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Archive 1 | ← | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | → | Archive 10 |
As noted before, two issues have been decided, but these leave lot of room for discussion.
The issue of using normal disambiguation rules should be clear; articles on cities get that name unless there are other topics with the same name.
Next, it has been decided that the "comma notation" ([City, Something]) is used for city names in stead of the parenthesis format. That still leaves the following possibilities:
The first option would give Sydney, Australia and Sydney, Canada, and Las Vegas, Nevada and Las Vegas, New Mexico (assuming both city names are equally common in use). The second option would give Sydney, Australia and Sydney, Nova Scotia.
I myself have no preference for either option. The latter may be easier to remember, but shows less consistency. However, since in many cases there will be many US cities and some foreign ones with the same name, that one seems the best and most logical option.
In either case, it should be investigated and listed what the standards for disambiguating nationally are per country. For the USA and Canada, these have already been established as being [City, State] and [City, Province]. For others this still has to be decided. A remaining question is whether to use the natural disambiguator for a country (be it in English language or not) should also be used if it doesn't have the comma notation. I'd say yes here - if Malta's (example) English language convention is to use City-Province, I'd say we should use that.
The last issue is the so-called "Paris" problem. As we're following "normal disambiguation" rules, it states that when one of the disambiguated articles has priority, it gets to stay at the main article (Paris, in our example). If none of the articles has priority, they're all disambiguated. The current disambiguation rules also state this decision must be made on a case-to-case basis. I think that solves our problem here. In case we decide (no matter how) that the French city has priority over the Trojan and all the other spots on the map, we put its article at Paris, and put a block-format disambiguation at the top. If we decide the city hasn't got priority, we use the normal disambiguation article. I don't see any other possibilities, but I may be wrong.
Summarising, we need to decide on :
I think "has priority" is "defined" at disambiguation as the most commonly associated meaning of the name, if any. For some, this is difficult to determine, but for a city like Rome, it is pretty clear that this one should has priority. Jeronimo
Archive 4 came from here.
Archive 5 came from here.
I just got a note that somehow Wiki convention got established that "St." should be abbreviated in city names. For US cities, at least, this is contrary to the official US Government policy that states that "Saint" should be spelled out. I think it has to be agreed that, regardless of what we do in the case of other countries, "Saint" needs to be spelled out in US placenames -- BRG July 19, 2003
What the US Government's official policy is doesn't matter a damn, any more than the official French government policy, Italian government policy, Irish government policy etc does. If a city's official name uses St then it should go in as St. If it officially called Saint then that should be used. BRG's constant causing chaos in naming cities on wiki is getting ludicrous. He has already caused chaos by mucking up disambigulations and links with crazy name changes which no-one agreed to. Now cities with St is his next place to unilaterally cause chaos. FearÉIREANN 18:41 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Yup. That's what I understand its role to be too. BTW The Clerk's office in St. Cloud, Minnesota is also at St. Cloud, not Saint Cloud. St. Cloud city clerk page Is this another rerun of BMG's Exeter fiasco, when he decided to create a unilateral disambigulation approach that was contrary to wiki policy, contrary to the naming style used and contrary to logic, but defended it to the end even when users were queuing to tell him to stop? BTW, for all the renaming (which I have reversed) did BMG actually check to see if any links had been broken with his latest st. to saint batch of renamings? FearÉIREANN 19:31 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Someone needs to archive this page. It is now at 54K. I would do it but I am on a v-e-r-y--s-l-o-w- link from Ireland that can take minutes to form a page sometimes. If I tried, it would take so long I'd be caught up in edit conflicts. (I archived something recently and it took me nine attempts to save the changes because everytime I tried, someone else had added in a new comment.) It is best if someone on a fast link does it. (Either that or I'd have to protect the page for a couple of minutes to stop anyone editing it while I was archiving it. Hell on wiki is trying to do an archive on a slow link and then getting trapped in a constant edit conflicts.) FearÉIREANN 19:31 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Quoting from the BGN's site: "Although established to serve the Federal Government as a central authority to which all name problems, name inquiries, and new name proposals can be directed, the Board also plays a similar role for the general public." Therefore, as you can see, if _any_ authority has the right to be called "official," it is the BGN. BTW, The Postal Service does follow this rule as well: You can address a letter to "St. Louis" and it will get delivered but in all postal directories, the place is shown as "Saint Louis." I am still waiting to find out what Jtdirl seems to think _is_ official, since he has claimed that he wants to use "the city's official name"! (After all, that is what _I_ want to do as well!) BRG July 21
Stop mis-interpreting the role of the BGN. The guide is obviously what the cities regard as their official name. The BGN plays the same role as other similar organisations in other states of co-ordinating names, of dealing with problems should one urban entity wish to use a name already being used elsewhere. But unless a problem occurs, the urban centre's chosen name becomes the one and when a city adopts a name that is it. The BGN may like people to use saint but if a city (as they have) adopt St., St. it is. It is that simple and this gross mis-understanding of the BGN's role simply making an issue of a non-issue. FearÉIREANN 19:24 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Okay, not to start another row here, . . . but I'm in the process of adding paragraphs of history info to the pages of Louisiana parishes (known as "counties" in the rest of the U.S.). I was taken aback to find that some (not all, mind you, only some) are listed as, e.g., "Saint Charles," redirected from "St. Charles." People, this is simply incorrect, inaccurate, and wrong. The formation and naming of the parishes of St. James, St. Charles, St. Mary, St. John the Baptist, etc., predates not only Louisiana statehood but, in some cases, the formation of the United States. They were and always have been recognized and cited as "St. Whatever" by the territorial and state legislatures, are listed that way in the Louisiana Statutes, and are universally so spelled by everyone in the state. The BGN doesn't enter into it. So how do I get those wrongheaded redirects undone? -- Michael K. Smith 21:47, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Someone has moved the discussion about disambiguating names of cities, towns, and vllages (commas vs. parentheses) to Talk Archive 5. However, as far as I am aware, the issue has not been settled yet. Talk Archive 2 seems to contain all the arguments, and Talk Archive 3 contains a vote which the comma style won by 10 votes to 4, but there are still a lot of people unhappy with the idea. Basically, it seems to me that we have a perfectly workable Wikipedia convention for most articles - to use natural disambiguators and then parentheses if that doesn't work - which we are arbitrarily overriding for the specific case of placenames, just because that's how the Americans like to do it. From the archives, it seems that Toby gave the most detailed arguments; those arguments were against the [City, Country] format, and I can't find any convincing argument against him. I don't consider a vote to be a satisfactory replacement for an argument, really. So can someone please explain why they think the argument is wrong? If not, I think we should get rid of the [City, Country] format altogether. -- Oliver P. 04:15 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I agree with both Mav and Oliver. (See mav, an entire day cannot go by when he don't agree on something! :-) ) FearÉIREANN 05:34 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
In reply to Mav's query a few paragraphs above, here is one particular Australian's view. Just the plain city name is always best. Qualifiers (country or state, comma or parenthesis, etc.) should only be used to resolve ambiguities. This point is the only one I really care about, the details of how the disambiguation is handled I'm not too fussed about either way. I'd just like to have it settled so that I know what to do next time the question arises. So, should it be Armidale, New South Wales, Armidale (New South Wales), Armidale, Australia or Armidale (Australia? I don't much mind, but I've listed them in best-to-worst order (but even my "worst" is perfectly OK). Tannin (Actually, that was a bad example, as "Armidale" has to be listed with the New South Wales because there is another well-known Armidale in Victoria.) (PPS: I'm talking about Oz and rest of the world here - the existing US cities practice is clearly well supported and should be retained.)
