Frequently asked questions Why is the article on Georgia named
Georgia (country), and
Georgia is instead a
disambiguation page?
The consensus is that there is no
primary topic for the term "Georgia". Supporters of that position successfully argued that since the country is not significantly more commonly searched for than
the US state of the same name, it cannot have primary topic over the US state. Opponents argued that internationally recognized countries should take precedence over sub-national units like the US state. Some opponents argued that the current setup conveys a US-centric bias. Attempts to rename the articles to a
natural disambiguation title like "Republic of Georgia" or "State of Georgia" have not reached any consensus (see
the list of archived discussions). Why is the
Ireland article about the island, while the article on the country is named
Republic of Ireland?
The naming of Ireland articles dates back to 2002. Previously, content for both the island and country appeared on the same page,
[1] but it was then decided to move content and the
page history about the country to
its official "Republic of Ireland" description, while keeping content about the island at "Ireland". Ever since, this issue has been heavily disputed, but there has not been any consensus to change this status quo. Previous failed proposals have included making the country the
primary topic of "Ireland" instead, or using
parenthetical disambiguation titles like "Ireland (island)" and "Ireland (country)". According to an
ArbCom ruling in 2009, discussions relating to the naming of these Ireland articles had to occur at
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ireland Collaboration. In 2023 this requirement was
withdrawn so discussions can take place on the talk pages as normal. Why do articles on populated places in the United States primarily use the [[Placename, State]] "comma convention" format? Why is there an exemption for cities listed in the
AP Stylebook as not requiring a state?
This is an issue where different rules of
Wikipedia:Article titles can conflict with each other, thus consensus determines which ones to follow. Most of these articles were created by
User:Rambot, a
Wikipedia bot, back in 2002 based on
US Census Bureau records. When creating these pages, Rambot used the "Placename, State" naming format, initially setting a consistent naming convention for these articles. Supporters of keeping the "Placename, State" format argue that this is generally the
most common naming convention used by American
reliable sources. Opponents argue that this format is neither
precise nor concise, and results in short titles like
Nashville redirecting to longer titles like
Nashville, Tennessee. After a series of discussions
since 2004, a compromise
was reached in 2008 that established the
Associated Press Stylebook exception rule for only those handful of cities listed in that style guide (the dominant US newswriting guide) as not requiring the state modifier. There has been since no consensus to do a massive page move on the other articles on US places (although individual
requested move proposals have been initiated on different pages from time to time). |
Archive 1 • Archive 2 • Archive (settlements) • Archive (places) • September 2012 archives • September 2013 archives • October 2013 archives; February 2014 archives; Archive 3; Archive 4; Archive 5; Archive 6
Index
|
||||||||
This page has archives. Sections older than 180 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 6 sections are present. |
Consensus is sought as to the correct way to refer and link to major American cities such as Los Angeles and Boston. The discussion is being held at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking#Need for clarity on linking major American cities.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I would like to initiate a discussion on whether USPLACE should apply to US territories as well as US states. I will not propose anything on places in US states since the discussions of those have been exhausted with no consensus to change. There didn't seem to be much discussion on whether US territories should be included in the guideline as well. I would like to discuss the applicability of the guideline for US territories. The question I would like to answer is "Should the guideline apply to US territories?" Please discuss here. Interstellarity ( talk) 14:06, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
if the drafters of USPLACE did not intend for it to include territories, it would not have mentioned Placename, Territory as a model to follow.— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 09:09, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
The term "United States," when used in the geographical sense, refers to the contiguous United States (sometimes referred to as the Lower 48), the state of Alaska, the island state of Hawaii, the five insular territories of Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa, and minor outlying possessions."Since we're here to discuss geographical names, that seems pretty clear. ╠╣uw [ talk 09:40, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
