracticable, but the single-name convention has its problems too, namely because of the disambiguation limitations. "City, state" is halfway between the two. I'm also speaking from a point of view of between-article comprehension - I'm thinking 'consistency' more than anything. I'd vie for a single-name (disambiguated) convention were brackets not so dang ugly - in all practical, technological (pipe trick) and inter-article predictability, this increasingly seems to be the best solution - at least from an international point of view that Wiki eventually should cover. Am I seeing too large? THEPROMENADER 09:28, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

The current convention achieves several things, which are not really improved on by going to full containment chains:

1. Unique article names (required by the software)
2. Predictable content (A reader seeing the title can guess what the content of the article is about)
3. Predictable title (An editor of some other article such as a biography can predict the name of the article about the subject's birthplace)

The last two fail for those few places that need county names included for uniqueness, but are lost completely if the convention is dropped in favour of ad hoc, on demand disambiguation. --Scott Davis ^Talk 14:58, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

But city, state has five years of proven instability problems as well, particularly:

• The use of city, state where city is not ambiguous is supported strongly by many and opposed strongly by many.
• The use of city alone where city is not ambiguous, is supported strongly by many and opposed strongly by many.

These issues reoccur constantly on city after city, and have for five years now.

The strong support/opposition on both issues has not changed in five years. Something has to change. This is why I suggest backing off any city-specific convention, and relying on tried and true conventions that have been proven for the rest of Wikipedia:

1. The use of city alone where there is no ambiguity issue.
2. The use of city (disambiguation info) -- which may be (state) or (country) or (city)) (literally) -- as the particular ambiguity problem dictates. This approach has the advantage of avoiding some cities being named city, state which seems to be the impetus for getting some folks to push for all cities being named city, state for "consistency". In other words, seeing Portland, Oregon causes one to want Seattle, Washington; but seeing Portland (Oregon) should not cause the same one to want Seattle (Washington). Problem solved. Simple. Consistent. Let's do it! --Serge 15:06, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Very few here think that the "city, state" convention is "something to be avoided". That standard is something that US Wikipedians feel comfortable with; because of this it has become consensus, and it is only normal that someone starting a new article (or modifying one existing) think, for sake of consistency, when he sees that a majority of articles are named a certain way, that the one he is working on should follow suit.

Before anyone can hope to change this trend he has to a) find a founded reason, based not only on taste, why another convention should be better, b) be able to expose precisely why this new format would be in everyone's (readers and wikipedians') interest and c) have this argument be convincing enough to motivate other wikipedians into following this example. If reason is sound and easily explainable, yet more wikipedians will follow. It will not serve discussion to take a 'pet choice' and find every possible argument for it and every possible argument against anything else - discussions like this will go in circles for ages. Any decision made must be objective and practical as possible, and its logic must appeal to all. Experience and reason is the only way to go here. THEPROMENADER 16:52, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree with you. This is why nothing I've said has been about "taste", or a "pet choice", or anything close to it. In fact, the only argument that has been presented in defense of keeping the city, state convention is about taste. a) the founded primary reason to change is undisputed: five years of turmoil and discontent with the status quo. b) the new format -- use city alone when unamibiguous, use city (disambiguation info), per tried and true conventions used throughout Wikipedia, when there is a disambig issue -- would resolve all the turmoil and discontent, c) I'm still working on making it convincing. Will you help? (oops, forgot to sign this last night... --Serge 14:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC))

