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And yet Mozart and Bach are both disambiguation pages, and Goethe redirects to his full name. Is the above really correct, or have I just wasted my time relinking all the Mozarts to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? -- Camembert
You're right that the assertion made in the article is refuted by actual practice. -- The Cunctator
So why are we not allowing Margrethe II to be at her proper name, but rather at some English variant of the name? It's pretty stupid to think you Americans have the right to change every name in the world to some American version. Lir 21:22 Nov 10, 2002 (UTC)
Much discussion has taken place about this very subject. Here are some threads:
After some discussion with mav I've added a paragraph on the metapage to state what has become and is enforced as the norm: no subpages. The current practice needed to be state more plainly on the metapage because the links to the threads on this issue are too arduous (for experienced contributors) to guide newcomers. Editors moving subpages should point newcomers to this metapage and its talk page. BoNoMoJo 15:56 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)
What is the best option given the polemic. But, in the middle of the article, ´( Luis Inacio Lula da Silva should we use the international (american?) common form (Mr. da Silva) or the way he is called in Brazil (not only by his supporters), "Lula"?
In this case, it´s curious that Lula himself has made clear that he WANTS to be called with the word "Lula" in the middle, like "Lula", "Lula da silva", "President Lula", etc. In his opinion and also from all brazilians, he shouldn´t be called "Mr. da Silva", but "Mr. Lula" or any variant of that.
As a brazilian, I would suggest to refer to him as Lula. What is the wikipedia rule for that? "Use the English form" (anglicize) is not like "Use the form he is called in countries of english language".
Yves 15:09 Jan 29, 2003 (UTC)
Related to the recent mailing list discussion is the issue of unnecessary disambiguation. This has become very tedious for me to move bands and albums to the most simple location because people see Kansas (band), U.F.O. (band) and Styx (band) and want to put every band at similarly disambiguated titles, in spite of there being nothing encyclopedic to disambiguate against. Maybe a note should be included here or elsewhere about disambiguation-mania, just so I have something to point to? (though most of the offenders are the KROQ guy and other anonymous users who probably would never see me point). Tokerboy
I am confused by this header. I would have expected it to read Don't Overdo it, which makes more sense if only to me personally. Is the current one perhaps (a) a US usage which I don't know about, (b) a clever pun, or something, which I don't get, or (c) a mistake? If it's A then fine, if B then dubious because others may also miss the joke, if C then it needs changing. All enlightenment gratefully received. Nevilley
What about kings, queens, princes, princesses, etc? IE, Laurent, Prince of Belgium ? Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom or Elizabeth Windows ? Martin
That is all covered in the naming conventions pages on royal titles. STÓD/ÉÍRE 20:57 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)
In the UK and the Republic, people who are members of the Welsh (or London) Assemblies have AM after their names. Members of the Parliament at Westminster use MP after their names. Members of the Scottish Parliament put MSP after their name. Members of the NI Assembly put MLA after their names and Members of Dáil Éireann put TD after their names. Here's what i'm wondering, should a Wikipedian refer to a person who is a member of a body that uses a TLA with that TLA or without the TLA? Like this:
John Doe, TLA
or
John Doe
In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was fairly common practice on the Continent that a person was called by their last given name rather than the first one as is common today. So the French painter Alexandre-Georges-Henri Regnault was commonly referred to as Henri Regnault. His father Henri Victor Regnault was probably called Victor when he wasn't called Monsieur. In cases like this, it makes sense to list the person by the given name they were most frequently called by, rather than a full name or the name we could guess from our modern conceptions of name order. Agreements? Disagreements? Shimmin 03:27, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)
When used, which one are we to prefer:
The first four variants showed up quite often on Daniel Quinlan's redirect-project. -- User:Docu
At Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)#Don't Overdo it, i have converted "unreasonably offensive" to "commonly regarded as offensive" in the following two passages:
I am making no argument against the usage of these preferred terms. Nevertheless, it is a PoV to say that the reason is unreasonable offensiveness. Another PoV (mine and perhaps others) is that these are matters of politeness, rejected in modernized societies not bcz they are offensive but for more pragmatic (but IMO equally good) reasons. Actually, to the extent they are offensive, it's bcz the alternatives are polite (or considered polite, arguably the same thing).
It'll take me a while to put across my explanation; three anecdotes help in that:
My point with all three of these is that what is "unreasonably offensive" grabs a reasonable person by the throat, without them stopping to deal with the nuances that this terminology has gone thru, and doesn't change in a year or two. What we have here is a social convention, or rather a series of them; i happen to regard each of them as a good social convention in its time (that's my PoV), but i think it is a fact (or much closer to an objective fact) that they are conventions, and that these conventions have served the role of helping African-Americans reorganize and propagate their collective goals and self-conceptions, and enlist different forms (or nuances) of support from sympathetic people of more privileged racial identity. It's IMO unreasonable to violate any of these conventions in its own time, but not unreasonably offensive. Unreasonable, and offensive, but offensive only because the convention is accepted as important (which i agree with); that's my PoV, and the idea of "unreasonably offensive" is another PoV. But whether they're "commonly regarded as offensive" is a fact. -- Jerzy 21:51, 2004 Jan 19 (UTC)
On Talk:Citric acid cycle, there has for a while been a disagreement going on about how to title the page. There is some evidence from Google searches that "Krebs cycle" is a more common name than "citric acid cycle", and no-one has, as far as I can see, argued that this is not true.
...Therefore, following the convention to use the most common name, unless it is misleading or offensive, the page should be at Krebs cycle.
