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Should Australian city/town/suburb articles be listed at Town, State no matter what their status of ambiguity or should Australian city/town/suburb articles with unique names or that are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name be allowed to use an undisambiguated title? -- Mattinbgn\ talk 05:36, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
I wish to see a modification in the section of this guideline relating to Australia to remove the concept of compulsory disambiguation. The current wording reads as follows:
Australian town/city/suburb articles are at Town, State no matter what their status of ambiguity is. Capital Cities will be excepted from this rule and preferentially made City. The unqualified Town should be either a redirect or disambig page. Local government areas are at their official name
I propose this section be reworded to read:
Australian town/city/suburb articles that are uniquely named or unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name can have undisambiguated titles. Where disambiguation is required, this will take the form of Town, State in the first instance. If further disambiguation is required—such as at Springfield, Victoria—this should be shown in parentheses as follows: Town, State (disambiguation). Local government areas are at their official name.
The practice of compulsory disambiguation goes against the principles of Wikipedia:Article titles which state that article titles should be recognisable, easy to find, precise, concise and consistent. To demonstrate how the current guideline breaches these principles, I will use the New South Wales town of Deniliquin, New South Wales as my example.
Whatever rationale that may have previously existed to maintain compulsory disambiguation (and several have been provided in the past), none of these surely apply any more. Australian geographical features such as rivers and mountains are not compulsory disambiguated, I see no valid reason to continue disambiguating articles on towns where it is unnecessary. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 05:38, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree with the proposal in principal, but will remain curious as to what happens to exceptions or oddities that might occur Satu Suro 09:37, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
Going to have to be a pest here and disagree for the following reasons:
With that said, in cases like Deniliquin where the title is completely unambiguous, it makes sense to have a redirect to the longer article name. I remain open to argument, but I'm not convinced that this change is particularly necessary. Lankiveil ( speak to me) 10:24, 16 May 2010 (UTC).
Australian town/city/suburb articles that are uniquely named or unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name can have undisambiguated titles. Where disambiguation is required, this will take the form of Town, State in the first instance. If further disambiguation is required—such as at Springfield, Victoria—this should be shown in parentheses as follows: Town, State (disambiguation). Local government areas are at their official name. This convention applies only to articles created after 5 July 2024. Articles created prior to then may be at their disambiguated titles. These articles should only be renamed to their undisambiguated title where a reasonable need is seen.
I'd support that. It seems very unnecessary to have Deniliquin as a redirect to Deniliquin, New South Wales if that's the only placename on Wikipedia with that name. How many Australians say " Alice Springs, Northern Territory", or any derivitave of "City, State", for that matter? The media doesn't, and I sure don't. I'm sure there'd be thousands of places with unique names —especially since probably more than half of Australian placenames are etymologically Aboriginal. Surely nobody is going to enforce a deadline for the renaming of these pages, but if the policy (or guideline) is there, people will follow it for new articles and the WikiProject Australian places can put the rest on their to-do list. Great idea, Kotniski. I actually wasn't aware of the current policy. Geelong, Victoria? Oodnadatta, South Australia? Cairns, Queensland? Townsville, Queensland? Wow! Night w ( talk) 13:28, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
We implemented this for a perfectly good reason, and that hasn't changed years later. We had an absolute mess of a situation; articles disambiguated with no less than about seven different suffixes, making it absolutely impossible to find if Wikipedia did actually have an article on the subject. With this convention, anyone knows exactly where to find an article on an Australian town. Orderinchaos puts this better than I. Let's not go over this again. Rebecca ( talk) 01:20, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Has anyone considered something similar to the Canadian style? Those conventions there seem like they would satisfy much of what is being proposed here. For example:
Cities can be moved if they (a) have a unique place name, or (b) are the most important use of their name. A city's relative international fame, or lack thereof, may have some bearing on criterion (b), but it is irrelevant if the city qualifies under criterion (a) — if there's no other Flin Flon anywhere in the world, then it's not valid to cite Flin Flon's lack of international fame as a reason to keep the article at "Flin Flon, Manitoba".
Why can't we do the same with Australian places. What's the logic behind having unique names as redirects to a title with the state on the end? Night w ( talk) 22:02, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
I have to say I still haven't seen any compelling reason why we need to make such a massive change. Yes, for capitals and other large cities I suppose it makes sense to have an article without the comma for the urban area ( Brisbane for the metro, Brisbane, Queensland, for its core suburb). But I think that the consistency that we already have is a bigger advantage than any perceived benefit to making the whole system inconsistent and arbitrary. Lankiveil ( speak to me) 23:48, 21 May 2010 (UTC).
I wrote the proposed change in a manner that would allow for minimalistic change in the policy for naming Australian places. My major concern was to remove the farcical rule that requires the compulsory disambiguation of articles such as Deniliquin, Cunnamulla, Manangatang, Orroroo, (See Talk:Orroroo, South Australia for some idea of the confusion this causes non-Australian editors), Dwellingup and Zeehan; i.e. the clear cut cases. I am personally not so fussed about Manly, Perth, etc. Just as easy to disambiguate if there is any argument or doubt. If disambiguation is required, then I strongly support the use of state names for this purpose in all cases. It is simple, clear and is consistent with the manner in which Australians generally think of place names (i.e. Postal addresses are formatted "Name, State" regardless of status as town/suburb/locality etc.). It should avoid OICs problem with finding suburbs etc.
I would not like to see the problem of CBD articles—how many CBD articles do we actually have, anyway?—hold up the common sense and minimal change proposed. If that requires further work to find a consensus, surely that should be a further discussion—it is not as if the current wording of the guideline provides any guidance on that matter as it is.
As for how any change would take place, well I see a gradual move over to the common sense names as editors identify articles that should be moved. I don't see the need to agree on a list beforehand and then using AWB to work through the list. I would be more comfortable with a manual process, but if editors want to use AWB and can be careful not to step on toes, then I wouldn't have too many concerns. I am not sure that the change can be described as "chaos"; the proposal is a minimal one. Still, someone will need to determine if the reasonable level of support so far translates to consensus for the specific change suggested. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 12:08, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
The discussion will have been open for two weeks on 30 May. The last comment not by the nominator was on 23 May. Are there any objections to me finding someone to close the discussion on Sunday? -- Mattinbgn\ talk 21:58, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
The titles of Australian articles are expected to satisfy the five desiderata specified in WT:AT, which does not set any standard form. The purpose of guidelines is to suggest standard forms which fulfill those desiderata as best as may be; a standard will, by nature, tend to satisfy consistency. Any standard which does a reasonable job on all five is acceptable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:39, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
A reader who never looks at Australian articles will not be inconvenienced by whatever system we use. A reader who looks once will type in Denili and at that point be offered Deniliquin, New South Wales - and click on it - with assurance that it is what she wants and not an article on some homonym. A reader who looks six times will notice and take advantage of the obvious system; none are harmed, all are helped.
Beyond that, some readers find consistency and predictability useful; others don't. Some people are willing to tolerate what other people find helpful. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:44, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Mattingly's question has a simple answer: this is not different than the rest of the encyclopedia. Where a systematic choice of name seems helpful, it is our best practice to use it; several examples are mentioned in the section above. In addition, all our battle articles are titled Battle of, even where, as with Plassey and Eylau, the corresponding placename is no longer in use. However, they are a minority; extensions of this kind are usually confined to cases where a majority of articles do need to be disambiguated, and in so doing establish a de facto convention. In such cases, it serves the reader both to use a uniform convention, and to apply where not strictly necessary, because the reader cannot and should not be expected to consult an encyclopedia to know whether or not it is necessary.
But no answer will serve those who are determined not to hear. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:36, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
As a complete aside, I just had to update over 300 articles to reflect a change in federal electorate boundaries in my home state. It was a breeze - load the list of anything vaguely related into AWB, filter on ", West" and I had a complete list of all towns and suburbs with articles on Wikipedia, which I then loaded into Excel and narrowed down by LGA. Couldn't have been easier. I don't actually know what the supporters of this proposal would suggest for maintainers in future. Orderinchaos 13:23, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
There have been no new contributors to this debate for some time and nothing really new in the way of argument for a few days now. Unless there is violent objection, I propose that the RfC be closed and that an independent editor be found to assess this discussion for consensus or otherwise on the proposed change at the top of this discussion. Note that this discussion is about Australian place names only at this stage.
I was thinking perhaps one of the regulars at CfD would be a good choice to close this dicussion, Good Olfactory ( talk · contribs) perhaps, if he/she is willing? -- Mattinbgn\ talk 01:51, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
(left)The guideline does indeed forbid using criteria mandated by the policy. This is a falsehood; the next time it will be a lie.