The "five years of turmoil and discontent" is caused by a minority of vocal participants who don't want to accept the convention that has been accepted by the majority (and is supported by more than dispute it). --Scott Davis ^Talk 09:26, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Right. The folks who started and signed the decision to move Chicago (for one example) was caused by a "minority of vocal participants who don't want to accept the convention"? The point you're missing is that its newcomers who keep raising the questions and seeking change. --Serge 14:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, even to a newcomer to this discussion, it is obvious that the 'turmoil' is caused by only a select few contributors, and I can add that I don't think the majority of contributors are even aware of it. I will help in any effort to discuss/experiment with any effort to make a worldwide naming standard, but if it is just for the US I'd rather stay out of it - I don't know what's 'best' for the US (as I don't live there) and frankly I think, even if it is the nation of residence for most of English Wikipedia's contributors, that making a convention for one country only is aiming too low for what should be an encyclopedia read the world over. THEPROMENADER 09:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Again, I agree we should have an international standard. And, also again, I point out we already have one: don't disambiguate when there is no disambiguation issue. --Serge 14:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Man, the real problem is the god damned "unique name" rule. If only an article could have two names - one for purposes of editing and location on the site, and another to actually display as the name at the top of the article. john k 22:48, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Excuse me to play daft, but didn't I suggest that earlier? One name as the title, and all other versions as a 'redirect to that title' ? If this is technically possible and easy to manage, there is no reason why this should be forbidden. Wiki isn't paper, after all. THEPROMENADER 23:09, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, an article can only have one title displayed at the top of the page, even if there a number of names that redirect to it, but what I meant by unique article names was that each name must apply to at most one article. --Scott Davis ^Talk 09:26, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Logically the article title shouldn't even matter if every link/search result leads there. Would this really be so difficult to manage for each article? If it isn't a problem, the article contributors themselves could decide what the name the article should have, and have other 'versions' as redirects leading to it. Yet already I see problems with this system when I imagine all the work it takes (speaking from recent experience here) to eliminate double-redirects through many articles - the bigger the city, the greater the potential problems/workload. I take it that it's for this that linking to redirects is considered "evil". THEPROMENADER 13:12, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

PS: On the last note: doesn't wiki have a crew of 'link manager' bots for this sort of task? It would seem normal that it would. THEPROMENADER 13:15, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

The article title matters because it is the one and only specification of the most common name used to refer to the subject of the article. --Serge 14:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I really didn't get your meaning there. Are we speaking of the same subject? THEPROMENADER 00:30, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

The article title does not specify anything at all about the subject of the article - it specifies the name of the article. By convention, an article title is related to the subject, and this discussion page is about the convention for naming articles about populated places. Most of the discussion is about naming articles about cities and towns in the USA. Canada recently relaxed the convention for naming articles about cities and towns there, and appear to now be starting to discover that the stronger convention was more predictable. --Scott Davis ^Talk 03:48, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

We are starting to discover what now? Skeezix1000 11:48, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Alright, it was not quite the same subject. Perhaps I should clarify my "doesn't matter" statement as well: The content of an article on the city of Chicago wouldn't change in the least were it titled Chicago, Illinois, Chicago or Chicago, Illinois, United States of America. THEPROMENADER 08:02, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Specific proposal to change U.S. guidelines

The current version of the U.S. city naming guidelines, as of September 1, 2006, is:

The canonical form for cities in the United States is City, State (the "comma convention") (exceptions are New York City and Chicago). Those cities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish (for example Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina).

A United States city's article, however, should never be titled simply "city, country" (e.g "Detroit, United States").

The result of this version is almost five years of on and off debate here and on countless individual city talk pages. Clearly it is time for a change. Please vote "YES" or "NOT YET" for the following proposed version.

NOTE: the meaning of a city that does not require disambiguation below is one where the article name is currently Cityname, or where Cityname redirects to the current name.

The reason for this change is to be consistent with Wikipedia naming policies and principles used on all other articles, and to eliminate the basis for all the debate: the use of the "comma format" "per the guidelines" in city articles where there is no ambiguity issue. See reasoning in above sections for further explanation.

Proposed version

The canonical form for titles of United States city articles that require disambiguation is City, State (the "comma convention"). Those cities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish (for example Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina). Examples: Portland, Oregon, Portland, Maine.

The canonical form for titles of United States city articles that do not require disambiguation is to use the most common name used to reference that city (usually, if not always, City), per WP:NC(CN). Examples: New York City, Chicago.