"articles on populated places in the United States are typically titled "Placename, State" when located within a state or "Placename, Territory" in US territories."That is accurate, as you can see for yourself. (A quick tally suggests around 80% of populated places in US territories are so titled.) ╠╣uw [ talk 18:21, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
References
Since there are no comments recently, do you think we are ready to close the discussion? Interstellarity ( talk) 19:18, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
I have made an ngram review of "X O|oblast" for the oblasts listed at Oblasts of Ukraine#List. While many of these do not give an ngram result, where they do, they do not show that oblast is consistently capitalised in sources (per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS) that would lead us to a conclusion that we should cap these names on WP. See Chernivtsi Oblast, Donetsk Oblast, Kharkiv Oblast, Kherson Oblast, Kiev Oblast (no result for Kyiv Oblast), Lviv Oblast, Poltava Oblast and Sumy Oblast - others retured no result. A cursory look at Google Scholar results would confirm mixed capitalisation - Sumy Oblast, Donetsk Oblast and Kharkiv Oblast. For these names in Cyrillic, oblast (о́бласть) is not capitalised. There is therefore no to argument that capitalisation from the native language gives rise to a need to capitalise the term in English. The same would be true for other administrative divisions (eg raion). The same is likely true where the same terms are used for other nations (eg Russia). Cinderella157 ( talk) 02:35, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
Can we add some specific guidance for Turkish cities? For some cities, this is almost getting to ridiculous levels. For example, count how many Smyrna's are in the lead of İzmir in this version [5] (there's one extra in the footnote as well). Btw, there's also Smyrna and Old Smyrna articles. Historic names should usually be presented in "Names" or "Etymology" sections, except significant ones such as Constantinople in the lead of Istanbul for example. However, non-English alphabet versions should also be in "Names" or "Etymology" sections. Turkish is spoken by 85-90% of the population. The rest is mostly Kurdish. Except Arabic, other languages would be less than 0.1% Bogazicili ( talk) 16:41, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
Could we get a section addressing users adding Türkiye or replacing Turkey with Türkiye? I usually revert those edits and point to wp:commonname or another MOS-related guideline, but it would be helpful to point here. Classicwiki ( talk) If you reply here, please ping me. 05:54, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
A discussion at Talk:Sněžka#Requested move 17 July 2024, regarding a mountain on the Polish—Czech border, may be of interest. — Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 17:44, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
Frequently asked questions Why is the article on Georgia named
Georgia (country), and
Georgia is instead a
disambiguation page?
The consensus is that there is no
primary topic for the term "Georgia". Supporters of that position successfully argued that since the country is not significantly more commonly searched for than
the US state of the same name, it cannot have primary topic over the US state. Opponents argued that internationally recognized countries should take precedence over sub-national units like the US state. Some opponents argued that the current setup conveys a US-centric bias. Attempts to rename the articles to a
natural disambiguation title like "Republic of Georgia" or "State of Georgia" have not reached any consensus (see
the list of archived discussions). Why is the
Ireland article about the island, while the article on the country is named
Republic of Ireland?
The naming of Ireland articles dates back to 2002. Previously, content for both the island and country appeared on the same page,
[1] but it was then decided to move content and the
page history about the country to
its official "Republic of Ireland" description, while keeping content about the island at "Ireland". Ever since, this issue has been heavily disputed, but there has not been any consensus to change this status quo. Previous failed proposals have included making the country the
primary topic of "Ireland" instead, or using
parenthetical disambiguation titles like "Ireland (island)" and "Ireland (country)". According to an
ArbCom ruling in 2009, discussions relating to the naming of these Ireland articles had to occur at
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ireland Collaboration. In 2023 this requirement was
withdrawn so discussions can take place on the talk pages as normal. Why do articles on populated places in the United States primarily use the [[Placename, State]] "comma convention" format? Why is there an exemption for cities listed in the
AP Stylebook as not requiring a state?