So what is happening with this proposal? Is it being reviewed? It seems to have just trailed off into another fruitless discussion. Night w ( talk) 16:10, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
For those who aren't aware, there is a poll on this issue at Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board#RM -- moving_forward. Hesperian 23:57, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
As well as the poll above, there are discussions taking place at Talk:Cunnamulla, Queensland, Talk:Mosman, Queensland, Talk:Coffs Harbour, Queensland and Talk:Nambour, Queensland. Mungindi has been moved to an undisambiguated name, but it is a bit of a special case. Contributions from a diverse group of editors at all these discussions (and at the straw poll) would be very welcome. -- Mattinbgn ( talk) 23:59, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Borgo, Lazio. Since you had some involvement with the Borgo, Lazio redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Bridgeplayer ( talk) 17:23, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Borgo, Lazio
This redirect (and all the others created for the rioni) should be deleted. Borgo is one of the original 14 historic quarters (rioni) of Rome. All over Italy there are hundreds, if not thousands, quarters and frazioni which bear the same name. This means that this redirect is - at the very best - ambiguous ,and therefore nonsense. Moreover, a rione is a part of a city (Rome), not of a region (Latium), therefore it should be superordinated to the city. If we want really to be precise, then we should rename the article to Rione Borgo (Rome), and then rename accordingly all the other Rioni. Alex2006 ( talk) 13:44, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
- Keep - Though a newly created redirected, looking here it seems a plausible search term. I don't understand the nomination since this seems the only Borgo to which the redirect can relate? Bridgeplayer ( talk) 17:38, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
- Comment I have copied below a question/ comment/reply from my Talk page concerning this
Hallo Skinsmoke
sorry to disturb you, I am writing about this redirect. Borgo is one of the original 14 historic quarters (rioni) of Rome. All over Italy there are hundreds, if not thousands, quarters and frazioni which bear the same name. You can google a little bit to discover it. Just to make an example of a town which I know well, the ancient part of Nocera Umbra, is called il Borgo. This means that this redirect is - at the best - ambiguous ,and therefore senseless. Moreover, a rione is a part of a city (Rome), not of a region (Latium), therefore it should be superordinated to the city. If we want really to be precise, then we should rename the article to Rione Borgo (Rome), and then rename accordingly all the other Rioni. I hope you got my point. Cheers from the Eternal City, Alex2006 ( talk) 11:27, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
- Don't worry about disturbing me. On Wikipedia we determine disambiguation terms by what other articles we have; not by what potential articles there may be. We have articles on just two places called Borgo: one in Corsica, France; and one in Lazio, Italy. We have plenty of articles with Borgo as part of the name (18 in total): Borgo Santa Lucia in Campania; Borgo Tossignano and Borgo Val di Taro in Emilia–Romagna; Borgo Velino in Lazio; Borgo di Terzo, Borgo Priolo, Borgo San Giacomo, Borgo San Giovanni and Borgo San Siro in Lombardy; Borgo Pace in Marche; Borgo d'Ale, Borgo San Dalmazzo, Borgo San Martino, Borgo Ticino and Borgo Vercelli in Piedmont; Borgo Valsugana in Trentino–Alto Adige/Südtirol; and Borgo a Mozzano and Borgo San Lorenzo in Tuscany. However, all those 18 are pre-disambiguated (their name is not simply Borgo).
- The example you gave in Nocera Umbra is somewhat irrelevant. Firstly, it is in Umbria, but more importantly we have no article about it, there is no redirect to it, and it isn't even mentioned in the article on Nocera Umbra. For the purposes of disambiguation, it is therefore irrelevant. However, in the unlikely event that an article was created, it would be under Borgo, Umbria.
- If subsequently there was another article created for a Borgo in Lazio then, under the naming convention for Italy, the articles would be named under the Placename, Province format. If we had two within the province of Roma, then we would move to the Placename, Comune format.
- As it is we only have to differentiate between two places in Lazio: Borgo and Borgo Velino.
- One final point is that disambiguating by parentheses is deprecated for placenames, unlike (I think) on Italian Wikipedia. Your suggestion of Rione Borgo (Rome) would therefore be Rione Borgo, Rome. However, with the Rione in the title, there would be no need to disambiguate at all. There may well be an argument that all the rioni should be titled Rione Placename, but I am not sure you would find widespread support for that. We do not title articles on frazioni as, for example Frazione Borgo Santa Lucia, nor do we title articles on comuni as, for example, Comune Borgo Velino. I would hazard a guess that such a proposal would be met with widespread opposition
Skinsmoke ( talk) 18:58, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
- Borgo, in this particular case, is not a regular placename. It's a part of Rome, which is more of a placename. Why not keep it simple: Rione Borgo? Antique Rose — Drop me a line 19:27, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
The basic question appears to be whether the rioni of Rome should be treated in the same way as the frazioni of any other Italian city or municipality; or should they be dealt with differently. If differently, how?
The naming convention for Italy currently reads as follows:
Italy
If necessary, places in Italy are disambiguated by one of the region, province or comune needed to identify it uniquely, as appropriate, not as Placename, Italy. Articles previously used the two-letter abbreviations for the provinces: these should no longer be used.
Examples:
- Two locations in different regions: Castro, Apulia and Castro, Lombardy;
- Two locations in the same province: Ronchi, Bra and Ronchi, Cuneo (both in the Province of Cuneo);
- Two locations in the same region, and a third in a different region: Manciano, Arezzo and Manciano, Grosseto (both in the Region of Tuscany) but Manciano, Umbria.
Province of Bolzano-Bozen
In the Province of Bolzano-Bozen (South Tyrol), the local authority recognizes equally two or more names from different languages, and English discussion is often so limited that none of the above tests indicate which of them is widely used in English. However there is an official linguistic survey of the area, by commune, which has the following advantages:
- It is available on-line, and officially published.
- The proportions of the various language groups are fairly stable.
- Most communes have a large majority, often a 90% majority, of one language group.
- In the few cases where there is a widely used English name, it is usually that of the majority language group.
Therefore articles about locations in the province of Bolzano-Bozen are placed according to the language of the linguistic majority, except where the widely used English name is adequately substantiated and is different from that of the majority language group.
The region containing the Province of Bolzano-Bozen is referred to as Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol.
The previous discussion that led to the existing naming convention can be found at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archives/2009/August#Naming convention for Italian cities
Skinsmoke ( talk) 09:48, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
The rioni are neighborhoods of Rome, not distinct localities that happen to be within the commune of Rome. Locations like Borgo, Lazio are completely absurd. Naming conventions should be discarded and modified when they yield absurd results. john k ( talk) 14:44, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
It may be that Antique Rose and Alex2006 and others may want to create a special category for either the rioni of Rome or rioni in general, since they are always specific to a city and not to the region or province. While I think that Borgo, Roma is fine in the particular case since Antique Rose asserts that there is more than one Borgo in Lazio, and that format complies with the existing guidelines; it may in fact be better to make boroughs of cities city specific always. See, for example, Düsseldorf#Districts, where someone renamed them all with hyphens. Regardless, the edit by Antique Rose on 3 July 2010 moving Borgo, Lazio to Borgo (rione of Rome) is not correct; and it would be simplest if the editor who made the edit corrected it. -- Bejnar ( talk) 17:22, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
According to the NCG :
The lead: The title can be followed in the first line by a list of alternative names in parentheses: {name1, name2, name3, etc.}.
It seems to me that this wording can be used for a variety of nationalistic or absurd reasons. New York was called New Amsterdam and this is covered under history, but the name is not given in the Dutch language. Would it be according to policy if next to New York we had a long list of alternative names given in the languages of all people who used to and still live there (German, Chinese, French, Italian, Korean, Spanish etc)? Should we place next to many European placenames the historical Greek, Roman, Goth or Slavic names they had in the respective languages? There are Balkan places (most actually), which now are called by the names given by the governments that control them but in the 17th to the 20th centuries had Bulgarian, Greek, Turkish, Jewish, Aromanian, Serb populations living together or not. Should we expect that all these placenames will be given in all the respective languages in the lead? I think that the implications will be many. Any ideas or comments?
GK ( talk) 10:51, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
It actually isn't done. You are one of the very few who use (or misuse) this guideline. New York is inhabited by people from over 100 ethnicities and so, I guess, they have the right to add one hundred different versions of "New York" in their own languages. If we add to this all native dialects, we would have a very interesting example of guideline misuse. Most Bulgarian toponyms have alternative Greek and Turkish names and it would be hell if we tried to add them in their native - not transliterated to English form. Anyways, this is why I called for a discussion. GK ( talk) 12:36, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
I suggest to include the following table into the convention, directly below the current text in the section WP:NCGN#Administrative subdivisions / WP:NCCS.
Rationale: Give editors a fast overview of what is currently done with respect to country subdivisions. Currently all this is spread among several guidelines or not written down at all.
Category | A | Typename of A | Typename A | A Typename |
---|---|---|---|---|
States | A | State of A | A State | |
Territories | A | Territory of A (e.g. Territory of Hawaii) | A Territory | |
Provinces | A | Province of A (Italy, Spain, Prussia, and some minor) | A Province | |
Governorates | A | Governorate of A (two in the Russian Empire) | A Governorate | |
Departments | A (e.g. in France) | Department of A (e.g. Department of Alaska) | A Department | |
Districts | A | District of A | A District | |
Cantons | A (Switzerland) | Canton of A (Switzerland, France) | A Canton | |
Municipalities | A | Municipality of A | A Municipality | |
Counties | A | County of A | County A (e.g. in Ireland) | A County |
Parishes | A (e.g. Barbados) | Parish of A | A Parish |
Legend:
With disambiguation , compare Category:Country subdivision name disambiguation pages there may exist:
Schwyz ( talk) 16:46, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
Insofar as I can follow this it would seem to involve the renaming of innumerable articles. You have provided no rationale, and the idea seems to contradict current practice. Ben Mac Dui 07:23, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
We're having a minor revert war over the name used for the prince-bishop of the place now known as Olomouc, which was known as Olmütz in German. This prince-bishopric was a vassal of the Bohemian Crown within the Holy Roman Empire.
If anyone has strong feelings on the matter, they may wish to contribute to the conversation at Talk:Prince-Bishop#Nationalist / anti-nationalist place naming, where I am trying to seek consensus. — OwenBlacker ( Talk) 13:49, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
A number of fiercely argued discussions in various parts of the world suggests a need to restate the naming convention for cases when disambiguation is needed and there is no primary topic. The present guidance is needlessly vague, and although various national systems are acknowledged, some of the variations seem to be unnecessarily inconsistent with the wider guidance. Also, some of the guidance seems to disregard how places are disambiguated in ordinary writing or speech outside Wikipedia.
