[WikiEN-l] [[Ireland]] and [[China]]

Wed Dec 11 08:08:39 UTC 2002

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>So I favor moving [[History of China]] to [[China]] and moving [[China]] to 
>[[People's Republic of China]]. This will require some work on all the 
>affected articles though (a lot of text needs to be rearranged and moved 
>around). Then the history of the PRC will officially start in 1949 with an 
>explanation of the major events of the revolution that preceded it. [[China]] 
>will then be the main article that will introduce all things Chinese and link 
>to more detailed articles on various topics - which includes the current 
>republic at [[People's Republic of China]].  
>
I think we have most of an agreement.  Still, I don't see the need to 
move [[History of China]].  [[China]] will be the article that brings 
'''everything''' together, not just the history. I can commit myself to 
review some of the articles that now link to [[China]], and, where 
appropriate, change that link to PRC.  Piping some of these links to 
simply [[PRC]] rather than [[People's Republic of China]] would make the 
work easier, but some people may object to pipes which are only to a 
redirection page.

>But now we have a bigger problem; What about France, The Netherlands, Germany, 
>Denmark, Mexico, and many many other nations whose current government was 
>started way after our histories on them begin? With the new logic, it doesn't 
>seem appropriate to have [[History of the French Republic]] mention Louis XIV 
>or Napoleon. Or the history of the United States of Mexico say much about the 
>Aztecs. This will require a great deal of work to sort out and can't be 
>solved by just renaming articles.  
>
Hold on!  Let's not get carried away!  This most recent debate affected 
only a handful of countries with very special problems.  For most 
countries the short form is not problematical, and these articles can 
carry on just as they are.  [[History of the French Republic]] may be a 
perfectly valid article when [[History of France]] needs to broken into 
smaller chunks, but it's not an immediate necessity.  It would help 
nobody if we started to develop solutions for problems that don't exist. 
 The problem countries will make themselves obvious when then time comes.

Eclecticology