[WikiEN-l] Naming convention: popularity vs. correctness

Sun Feb 9 22:57:27 UTC 2003

So then you're in favor of moving Christopher Columbus to Cristobal Colon, just like Lir was?
I will disagree with it now just as much as I disagreed with it then.  "Correctness" is another word for "elitism".  We shouldn't confuse the reader.  If it's good enough for World Book, Collier's and Britannica, why isn't it good enough for us?  I especially object to continuing to call "Pennsylvania Dutch" "Pennsylvania German", as I've said in the Talk page for that article.  The Google search I did clearly shows what people call it.  And it has nothing to do with using a "corrupt" form.  I object strenuously to use of that term.  That's EXTREME elitism.  People are calling it what people expect to see and have been forced to get around where we have mistakenly put the article.
Zoe
 Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:I think we need to change our naming convention to use the more correct 
article title if everybody who knows the history of the term in question 
agrees that it is correct; that is, if everybody who has a coherent POV on 
the matter shares the same opinion. In other words, we should use 
academically correct titles, not those which Google prefers.

Examples:

1) Ockham's Razor should not reside at Occam's Razor (Occam is the 
latinization of the town name Ockham; the town still exists today).

2) Pennsylvania Dutch should be at Pennsylvania German (it is not Dutch at 
all; the word is merely a corruption of "Deutsch" or "Dütsch").

As I wrote on [[Talk:Pennsylvania Dutch]]:

Regarding the title, I agree this should be under Pennsylvania German. 
This is a case where a redirect makes perfect sense. I support anglicized 
article titles, but I do not support using an obviously inccorect title 
because it is more popular among the uninformed. It is not POV for us to 
assert that "Pennsylvania German" is correct if there's nobody who 
disagrees, based on factual arguments and not mere habit, with that 
statement. This "Dutch" has nothing to do with Dutch.

[...]

Linkability is not an argument: People are already linking to this article 
using [[Pennsylvania German|Pennsylvania Dutch]], because obviously they 
do not want to use the corrupt form. Searchability is neither, since 
redirects show up in searches. Google-ability is only slightly reduced, 
since "Pennsylvania Dutch" would still be mentioned in the article body.
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