Can I suggest something along these lines (I have not muddied the waters by including natural features):
I think such a restatement would give a framework, not too rigid, that everyone could fit into. It would avoid some of the article titles which some editors find odd or counter-intuitive ( Borgo, Lazio or Lincoln, Lincolnshire, or possibly even Oxford, Oxfordshire, Manchester, Greater Manchester or London, London which current conventions would seem to require if Oxford, Manchester or London were not primary topics).
Any views? -- Mhockey ( talk) 14:13, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
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 notice some localities have been moved, or had requested moves, from Place, County to Place, Town because of the phrase "although for districts and suburbs within towns and cities, placename, Town/City should be used". Has any attempt been made to define what town/city means for the purposes of this? There is potential , for the guidelines to be interpreted either way in many cases. MRSC ( talk) 20:08, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
If this policy means that any place [requiring disambiguation] that is located in a borough should be renamed to use the name of the borough not the county, then it is not uncontraversial and would result in a large number of places being misnamed under our current guideline. MRSC ( talk) 05:45, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
That's a fair point. In the case of MK you could apply it for places within the Milton Keynes urban area. I think you need an objective test. Another problem might be the City of Canterbury, which also includes rural areas. But I would have thought a few practical difficulties should not detract from the principle that districts of a town should be disambiguated by the name of the town. I think the current guidance is right. It just seems a more natural way to disambiguate - the clue is in the phrase "districts or suburbs of a town", we are unlikely to talk about "districts or suburbs of a county" when we were referring to places in a town.-- Mhockey ( talk) 10:59, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
We need to make the guidance clearer and less open to interpretation or this is going to come up again and again. I'm not convinced urban areas/urban subdivisions are a satisfactory way to define towns. What town exactly does " Reading/Wokingham Urban Area" define? In practice these are really conurbations, not towns and cities. We could specify the slightly more generalised "continuously built up area". This can be objectively tested for, although with fringe cases it might be possible to argue either way. Another alternative is to think in terms of parishes and unparished areas, this would work with City of Canterbury where I believe only the city proper is unparished and the remainder forms part of other parishes. MRSC ( talk) 14:14, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
For clarity, this is the process that led to the change:
MRSC ( talk) 14:38, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
The edits in April 2010 were not discussed, and originated from an editor who seems not to have been aware of the conclusion of the April 2009 discussion, so I do not think much weight should be attached to them - although the wording after the edits better reflects the April 2009 conclusion, I think. -- Mhockey ( talk) 09:22, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
It's interesting that when we need to disambiguate districts or suburbs of London, we use Place, London, which is consistent with the convention Place, City, and not Place, Greater London, which is what you would expect if we were to use Place, Ceremonial county as the convention for all places in England. -- Mhockey ( talk) 09:00, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
Back to the point in hand, we need to either reword or remove the guideline relating to suburbs. It just isn't clear at the moment and is leading to all these lengthy and pointless debates. So, any suggestions of how to word this? MRSC ( talk) 14:11, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
How about:
"In England, place names requiring disambiguation should go under [[placename, ceremonial county]], except
- disambiguated place names for districts and suburbs within towns and cities, which should go under [[placename, Town/City]]. The boundaries of the borough, city or civil parish (which has declared itself a town) should generally be used to determine whether a suburb or district is in a town or city, but if a borough or City contains rural areas, places in rural areas requiring disambiguation should go under [[placename, ceremonial county]]. Urban areas defined by the Office of National Statistics can be used to determine whether a place is in an urban or rural area.
- disambiguated place names in London/ Greater London, which should go under [[placename, London]]. Thus Rainham, London not Rainham, Greater London (which is a redirect page). Where two places exist within London, use the London Borough (in short form), so for the two Belmonts, they become Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow.
Where further disambiguation is needed (i.e. there are two identical [[placename]]s within the same county or town/city), use the local government district or ward.
Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."
One issue I can think of: do any boroughs or cities include more than one urban area defined by the ONS? If so, I can think of some wording, but I don't want to propose something if it is purely hypothetical.-- Mhockey ( talk) 18:46, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
Here is my proposal:
"In England, place names requiring disambiguation wherever possible go under [[placename, ceremonial county]] or [[placename, London]] for the City of London and Greater London combined.
Wherever further disambiguation is required, because of more than one place of the same name in the same county, local government district (and not county) is used, for example Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow.
If further disambiguation is required, because of two places of the same name in the same district, then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass ordinals are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations within the district.
Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."
MRSC ( talk) 14:42, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
I'm in full agreement with MRSC and Keith D. As has been discussed ad nauseam before, for a lot of places there simply is no definition of the boundaries of a town or city. Yes, the ONS produce some data on "urban sub-divisions" but they do not claim that these are accurate representations of the extent of the settlement. Disambiguating by town/city would change a huge number of existing names, and potentially leads to much animosity where it is disputed if one settlement is part of another. Quantpole ( talk) 15:40, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
"In England, place names requiring disambiguation wherever possible go under [[placename, ceremonial county]] or [[placename, London]] for the City of London and Greater London combined.
Wherever further disambiguation is required, because of more than one place of the same name in the same county, local government district (and not county) is used, for example Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow.
If further disambiguation is required, either because of two places of the same name in the same district or because the county has no districts, then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass ordinals are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations.
Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."
Done. MRSC ( talk) 17:55, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
"In England, place names requiring disambiguation wherever possible go under [[placename, ceremonial county]] or [[placename, London]] for the City of London and Greater London combined.
Wherever further disambiguation is required, because of more than one place of the same name in the same county, local government district (and not county) is used. Example: two Belmonts in London become Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow.
If further disambiguation is required, either because of two places of the same name in the same district or because the county has no districts, then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass ordinals are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations. Example: two Woolstons in Shropshire unitary authority become Woolston, north Shropshire and Woolston, south Shropshire.
Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."
Version with examples. MRSC ( talk) 04:53, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
Before we make yet another change to the policy, can we consider these points:
1. Of the countries which have a specific policy for disambiguated districts or neighbourhoods of cities, all except one use the convention Neighbourhood, City. They are: Canada, Japan, Poland and (I think) Germany. The exception is New Zealand, which uses Suburb, New Zealand (or the official name of the suburb if it is ambiguous within NZ). The usual practice for the United States is to use Neighbourhood, City (see Category:Neighborhoods in Boston, Massachusetts and Category:Neighborhoods in San Francisco, California. The usual practice in Ireland is to use District, City (see Category:Towns and villages in County Dublin and Category:Geography of Belfast. I suspect the reason is that people naturally identify a neigbourhood or suburb with the city of which it is a part, before any wider administrative unit. I can see no reason why the same should not apply in England.
2. The policy before April 2009 was a mess - full of inconsistencies. That is why it was changed. Why go back to a mess?
3. Can anyone point to some specific examples of where, under the current policy, there has been a difficulty in deciding whether a particular place is a suburb or district of a particular town or city? The assertion that "this whole suburb thing has caused more problems than it has solved" is unsubstantiated. Can we have some evidence, please? I am aware of inconsistencies because some editors had not appreciated what the current policy is, but that is not a good reason for changing it again.-- Mhockey ( talk) 20:47, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
Here is a comparison of our system and what Ordnance Survey use.
Place located in... | Ordnance Survey [1] | Our system |
---|---|---|
Unitary authority | Rochester, Medway | Rochester, Kent |
Two-tier area | Ashford, Kent | Ashford, Kent |
Metropolitan county | Sefton, Sefton | Sefton, Merseyside |
London borough | Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea | Chelsea, London |
MRSC ( talk) 09:03, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
The problem we have is the definition of where the town ends and the district it is in begins. This is especially difficult where the district and town/city share the same name. I believe this to be the nub of the problem. However, in around 45 cases we consider the town/city and the district of the same name to be identical. We express this by having only one article for the town/city and the district, rather than the usual two. The implication of this is that all places within the district are suburbs of the main settlement. The districts that this applies to are:
Birmingham, Blackpool, Bournemouth, Bristol, Cambridge, Cheltenham, Chesterfield, Christchurch, Dorset, Corby, Coventry, Crawley, Derby, Eastbourne, Exeter, Gloucester, Harlow, Hastings, Ipswich, Kingston upon Hull, Leicester, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, Liverpool, Luton, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Newcastle upon Tyne, Northampton, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Peterborough, Plymouth, Poole, Portsmouth, Reading, Berkshire, Redditch, Sheffield, Southampton, Southend-on-Sea, Slough, Stevenage, Tamworth, Watford, Wolverhampton, Worcester, Worthing, York
Is there any synchronicity between this list and the places that want to "break away" from the usual county system? If these two lists are the same, we can easlily codify this into the guideline - and it would be clear to follow. MRSC ( talk) 09:29, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
Here is how that would work as a guideline:
"In England, place names requiring disambiguation use ceremonial or administrative divisions wherever it is possible.
For the City of London and Greater London combined [[placename, London]] (the region) is used. In local government districts consisting of a single town or city (see WP:UKDISTRICTS) [[placename, district]] is used. Elsewhere in England [[placename, ceremonial county]] is used.
Wherever further disambiguation is required, because of more than one place of the same name in the same county, local government district (and not county) is used. Example: two Belmonts in London become Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow. If further disambiguation is required, either because of two places of the same name in the same district or because the county has no districts, then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass ordinals are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations. Example: two Woolstons in Shropshire unitary authority become Woolston, north Shropshire and Woolston, south Shropshire.
Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."
MRSC ( talk) 11:31, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
The City of London is not part of the Greater London ceremonial county, but I can see where region will confuse, so I'll omit that:
"In England, place names requiring disambiguation use ceremonial or administrative divisions wherever it is possible.
For the City of London and Greater London combined [[placename, London]] is used. In local government districts consisting of a single town or city (see WP:UKDISTRICTS) [[placename, district]] is used. Elsewhere in England [[placename, ceremonial county]] is used.