It always gets really hairy when you have multiple places in the same state or county. For examples, Springfield Township, Bradford County, Pennsylvania and Farmington (town), Maine. There are even some places that require both forms of the above disambiguation. Now this is only done on a case by case basis and is not done if not required. The rule is basically this: Use commas if it is part of the name or the physical location (State, County, etc) (i.e. Bradford County is where it is located) and parenthesis when it is not part of the name or location and just a descriptor (i.e. (town)). These are fringe cases and they are consistent. The comma notation for adding the County is a natural by product of using the comma notation when moving from the [[City]] to [[City, State]]. Really, not everyone may be happy with everything, but this is a workable solution and only done when needed. -- Ram-Man 16:55, May 4, 2004 (UTC)
Suppose we have:
I think this would be a very bad idea, and I would like it to be avoided. However, if we do end up with this solution, can we agree that the "default" name will always be redirected to whatever the "local" name might be. This will at least ensure that people can continue to make links freely with some confidence that they'll go to the right place. Martin 17:28 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Maybe the attempt on a worldwide standard was too much at the moment?
It seems pretty clear that the comma-notion is preferred for Australia, USA and Canada.
Other important English-language countries are for instance UK, Éire, South-Africa and India. Should UK do as a start?
Do we agree that the wikipedia standard disambiguation system (i.e. parenthesis, and of course only when needed) is appropriate for UK?
Can "(Wales)", "(England)", "(Scotland)" and "(Northern Ireland)" be deemed sufficiently known in the rest of the world to be used instead of "(United Kingdom)" also in the cases when the place in question wouldn't need to be disambuguated within UK?
--
Ruhrjung 18:23, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)
People seem to be using the sensible comma-notation for the UK. The disagreement is over what the second part of the designation should be. I suggest for somewhere like Hope, England, where all other similarly named towns are in other countries, [Hope, England] suffices, while where there is more than one town in England with the same name, Newport, Shropshire and Newport, Isle of Wight (and Newport, Wales) provide the clearest method. Warofdreams 18:40, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)
In the UK there is one standard, unique, geographical identifier that isn't arbitrary (South Wales, East Anglia, etc), isn't tied to current local government areas (subject to change) and doesn't favour nationalists over unionists: the traditional county. User:Owain Genealogists, among others, still use them because they were relevant for many centuries of parish and civil registration of personal events. Some are rather fragmented, however, which would be a disadvantage for some purposes. : robinp 19:27, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The usual US convention in normal usage is to specify the state. The usual UK convention in normal usage is to use the county or, very often, perhaps more often, the traditional county. That works for us as well, since it's usual local usage and disambiguates better than a large territory within the UK. Jamesday 20:59, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
What about the following?
-- Ruhrjung 18:23, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think we should use the City, Province/State/Territory/Whatever format whenever that is the prodominate form within the country. This applies at least to Canada, the US, and Australia.
If use this format for a country, it should apply to all cities, not just the ambiguous or lesser-known ones. - Efghij 01:27, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Let's see if we can express this simply. The preffered format is:
Make sense? Tannin 13:42, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Looks good - except I would suggest skipping the third one, and only using the fourth one for Victorian locations which have a "Victoria" ambiguity. This way, the majority of locations only go as far as the second option
City, State.
I have also redirecting City, Australia to City, where City is a disambig page, there are multiple Australian locations by that name, AND there are international locations by that name. See Cheltenham, Australia. This way only one disambig page (the main one) needs to be kept up to date. -- Chuq 04:22, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
See: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names)/Spain.
This is my pet peeve. In uses such as --
John Jones was born in Jackson, Mississippi, where his parents were on vacation.
-- that second comma is mandatory to set off the apposite.
This usage --
John Jones was born in Jackson, Mississippi where his parents were on vacation.
-- is just wrong, wrong, wrong. -acsenray
Based on the discussions at Talk:New York, New York, I shall protest the entire system whereby American (and Canadian) cities have to have articles at City, State/Province. I don't see any reason why this should be the case for cities where there is only one famous city of that name. Why do we need the article to be at Chicago, Illinois when there's only one important city named Chicago and Chicago redirects to the article on the Illinois city? There is only one Toronto of any note, but the article is at Toronto, Ontario. Why do we need to do this? Why are we fetishizing consistency at the expense of using the shortest name possible? What on earth is the advantage behind having the article at Chicago, Illinois or Los Angeles, California as opposed to simply Chicago and Los Angeles? john 07:11, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
But this is much more sensible. You Australians are sensible people in your city naming policies. My whole point is that because Chicago and Los Angeles redirect to Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles, California, there's no good reason for those articles to be, as Mav put it at Talk:New York, New York, pre-emptively disambiguated. I think this is fine to do with small cities, because people generally haven't heard of them, so even when there's no need for disambiguation, there's reason to be more specific. But it's completely ridiculous to do this for major cities. Here, for the sake of stimulating further discussion, is Mav's reply to my objection to the current standards at the New York page: john 17:50, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for the explanation about the ram-bot. At any rate, the argument that "introducing bias" is leading to disputes now is a straw man. The dispute now is about whether or not the general rule makes sense. If the general rule were not to use city, state, I see no reason to expect that there will be any more problems than there are now. I can't believe that anybody would advocate having the article on New York City at New York, New York if that were not a general policy to be used without exceptions. Similarly, do you really think there would be any articles about what Los Angeles the article Los Angeles should refer to? As I've repeatedly said, it's often not that difficult to determine what the most famous city of a particular name is, and when it is difficult, we should maintain the current system. But why should we have unnecessary disambiguation in article titles? As to the aesthetic value of disambiguation notices, I suppose that's a personal matter - I find it aesthetically unpleasant that the article on New York City is at New York, New York and that Chicago is at Chicago, Illinois. So I suppose it's a matter of personal taste. You can find my fuller thoughts on this stuff at Talk:New York, New York and Mav's talk page. john 18:14, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
Here's my problem - I think the specific standard conflicts with general wikipedia standards that we should use the most commonly used name. And I see no compelling reason to do this. Australia is able to get by with only using the state name when necessary, without getting into many problems. I don't think any German cities use this form of disambiguation. English cities only use it when appropriate. So why is it necessary to have a uniform standard for U.S. city names that results in hideous article titles like New York, New York? If I could see a compelling case for why this uniform standard is necessary, I would agree with you, but I am still unclear as to what that compelling case is. That is to say - I don't like the fact that European cities are located at nice, clear places like Paris, London, Berlin, Vienna, Madrid, and so forth, the big Australian cities are just at Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra, and so on and so on; while major American cities have to be at annoying looking locations like New York, New York, Los Angeles, California, Chicago, Illinois, and completely unambiguous Japanese cities are at places like Kyoto, Kyoto, Osaka, Osaka, Hiroshima, Hiroshima, and so on and so forth. This is just ugly and unnecessary. john 18:50, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
Now, here's my proposal after reading all of these debates. It's certainly not meant as a voting issue (yet), but perhaps it could serve as a basis for changes and development into a convention to be agreed upon.
I don't see why we can't have cities anywhere named under the city, assuming that there can be a consensus that it is famous enough to do so. john 19:39, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
In my opinion, the current standard for US city naming is a good thing. It simplifies. It frees us from constant move and edit wars about where things should be. It means that when I'm writing an article and want to link to a US city, I know exactly what I should link to without having to check.
It also removes the nasty pro-US bias that would inevitably occur, because so many American cities are named after places in Europe.
I think this proposal is highly damaging, and is attempting to disturb and displace a useful and peaceful consensus just to satisfy the aesthetic tastes of a few users. I urge my fellow Wikipedians to leave the stable status quo well alone.