A United States city's article should never be titled simply "city, country" (e.g "Detroit, United States").

Change Log

• Apply suggestions from tariqabjotu: Reorder first two paragraphs. Clarify meaning of "require disambiguation" by Wikifying disambiguation (if dab is required per that page, then its required per this meaning)[18]. --Serge 22:46, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Success Criteria

• This survey will remain open for 2 weeks, until Friday, September 15, 2006.
• Update/Lock: Suggested modifications may be applied in the first week and will be logged in the "change log". The proposed rewording will be locked after one week, on Saturday, September 9, 2006.
• The proposed change will be considered approved if the number of YES votes constitutes a consensus of 75% or more of the votes cast.

Survey

Please vote "YES" or "NOT YET". If you vote NOT YET, please indicate why you are not satisifed with this proposed rewording.

• YES. --Serge 18:21, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
• NOT YET. In the first place, we don't have a static contract yet. In the second place, nobody has particularly agreed to do consensus polling. In the third place, I thought we were discussing using my proposal as the basis for such a poll. In the fourth place, if we do this, there should probably be a separate sub page, announcements on "Current polls" and so forth. Let's slow down a bit. john k 18:44, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

• I was hoping we could achieve consensus on this change without all that. But, apparently not. --Serge 18:48, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

  Your proposed convention results in Chula Vista. I could be persuaded that this is a good idea, but I've seen no evidence that people who are voting against moves of Seattle and New Orleans would do so. john k 18:59, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

• But most of the people that voted against the moves of Seattle and New Orleans cited the current guidelines as the reason. So that's one of the reasons to change the guidelines. Please reconsider your vote. --Serge 20:11, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Your command of human psychology is very limited, Serge. The vast majority surely voted that way because they approve of the current policy. john k 20:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

That doesn't explain why you are not in support of this particular change. --Serge 21:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I am not in support because I think it is completely unlikely that this will go through. john k 07:00, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

So for you it's a horse race? You don't decide whether to support or oppose a proposal on its merits, but, rather, on whether you think others will or will not support it? If so, that's what some would call a self-fulfilling prophecy. --Serge 16:19, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

• NO Very quick to straw poll here. I also think it's a very bad idea to make the canonical name the "common name" (essentially just City). -- tariqabjotu 19:44, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
• YES -- Definitely requires success criteria. Also, some notion of "majorness" of a city as john k suggested above using population would probably go a long way in achieving consensus on this. --Polaron | Talk 20:05, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

• I've added the success criteria. Please reconsider your vote. Is some notion of "majorness" required for you to approve of a change, regardless of what you think is required for others to approve it? --Serge 21:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Majorness is of secondary importance to me but adding it would make the proposal have wider appeal and have a better chance of success. --Polaron | Talk 21:55, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

• still NOT YET...this needs to be on its own subpage and it needs to be announced elsewhere, and so forth. Once again, you are insisting on doing it your way, which has pretty much no likelihood of attracting support from people who don't already agree with you. I don't see why on earth we would want to propose a standard that someone like Bkonrad, who agrees that the current standard is less than ideal, but doesn't want to jettison it entirely, would not be willing to agree with. Personally, I also prefer Chula Vista, California to Chula Vista, and don't relish the prospect of every city name being up for grabs on the basis of ambiguity. I think a city that is ambiguous, but not well known, doesn't need to be at City, State, but that it does very little harm for it to remain there. The important issue is well known cities, and there's absolutely no reason to propose a policy that is unlikely to get enough support to make a change on that issue, solely because of taking a stand on principle about smaller cities. john k 07:00, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

• John, is your "preference" to not have Chula Vista, California moved to Chula Vista, or your lack of "relish" for the prospect of every nonambiguous city article being made consistent with WP:NC(CN) just a whim, or it based on reasons that have something to do with improving or maintaining Wikipedia quality? --Serge 15:31, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