Wherever further disambiguation is required, because of more than one place of the same name in the same county, local government district (and not county) is used. Example: two Belmonts in London become Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow. If further disambiguation is required, either because of two places of the same name in the same district or because the county has no districts, then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass ordinals are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations. Example: two Woolstons in Shropshire unitary authority become Woolston, north Shropshire and Woolston, south Shropshire.
Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."
We've never used placename, England before. I will look to the archives, to see why... MRSC ( talk) 12:34, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
I would imagine Christchurch, Dorset, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, Reading, Berkshire would continue to be disambiguated in the same way, as they are being disambiguated with the next administrative division "up". MRSC ( talk) 12:43, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
I see. I've added this with a modification:
"In England, place names requiring disambiguation use ceremonial or administrative divisions wherever it is possible.
For the City of London and Greater London combined [[placename, London]] is used. In local government districts consisting of a single town or city (see WP:UKDISTRICTS) [[placename, district]] is used. Elsewhere in England [[placename, ceremonial county]] is used.
Wherever further disambiguation is required then the district/unitary and not the county is used. Example: two Belmonts in London become Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow. If there are two places of the same name in the same district/unitary then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass directions are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations. Example: two Woolstons in Shropshire unitary authority become Woolston, north Shropshire and Woolston, south Shropshire.
Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."
MRSC ( talk) 14:41, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
We've been at it for some time and appear to have worked through wording that is acceptable. I'm going to update the guideline at this point and discussion of any further changes can take place in a new section. MRSC ( talk) 07:00, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
It seems to me that it was unreasonable for half a dozen people to discuss a long-standing convention in the middle of August (when many people are on holiday or relatively inactive) and decide to change it. The revised text is unclear: I shall assume however that it does not seek to change the convention that districts and suburbs of a city/town are disambiguated by the name of that city/town. Furthermore, the decision to ignore a reliable source, the Ordnance Survey, is highly questionable – see the RS, OR and SYN policies. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 23:03, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
Partly just to make editing easier, I am adding this new section and we can carry on here. Same basic subject, but I thought it would also help if I put this more accurate section title, to make it clear exactly what we are talking about.
One or two points arising from the discussion above that may require additional research for clarification:
Thanks for all comments so far, very interesting - there is still more work to be done to build a convincing case for this and I am just exploring it, but I appreciate that it's taken seriously and editors think about it. Thanks. Jamesinderbyshire ( talk) 11:57, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
I really don't see what problem we're trying to solve here. Naming articles on countries is hardly ever a problem, except in a few special cases which are special cases (i.e. they can be handled individually, without the need for any rule). Is there anything broken with what we have at the moment (except that some people disagree with some of the consensus decisions reached - e.g. I can't understand why the article on China isn't called China)?-- Kotniski ( talk) 13:36, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
The full list of names used by UN that can be controversial:
UN short name [common short name]:
<cr> The UN recognized state is correct by definition? what? There is no necessary correspondence between a nation's name for itself and the name outsiders bestow upon it. When France writes it's dictionaries they call Germany as Allemagne and the Germans call themselves Deutchland. Heck I think the Swiss have 4 different names for themselves. Countries have no right to tell us what we should call them in english and they have no right to tell France what to call them in french. The UN needs to have some point of reference so interpreters can communicate with their respective entities but here in a English encyclopedia we don't need that. It seems weird that anyone would want to force a UN view on an English encyclopedia to me. Fyunck(click) ( talk) 19:01, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
Apologies if this has been discussed before or I am in the wrong place - if the latter, I would be grateful to know the correct project page. Thanks for any help and comments.
My subject is this - UN official names for countries. The UN website helpfully lists these in each language on it's website. [4] These names are also widely used in other major official websites like the EU, the US State Dept, IMF, UN sub-organisations, etc. I am curious about the article names for countries in Wikipedia. In many cases, like France, Germany, China and so on, Wikipedia articles do use the UN-en names. In a few significant cases, notably, Burma (which should be Myanmar), North Korea (which should be Democratic People's Republic of Korea), Georgia (country) (which should be Georgia) and Republic of Ireland (which should be Ireland), we do not. This seems (a) rather inconsistent and (b) confusing to the reader. Would it not be better to have an overall policy of following the official UN english name for each UN-recognised nation state in Wikipedia article titles? That would require some disambiguation, but that seems a small price to pay for precision. I ask because, when investigating exceptions to this, it appears that various POVs have intervened to generate the non-UN article name. Comments gratefully received, in particular, has this been discussed before as a Wikipedia policy? Jamesinderbyshire ( talk) 12:32, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
(od + ec)You say that "this seems (a) rather inconsistent and (b) confusing to the reader". However, it is inconsistent only if the intention was to follow UN names which is not the case. Our naming policy focuses more on common english names and France, Germany, Burma, North Korea are consistent with that. Second, you say that this is 'confusing to the reader'. It would be confusing only to that particular reader who happened to be familiar with the UN given names (I doubt if there are many such readers). Most readers are not familiar with that system and would be far more confused by Democratic People's Republic of Korea than by North Korea. Article titles are driven by reader expectations rather than formal systems of naming (of which there are many, and there is no particular reason to choose one over another). -- RegentsPark ( talk) 13:06, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
The [ list linked to is a list of "Member States of the United Nations". Although the list contains countries, it is not "a list of countries" per se, as it excludes several countries. Not least those countries that comprise the UK, because they are not Member States of the United Nations in their own right. Daicaregos ( talk) 13:15, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Avoiding getting bogged down OK, I see that some editors want to try to bog the issue down in Ireland-related issues from their POVs and although that's their privelege, it's essentially a distraction, as that is all just POV. Regents Park makes the interesting argument here, which is about consistency. What this discussion ought to be about is that it there clearly is a serious problem of POV affecting a few nation-state articles. Reference to the UN-list is an easy, internationally-accepted, consistent and widely used source we can refer to in order to NPOV the nation-state article space. Redirection is a well established and easy-to-use method of avoiding reader confusion in those few cases (like Burma and North Korea) where widely known names are not the same as official UN english-language short names, thus giving the casual reader the added information that when they type Burma they interestingly get the official name Myanmar. The issue of Ireland is a well-known controversial one and is anyway under Arbcom injunction, so all we are seeking to do here is establish if the UN list is a useful NPOV source to serve as a basis for future use. Consistency is an issue, but it is plainly illogical to seek consistency from what are UN short-names, such as France and Germany and then avoid it elsewhere in a few cases, because of POV. Consistency also matters because Wikipedia is now the number one online factual source. Official nation-state names matter and it is absolutely muddled to have some of them drifting away arbitrarily from the most accepted international usage. Jamesinderbyshire ( talk) 14:12, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
As far as Ireland is concerned? we should wait & discuss this in September 2011 (per Arbcom ruling & community consent). GoodDay ( talk) 14:55, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Oppose. Obviously. The naming policy of the United Nations has no practical value in an encyclopaedic context, and it's not a neutral system. There'd be massive violations of WP:NPOV. There is the already mentioned issue of "Ireland", but there are others aswell: It uses "Myanmar" over "Burma", and "China" for the PRC. I think most editors here can imagine the uproar at WP:NC-CHINA if People's Republic of China was moved to China.
" Congo" should clearly be dab'd, but the UN uses that as the short name for the Republic of the Congo, while using " Democratic Republic of the Congo" for the other. There's no rationale behind that; it's simply that Brazaville became a member first.
The idea behind WP:COMMONNAME is that we use the name that most English speakers would expect to find, thus avoiding annoying redirects. A reader is not going to type in "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" or "Lao People's Democratic Republic" or "Russian Federation" into the search box (yes, these are the official "short names" under the UN naming system), nor is an editor going to type such names when linking. I'm not sure that you actually realise what you're proposing.
Can you imagine the number of hits going through redirects? Where's the benefit in establishing a naming policy that will have easily forseeable problems. There'll be flaws in any system we use, but the UN naming policy? Really... Nightw 15:14, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
And it's not just naming issues. Once you start using the UN as the end-all for naming then what's next? There are many rulings the UN makes, other than naming, that are not popular for a plethora of countries especially those in an English-centric wikipedia. Yet a slippery slope will have been initiated with a naming convention and others arguments will point out that UN policy rules around here. No thanks. Overall I don't think the average reader finds wiki articles so confusing and they realize that some names are simply controversial. Confusing are articles like global warming or maybe Cyprus, but usually things things look pretty good. Fyunck(click) ( talk) 19:30, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
I see no reason to bind our naming practices to one particular source. There are zillions of reliable English sources for country names (and other criteria for deciding article titles than commonness) - to blindly follow a single source out of all of them would be very dubious both policy-wise and usefulness-wise.-- Kotniski ( talk) 07:02, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
Not a good idea. Taking the UN as a prime source is really not the great idea it sounds like. UN naming principles aren't really based on principles of neutrality; they're based on diplomatic agreements or often on lack thereof. They use the term "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" because Greece objects to "Republic of Macedonia". Should Greece be allowed to effectively decide the name of its neighbour on Wikipedia? Hell no! (Though they sure did try to.) Other similar situations could be named.