—Morven
00:36, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
What evidence is there that there would be constant move and edit wars? I'm suggesting that we use disambiguation only when necessary. I don't see why this is so hard to figure out - we do that with every other article in the wikipedia, without constant move and edit wars. john 00:47, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
Speaking more broadly, a city is a kind of thing with a clear definition, and there should be a broad, flexible policy for naming all cities, rather than a bunch of narrow, restrictive policies for naming cities in different countries. Why should world cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City be named according to completely different standards from great cities of other parts of the world? john 00:52, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
There won't be new census data for ten years, will there? And the purpose of an encyclopedia is not to report census data about US cities, or to make things easy for a bot. I'd also note that your example of Hempfield is a complete straw man - I'm not proposing that small towns that nobody's heard of be listed without the state, just major cities where there would be no confusion about what city is meant. And my real reasons for this are that a) no other encyclopedia uses the city, state formula for articles on major cities; b) it results in deeply ugly and, to be honest, weird and actually ambiguous, article titles like New York, New York, which are only justified by this policy; c) it results in a standard whereby American city articles are titled differently from articles on cities in other parts of the world, for no reason other than so that a bot can work more easily; and d) the basic wikipedia policy is to use disambiguation only when necessary. After all, it would be completely consistent if every individual had an article at their full name, no matter how long, because there might be another person of the same commonly used name. But we don't do that, because it's silly, and we can use judgment. The same applies in this case. And, once again, I am not suggesting that most American cities be moved - most American cities are little known, and share their name with cities in other states. Such articles clearly shouldn't be moved. I'm not talking about Hempfield, Pennsylvania, or Storrs, Connecticut, or whatever hell tiny town nobody has heard of before. I'm talking about major American cities, where there is no confusion as to what is being referred to, being located at silly unnecessary disambiguating locations. And, so far as I can tell, entirely for the convenience of a bot. Wikipedia is supposed to be for the benefit of readers, not for the convenience of a bot updating census data nobody's really interested in anyway. john 04:02, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
Well, nobody agrees with me, as far as I can tell. So, whatever. If people want to have articles in ridiculous locations so that a bot can upload uninteresting census data, whatever. I'm done with this argument. In fact, why don't we have all U.S. cities at City, County, State? Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California would clearly disambiguate Los Angeles from any other possible cities named Los Angeles in California. Since there are a few cities that do share names in different states, it's pretty clear that we should name all articles this way, in order to preventively disambiguate, and prevent all these endless edit wars we've been getting into about whether Hicksville, Hick County, Arkansas or Hicksville, Dull County, Arkansas should get the coveted Hicksville, Arkansas location. And it would make it easier for the bot to upload data about the exact acreage of these municipalities! And let's add the département to the name of every French city. Paris, Seine is much better than just Paris. After all, we don't want to confuse it with Paris, Indiana. Unhappily, john 04:45, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
I must say that I agree entirely with Bkonrad here, as I've probably already made clear. But, another point, related to the convention. The convention is partially justified on the basis that it conforms with US postal service usage. This can be misleading, though. In Montgomery County, Maryland, where I'm from, there are numerous post office designations that are much larger than the municipalities with which they share their name. For instance, my parents' home has the post office address of "Kensington, Maryland." However, it is not part of the Town of Kensington. The City of Rockville is considerably smaller than the area where people put "Rockville, MD" on their mailing address. So what are these articles referring to? From the Rockville article, I must say that I have absolutely no idea. So, then, the current, utterly unambiguous standard is not, in fact, all that unambiguous. At any rate, I find that the defenders of the current policy are using complete straw men. Of course Vienna, Virginia and Kensington, Maryland need to be disambiguated. No one is suggesting that they not be. That's a complete different matter from well-known cities where there is already a redirect from the city name to the city, state format. john 22:50, 8 May 2004 (UTC)
[ [1]] on the vote here, it was 4 yes to 2 no for the U.S. naming convention. 66% yes to 33% no. WhisperToMe 05:03, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
4 to 2? That's an intensely small number of votes, and it was taken two years ago. I think this decision ought to be revisited. john 05:06, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
I assume there were not that many people on WP back then. WhisperToMe 05:18, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
One would assume. Given the number of people who've raised concerns with the policy recently, I think a new vote is absolutely in order - as I said at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names), I think this would be beneficial no matter how the vote turns out - I don't see a policy decided two years ago by four people as having any particular validity when more than four people are currently objecting to it. If a new vote showed solid support for this policy, I think it would be much harder for me and others to argue against it. john 05:34, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
I agree: 4 to 2 seems more like an opinion in an ad hoc discussion group than any kind of consensus. Still in all, even if [City, State} is appropriate in most cases (as disambiguation), this seems foolish for well-known places. To state it yet again again, London, Rome, Berlin, and on and on, don't even have country names attached, even though there are other Londons, Romes and Berlins around the world. -- Cecropia | Talk 05:39, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
To state yet again, specific naming policies override general ones. And in addition, there are cities out there which some would consider a world city, and that others wouldn't. WhisperToMe 05:49, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are not among these. At any rate, to state yet again, this "specific naming policy" is based on the votes of four people two years ago. It ought to be revisited. john 05:53, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Maybe not, but what about Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? Should it recieve special treatment? WhisperToMe 05:56, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
There is no other notable city named Pittsburgh. It should be at Pittsburgh. Philadelphia, Detroit, Cincinnati, San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Virginia Beach, Oklahoma City, Topeka, Santa Fe, and so on and so forth, have no particular reason not to be at those locations, either. I'd say that Boston and Cleveland, Ohio, which are named for places in England, have probably sufficiently outstripped their namesakes to warrant this treatment as well, although I'm ready to be convinced otherwise. I mean, I'd say that a city should have to either be a state capital or have more than 100,000 people or so to be considered for not having to be disambiguated. Once you get to that point, you should have to use normal disambiguation rules - are there other cities of that name? Is the largest city of that name sufficiently better known than the others to deserve the main article space? And so on. I see no reason to think this will cause any particular problems - it has not done so with the many cities in other world countries that we have articles on. john 06:04, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Or places named after people - Bismarck, North Dakota, Saint Louis, Missouri, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. I'd say that most of the 30,000 articles on US municipalities are almost certainly fine where they are. john 06:20, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Again, what constitutes as an "important city", and what doesn't? There are obvious ones, yes. But there are also not-so-obvious ones. This is a bit closer to rocket science than one thought... WhisperToMe 06:23, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
I said state capitals and cities with populations of over 100,000 probably qualify as important. These should not be disambiguated unless a) there are multiple cities where it's hard to say that one is particularly more famous than the other; or b) the city has a secondary meaning deserving of its own encyclopedia article. When in doubt, disambiguate. john 06:29, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
But some people will not like seeing NYC get special preference in opposition to other cities, e.g. Los Angeles. Either way, this is a no-win issue. WhisperToMe 06:35, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Huh? We're saying do the same thing for Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. as for New York. We can address the question of, say, Tempe, when we get there. (assuming that people decide to revise the current policy). But perhaps this should all go at the Naming conventions page. I'm going to copy this discussion over there. john 06:37, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Given that WhisperToMe has just pointed out the actual vote whereby the US city naming policy was determined, I note that only six people actually voted on this policy - 4 in favor and 2 against. Whereas more than six people have in the last few days expressed an opinion on this subject, and many have expressed doubts about whether this policy is a good idea (including Cecropia (maybe - I'm not sure if he was disagreeing with the policy in general, or just its application to New York), BKonrad, Nohat, Proteus, and myself - that is to say, almost as many people as voted in the original decision), I move that this policy (and, by extension, that for Canadian cities) be reopened for a new vote. I think that, as it stands now, a policy decided by four people nearly two years ago cannot be used as an argument for preventing any further discussion of this question at all. A new vote would either a) provide greater legitimacy for the current policy if it is supported by a majority; or b) justly overturn a policy for which there is no longer a consensus. Do I have a second? john 05:17, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Vote and vote and vote and vote until you get your way. You've already gotten your way despite the vote, so why bother? You are all going to do whatever you want to do. Rick K 05:20, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
I have not moved the page. Furthermore, the vote was in favor of moving the city to New York City. The page is currently at City of New York. I 1) resent being accused of doing things that I had nothing to do with; and 2) am trying to come up with a way to resolve the dispute, which currently seems inresoluble within the confines of the New York page. Furthermore, I'd like to see you defend the principle that a 4-2 vote from two years ago supersedes the outcome of a 17-15 vote from yesterday. john 05:30, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Before there is any vote on this cluster of issues, I hope that we can at least come to a clear sense of just what is being voted on. There have been two fairly contentious votes over naming issues recently, and both have been flawed (IMO) by a lack of clarity in framing the issues being voted on. In both cases, a vote was held concerning the naming of specific cities, while the actual issues concerned how to interpret policy statements.