  I think a title Chula Vista is close to meaningless. Chula Vista, California is obviously more useful, as it not only indicates that Chula Vista is a city in California, but also that it is a city at all. I see no particular good that would come of removing the pseudo-disambiguation in cases like this, and some harm. Now will you stop bothering me about this? john k 17:54, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

• Tentative No. In addition to the principle of not signing a blank check, (cheque in Canada :) ), I prefer the current guidelines (City, State with exceptions) to the proposed guidelines. (And I know Des Moines is in Ohio Iowa, but I'm not sure we should expect someone writing a biography article to know that.) If there was a principle that City, State must be created (either as a redirect or disambiguator), if either City or City, ambiguity designator, State exists, I might be persuaded that it didn't matter.
• YES. We do not automatically disambiguate articles where no ambiguity exists for cities outside the United States, celebrities, chemical elements and just about everything else in the Wikipedia. Why should cities in the United States be an exception?--DaveOinSF 21:27, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

I'm very disappointed that Serge just jumped ahead and started yet another half-baked poll on this matter before there was any broad agreement about what we should be voting on and how (this proposition is quite blatantly designed to favor his slant on things). There are no success criteria -- how will we know when it is over? I suggest that we put together a new sub-page and at least agree on what we should be voting on and some of the mechanics of how the polling will work. older ≠ wiser 19:05, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I strongly agree. john k 19:29, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

When the reasons given for voting against are "it's a very bad idea" (without even a hint as to why it might be a "very bad idea" regardless of the fact that it works for most other countries without any of the turmoil that we have because of it), it's "designed to favor his slant on things" (without explanation as to what is so wrong with "his slant"), and baseless claims of "half-baked" and hand-wringing about "too early", I am losing hope that this issue will ever be resolved here. No wonder it is going on for five years now. But the point about no success criteria is well taken. I spaced on that, and will fix right away. --Serge 20:02, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

When you complain about users who have been with you all along on changing the U.S. convention, that's when I see a problem. John k posed a perfectly viable proposal above, and you, for the most part, passed over it to propose your own idea. Let's take this one step at a time. I'm not saying you have to agree with John k's idea, but if it accomplishes the primary goal of getting the large U.S. city articles renamed, why don't we try to work with that. If that fails, then we could go on to your idea, which appears to be radically different from all the ones that have been proposed so far. -- tariqabjotu 20:20, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Serge, what does it say to you that various people (me and Polaron, for instance, and bkonrad to a lesser extent), who are in favor of the idea of changing the current naming standards are voting against you? I thought the fact that Scott gave some cautious approval to my idea above was a good sign. What you keep doing is putting the case in such a way that we are guaranteed not to make any progress, and that you alienate people who might agree with you. john k 20:09, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

John, what it tells me, along with words like "voting against you" and "alienate people", and no matter how many times and different ways I ask the same question it remains essentially unanswered, is that you guys are not voting for or against solutions to resolve this issue for any reasonably discernable logical reasons. You're apparently not looking at the proposal on its inherent merits alone. Not one of you has explained why you are personally opposed to the proposal I've made, or explained why you think it would not be a positive change for Wikipedia. Not one. I don't see how progress can be made in such an irrational environment. --Serge 21:53, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Sigh. Let me explain my reasoning, Serge. If we go by your proposal that City be the canonical name, we start with the idea that all U.S. cities, by default, should be at just City. All gazillion of them. Then, we'd have to (in theory, but not entirely in practice) go through each city and say "Is this ambiguous? Is this too similar to another city?" The answer will be yes for the vast majority of the cities and then they'd be moved back to the original City, State article (in theory, not in practice, because the move for Springfield, Massachusetts to Springfield, for instance, would never occur in the first place). But again, I don't think it's in everyone's best interest for you to antagonize the very people who have been your closest allies throughout this attempt to change the U.S. convention. -- tariqabjotu 22:05, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Upon further review (seeing as the City is only canonical for cities that don't need disambiguation), I must say I take issue with the wording. If you're saying we copy the Canadian convention, that should just be said. "Not needing disambiguation" needs to be clarified a bit and the order of the wording seems to imply that the canonical version for all cities really is City and that questions regarding ambiguity should go from there (as I said in my previous statement). -- tariqabjotu 22:12, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for paying closer attention to what was actually proposed and giving some useful feedback. I've updated the proposal accordingly. Also, the proposal is based on the premise that the concept of "X doesn't need disambigation" is sufficiently well defined and understood in Wikipedia to not require further clarification. It's probably not appropriate to redefine concepts that are not specific to U.S. cities in the U.S. cities naming guidelines section. Please reconsider your vote. --Serge 23:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