Taking the UN names doesn't really serve our readers well, anyway. The determining factor should be exactly what our policy already says: most common name in English. Our readers are better served with the common names "North Korea" and "South Korea" than the long form names used by the UN. (I'd kind of like to not have to have the article title as "People's Republic of China", either, but that's kind of a complicated situation and I haven't thought of a better solution as yet.) The UN name can be a factor in deciding naming, but should not be authoritative. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 07:33, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Should Australian city/town/suburb articles be listed at Town, State no matter what their status of ambiguity or should Australian city/town/suburb articles with unique names or that are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name be allowed to use an undisambiguated title? -- Mattinbgn\ talk 05:36, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
I wish to see a modification in the section of this guideline relating to Australia to remove the concept of compulsory disambiguation. The current wording reads as follows:
Australian town/city/suburb articles are at Town, State no matter what their status of ambiguity is. Capital Cities will be excepted from this rule and preferentially made City. The unqualified Town should be either a redirect or disambig page. Local government areas are at their official name
I propose this section be reworded to read:
Australian town/city/suburb articles that are uniquely named or unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name can have undisambiguated titles. Where disambiguation is required, this will take the form of Town, State in the first instance. If further disambiguation is required—such as at Springfield, Victoria—this should be shown in parentheses as follows: Town, State (disambiguation). Local government areas are at their official name.
The practice of compulsory disambiguation goes against the principles of Wikipedia:Article titles which state that article titles should be recognisable, easy to find, precise, concise and consistent. To demonstrate how the current guideline breaches these principles, I will use the New South Wales town of Deniliquin, New South Wales as my example.
Whatever rationale that may have previously existed to maintain compulsory disambiguation (and several have been provided in the past), none of these surely apply any more. Australian geographical features such as rivers and mountains are not compulsory disambiguated, I see no valid reason to continue disambiguating articles on towns where it is unnecessary. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 05:38, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree with the proposal in principal, but will remain curious as to what happens to exceptions or oddities that might occur Satu Suro 09:37, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
Going to have to be a pest here and disagree for the following reasons:
With that said, in cases like Deniliquin where the title is completely unambiguous, it makes sense to have a redirect to the longer article name. I remain open to argument, but I'm not convinced that this change is particularly necessary. Lankiveil ( speak to me) 10:24, 16 May 2010 (UTC).
Australian town/city/suburb articles that are uniquely named or unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name can have undisambiguated titles. Where disambiguation is required, this will take the form of Town, State in the first instance. If further disambiguation is required—such as at Springfield, Victoria—this should be shown in parentheses as follows: Town, State (disambiguation). Local government areas are at their official name. This convention applies only to articles created after 5 July 2024. Articles created prior to then may be at their disambiguated titles. These articles should only be renamed to their undisambiguated title where a reasonable need is seen.
I'd support that. It seems very unnecessary to have Deniliquin as a redirect to Deniliquin, New South Wales if that's the only placename on Wikipedia with that name. How many Australians say " Alice Springs, Northern Territory", or any derivitave of "City, State", for that matter? The media doesn't, and I sure don't. I'm sure there'd be thousands of places with unique names —especially since probably more than half of Australian placenames are etymologically Aboriginal. Surely nobody is going to enforce a deadline for the renaming of these pages, but if the policy (or guideline) is there, people will follow it for new articles and the WikiProject Australian places can put the rest on their to-do list. Great idea, Kotniski. I actually wasn't aware of the current policy. Geelong, Victoria? Oodnadatta, South Australia? Cairns, Queensland? Townsville, Queensland? Wow! Night w ( talk) 13:28, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
We implemented this for a perfectly good reason, and that hasn't changed years later. We had an absolute mess of a situation; articles disambiguated with no less than about seven different suffixes, making it absolutely impossible to find if Wikipedia did actually have an article on the subject. With this convention, anyone knows exactly where to find an article on an Australian town. Orderinchaos puts this better than I. Let's not go over this again. Rebecca ( talk) 01:20, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Has anyone considered something similar to the Canadian style? Those conventions there seem like they would satisfy much of what is being proposed here. For example:
Cities can be moved if they (a) have a unique place name, or (b) are the most important use of their name. A city's relative international fame, or lack thereof, may have some bearing on criterion (b), but it is irrelevant if the city qualifies under criterion (a) — if there's no other Flin Flon anywhere in the world, then it's not valid to cite Flin Flon's lack of international fame as a reason to keep the article at "Flin Flon, Manitoba".
Why can't we do the same with Australian places. What's the logic behind having unique names as redirects to a title with the state on the end? Night w ( talk) 22:02, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
I have to say I still haven't seen any compelling reason why we need to make such a massive change. Yes, for capitals and other large cities I suppose it makes sense to have an article without the comma for the urban area ( Brisbane for the metro, Brisbane, Queensland, for its core suburb). But I think that the consistency that we already have is a bigger advantage than any perceived benefit to making the whole system inconsistent and arbitrary. Lankiveil ( speak to me) 23:48, 21 May 2010 (UTC).
I wrote the proposed change in a manner that would allow for minimalistic change in the policy for naming Australian places. My major concern was to remove the farcical rule that requires the compulsory disambiguation of articles such as Deniliquin, Cunnamulla, Manangatang, Orroroo, (See Talk:Orroroo, South Australia for some idea of the confusion this causes non-Australian editors), Dwellingup and Zeehan; i.e. the clear cut cases. I am personally not so fussed about Manly, Perth, etc. Just as easy to disambiguate if there is any argument or doubt. If disambiguation is required, then I strongly support the use of state names for this purpose in all cases. It is simple, clear and is consistent with the manner in which Australians generally think of place names (i.e. Postal addresses are formatted "Name, State" regardless of status as town/suburb/locality etc.). It should avoid OICs problem with finding suburbs etc.
I would not like to see the problem of CBD articles—how many CBD articles do we actually have, anyway?—hold up the common sense and minimal change proposed. If that requires further work to find a consensus, surely that should be a further discussion—it is not as if the current wording of the guideline provides any guidance on that matter as it is.
As for how any change would take place, well I see a gradual move over to the common sense names as editors identify articles that should be moved. I don't see the need to agree on a list beforehand and then using AWB to work through the list. I would be more comfortable with a manual process, but if editors want to use AWB and can be careful not to step on toes, then I wouldn't have too many concerns. I am not sure that the change can be described as "chaos"; the proposal is a minimal one. Still, someone will need to determine if the reasonable level of support so far translates to consensus for the specific change suggested. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 12:08, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
The discussion will have been open for two weeks on 30 May. The last comment not by the nominator was on 23 May. Are there any objections to me finding someone to close the discussion on Sunday? -- Mattinbgn\ talk 21:58, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
The titles of Australian articles are expected to satisfy the five desiderata specified in WT:AT, which does not set any standard form. The purpose of guidelines is to suggest standard forms which fulfill those desiderata as best as may be; a standard will, by nature, tend to satisfy consistency. Any standard which does a reasonable job on all five is acceptable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:39, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
A reader who never looks at Australian articles will not be inconvenienced by whatever system we use. A reader who looks once will type in Denili and at that point be offered Deniliquin, New South Wales - and click on it - with assurance that it is what she wants and not an article on some homonym. A reader who looks six times will notice and take advantage of the obvious system; none are harmed, all are helped.
Beyond that, some readers find consistency and predictability useful; others don't. Some people are willing to tolerate what other people find helpful. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:44, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
Mattingly's question has a simple answer: this is not different than the rest of the encyclopedia. Where a systematic choice of name seems helpful, it is our best practice to use it; several examples are mentioned in the section above. In addition, all our battle articles are titled Battle of, even where, as with Plassey and Eylau, the corresponding placename is no longer in use. However, they are a minority; extensions of this kind are usually confined to cases where a majority of articles do need to be disambiguated, and in so doing establish a de facto convention. In such cases, it serves the reader both to use a uniform convention, and to apply where not strictly necessary, because the reader cannot and should not be expected to consult an encyclopedia to know whether or not it is necessary.
But no answer will serve those who are determined not to hear. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:36, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
As a complete aside, I just had to update over 300 articles to reflect a change in federal electorate boundaries in my home state. It was a breeze - load the list of anything vaguely related into AWB, filter on ", West" and I had a complete list of all towns and suburbs with articles on Wikipedia, which I then loaded into Excel and narrowed down by LGA. Couldn't have been easier. I don't actually know what the supporters of this proposal would suggest for maintainers in future. Orderinchaos 13:23, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
There have been no new contributors to this debate for some time and nothing really new in the way of argument for a few days now. Unless there is violent objection, I propose that the RfC be closed and that an independent editor be found to assess this discussion for consensus or otherwise on the proposed change at the top of this discussion. Note that this discussion is about Australian place names only at this stage.
I was thinking perhaps one of the regulars at CfD would be a good choice to close this dicussion, Good Olfactory ( talk · contribs) perhaps, if he/she is willing? -- Mattinbgn\ talk 01:51, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
(left)The guideline does indeed forbid using criteria mandated by the policy. This is a falsehood; the next time it will be a lie.