In the recent Wikipedia:Naming policy poll vote concerning Kiev/Kyiv, Calcutta/Kolkata, Mecca/Makkah, and Gothenburg / Göteborg, ostensibly the vote was about agreeing or disagreeing with the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names); however the vote was largely a popularity poll on the names. IMO, the real issue was that there is no incontrovertible method for fairly assessing what is really the most common current usage throughout the english speaking world. At best, the Wikipedia:Google Test offers only a **very** rough indication. IMO, the vote would have been more productive if it had tried to establish some criteria for determining the "most common usage" rather than voting up or down on four separate specific instances as a group.
The more recent New York City naming poll was a vote on five different names for the article, but did not directly address the underlying issues about the applicable policies, which as I see it are 1) whether the specific U.S. city naming policy should take precedence over the more general Use Common Names policy; and 2) whether the specific U.S. city naming policy to preemptively disamiguate names should apply in all cases without exception.
FWIW, my position on Kiev/Kyiv and related items is that for international place names and in the absence of an incontrovertible method for establishing the most commonly used name throughout the entire english-speaking world, we should by default defer to the expressly declared official english spellings of a place where that spelling is recognized by other international entities such as the UN and various national embassies. Without such a default position, we need to establish exactly how we determine what is the "most commonly used" name, otherwise these sorts of controversies will continue to reoccur. I don't want to reopen the Kiev/Kyiv debate here, but I do want to suggest that we NEED a clear statement about how to determine "most common" usage.
For NYC, my position is that the fact that the undisambiguated names for so many of the large cities ALREADY redirect to the City,State forms is de facto evidence that a decision has been made that those names are most commonly used to refer to those cities. In typical usage, people are far more likely to use the undisambiguated names, such as Chicago or New York City, or Detroit, rather than the city,state form. Certainly people do use that form in some contexts, but most of the time it is not necessary to specify the state--the cities are well known on their own. I think john's suggestions above for a cutoff at 100,000 is reasonable (i.e., unambiguous names for cities larger than 100,000 would be titled simply by the Cityname (with City,State as a redirect). Places smaller than 100,000 would be named City,State (and in cases where there is no ambiguity, the Cityname would redirect to City,State).
In sum, I think john is quite right in moving this discussion to the policy page, as the issue is better addressed as policy rather than application to a specific instance. older≠ wiser 14:03, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
I absolutely agree that if there is to be a vote on this policy, we need to be absolutely clear what is being voted on. I suggest that we bat around the wording on a temp page or something and get it so that it's as immaculate as possible before we open voting - for this to have any value, we need to a) be absolutely clear about what we are voting on; b) run the vote in as fair and open a manner as possible. I'd prefer not to have RickK coming in all "you're just holding votes until you win," if that's possible (I suspect that it is not, though, but we can always try.) john 15:13, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Agree with Proteus and Cecropia, actually. English cities should be disambiguated using county, rather than country. Big American cities should be treated like big cities anywhere else. john 19:33, 11 May 2004 (UTC)
Please see my proposed policy for handling the naming of geographical places at Wikipedia:Geographical names naming policy (proposed) Nohat 18:51, 2004 May 11 (UTC)
The current policy says, "there are no special naming conventions for cities" and, in the following sentence, sets out a special naming convention for cities. Then it identifies the problem: "Over 30,000 U.S. city articles are already in the form of "City, State" even if they do not need disambiguation." So, the policy of disambiguating when there is no need already has the weight of inertia on its side. The statement, "There is some dispute as to the general applicability of this convention" is no doubt true (and is about the only statement on that page that makes any sense). A dispute would seem unavoidable since the special policy contradicts the general policy (not to mention the fact that it is being used selectively). If I can vote, I vote for any proposal that repudiates the convention of unnecessarily disambiguating US and Canadia cities. Bluelion 13:41, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
I think the big problem is that place names fall into three groups:
If all we had were the first and third, there would be little to argue about; it hardly matters whether "Ronkonkoma" is the main article, with "Ronkonkoma, New York" being a redirect to it, or vice versa, and surely nobody, not even Bluelion, must doubt that "Springfield" has to be disambiguated. The problem is that there is this second group, which I want disambuguated and Bluelion/John do not. There is also a secondary problem, that many of us disagree as to whether a given name belongs in the second or the third category. Hence my edit war with Mintguy over Exeter. I think that because it is so hard to draw the line between category-2 and category-3 names, it is better to treat all non-unique names as if they were in category 3, and then, because category 1 is so small, to disambiguate those names (but with redirects) for consistency. Part of the reason I feel this way is that I have probably constructed more disambiguation pages than any other Wikipedian (and I would not be surprised to find that I have constructed more than all other Wikipedians combined!) and added to most of the ones that I have not constructed. And whenever I build a new one I have to check to see that the name has not already been pre-empted by someone who has decided that the name in question is in what I have here designated as category 2. It would be much simpler if any disambiguation page for a city name would be at "Cityname" rather than some being at "Cityname" and others being at "Cityname (disambiguation)." -- BRG 13:31, May 19, 2004 (UTC)
Of course it can be difficult to draw the line between your category 2 and your category 3. That does not mean the attempt should not be made. I've already agreed, at any rate, that in cases where it's uncertain, we should disambiguate. But there are many cases where it's not at all unclear. john 16:12, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
It is a longer variation of the name whose sole purpose is disambiguation. At any rate, I agree with the idea of using disambiguation if a consensus cannot be arrived at that there should not be. This is just common sense, and general wikipedia policy. I see no reason why we need to needlessly disambiguate when there's no reason to do so except a general policy to disambiguate. john 19:22, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Proteus that no case has been made for even having a special convention for cities, and I agree that it only serves to make Wikipedia look stupid (understatement of the century), since it contradicts the general Wikipedia convention that article titles should be based on common usage. Those who don't like the general Wikipedia convention that titles should be based on common usage should have the decency to stand up and admit they want to change the general convention rather than taking the coward's way out by trying to sabotage it. Bluelion 20:45, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
I'm fine with large U.S. and Canadian cities breaking from the existing naming convention, provided that
Is this workable? - jredmond 22:21, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
Personally I think it's daft that major cities should get the same treatment as tiny villages. I would say that perhaps 99% of people looking up say San Francisco are looking for the famous city rather than some obscure village somewhere which may share the same name.
I also dont think many people will agree with BRG's idea of turning everything into a disambiguation. As BRG keeps bringing up the Exeter situation. BRG seems to think that if somewhere is not well known in the US then it obviously should not be regarded as being "common usage" of the name, which is IMO horribly US centric. G-Man 22:56, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
Even in the US, it is not as though there are any very famous cities named "Exeter." The most well known is probably Exeter, New Hampshire, which is not all that well-known. john k 23:23, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
jredmond's proposal sounds good to me, and reasonably in keeping with the existing "put articles at their most common name" rule of thumb we use for non-city topics. I have no problem with erring on the side of disambiguation, as long as the major cities are at simply their bare names. Paris, not Paris, France, and similarly San Francisco, not San Francisco, California. One thing that should not happen, which currently happens a lot, is a non-disambig. location being a redirect to a disambig. location, which is completely out of keeping with the purpose of disambig. pages. Cityname should either have the city name, or be a disambig. page, not redirect to Cityname, somewhere. The redirects make for all sorts of unintuitive things, like Cityname, state having a link to Cityname (disambiguation at the top, which we have to explain as " Cityname redirects here; for other uses see Cityname (disambiguation), which is a pretty screaming red flag that we set up something very unintuitively if we have to explain things like that to our users. -- Delirium 05:13, May 23, 2004 (UTC)
Well said Delirium!. Any sensible system of naming conventions should have a certain amount of flexibillity to deal with sensible exceptions, rather than trying to squeeze everything into a rigid format whether or not it's sensible. What's so hot about consistency anyway, I seem to recall a saying which goes somthing like "A follish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" (not that I'm suggesting that any of you have small minds of course). G-Man 18:24, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This 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. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | → | Archive 10 |
As noted before, two issues have been decided, but these leave lot of room for discussion.