How about rewording the proposal to something like this:

• The canonical form for titles of articles for major cities that do not require disambiguation is to use the most common name used to reference that city (usually, if not always, City), per WP:NC(CN). Examples: New York City, Chicago.

• The canonical form for titles of articles for non-major cities is City, State (the "comma convention"). Those cities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish (for example Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina).

• For the purposes of this poll the following definitions are used: a major city is a principal city of a metropolitan statistical area with a population (as of 2005) of at least 1 million, or a state capital. A city name that does not need disambiguation is one where the name is unique or is one where the primary usage of the term is to refer to the city in question.

• For those major city articles that require disambiguation, the disambiguation style will be the "comma method". Examples: Portland, Oregon, Portland, Maine.

Edit: updated wording to include state capitals and changed canonical form (22:18, 1 September 2006 (UTC))

I think we can get much wider support with this. Comments? --Polaron | Talk 20:22, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a big fan of this. In the first place, there are probably some articles where City redirects to a disambiguation page where it doesn't need to, and others where it redirects to a City, State page when it should go to disambiguation. I don't see why we should reify what happens to be the case at present for all future purposes. I'd add that 1,000,000 metro area is a fairly high barrier. There are fairly well known places that wouldn't fall into it - Baton Rouge and Des Moines, for instance, are unique and recognizable, but wouldn't qualify by a wide margin. Another issue is, er, the rather opaque meaning of "principal city". What does this mean, exactly? I'f prefer it if we state that the canonical form for US cities is City, State, and that exceptions can be made for larger cities without ambiguity problems (defining "ambiguity problems" in the normal way it is defined in wikipedia, based on "primary use"). Precisely which cities exceptions should be made for could be done on a one by one basis, and definition of what a "larger city" is should also be worked on. I'd be in favor of a reasonably inclusive system that would include places like Topeka, Baton Rouge, Des Moines, Wichita, and so forth, that have distinctive names and are reasonably well known, but are not that large. I would not favor having it mean places like Chula Vista that are not at all well known, should not be. To answer Serge's inevitable question, I think that when somebody says "Topeka", many people know that Topeka is a city in Kansas, and given the lack of other familiar cities named Topeka, it qualifies as a primary use. On the other hand, with "Chula Vista," most people really have very little idea of how many Chula Vistas there might be, or what state they are in. Due to the low familiarity of the Chula Vista in California, it is necessary to disambiguate it from potentially existing, but not actually existing, places that might be named Chula Vista. So in spite of the existence of various places called "Nashville," when somebody says "Nashville" without any referent, most people will understand that the city in Tennessee is being referred to. On the other hand, reference to "Chula Vista" without any referent would simply be met with confusion, in spite of the existence of only one place called Chula Vista (that we are aware of). Another issue is, well, the last one. We do not really know that there are no other places called Chula Vista. There presumably aren't any incorporated communities or census-designated places of that name in the United States, but there might be some place named that in another country, or some unincorporated place that is not a CDP that is called that. And the Chula Vista near San Diego is not so important that we can say that it is actually a primary use - what with most people not having heard of it (I think it is fair to say). So Chula Vista, even if it is the only place of its name, is not actually a primary use of "Chula Vista," while "Nashville," despite being an entirely non-unique name, is a primary use. Does that make any sense at all? Basic point is, there's so many places in the United States that for most places people don't actually know whether or not it's a unique name or not. Only larger cities can actually be said to have any "common usage" at all for people who are not actually from there. john k 20:53, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I only used principal cities since there are official lists of them by the Census Bureau. They are designated using both population and employment criteria. I'll try and track down the precise definition and list later. For unambiguous names, I'm all for just using the usual disambiguation guidelines, i.e. if the name is unique or is clearly the primary usage of the term. For the precise population criteria, any well-defined criteria whether city proper, urban area, or metro area is fine. We should probably also include state capitals of any size as you mentioned. How would you write up the naming guideline? --Polaron | Talk 21:14, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I don't think I'd want to write up a guideline yet. I'd want to go through and identify speicifc cities.

