The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Metropolitan90 (talk) 06:30, 14 January 2015 (UTC) reply

Altai

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A complete subset of the Altay disambiguation page—it does not meet the double disambiguation guidelines but does violate the practices for combining terms on disambiguation pages (particularly the third bullet, "Variant spellings"). The "Altay" page already contains all entries which may be referred as either "Altay" or "Altai" (and often as both).— Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • ( yo?); December 15, 2014; 18:22 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Disambiguations-related deletion discussions. Everymorning talk 19:07, 15 December 2014 (UTC) reply

• Comment I see you looked to redirect this page to Altay, but it was reverted by Inwind with the reason given: 'Turkish and Chinese Altay is not the same as Russian Altai.' I have no idea if this is correct or not. Boleyn ( talk) 15:49, 16 December 2014 (UTC) reply

  To the best of my knowledge, it is correct; from the content point of view. The problem here, however, is that disambiguation pages are not content, they are simply navigational tools. We don't have a disambiguation page at Altay and a related article at Altai; what we have is two disambiguation pages, one of which (Altai) contains only one specific spelling variation and is a complete subset of another. That's the exact situation WP:DPAGE addresses.— Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • ( yo?); December 16, 2014; 16:16 (UTC)

• Comment to provide a bit of background for the discussion I would like to give a little explanation to the spelling variants:

Both

• The Altai Mountains which are the source of the majority of subjects can be romanized either as Altai or as Altay. This seems to be true for all languages involved (Russian, Kazakh, Mongolian and Chinese)

only Altay

• The Turkish name

only Altai

• The novel by Wu Ming, a group of Italian authors
• Altai Inc in Computer Associates Int'l, Inc. v. Altai Inc.

Inwind ( talk) 15:45, 17 December 2014 (UTC) reply

• The legal case, as it's currently presented, does not really belong in the main section, since it's a partial title match, although it would of course be fine under "See also". That leaves exactly one entry on the "Altai" page (the novel) which may not be referred to as "Altay"; the bulk of other entries can be referred to using either spelling. In other words, if both disambigs were to be kept, the only entries not present on both would be the novel (only on "Altai") and the people with the Turkish names (only on "Altay"), resulting in overwhelming duplication of entries. This can easier be resolved by leaving just one page ( Altay, to which "Altai" redirects) with three main sections ("can be referred to using the 'Altai' spelling only, the 'Altay' spelling only, or using either spelling"). Would you see that as an acceptable compromise? The alternative is maintaining two nearly identical pages, and that tends to be confusing to both readers and editors.— Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • ( yo?); December 17, 2014; 16:09 (UTC)

  Regarding the legal case, it is common in copyright circles to refer to it as just Altai ( here, for example). bd2412 T 16:17, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  Good to know; thanks.— Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • ( yo?); December 18, 2014; 16:31 (UTC)

• Why is a merge discussion on AfD? Is this a WP:CFORK or? -- Joy [shallot] ( talk) 10:39, 31 December 2014 (UTC) reply

  This is not a content fork because the pages in question are disambiguation pages (i.e., strictly navigational tools).— Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • ( yo?); January 5, 2015; 13:12 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Mongolia-related deletion discussions. Latebird ( talk) 19:22, 10 January 2015 (UTC) reply

• Comment:I see two possibilities:
  1. A clear split: Russian and Mongolian topics to Altai, Chinese and Turkish topics to Altay etc. according to the relevant naming conventions. "See also" in between.
  2. A full merge: Redirect one to the other

Since many people use different spellings than ours, and the two are derived from the same Mongolian word, I'd prefer the latter. -- Latebird ( talk) 19:34, 10 January 2015 (UTC) reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.