The issue of using normal disambiguation rules should be clear; articles on cities get that name unless there are other topics with the same name.
Next, it has been decided that the "comma notation" ([City, Something]) is used for city names in stead of the parenthesis format. That still leaves the following possibilities:
The first option would give Sydney, Australia and Sydney, Canada, and Las Vegas, Nevada and Las Vegas, New Mexico (assuming both city names are equally common in use). The second option would give Sydney, Australia and Sydney, Nova Scotia.
I myself have no preference for either option. The latter may be easier to remember, but shows less consistency. However, since in many cases there will be many US cities and some foreign ones with the same name, that one seems the best and most logical option.
In either case, it should be investigated and listed what the standards for disambiguating nationally are per country. For the USA and Canada, these have already been established as being [City, State] and [City, Province]. For others this still has to be decided. A remaining question is whether to use the natural disambiguator for a country (be it in English language or not) should also be used if it doesn't have the comma notation. I'd say yes here - if Malta's (example) English language convention is to use City-Province, I'd say we should use that.
The last issue is the so-called "Paris" problem. As we're following "normal disambiguation" rules, it states that when one of the disambiguated articles has priority, it gets to stay at the main article (Paris, in our example). If none of the articles has priority, they're all disambiguated. The current disambiguation rules also state this decision must be made on a case-to-case basis. I think that solves our problem here. In case we decide (no matter how) that the French city has priority over the Trojan and all the other spots on the map, we put its article at Paris, and put a block-format disambiguation at the top. If we decide the city hasn't got priority, we use the normal disambiguation article. I don't see any other possibilities, but I may be wrong.
Summarising, we need to decide on :
I think "has priority" is "defined" at disambiguation as the most commonly associated meaning of the name, if any. For some, this is difficult to determine, but for a city like Rome, it is pretty clear that this one should has priority. Jeronimo
Archive 4 came from here.
Archive 5 came from here.
I just got a note that somehow Wiki convention got established that "St." should be abbreviated in city names. For US cities, at least, this is contrary to the official US Government policy that states that "Saint" should be spelled out. I think it has to be agreed that, regardless of what we do in the case of other countries, "Saint" needs to be spelled out in US placenames -- BRG July 19, 2003
What the US Government's official policy is doesn't matter a damn, any more than the official French government policy, Italian government policy, Irish government policy etc does. If a city's official name uses St then it should go in as St. If it officially called Saint then that should be used. BRG's constant causing chaos in naming cities on wiki is getting ludicrous. He has already caused chaos by mucking up disambigulations and links with crazy name changes which no-one agreed to. Now cities with St is his next place to unilaterally cause chaos. FearÉIREANN 18:41 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Yup. That's what I understand its role to be too. BTW The Clerk's office in St. Cloud, Minnesota is also at St. Cloud, not Saint Cloud. St. Cloud city clerk page Is this another rerun of BMG's Exeter fiasco, when he decided to create a unilateral disambigulation approach that was contrary to wiki policy, contrary to the naming style used and contrary to logic, but defended it to the end even when users were queuing to tell him to stop? BTW, for all the renaming (which I have reversed) did BMG actually check to see if any links had been broken with his latest st. to saint batch of renamings? FearÉIREANN 19:31 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Someone needs to archive this page. It is now at 54K. I would do it but I am on a v-e-r-y--s-l-o-w- link from Ireland that can take minutes to form a page sometimes. If I tried, it would take so long I'd be caught up in edit conflicts. (I archived something recently and it took me nine attempts to save the changes because everytime I tried, someone else had added in a new comment.) It is best if someone on a fast link does it. (Either that or I'd have to protect the page for a couple of minutes to stop anyone editing it while I was archiving it. Hell on wiki is trying to do an archive on a slow link and then getting trapped in a constant edit conflicts.) FearÉIREANN 19:31 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Quoting from the BGN's site: "Although established to serve the Federal Government as a central authority to which all name problems, name inquiries, and new name proposals can be directed, the Board also plays a similar role for the general public." Therefore, as you can see, if _any_ authority has the right to be called "official," it is the BGN. BTW, The Postal Service does follow this rule as well: You can address a letter to "St. Louis" and it will get delivered but in all postal directories, the place is shown as "Saint Louis." I am still waiting to find out what Jtdirl seems to think _is_ official, since he has claimed that he wants to use "the city's official name"! (After all, that is what _I_ want to do as well!) BRG July 21
Stop mis-interpreting the role of the BGN. The guide is obviously what the cities regard as their official name. The BGN plays the same role as other similar organisations in other states of co-ordinating names, of dealing with problems should one urban entity wish to use a name already being used elsewhere. But unless a problem occurs, the urban centre's chosen name becomes the one and when a city adopts a name that is it. The BGN may like people to use saint but if a city (as they have) adopt St., St. it is. It is that simple and this gross mis-understanding of the BGN's role simply making an issue of a non-issue. FearÉIREANN 19:24 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Okay, not to start another row here, . . . but I'm in the process of adding paragraphs of history info to the pages of Louisiana parishes (known as "counties" in the rest of the U.S.). I was taken aback to find that some (not all, mind you, only some) are listed as, e.g., "Saint Charles," redirected from "St. Charles." People, this is simply incorrect, inaccurate, and wrong. The formation and naming of the parishes of St. James, St. Charles, St. Mary, St. John the Baptist, etc., predates not only Louisiana statehood but, in some cases, the formation of the United States. They were and always have been recognized and cited as "St. Whatever" by the territorial and state legislatures, are listed that way in the Louisiana Statutes, and are universally so spelled by everyone in the state. The BGN doesn't enter into it. So how do I get those wrongheaded redirects undone? -- Michael K. Smith 21:47, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Someone has moved the discussion about disambiguating names of cities, towns, and vllages (commas vs. parentheses) to Talk Archive 5. However, as far as I am aware, the issue has not been settled yet. Talk Archive 2 seems to contain all the arguments, and Talk Archive 3 contains a vote which the comma style won by 10 votes to 4, but there are still a lot of people unhappy with the idea. Basically, it seems to me that we have a perfectly workable Wikipedia convention for most articles - to use natural disambiguators and then parentheses if that doesn't work - which we are arbitrarily overriding for the specific case of placenames, just because that's how the Americans like to do it. From the archives, it seems that Toby gave the most detailed arguments; those arguments were against the [City, Country] format, and I can't find any convincing argument against him. I don't consider a vote to be a satisfactory replacement for an argument, really. So can someone please explain why they think the argument is wrong? If not, I think we should get rid of the [City, Country] format altogether. -- Oliver P. 04:15 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I agree with both Mav and Oliver. (See mav, an entire day cannot go by when he don't agree on something! :-) ) FearÉIREANN 05:34 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)
In reply to Mav's query a few paragraphs above, here is one particular Australian's view. Just the plain city name is always best. Qualifiers (country or state, comma or parenthesis, etc.) should only be used to resolve ambiguities. This point is the only one I really care about, the details of how the disambiguation is handled I'm not too fussed about either way. I'd just like to have it settled so that I know what to do next time the question arises. So, should it be Armidale, New South Wales, Armidale (New South Wales), Armidale, Australia or Armidale (Australia? I don't much mind, but I've listed them in best-to-worst order (but even my "worst" is perfectly OK). Tannin (Actually, that was a bad example, as "Armidale" has to be listed with the New South Wales because there is another well-known Armidale in Victoria.) (PPS: I'm talking about Oz and rest of the world here - the existing US cities practice is clearly well supported and should be retained.)