I'd suggest that there would be a number of possible ways a city could qualify. I'd suggest:

1. being a state capital
2. having a population of greater than 250,000
3. being the central city (or one of the) of an urban area with a population of greater than 500,000

Any city which fulfills one of these criteria would be qualified. Looking at the list, that's 50 state capitals + 58 non-state capitals that qualify based on population of the city itself + ~20 that qualify on basis of urban area, for a total of about 128. I suspect a lot would be immediately eliminated for ambiguity problems. I would note that an additional possible thing to qualify a city would be being the largest city in its state - this would add places like Fargo, North Dakota, Billings, Montana, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Burlington, Vermont, Manchester, New Hampshire...(and possibly only those places, come to think of it - most states have a largest city that qualifies under one of the other standards.) At any rate, for whatever remains after the initial culling for obvious ambiguity problems, we would have to go through and see whether people object. I'd adopt a standard of conservatism - if the city name by itself can plausibly be construed as ambiguous or confusing, we stick with the current format. john k 22:45, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Which cities fall under #3, but not the other two? I'm thinking...

The default form for cities in the United States is [[City, State]] (the "comma convention"). Those cities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish (for example Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina).

State capitals, cities with populations greater than 250,000 or central to metropolitan areas with populations greater than 500,000, and cities that are the largest in their respective states may have the state omitted from their article titles if they have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name.

A United States city's article, however, should never be titled simply "city, country" (e.g "Detroit, United States").

-- tariqabjotu 22:55, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Rochester, New York, Akron, Ohio, Sarasota, Florida, Orlando, Florida, New Haven, Connecticut, Allentown, Pennsylvania, Birmingham, Alabama, Dayton, Ohio - fairly well known places, often better known than the smaller cities that are included for their size. john k 23:31, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Alright; fair enough. I added that criterion to my suggestion (although I believe at least one of those above cities shouldn't be moved). -- tariqabjotu 00:02, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I would say that, at the very least, Rochester and Birmingham shouldn't be moved, as they are quite ambiguous. Orlando perhaps shouldn't be moved as well, what with Orlando Furioso and so forth. But all of those places seem sufficiently well known that we could consider whether to move them or not. john k 06:53, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Since no one can explain what good reason there is to use a different naming convention for those cities that are better known from those that are not as well known (see "A Proposal Question" section/discussion above this survey), I have no choice but to assume that no such good reason exists. As such, I see no reason to propose wording that does that. --Serge 23:01, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I have tried to explain. Why are you insisting on a principle that nobody will support? john k 23:31, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "principle that nobody will support". No one will support WP:NC(CN)? With all due respect, you have not explained, nor even tried, so far as I can tell, what the reason is for "not so well-known" unambiguous cities to inconsistently require qualification beyond WP:NC(CN) that other "better known" unambiguous cities do not need. You have not explained, nor even tried, so far as I can tell, what the reason is for "not so well-known" unambiguous cities to inconsistently require qualification beyond WP:NC(CN) that other "not so well-known" subjects do not need. I understand that people feel there is a reason. But I suggest the inability of anyone to actually state what it is is that it's not really there. That creates an irrational basis for decision-making, by definition. --Serge 00:06, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but I believe he's referring to this, although I believe this "common name" thing has been discussed several times before. Serge, you're really not helping matters here with comments like the one above. Do you not see that john k and I (and a few others) agree with you that the U.S. convention is no good? So, why are you making a fuss over our legitimate attempts to rectify that and come to a comprimise? If we can't be on the same page here, there is absolutely no way we're going to get this past the people who are fine with the current convention. The "common names" idea (or rather "get rid of this convention" idea) may be too drastic for many to support, but some guideline as outlined by john k, among others, may provide some comfort. Please, Serge, let's try avoid calling others "irrational". -- tariqabjotu 00:39, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