This is an issue where different rules of
Wikipedia:Article titles can conflict with each other, thus consensus determines which ones to follow. Most of these articles were created by
User:Rambot, a
Wikipedia bot, back in 2002 based on
US Census Bureau records. When creating these pages, Rambot used the "Placename, State" naming format, initially setting a consistent naming convention for these articles. Supporters of keeping the "Placename, State" format argue that this is generally the
most common naming convention used by American
reliable sources. Opponents argue that this format is neither
precise nor concise, and results in short titles like
Nashville redirecting to longer titles like
Nashville, Tennessee. After a series of discussions
since 2004, a compromise
was reached in 2008 that established the
Associated Press Stylebook exception rule for only those handful of cities listed in that style guide (the dominant US newswriting guide) as not requiring the state modifier. There has been since no consensus to do a massive page move on the other articles on US places (although individual
requested move proposals have been initiated on different pages from time to time). |
Archive 1 • Archive 2 • Archive (settlements) • Archive (places) • September 2012 archives • September 2013 archives • October 2013 archives; February 2014 archives; Archive 3; Archive 4; Archive 5; Archive 6
Index
|
||||||||
This page has archives. Sections older than 180 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 6 sections are present. |
Consensus is sought as to the correct way to refer and link to major American cities such as Los Angeles and Boston. The discussion is being held at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking#Need for clarity on linking major American cities.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I would like to initiate a discussion on whether USPLACE should apply to US territories as well as US states. I will not propose anything on places in US states since the discussions of those have been exhausted with no consensus to change. There didn't seem to be much discussion on whether US territories should be included in the guideline as well. I would like to discuss the applicability of the guideline for US territories. The question I would like to answer is "Should the guideline apply to US territories?" Please discuss here. Interstellarity ( talk) 14:06, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
if the drafters of USPLACE did not intend for it to include territories, it would not have mentioned Placename, Territory as a model to follow.— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 09:09, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
The term "United States," when used in the geographical sense, refers to the contiguous United States (sometimes referred to as the Lower 48), the state of Alaska, the island state of Hawaii, the five insular territories of Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa, and minor outlying possessions."Since we're here to discuss geographical names, that seems pretty clear. ╠╣uw [ talk 09:40, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
"articles on populated places in the United States are typically titled "Placename, State" when located within a state or "Placename, Territory" in US territories."That is accurate, as you can see for yourself. (A quick tally suggests around 80% of populated places in US territories are so titled.) ╠╣uw [ talk 18:21, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
References
Since there are no comments recently, do you think we are ready to close the discussion? Interstellarity ( talk) 19:18, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
I have made an ngram review of "X O|oblast" for the oblasts listed at Oblasts of Ukraine#List. While many of these do not give an ngram result, where they do, they do not show that oblast is consistently capitalised in sources (per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS) that would lead us to a conclusion that we should cap these names on WP. See Chernivtsi Oblast, Donetsk Oblast, Kharkiv Oblast, Kherson Oblast, Kiev Oblast (no result for Kyiv Oblast), Lviv Oblast, Poltava Oblast and Sumy Oblast - others retured no result. A cursory look at Google Scholar results would confirm mixed capitalisation - Sumy Oblast, Donetsk Oblast and Kharkiv Oblast. For these names in Cyrillic, oblast (о́бласть) is not capitalised. There is therefore no to argument that capitalisation from the native language gives rise to a need to capitalise the term in English. The same would be true for other administrative divisions (eg raion). The same is likely true where the same terms are used for other nations (eg Russia). Cinderella157 ( talk) 02:35, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
Can we add some specific guidance for Turkish cities? For some cities, this is almost getting to ridiculous levels. For example, count how many Smyrna's are in the lead of İzmir in this version [5] (there's one extra in the footnote as well). Btw, there's also Smyrna and Old Smyrna articles. Historic names should usually be presented in "Names" or "Etymology" sections, except significant ones such as Constantinople in the lead of Istanbul for example. However, non-English alphabet versions should also be in "Names" or "Etymology" sections. Turkish is spoken by 85-90% of the population. The rest is mostly Kurdish. Except Arabic, other languages would be less than 0.1% Bogazicili ( talk) 16:41, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
Could we get a section addressing users adding Türkiye or replacing Turkey with Türkiye? I usually revert those edits and point to wp:commonname or another MOS-related guideline, but it would be helpful to point here. Classicwiki ( talk) If you reply here, please ping me. 05:54, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
A discussion at Talk:Sněžka#Requested move 17 July 2024, regarding a mountain on the Polish—Czech border, may be of interest. — Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 17:44, 18 July 2024 (UTC)