So what is happening with this proposal? Is it being reviewed? It seems to have just trailed off into another fruitless discussion. Night w ( talk) 16:10, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
For those who aren't aware, there is a poll on this issue at Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board#RM -- moving_forward. Hesperian 23:57, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
As well as the poll above, there are discussions taking place at Talk:Cunnamulla, Queensland, Talk:Mosman, Queensland, Talk:Coffs Harbour, Queensland and Talk:Nambour, Queensland. Mungindi has been moved to an undisambiguated name, but it is a bit of a special case. Contributions from a diverse group of editors at all these discussions (and at the straw poll) would be very welcome. -- Mattinbgn ( talk) 23:59, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Borgo, Lazio. Since you had some involvement with the Borgo, Lazio redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Bridgeplayer ( talk) 17:23, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Borgo, Lazio
This redirect (and all the others created for the rioni) should be deleted. Borgo is one of the original 14 historic quarters (rioni) of Rome. All over Italy there are hundreds, if not thousands, quarters and frazioni which bear the same name. This means that this redirect is - at the very best - ambiguous ,and therefore nonsense. Moreover, a rione is a part of a city (Rome), not of a region (Latium), therefore it should be superordinated to the city. If we want really to be precise, then we should rename the article to Rione Borgo (Rome), and then rename accordingly all the other Rioni. Alex2006 ( talk) 13:44, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
- Keep - Though a newly created redirected, looking here it seems a plausible search term. I don't understand the nomination since this seems the only Borgo to which the redirect can relate? Bridgeplayer ( talk) 17:38, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
- Comment I have copied below a question/ comment/reply from my Talk page concerning this
Hallo Skinsmoke
sorry to disturb you, I am writing about this redirect. Borgo is one of the original 14 historic quarters (rioni) of Rome. All over Italy there are hundreds, if not thousands, quarters and frazioni which bear the same name. You can google a little bit to discover it. Just to make an example of a town which I know well, the ancient part of Nocera Umbra, is called il Borgo. This means that this redirect is - at the best - ambiguous ,and therefore senseless. Moreover, a rione is a part of a city (Rome), not of a region (Latium), therefore it should be superordinated to the city. If we want really to be precise, then we should rename the article to Rione Borgo (Rome), and then rename accordingly all the other Rioni. I hope you got my point. Cheers from the Eternal City, Alex2006 ( talk) 11:27, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
- Don't worry about disturbing me. On Wikipedia we determine disambiguation terms by what other articles we have; not by what potential articles there may be. We have articles on just two places called Borgo: one in Corsica, France; and one in Lazio, Italy. We have plenty of articles with Borgo as part of the name (18 in total): Borgo Santa Lucia in Campania; Borgo Tossignano and Borgo Val di Taro in Emilia–Romagna; Borgo Velino in Lazio; Borgo di Terzo, Borgo Priolo, Borgo San Giacomo, Borgo San Giovanni and Borgo San Siro in Lombardy; Borgo Pace in Marche; Borgo d'Ale, Borgo San Dalmazzo, Borgo San Martino, Borgo Ticino and Borgo Vercelli in Piedmont; Borgo Valsugana in Trentino–Alto Adige/Südtirol; and Borgo a Mozzano and Borgo San Lorenzo in Tuscany. However, all those 18 are pre-disambiguated (their name is not simply Borgo).
- The example you gave in Nocera Umbra is somewhat irrelevant. Firstly, it is in Umbria, but more importantly we have no article about it, there is no redirect to it, and it isn't even mentioned in the article on Nocera Umbra. For the purposes of disambiguation, it is therefore irrelevant. However, in the unlikely event that an article was created, it would be under Borgo, Umbria.
- If subsequently there was another article created for a Borgo in Lazio then, under the naming convention for Italy, the articles would be named under the Placename, Province format. If we had two within the province of Roma, then we would move to the Placename, Comune format.
- As it is we only have to differentiate between two places in Lazio: Borgo and Borgo Velino.
- One final point is that disambiguating by parentheses is deprecated for placenames, unlike (I think) on Italian Wikipedia. Your suggestion of Rione Borgo (Rome) would therefore be Rione Borgo, Rome. However, with the Rione in the title, there would be no need to disambiguate at all. There may well be an argument that all the rioni should be titled Rione Placename, but I am not sure you would find widespread support for that. We do not title articles on frazioni as, for example Frazione Borgo Santa Lucia, nor do we title articles on comuni as, for example, Comune Borgo Velino. I would hazard a guess that such a proposal would be met with widespread opposition
Skinsmoke ( talk) 18:58, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
- Borgo, in this particular case, is not a regular placename. It's a part of Rome, which is more of a placename. Why not keep it simple: Rione Borgo? Antique Rose — Drop me a line 19:27, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
The basic question appears to be whether the rioni of Rome should be treated in the same way as the frazioni of any other Italian city or municipality; or should they be dealt with differently. If differently, how?
The naming convention for Italy currently reads as follows:
Italy
If necessary, places in Italy are disambiguated by one of the region, province or comune needed to identify it uniquely, as appropriate, not as Placename, Italy. Articles previously used the two-letter abbreviations for the provinces: these should no longer be used.
Examples:
- Two locations in different regions: Castro, Apulia and Castro, Lombardy;
- Two locations in the same province: Ronchi, Bra and Ronchi, Cuneo (both in the Province of Cuneo);
- Two locations in the same region, and a third in a different region: Manciano, Arezzo and Manciano, Grosseto (both in the Region of Tuscany) but Manciano, Umbria.
Province of Bolzano-Bozen
In the Province of Bolzano-Bozen (South Tyrol), the local authority recognizes equally two or more names from different languages, and English discussion is often so limited that none of the above tests indicate which of them is widely used in English. However there is an official linguistic survey of the area, by commune, which has the following advantages:
- It is available on-line, and officially published.
- The proportions of the various language groups are fairly stable.
- Most communes have a large majority, often a 90% majority, of one language group.
- In the few cases where there is a widely used English name, it is usually that of the majority language group.
Therefore articles about locations in the province of Bolzano-Bozen are placed according to the language of the linguistic majority, except where the widely used English name is adequately substantiated and is different from that of the majority language group.
The region containing the Province of Bolzano-Bozen is referred to as Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol.
The previous discussion that led to the existing naming convention can be found at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archives/2009/August#Naming convention for Italian cities
Skinsmoke ( talk) 09:48, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
The rioni are neighborhoods of Rome, not distinct localities that happen to be within the commune of Rome. Locations like Borgo, Lazio are completely absurd. Naming conventions should be discarded and modified when they yield absurd results. john k ( talk) 14:44, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
It may be that Antique Rose and Alex2006 and others may want to create a special category for either the rioni of Rome or rioni in general, since they are always specific to a city and not to the region or province. While I think that Borgo, Roma is fine in the particular case since Antique Rose asserts that there is more than one Borgo in Lazio, and that format complies with the existing guidelines; it may in fact be better to make boroughs of cities city specific always. See, for example, Düsseldorf#Districts, where someone renamed them all with hyphens. Regardless, the edit by Antique Rose on 3 July 2010 moving Borgo, Lazio to Borgo (rione of Rome) is not correct; and it would be simplest if the editor who made the edit corrected it. -- Bejnar ( talk) 17:22, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
According to the NCG :
The lead: The title can be followed in the first line by a list of alternative names in parentheses: {name1, name2, name3, etc.}.
It seems to me that this wording can be used for a variety of nationalistic or absurd reasons. New York was called New Amsterdam and this is covered under history, but the name is not given in the Dutch language. Would it be according to policy if next to New York we had a long list of alternative names given in the languages of all people who used to and still live there (German, Chinese, French, Italian, Korean, Spanish etc)? Should we place next to many European placenames the historical Greek, Roman, Goth or Slavic names they had in the respective languages? There are Balkan places (most actually), which now are called by the names given by the governments that control them but in the 17th to the 20th centuries had Bulgarian, Greek, Turkish, Jewish, Aromanian, Serb populations living together or not. Should we expect that all these placenames will be given in all the respective languages in the lead? I think that the implications will be many. Any ideas or comments?
GK ( talk) 10:51, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
It actually isn't done. You are one of the very few who use (or misuse) this guideline. New York is inhabited by people from over 100 ethnicities and so, I guess, they have the right to add one hundred different versions of "New York" in their own languages. If we add to this all native dialects, we would have a very interesting example of guideline misuse. Most Bulgarian toponyms have alternative Greek and Turkish names and it would be hell if we tried to add them in their native - not transliterated to English form. Anyways, this is why I called for a discussion. GK ( talk) 12:36, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
I suggest to include the following table into the convention, directly below the current text in the section WP:NCGN#Administrative subdivisions / WP:NCCS.
Rationale: Give editors a fast overview of what is currently done with respect to country subdivisions. Currently all this is spread among several guidelines or not written down at all.
Category | A | Typename of A | Typename A | A Typename |
---|---|---|---|---|
States | A | State of A | A State | |
Territories | A | Territory of A (e.g. Territory of Hawaii) | A Territory | |
Provinces | A | Province of A (Italy, Spain, Prussia, and some minor) | A Province | |
Governorates | A | Governorate of A (two in the Russian Empire) | A Governorate | |
Departments | A (e.g. in France) | Department of A (e.g. Department of Alaska) | A Department | |
Districts | A | District of A | A District | |
Cantons | A (Switzerland) | Canton of A (Switzerland, France) | A Canton | |
Municipalities | A | Municipality of A | A Municipality | |
Counties | A | County of A | County A (e.g. in Ireland) | A County |
Parishes | A (e.g. Barbados) | Parish of A | A Parish |
Legend:
With disambiguation , compare Category:Country subdivision name disambiguation pages there may exist:
Schwyz ( talk) 16:46, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
Insofar as I can follow this it would seem to involve the renaming of innumerable articles. You have provided no rationale, and the idea seems to contradict current practice. Ben Mac Dui 07:23, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
We're having a minor revert war over the name used for the prince-bishop of the place now known as Olomouc, which was known as Olmütz in German. This prince-bishopric was a vassal of the Bohemian Crown within the Holy Roman Empire.
If anyone has strong feelings on the matter, they may wish to contribute to the conversation at Talk:Prince-Bishop#Nationalist / anti-nationalist place naming, where I am trying to seek consensus. — OwenBlacker ( Talk) 13:49, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
A number of fiercely argued discussions in various parts of the world suggests a need to restate the naming convention for cases when disambiguation is needed and there is no primary topic. The present guidance is needlessly vague, and although various national systems are acknowledged, some of the variations seem to be unnecessarily inconsistent with the wider guidance. Also, some of the guidance seems to disregard how places are disambiguated in ordinary writing or speech outside Wikipedia.