This idea of attaching a larger place to a city seems to be a phenomenon found only in the English Wikipedia. While I do agree with you that being a major city or not should not matter in principle. There are many who will reject changes in the existing guideline outright if we remove that "comfort" of seeing a "city, larger place" form. Let's start with something that has a good chance of passing. Once people become more familiar with simple names for cities, more of them might decide to extend that to the smaller, lesser known ones. --Polaron | Talk 00:46, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Folks. For crying out loud. I'm not saying no. I'm asking for a reason. --Serge 03:35, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

The reasons are a mystery to me too but that feeling of incompleteness without indicating the containing place for cities is definitely there and is widespread. Look at the opposition to a similar guideline change at the Japanese city naming conventions. --Polaron | Talk 03:46, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Related guideline discussion

Since a major contention to the current convention relates to an application of the Common Names guideline that conflicts with other guidelines, I think clarification should be made to that guideline to alleviate some of this conflict and better shed light on how it relates to this convention. All views are welcomed in the discussion on the guideline's talk page. Agne 19:37, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the interpretation of how to apply a CN guideline that conflicts with other guidelines is terribly important here. Perhaps Serge disagrees, but I don't think most of us disagree with the idea that the common names principle can be superseded by other considerations. Ths issue is more that the current construction of the US city names policy is bad. That it arguably conflicts in some ways with the common names principle is an argument on this, but the issue is more that common names is a principle we should strive towards when other considerations don't argue against it, and that in many cases, there is no good reason for the current US city policy to run counter to a more basic "common names" principle. That there have to be more complicated naming conventions than simply "common names" is certainly true, because of issues of ambiguity and consistency. But in this case neither of those principles is really in place. The current policy is specifically not about ambiguity, in that it explicitly applies to cities whose names are not ambiguous. In terms of consistency, this is somewhat more serious, but I think the main issue that exercises most of us about US city names is, in fact, also the issue of consistency - we don't think the naming policies for US cities should be completely different from those for just about every country in the world. Is any other city outside the United States so important as Los Angeles pre-emptively disambiguated despite a complete lack of ambiguity? So, it seems to me that if we view all naming conventions as being based around finding a rough compromise among four sometimes competing principles - common name, accuracy, precision/ambiguity, and consistency, I think the current US naming policy signaling fails to qualify as a good one. On common name, an alternative policy that allows for Los Angeles and Seattle would be far superior. The two are equivalent on accuracy. The precision/ambiguity issue, which arises with many, but not all, American cities, does not need to be dealt with by a one size fits all policy. And on consistency, a broader view shows that the supposedly "consistent" US naming policy is, in fact, entirely inconsistent with naming policies for most other places in the world. It's not simply the "common names" issue. It's that the reasons provided so far provide no compelling reason to depart from it. john k 12:19, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Bravo! On this second encounter of your argument, it's getting more compelling. --Serge 16:20, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I just remembered tonight which major corporation consistently prefers full disambiguation of place names in its databases. In the Microsoft MapPoint engine that is used in Microsoft Streets and Trips, among others, place names are always given as neighborhood, city, state, country. The fact that the global leader in consumer and corporate software prefers full disambiguation of place names is itself quite compelling. For example, when I run the search string "Los Angeles", the top item on the result list is "Los Angeles, California, United States" followed by "Los Angeles, Region del Biobio, Chile" and then all the other places named Los Angeles. --Coolcaesar 07:06, 16 September 2006 (UTC)