It always gets really hairy when you have multiple places in the same state or county. For examples, Springfield Township, Bradford County, Pennsylvania and Farmington (town), Maine. There are even some places that require both forms of the above disambiguation. Now this is only done on a case by case basis and is not done if not required. The rule is basically this: Use commas if it is part of the name or the physical location (State, County, etc) (i.e. Bradford County is where it is located) and parenthesis when it is not part of the name or location and just a descriptor (i.e. (town)). These are fringe cases and they are consistent. The comma notation for adding the County is a natural by product of using the comma notation when moving from the [[City]] to [[City, State]]. Really, not everyone may be happy with everything, but this is a workable solution and only done when needed. -- Ram-Man 16:55, May 4, 2004 (UTC)
Suppose we have:
I think this would be a very bad idea, and I would like it to be avoided. However, if we do end up with this solution, can we agree that the "default" name will always be redirected to whatever the "local" name might be. This will at least ensure that people can continue to make links freely with some confidence that they'll go to the right place. Martin 17:28 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Maybe the attempt on a worldwide standard was too much at the moment?
It seems pretty clear that the comma-notion is preferred for Australia, USA and Canada.
Other important English-language countries are for instance UK, Éire, South-Africa and India. Should UK do as a start?
Do we agree that the wikipedia standard disambiguation system (i.e. parenthesis, and of course only when needed) is appropriate for UK?
Can "(Wales)", "(England)", "(Scotland)" and "(Northern Ireland)" be deemed sufficiently known in the rest of the world to be used instead of "(United Kingdom)" also in the cases when the place in question wouldn't need to be disambuguated within UK?
--
Ruhrjung 18:23, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)
People seem to be using the sensible comma-notation for the UK. The disagreement is over what the second part of the designation should be. I suggest for somewhere like Hope, England, where all other similarly named towns are in other countries, [Hope, England] suffices, while where there is more than one town in England with the same name, Newport, Shropshire and Newport, Isle of Wight (and Newport, Wales) provide the clearest method. Warofdreams 18:40, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)
In the UK there is one standard, unique, geographical identifier that isn't arbitrary (South Wales, East Anglia, etc), isn't tied to current local government areas (subject to change) and doesn't favour nationalists over unionists: the traditional county. User:Owain Genealogists, among others, still use them because they were relevant for many centuries of parish and civil registration of personal events. Some are rather fragmented, however, which would be a disadvantage for some purposes. : robinp 19:27, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The usual US convention in normal usage is to specify the state. The usual UK convention in normal usage is to use the county or, very often, perhaps more often, the traditional county. That works for us as well, since it's usual local usage and disambiguates better than a large territory within the UK. Jamesday 20:59, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
What about the following?
-- Ruhrjung 18:23, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think we should use the City, Province/State/Territory/Whatever format whenever that is the prodominate form within the country. This applies at least to Canada, the US, and Australia.
If use this format for a country, it should apply to all cities, not just the ambiguous or lesser-known ones. - Efghij 01:27, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Let's see if we can express this simply. The preffered format is:
Make sense? Tannin 13:42, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Looks good - except I would suggest skipping the third one, and only using the fourth one for Victorian locations which have a "Victoria" ambiguity. This way, the majority of locations only go as far as the second option
City, State.
I have also redirecting City, Australia to City, where City is a disambig page, there are multiple Australian locations by that name, AND there are international locations by that name. See Cheltenham, Australia. This way only one disambig page (the main one) needs to be kept up to date. -- Chuq 04:22, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)
See: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names)/Spain.
This is my pet peeve. In uses such as --
John Jones was born in Jackson, Mississippi, where his parents were on vacation.
-- that second comma is mandatory to set off the apposite.
This usage --
John Jones was born in Jackson, Mississippi where his parents were on vacation.
-- is just wrong, wrong, wrong. -acsenray
Based on the discussions at Talk:New York, New York, I shall protest the entire system whereby American (and Canadian) cities have to have articles at City, State/Province. I don't see any reason why this should be the case for cities where there is only one famous city of that name. Why do we need the article to be at Chicago, Illinois when there's only one important city named Chicago and Chicago redirects to the article on the Illinois city? There is only one Toronto of any note, but the article is at Toronto, Ontario. Why do we need to do this? Why are we fetishizing consistency at the expense of using the shortest name possible? What on earth is the advantage behind having the article at Chicago, Illinois or Los Angeles, California as opposed to simply Chicago and Los Angeles? john 07:11, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
But this is much more sensible. You Australians are sensible people in your city naming policies. My whole point is that because Chicago and Los Angeles redirect to Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles, California, there's no good reason for those articles to be, as Mav put it at Talk:New York, New York, pre-emptively disambiguated. I think this is fine to do with small cities, because people generally haven't heard of them, so even when there's no need for disambiguation, there's reason to be more specific. But it's completely ridiculous to do this for major cities. Here, for the sake of stimulating further discussion, is Mav's reply to my objection to the current standards at the New York page: john 17:50, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for the explanation about the ram-bot. At any rate, the argument that "introducing bias" is leading to disputes now is a straw man. The dispute now is about whether or not the general rule makes sense. If the general rule were not to use city, state, I see no reason to expect that there will be any more problems than there are now. I can't believe that anybody would advocate having the article on New York City at New York, New York if that were not a general policy to be used without exceptions. Similarly, do you really think there would be any articles about what Los Angeles the article Los Angeles should refer to? As I've repeatedly said, it's often not that difficult to determine what the most famous city of a particular name is, and when it is difficult, we should maintain the current system. But why should we have unnecessary disambiguation in article titles? As to the aesthetic value of disambiguation notices, I suppose that's a personal matter - I find it aesthetically unpleasant that the article on New York City is at New York, New York and that Chicago is at Chicago, Illinois. So I suppose it's a matter of personal taste. You can find my fuller thoughts on this stuff at Talk:New York, New York and Mav's talk page. john 18:14, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
Here's my problem - I think the specific standard conflicts with general wikipedia standards that we should use the most commonly used name. And I see no compelling reason to do this. Australia is able to get by with only using the state name when necessary, without getting into many problems. I don't think any German cities use this form of disambiguation. English cities only use it when appropriate. So why is it necessary to have a uniform standard for U.S. city names that results in hideous article titles like New York, New York? If I could see a compelling case for why this uniform standard is necessary, I would agree with you, but I am still unclear as to what that compelling case is. That is to say - I don't like the fact that European cities are located at nice, clear places like Paris, London, Berlin, Vienna, Madrid, and so forth, the big Australian cities are just at Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra, and so on and so on; while major American cities have to be at annoying looking locations like New York, New York, Los Angeles, California, Chicago, Illinois, and completely unambiguous Japanese cities are at places like Kyoto, Kyoto, Osaka, Osaka, Hiroshima, Hiroshima, and so on and so forth. This is just ugly and unnecessary. john 18:50, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
Now, here's my proposal after reading all of these debates. It's certainly not meant as a voting issue (yet), but perhaps it could serve as a basis for changes and development into a convention to be agreed upon.
I don't see why we can't have cities anywhere named under the city, assuming that there can be a consensus that it is famous enough to do so. john 19:39, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
In my opinion, the current standard for US city naming is a good thing. It simplifies. It frees us from constant move and edit wars about where things should be. It means that when I'm writing an article and want to link to a US city, I know exactly what I should link to without having to check.
It also removes the nasty pro-US bias that would inevitably occur, because so many American cities are named after places in Europe.
I think this proposal is highly damaging, and is attempting to disturb and displace a useful and peaceful consensus just to satisfy the aesthetic tastes of a few users. I urge my fellow Wikipedians to leave the stable status quo well alone.