Can I suggest something along these lines (I have not muddied the waters by including natural features):
I think such a restatement would give a framework, not too rigid, that everyone could fit into. It would avoid some of the article titles which some editors find odd or counter-intuitive ( Borgo, Lazio or Lincoln, Lincolnshire, or possibly even Oxford, Oxfordshire, Manchester, Greater Manchester or London, London which current conventions would seem to require if Oxford, Manchester or London were not primary topics).
Any views? -- Mhockey ( talk) 14:13, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
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 notice some localities have been moved, or had requested moves, from Place, County to Place, Town because of the phrase "although for districts and suburbs within towns and cities, placename, Town/City should be used". Has any attempt been made to define what town/city means for the purposes of this? There is potential , for the guidelines to be interpreted either way in many cases. MRSC ( talk) 20:08, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
If this policy means that any place [requiring disambiguation] that is located in a borough should be renamed to use the name of the borough not the county, then it is not uncontraversial and would result in a large number of places being misnamed under our current guideline. MRSC ( talk) 05:45, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
That's a fair point. In the case of MK you could apply it for places within the Milton Keynes urban area. I think you need an objective test. Another problem might be the City of Canterbury, which also includes rural areas. But I would have thought a few practical difficulties should not detract from the principle that districts of a town should be disambiguated by the name of the town. I think the current guidance is right. It just seems a more natural way to disambiguate - the clue is in the phrase "districts or suburbs of a town", we are unlikely to talk about "districts or suburbs of a county" when we were referring to places in a town.-- Mhockey ( talk) 10:59, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
We need to make the guidance clearer and less open to interpretation or this is going to come up again and again. I'm not convinced urban areas/urban subdivisions are a satisfactory way to define towns. What town exactly does " Reading/Wokingham Urban Area" define? In practice these are really conurbations, not towns and cities. We could specify the slightly more generalised "continuously built up area". This can be objectively tested for, although with fringe cases it might be possible to argue either way. Another alternative is to think in terms of parishes and unparished areas, this would work with City of Canterbury where I believe only the city proper is unparished and the remainder forms part of other parishes. MRSC ( talk) 14:14, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
For clarity, this is the process that led to the change:
MRSC ( talk) 14:38, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
The edits in April 2010 were not discussed, and originated from an editor who seems not to have been aware of the conclusion of the April 2009 discussion, so I do not think much weight should be attached to them - although the wording after the edits better reflects the April 2009 conclusion, I think. -- Mhockey ( talk) 09:22, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
It's interesting that when we need to disambiguate districts or suburbs of London, we use Place, London, which is consistent with the convention Place, City, and not Place, Greater London, which is what you would expect if we were to use Place, Ceremonial county as the convention for all places in England. -- Mhockey ( talk) 09:00, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
Back to the point in hand, we need to either reword or remove the guideline relating to suburbs. It just isn't clear at the moment and is leading to all these lengthy and pointless debates. So, any suggestions of how to word this? MRSC ( talk) 14:11, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
How about:
"In England, place names requiring disambiguation should go under [[placename, ceremonial county]], except
- disambiguated place names for districts and suburbs within towns and cities, which should go under [[placename, Town/City]]. The boundaries of the borough, city or civil parish (which has declared itself a town) should generally be used to determine whether a suburb or district is in a town or city, but if a borough or City contains rural areas, places in rural areas requiring disambiguation should go under [[placename, ceremonial county]]. Urban areas defined by the Office of National Statistics can be used to determine whether a place is in an urban or rural area.
- disambiguated place names in London/ Greater London, which should go under [[placename, London]]. Thus Rainham, London not Rainham, Greater London (which is a redirect page). Where two places exist within London, use the London Borough (in short form), so for the two Belmonts, they become Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow.
Where further disambiguation is needed (i.e. there are two identical [[placename]]s within the same county or town/city), use the local government district or ward.
Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."
One issue I can think of: do any boroughs or cities include more than one urban area defined by the ONS? If so, I can think of some wording, but I don't want to propose something if it is purely hypothetical.-- Mhockey ( talk) 18:46, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
Here is my proposal:
"In England, place names requiring disambiguation wherever possible go under [[placename, ceremonial county]] or [[placename, London]] for the City of London and Greater London combined.
Wherever further disambiguation is required, because of more than one place of the same name in the same county, local government district (and not county) is used, for example Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow.
If further disambiguation is required, because of two places of the same name in the same district, then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass ordinals are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations within the district.
Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."
MRSC ( talk) 14:42, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
I'm in full agreement with MRSC and Keith D. As has been discussed ad nauseam before, for a lot of places there simply is no definition of the boundaries of a town or city. Yes, the ONS produce some data on "urban sub-divisions" but they do not claim that these are accurate representations of the extent of the settlement. Disambiguating by town/city would change a huge number of existing names, and potentially leads to much animosity where it is disputed if one settlement is part of another. Quantpole ( talk) 15:40, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
"In England, place names requiring disambiguation wherever possible go under [[placename, ceremonial county]] or [[placename, London]] for the City of London and Greater London combined.
Wherever further disambiguation is required, because of more than one place of the same name in the same county, local government district (and not county) is used, for example Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow.
If further disambiguation is required, either because of two places of the same name in the same district or because the county has no districts, then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass ordinals are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations.
Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."
Done. MRSC ( talk) 17:55, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
"In England, place names requiring disambiguation wherever possible go under [[placename, ceremonial county]] or [[placename, London]] for the City of London and Greater London combined.
Wherever further disambiguation is required, because of more than one place of the same name in the same county, local government district (and not county) is used. Example: two Belmonts in London become Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow.
If further disambiguation is required, either because of two places of the same name in the same district or because the county has no districts, then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass ordinals are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations. Example: two Woolstons in Shropshire unitary authority become Woolston, north Shropshire and Woolston, south Shropshire.
Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."
Version with examples. MRSC ( talk) 04:53, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
Before we make yet another change to the policy, can we consider these points:
1. Of the countries which have a specific policy for disambiguated districts or neighbourhoods of cities, all except one use the convention Neighbourhood, City. They are: Canada, Japan, Poland and (I think) Germany. The exception is New Zealand, which uses Suburb, New Zealand (or the official name of the suburb if it is ambiguous within NZ). The usual practice for the United States is to use Neighbourhood, City (see Category:Neighborhoods in Boston, Massachusetts and Category:Neighborhoods in San Francisco, California. The usual practice in Ireland is to use District, City (see Category:Towns and villages in County Dublin and Category:Geography of Belfast. I suspect the reason is that people naturally identify a neigbourhood or suburb with the city of which it is a part, before any wider administrative unit. I can see no reason why the same should not apply in England.
2. The policy before April 2009 was a mess - full of inconsistencies. That is why it was changed. Why go back to a mess?
3. Can anyone point to some specific examples of where, under the current policy, there has been a difficulty in deciding whether a particular place is a suburb or district of a particular town or city? The assertion that "this whole suburb thing has caused more problems than it has solved" is unsubstantiated. Can we have some evidence, please? I am aware of inconsistencies because some editors had not appreciated what the current policy is, but that is not a good reason for changing it again.-- Mhockey ( talk) 20:47, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
Here is a comparison of our system and what Ordnance Survey use.
Place located in... | Ordnance Survey [1] | Our system |
---|---|---|
Unitary authority | Rochester, Medway | Rochester, Kent |
Two-tier area | Ashford, Kent | Ashford, Kent |
Metropolitan county | Sefton, Sefton | Sefton, Merseyside |
London borough | Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea | Chelsea, London |
MRSC ( talk) 09:03, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
The problem we have is the definition of where the town ends and the district it is in begins. This is especially difficult where the district and town/city share the same name. I believe this to be the nub of the problem. However, in around 45 cases we consider the town/city and the district of the same name to be identical. We express this by having only one article for the town/city and the district, rather than the usual two. The implication of this is that all places within the district are suburbs of the main settlement. The districts that this applies to are:
Birmingham, Blackpool, Bournemouth, Bristol, Cambridge, Cheltenham, Chesterfield, Christchurch, Dorset, Corby, Coventry, Crawley, Derby, Eastbourne, Exeter, Gloucester, Harlow, Hastings, Ipswich, Kingston upon Hull, Leicester, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, Liverpool, Luton, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Newcastle upon Tyne, Northampton, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Peterborough, Plymouth, Poole, Portsmouth, Reading, Berkshire, Redditch, Sheffield, Southampton, Southend-on-Sea, Slough, Stevenage, Tamworth, Watford, Wolverhampton, Worcester, Worthing, York
Is there any synchronicity between this list and the places that want to "break away" from the usual county system? If these two lists are the same, we can easlily codify this into the guideline - and it would be clear to follow. MRSC ( talk) 09:29, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
Here is how that would work as a guideline:
"In England, place names requiring disambiguation use ceremonial or administrative divisions wherever it is possible.
For the City of London and Greater London combined [[placename, London]] (the region) is used. In local government districts consisting of a single town or city (see WP:UKDISTRICTS) [[placename, district]] is used. Elsewhere in England [[placename, ceremonial county]] is used.
Wherever further disambiguation is required, because of more than one place of the same name in the same county, local government district (and not county) is used. Example: two Belmonts in London become Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow. If further disambiguation is required, either because of two places of the same name in the same district or because the county has no districts, then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass ordinals are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations. Example: two Woolstons in Shropshire unitary authority become Woolston, north Shropshire and Woolston, south Shropshire.
Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."
MRSC ( talk) 11:31, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
The City of London is not part of the Greater London ceremonial county, but I can see where region will confuse, so I'll omit that:
"In England, place names requiring disambiguation use ceremonial or administrative divisions wherever it is possible.
For the City of London and Greater London combined [[placename, London]] is used. In local government districts consisting of a single town or city (see WP:UKDISTRICTS) [[placename, district]] is used. Elsewhere in England [[placename, ceremonial county]] is used.