—Morven
00:36, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
What evidence is there that there would be constant move and edit wars? I'm suggesting that we use disambiguation only when necessary. I don't see why this is so hard to figure out - we do that with every other article in the wikipedia, without constant move and edit wars. john 00:47, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
Speaking more broadly, a city is a kind of thing with a clear definition, and there should be a broad, flexible policy for naming all cities, rather than a bunch of narrow, restrictive policies for naming cities in different countries. Why should world cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City be named according to completely different standards from great cities of other parts of the world? john 00:52, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
There won't be new census data for ten years, will there? And the purpose of an encyclopedia is not to report census data about US cities, or to make things easy for a bot. I'd also note that your example of Hempfield is a complete straw man - I'm not proposing that small towns that nobody's heard of be listed without the state, just major cities where there would be no confusion about what city is meant. And my real reasons for this are that a) no other encyclopedia uses the city, state formula for articles on major cities; b) it results in deeply ugly and, to be honest, weird and actually ambiguous, article titles like New York, New York, which are only justified by this policy; c) it results in a standard whereby American city articles are titled differently from articles on cities in other parts of the world, for no reason other than so that a bot can work more easily; and d) the basic wikipedia policy is to use disambiguation only when necessary. After all, it would be completely consistent if every individual had an article at their full name, no matter how long, because there might be another person of the same commonly used name. But we don't do that, because it's silly, and we can use judgment. The same applies in this case. And, once again, I am not suggesting that most American cities be moved - most American cities are little known, and share their name with cities in other states. Such articles clearly shouldn't be moved. I'm not talking about Hempfield, Pennsylvania, or Storrs, Connecticut, or whatever hell tiny town nobody has heard of before. I'm talking about major American cities, where there is no confusion as to what is being referred to, being located at silly unnecessary disambiguating locations. And, so far as I can tell, entirely for the convenience of a bot. Wikipedia is supposed to be for the benefit of readers, not for the convenience of a bot updating census data nobody's really interested in anyway. john 04:02, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
Well, nobody agrees with me, as far as I can tell. So, whatever. If people want to have articles in ridiculous locations so that a bot can upload uninteresting census data, whatever. I'm done with this argument. In fact, why don't we have all U.S. cities at City, County, State? Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California would clearly disambiguate Los Angeles from any other possible cities named Los Angeles in California. Since there are a few cities that do share names in different states, it's pretty clear that we should name all articles this way, in order to preventively disambiguate, and prevent all these endless edit wars we've been getting into about whether Hicksville, Hick County, Arkansas or Hicksville, Dull County, Arkansas should get the coveted Hicksville, Arkansas location. And it would make it easier for the bot to upload data about the exact acreage of these municipalities! And let's add the département to the name of every French city. Paris, Seine is much better than just Paris. After all, we don't want to confuse it with Paris, Indiana. Unhappily, john 04:45, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
I must say that I agree entirely with Bkonrad here, as I've probably already made clear. But, another point, related to the convention. The convention is partially justified on the basis that it conforms with US postal service usage. This can be misleading, though. In Montgomery County, Maryland, where I'm from, there are numerous post office designations that are much larger than the municipalities with which they share their name. For instance, my parents' home has the post office address of "Kensington, Maryland." However, it is not part of the Town of Kensington. The City of Rockville is considerably smaller than the area where people put "Rockville, MD" on their mailing address. So what are these articles referring to? From the Rockville article, I must say that I have absolutely no idea. So, then, the current, utterly unambiguous standard is not, in fact, all that unambiguous. At any rate, I find that the defenders of the current policy are using complete straw men. Of course Vienna, Virginia and Kensington, Maryland need to be disambiguated. No one is suggesting that they not be. That's a complete different matter from well-known cities where there is already a redirect from the city name to the city, state format. john 22:50, 8 May 2004 (UTC)
[ [1]] on the vote here, it was 4 yes to 2 no for the U.S. naming convention. 66% yes to 33% no. WhisperToMe 05:03, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
4 to 2? That's an intensely small number of votes, and it was taken two years ago. I think this decision ought to be revisited. john 05:06, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
I assume there were not that many people on WP back then. WhisperToMe 05:18, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
One would assume. Given the number of people who've raised concerns with the policy recently, I think a new vote is absolutely in order - as I said at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names), I think this would be beneficial no matter how the vote turns out - I don't see a policy decided two years ago by four people as having any particular validity when more than four people are currently objecting to it. If a new vote showed solid support for this policy, I think it would be much harder for me and others to argue against it. john 05:34, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
I agree: 4 to 2 seems more like an opinion in an ad hoc discussion group than any kind of consensus. Still in all, even if [City, State} is appropriate in most cases (as disambiguation), this seems foolish for well-known places. To state it yet again again, London, Rome, Berlin, and on and on, don't even have country names attached, even though there are other Londons, Romes and Berlins around the world. -- Cecropia | Talk 05:39, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
To state yet again, specific naming policies override general ones. And in addition, there are cities out there which some would consider a world city, and that others wouldn't. WhisperToMe 05:49, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are not among these. At any rate, to state yet again, this "specific naming policy" is based on the votes of four people two years ago. It ought to be revisited. john 05:53, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Maybe not, but what about Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? Should it recieve special treatment? WhisperToMe 05:56, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
There is no other notable city named Pittsburgh. It should be at Pittsburgh. Philadelphia, Detroit, Cincinnati, San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Virginia Beach, Oklahoma City, Topeka, Santa Fe, and so on and so forth, have no particular reason not to be at those locations, either. I'd say that Boston and Cleveland, Ohio, which are named for places in England, have probably sufficiently outstripped their namesakes to warrant this treatment as well, although I'm ready to be convinced otherwise. I mean, I'd say that a city should have to either be a state capital or have more than 100,000 people or so to be considered for not having to be disambiguated. Once you get to that point, you should have to use normal disambiguation rules - are there other cities of that name? Is the largest city of that name sufficiently better known than the others to deserve the main article space? And so on. I see no reason to think this will cause any particular problems - it has not done so with the many cities in other world countries that we have articles on. john 06:04, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Or places named after people - Bismarck, North Dakota, Saint Louis, Missouri, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. I'd say that most of the 30,000 articles on US municipalities are almost certainly fine where they are. john 06:20, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Again, what constitutes as an "important city", and what doesn't? There are obvious ones, yes. But there are also not-so-obvious ones. This is a bit closer to rocket science than one thought... WhisperToMe 06:23, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
I said state capitals and cities with populations of over 100,000 probably qualify as important. These should not be disambiguated unless a) there are multiple cities where it's hard to say that one is particularly more famous than the other; or b) the city has a secondary meaning deserving of its own encyclopedia article. When in doubt, disambiguate. john 06:29, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
But some people will not like seeing NYC get special preference in opposition to other cities, e.g. Los Angeles. Either way, this is a no-win issue. WhisperToMe 06:35, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Huh? We're saying do the same thing for Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. as for New York. We can address the question of, say, Tempe, when we get there. (assuming that people decide to revise the current policy). But perhaps this should all go at the Naming conventions page. I'm going to copy this discussion over there. john 06:37, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Given that WhisperToMe has just pointed out the actual vote whereby the US city naming policy was determined, I note that only six people actually voted on this policy - 4 in favor and 2 against. Whereas more than six people have in the last few days expressed an opinion on this subject, and many have expressed doubts about whether this policy is a good idea (including Cecropia (maybe - I'm not sure if he was disagreeing with the policy in general, or just its application to New York), BKonrad, Nohat, Proteus, and myself - that is to say, almost as many people as voted in the original decision), I move that this policy (and, by extension, that for Canadian cities) be reopened for a new vote. I think that, as it stands now, a policy decided by four people nearly two years ago cannot be used as an argument for preventing any further discussion of this question at all. A new vote would either a) provide greater legitimacy for the current policy if it is supported by a majority; or b) justly overturn a policy for which there is no longer a consensus. Do I have a second? john 05:17, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Vote and vote and vote and vote until you get your way. You've already gotten your way despite the vote, so why bother? You are all going to do whatever you want to do. Rick K 05:20, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
I have not moved the page. Furthermore, the vote was in favor of moving the city to New York City. The page is currently at City of New York. I 1) resent being accused of doing things that I had nothing to do with; and 2) am trying to come up with a way to resolve the dispute, which currently seems inresoluble within the confines of the New York page. Furthermore, I'd like to see you defend the principle that a 4-2 vote from two years ago supersedes the outcome of a 17-15 vote from yesterday. john 05:30, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Before there is any vote on this cluster of issues, I hope that we can at least come to a clear sense of just what is being voted on. There have been two fairly contentious votes over naming issues recently, and both have been flawed (IMO) by a lack of clarity in framing the issues being voted on. In both cases, a vote was held concerning the naming of specific cities, while the actual issues concerned how to interpret policy statements.
In the recent Wikipedia:Naming policy poll vote concerning Kiev/Kyiv, Calcutta/Kolkata, Mecca/Makkah, and Gothenburg / Göteborg, ostensibly the vote was about agreeing or disagreeing with the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names); however the vote was largely a popularity poll on the names. IMO, the real issue was that there is no incontrovertible method for fairly assessing what is really the most common current usage throughout the english speaking world. At best, the Wikipedia:Google Test offers only a **very** rough indication. IMO, the vote would have been more productive if it had tried to establish some criteria for determining the "most common usage" rather than voting up or down on four separate specific instances as a group.
The more recent New York City naming poll was a vote on five different names for the article, but did not directly address the underlying issues about the applicable policies, which as I see it are 1) whether the specific U.S. city naming policy should take precedence over the more general Use Common Names policy; and 2) whether the specific U.S. city naming policy to preemptively disamiguate names should apply in all cases without exception.
FWIW, my position on Kiev/Kyiv and related items is that for international place names and in the absence of an incontrovertible method for establishing the most commonly used name throughout the entire english-speaking world, we should by default defer to the expressly declared official english spellings of a place where that spelling is recognized by other international entities such as the UN and various national embassies. Without such a default position, we need to establish exactly how we determine what is the "most commonly used" name, otherwise these sorts of controversies will continue to reoccur. I don't want to reopen the Kiev/Kyiv debate here, but I do want to suggest that we NEED a clear statement about how to determine "most common" usage.
For NYC, my position is that the fact that the undisambiguated names for so many of the large cities ALREADY redirect to the City,State forms is de facto evidence that a decision has been made that those names are most commonly used to refer to those cities. In typical usage, people are far more likely to use the undisambiguated names, such as Chicago or New York City, or Detroit, rather than the city,state form. Certainly people do use that form in some contexts, but most of the time it is not necessary to specify the state--the cities are well known on their own. I think john's suggestions above for a cutoff at 100,000 is reasonable (i.e., unambiguous names for cities larger than 100,000 would be titled simply by the Cityname (with City,State as a redirect). Places smaller than 100,000 would be named City,State (and in cases where there is no ambiguity, the Cityname would redirect to City,State).
In sum, I think john is quite right in moving this discussion to the policy page, as the issue is better addressed as policy rather than application to a specific instance. older≠ wiser 14:03, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
I absolutely agree that if there is to be a vote on this policy, we need to be absolutely clear what is being voted on. I suggest that we bat around the wording on a temp page or something and get it so that it's as immaculate as possible before we open voting - for this to have any value, we need to a) be absolutely clear about what we are voting on; b) run the vote in as fair and open a manner as possible. I'd prefer not to have RickK coming in all "you're just holding votes until you win," if that's possible (I suspect that it is not, though, but we can always try.) john 15:13, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
Agree with Proteus and Cecropia, actually. English cities should be disambiguated using county, rather than country. Big American cities should be treated like big cities anywhere else. john 19:33, 11 May 2004 (UTC)
Please see my proposed policy for handling the naming of geographical places at Wikipedia:Geographical names naming policy (proposed) Nohat 18:51, 2004 May 11 (UTC)
The current policy says, "there are no special naming conventions for cities" and, in the following sentence, sets out a special naming convention for cities. Then it identifies the problem: "Over 30,000 U.S. city articles are already in the form of "City, State" even if they do not need disambiguation." So, the policy of disambiguating when there is no need already has the weight of inertia on its side. The statement, "There is some dispute as to the general applicability of this convention" is no doubt true (and is about the only statement on that page that makes any sense). A dispute would seem unavoidable since the special policy contradicts the general policy (not to mention the fact that it is being used selectively). If I can vote, I vote for any proposal that repudiates the convention of unnecessarily disambiguating US and Canadia cities. Bluelion 13:41, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
I think the big problem is that place names fall into three groups:
If all we had were the first and third, there would be little to argue about; it hardly matters whether "Ronkonkoma" is the main article, with "Ronkonkoma, New York" being a redirect to it, or vice versa, and surely nobody, not even Bluelion, must doubt that "Springfield" has to be disambiguated. The problem is that there is this second group, which I want disambuguated and Bluelion/John do not. There is also a secondary problem, that many of us disagree as to whether a given name belongs in the second or the third category. Hence my edit war with Mintguy over Exeter. I think that because it is so hard to draw the line between category-2 and category-3 names, it is better to treat all non-unique names as if they were in category 3, and then, because category 1 is so small, to disambiguate those names (but with redirects) for consistency. Part of the reason I feel this way is that I have probably constructed more disambiguation pages than any other Wikipedian (and I would not be surprised to find that I have constructed more than all other Wikipedians combined!) and added to most of the ones that I have not constructed. And whenever I build a new one I have to check to see that the name has not already been pre-empted by someone who has decided that the name in question is in what I have here designated as category 2. It would be much simpler if any disambiguation page for a city name would be at "Cityname" rather than some being at "Cityname" and others being at "Cityname (disambiguation)." -- BRG 13:31, May 19, 2004 (UTC)
Of course it can be difficult to draw the line between your category 2 and your category 3. That does not mean the attempt should not be made. I've already agreed, at any rate, that in cases where it's uncertain, we should disambiguate. But there are many cases where it's not at all unclear. john 16:12, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
It is a longer variation of the name whose sole purpose is disambiguation. At any rate, I agree with the idea of using disambiguation if a consensus cannot be arrived at that there should not be. This is just common sense, and general wikipedia policy. I see no reason why we need to needlessly disambiguate when there's no reason to do so except a general policy to disambiguate. john 19:22, 19 May 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Proteus that no case has been made for even having a special convention for cities, and I agree that it only serves to make Wikipedia look stupid (understatement of the century), since it contradicts the general Wikipedia convention that article titles should be based on common usage. Those who don't like the general Wikipedia convention that titles should be based on common usage should have the decency to stand up and admit they want to change the general convention rather than taking the coward's way out by trying to sabotage it. Bluelion 20:45, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
I'm fine with large U.S. and Canadian cities breaking from the existing naming convention, provided that
Is this workable? - jredmond 22:21, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
Personally I think it's daft that major cities should get the same treatment as tiny villages. I would say that perhaps 99% of people looking up say San Francisco are looking for the famous city rather than some obscure village somewhere which may share the same name.
I also dont think many people will agree with BRG's idea of turning everything into a disambiguation. As BRG keeps bringing up the Exeter situation. BRG seems to think that if somewhere is not well known in the US then it obviously should not be regarded as being "common usage" of the name, which is IMO horribly US centric. G-Man 22:56, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
Even in the US, it is not as though there are any very famous cities named "Exeter." The most well known is probably Exeter, New Hampshire, which is not all that well-known. john k 23:23, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
jredmond's proposal sounds good to me, and reasonably in keeping with the existing "put articles at their most common name" rule of thumb we use for non-city topics. I have no problem with erring on the side of disambiguation, as long as the major cities are at simply their bare names. Paris, not Paris, France, and similarly San Francisco, not San Francisco, California. One thing that should not happen, which currently happens a lot, is a non-disambig. location being a redirect to a disambig. location, which is completely out of keeping with the purpose of disambig. pages. Cityname should either have the city name, or be a disambig. page, not redirect to Cityname, somewhere. The redirects make for all sorts of unintuitive things, like Cityname, state having a link to Cityname (disambiguation at the top, which we have to explain as " Cityname redirects here; for other uses see Cityname (disambiguation), which is a pretty screaming red flag that we set up something very unintuitively if we have to explain things like that to our users. -- Delirium 05:13, May 23, 2004 (UTC)
Well said Delirium!. Any sensible system of naming conventions should have a certain amount of flexibillity to deal with sensible exceptions, rather than trying to squeeze everything into a rigid format whether or not it's sensible. What's so hot about consistency anyway, I seem to recall a saying which goes somthing like "A follish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" (not that I'm suggesting that any of you have small minds of course). G-Man 18:24, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)