Wherever further disambiguation is required, because of more than one place of the same name in the same county, local government district (and not county) is used. Example: two Belmonts in London become Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow. If further disambiguation is required, either because of two places of the same name in the same district or because the county has no districts, then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass ordinals are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations. Example: two Woolstons in Shropshire unitary authority become Woolston, north Shropshire and Woolston, south Shropshire.
Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."
We've never used placename, England before. I will look to the archives, to see why... MRSC ( talk) 12:34, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
I would imagine Christchurch, Dorset, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, Reading, Berkshire would continue to be disambiguated in the same way, as they are being disambiguated with the next administrative division "up". MRSC ( talk) 12:43, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
I see. I've added this with a modification:
"In England, place names requiring disambiguation use ceremonial or administrative divisions wherever it is possible.
For the City of London and Greater London combined [[placename, London]] is used. In local government districts consisting of a single town or city (see WP:UKDISTRICTS) [[placename, district]] is used. Elsewhere in England [[placename, ceremonial county]] is used.
Wherever further disambiguation is required then the district/unitary and not the county is used. Example: two Belmonts in London become Belmont, Sutton and Belmont, Harrow. If there are two places of the same name in the same district/unitary then parishes, wards, or lowercase compass directions are used as appropriate to identify the relative locations. Example: two Woolstons in Shropshire unitary authority become Woolston, north Shropshire and Woolston, south Shropshire.
Where county boundaries have changed, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK counties)."
MRSC ( talk) 14:41, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
We've been at it for some time and appear to have worked through wording that is acceptable. I'm going to update the guideline at this point and discussion of any further changes can take place in a new section. MRSC ( talk) 07:00, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
It seems to me that it was unreasonable for half a dozen people to discuss a long-standing convention in the middle of August (when many people are on holiday or relatively inactive) and decide to change it. The revised text is unclear: I shall assume however that it does not seek to change the convention that districts and suburbs of a city/town are disambiguated by the name of that city/town. Furthermore, the decision to ignore a reliable source, the Ordnance Survey, is highly questionable – see the RS, OR and SYN policies. -- John Maynard Friedman ( talk) 23:03, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
Partly just to make editing easier, I am adding this new section and we can carry on here. Same basic subject, but I thought it would also help if I put this more accurate section title, to make it clear exactly what we are talking about.
One or two points arising from the discussion above that may require additional research for clarification:
Thanks for all comments so far, very interesting - there is still more work to be done to build a convincing case for this and I am just exploring it, but I appreciate that it's taken seriously and editors think about it. Thanks. Jamesinderbyshire ( talk) 11:57, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
I really don't see what problem we're trying to solve here. Naming articles on countries is hardly ever a problem, except in a few special cases which are special cases (i.e. they can be handled individually, without the need for any rule). Is there anything broken with what we have at the moment (except that some people disagree with some of the consensus decisions reached - e.g. I can't understand why the article on China isn't called China)?-- Kotniski ( talk) 13:36, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
The full list of names used by UN that can be controversial:
UN short name [common short name]:
<cr> The UN recognized state is correct by definition? what? There is no necessary correspondence between a nation's name for itself and the name outsiders bestow upon it. When France writes it's dictionaries they call Germany as Allemagne and the Germans call themselves Deutchland. Heck I think the Swiss have 4 different names for themselves. Countries have no right to tell us what we should call them in english and they have no right to tell France what to call them in french. The UN needs to have some point of reference so interpreters can communicate with their respective entities but here in a English encyclopedia we don't need that. It seems weird that anyone would want to force a UN view on an English encyclopedia to me. Fyunck(click) ( talk) 19:01, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
Apologies if this has been discussed before or I am in the wrong place - if the latter, I would be grateful to know the correct project page. Thanks for any help and comments.
My subject is this - UN official names for countries. The UN website helpfully lists these in each language on it's website. [4] These names are also widely used in other major official websites like the EU, the US State Dept, IMF, UN sub-organisations, etc. I am curious about the article names for countries in Wikipedia. In many cases, like France, Germany, China and so on, Wikipedia articles do use the UN-en names. In a few significant cases, notably, Burma (which should be Myanmar), North Korea (which should be Democratic People's Republic of Korea), Georgia (country) (which should be Georgia) and Republic of Ireland (which should be Ireland), we do not. This seems (a) rather inconsistent and (b) confusing to the reader. Would it not be better to have an overall policy of following the official UN english name for each UN-recognised nation state in Wikipedia article titles? That would require some disambiguation, but that seems a small price to pay for precision. I ask because, when investigating exceptions to this, it appears that various POVs have intervened to generate the non-UN article name. Comments gratefully received, in particular, has this been discussed before as a Wikipedia policy? Jamesinderbyshire ( talk) 12:32, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
(od + ec)You say that "this seems (a) rather inconsistent and (b) confusing to the reader". However, it is inconsistent only if the intention was to follow UN names which is not the case. Our naming policy focuses more on common english names and France, Germany, Burma, North Korea are consistent with that. Second, you say that this is 'confusing to the reader'. It would be confusing only to that particular reader who happened to be familiar with the UN given names (I doubt if there are many such readers). Most readers are not familiar with that system and would be far more confused by Democratic People's Republic of Korea than by North Korea. Article titles are driven by reader expectations rather than formal systems of naming (of which there are many, and there is no particular reason to choose one over another). -- RegentsPark ( talk) 13:06, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
The [ list linked to is a list of "Member States of the United Nations". Although the list contains countries, it is not "a list of countries" per se, as it excludes several countries. Not least those countries that comprise the UK, because they are not Member States of the United Nations in their own right. Daicaregos ( talk) 13:15, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Avoiding getting bogged down OK, I see that some editors want to try to bog the issue down in Ireland-related issues from their POVs and although that's their privelege, it's essentially a distraction, as that is all just POV. Regents Park makes the interesting argument here, which is about consistency. What this discussion ought to be about is that it there clearly is a serious problem of POV affecting a few nation-state articles. Reference to the UN-list is an easy, internationally-accepted, consistent and widely used source we can refer to in order to NPOV the nation-state article space. Redirection is a well established and easy-to-use method of avoiding reader confusion in those few cases (like Burma and North Korea) where widely known names are not the same as official UN english-language short names, thus giving the casual reader the added information that when they type Burma they interestingly get the official name Myanmar. The issue of Ireland is a well-known controversial one and is anyway under Arbcom injunction, so all we are seeking to do here is establish if the UN list is a useful NPOV source to serve as a basis for future use. Consistency is an issue, but it is plainly illogical to seek consistency from what are UN short-names, such as France and Germany and then avoid it elsewhere in a few cases, because of POV. Consistency also matters because Wikipedia is now the number one online factual source. Official nation-state names matter and it is absolutely muddled to have some of them drifting away arbitrarily from the most accepted international usage. Jamesinderbyshire ( talk) 14:12, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
As far as Ireland is concerned? we should wait & discuss this in September 2011 (per Arbcom ruling & community consent). GoodDay ( talk) 14:55, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Oppose. Obviously. The naming policy of the United Nations has no practical value in an encyclopaedic context, and it's not a neutral system. There'd be massive violations of WP:NPOV. There is the already mentioned issue of "Ireland", but there are others aswell: It uses "Myanmar" over "Burma", and "China" for the PRC. I think most editors here can imagine the uproar at WP:NC-CHINA if People's Republic of China was moved to China.
" Congo" should clearly be dab'd, but the UN uses that as the short name for the Republic of the Congo, while using " Democratic Republic of the Congo" for the other. There's no rationale behind that; it's simply that Brazaville became a member first.
The idea behind WP:COMMONNAME is that we use the name that most English speakers would expect to find, thus avoiding annoying redirects. A reader is not going to type in "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" or "Lao People's Democratic Republic" or "Russian Federation" into the search box (yes, these are the official "short names" under the UN naming system), nor is an editor going to type such names when linking. I'm not sure that you actually realise what you're proposing.
Can you imagine the number of hits going through redirects? Where's the benefit in establishing a naming policy that will have easily forseeable problems. There'll be flaws in any system we use, but the UN naming policy? Really... Nightw 15:14, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
And it's not just naming issues. Once you start using the UN as the end-all for naming then what's next? There are many rulings the UN makes, other than naming, that are not popular for a plethora of countries especially those in an English-centric wikipedia. Yet a slippery slope will have been initiated with a naming convention and others arguments will point out that UN policy rules around here. No thanks. Overall I don't think the average reader finds wiki articles so confusing and they realize that some names are simply controversial. Confusing are articles like global warming or maybe Cyprus, but usually things things look pretty good. Fyunck(click) ( talk) 19:30, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
I see no reason to bind our naming practices to one particular source. There are zillions of reliable English sources for country names (and other criteria for deciding article titles than commonness) - to blindly follow a single source out of all of them would be very dubious both policy-wise and usefulness-wise.-- Kotniski ( talk) 07:02, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
Not a good idea. Taking the UN as a prime source is really not the great idea it sounds like. UN naming principles aren't really based on principles of neutrality; they're based on diplomatic agreements or often on lack thereof. They use the term "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" because Greece objects to "Republic of Macedonia". Should Greece be allowed to effectively decide the name of its neighbour on Wikipedia? Hell no! (Though they sure did try to.) Other similar situations could be named.
Taking the UN names doesn't really serve our readers well, anyway. The determining factor should be exactly what our policy already says: most common name in English. Our readers are better served with the common names "North Korea" and "South Korea" than the long form names used by the UN. (I'd kind of like to not have to have the article title as "People's Republic of China", either, but that's kind of a complicated situation and I haven't thought of a better solution as yet.) The UN name can be a factor in deciding naming, but should not be authoritative. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 07:33, 26 August 2010 (UTC)