However, there seems to be a lot of disapproval of this title on the talk page. They've even set up a silly poll to justify not applying the convention to that particular article. And, as usual, that has killed all rational debate. After all, why provide reasons for a point of view when you can force it through with sheer weight of numbers? No-one has taken up my suggestion to discuss a possible change in the policy here, so I'm bringing it up myself.
It seems that a lot of people want to title pages according to names used by professionals in the fields in question - for example, authors of textbooks. It seems that terms like " citric acid cycle" and so on are used by academics, while alternative terms are better known to the general public. My current point of view is that since this is a general encyclopaedia, meant for the general public, we should use the terms that the general public will be most likely to recognise. Comments...? (Hint: all humanly devised designations are arbitrary, and none can be considered objectively more "correct" than any other, so don't even think about trying that argument... :P ) -- Oliver P. 04:46, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)
People should be called what they say their name is, and groups should be called what they call themselves. This should only not be the case if there is a conflict between groups over who has the rights to a name (such as Taiwan and the mainland PRC both claiming that they represented China). When there is a refusal to call a group what it asks to be called, and instead an outside dominant group claims the right to assign it a pejorative, or propaganda name that it be called, this seems to be the end of any kind of NPOV. Some examples of this would be the Vietnamese National Liberation Front being called "Viet Cong" (as if anyone in South Vietnam opposed to the government was a de facto communist), the Communist Party of Kampuchea being called "Khmer Rouge", the Communist Party of Peru being called "Shining Path" and so forth. These names would usually be created and propagated by a small elite group, from government leaders to the corporate media, in an attempt to make the use of the name widespread.
I added a section called "call the group what it calls itself". Obviously, I would like a discussion of this so we can hammer this idea out. I have noticed that the US corporate media will not even call groups by the names they call themselves, and assign propaganda/pejorative names to groups. Examples, National Liberation Front -> Viet Cong; Communist Party of Peru -> Shining Path; Communist Party of Kampuchea -> Khmer Rouge. This is definitely a propaganda tool controlled by a small elite (<2% of the US population has any control of the corporate media, even less worldwide). Communist Parties get exotic, scary sounding names. Non-communist groups, or popular front groups which include communists have the label communist applied to them (and in the case of Viet Cong, it has an exotic, scary sounding name as well).
To me, this is the end of NPOV. When people say that the small elite who control the US corporate media have the right to determine everything's name, perhaps due to some divine Judeo-Christian right that biblical reference can be found to OK (Genesis 2:19-20 ?), even when the group asks that it be called by the groups name, then you can just forget about any NPOV after that. I see articles which are just straight propaganda after propaganda, and then I see that the group isn't even allowed it's own name, it has to be called whatever the US government and corporate media elite DECIDED it should be called. It would be as if a group called itself African-Americans, but wealthy white Americans decided they would rather that group be called niggers, have the corporate media propagate that, and there you go. Then you can have the article filled with scientific proof about how African-Americans, I mean, niggers, have lower IQ's then white people, are more crime-prone then white people, have never achieved anything near the pinnacle of white achievement, then there can be some links to the Bell Curve and the like at the bottom. If I had to decide where to start on all that, I would say, this group calls itself African-American, so let's call them African-American, we can allow them the right to determine what they are called, and go from there. And everyone knows what I am talking about, I mentioned real name disputes in the article. Those disputes are between two groups trying to get the same name - not one group with "two" names pinned on them, one by themselves and used by their friends, and one pejorative/propaganda ones pinned on them by their enemies. Richardchilton 09:23, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
It's an interesting point; a similar argument was made concerning the placement of the article on Linda Boreman. My own feeling is that the policy doesn't give the media conglomerates the right to decide names; rather, it recognizes the idea that common names, however derived, are the best place to put the article in order to get hits from search engines. It is a sad fact (or opinion) that media conglomerates control the public discourse, but Wikipedia's role is to provide information to the reader in the article, not make political statements by locating the article under a particular title. -- Cyan 22:03, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
To some extent, this policy is already in place; for instance, even though some aircraft might be best known to English speakers by their NATO reporting names ( Fishbed for instance), we've agreed to use the official designations. In any case, it's WP's role to report what is, rather than what we would think would make a better world. An organization that continually shifts its official name around for propaganda purposes would be more rationally categorized by a constant familiar name for instance; this is often the case for articles about companies. So I think familiarity should trump official names if there is a huge disparity (10-to-1 in Google, books, etc), but that official should be considered at, say, 2-to-1 or less, or if the "familiar" usage is nearly all in obsolete sources. Stan 22:20, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
One more thought: the official policy should remind people to find out the official name, and to determine if the familiar one is a pejorative applied by enemies - Viet Cong seems to be unclear for instance, somebody needs to do more research on the point, cite some authoritative sources. Stan 22:27, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The normal English form should be used for the article and any official name mentioned early in it. A look at the edit history of the proposer will also be instructive. Jamesday 22:36, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Richard's para is already policy and has been since time immemorial. There are many examples. In other words, Richard was simply spelling out the existing de facto policy in more explicit terms. On the other hand, I think his examples were poorly chosen, and the rhetoric needs to be toned down. However, in the interests of amity, I'll refrain from reverting the revert, at least for a little while. Tannin 22:58, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
It is a shame that this proposal is put forward with arguments that so invite suggestions like "[the] edit history of the proposer will also be instructive". I am honestly tempted to propose a consensus that the proposal be stripped down to its essentials, and discussed while every edit by Richard to this page is reverted to avoid him further inflaming the discussion with issues that could only interfere with the outcome he seeks, so we can discuss the issue and not him.
(With that in mind, i am holding my tongue about the details of the insults, against both of the two most relevant races, implicit in Richard's views of the role of that word in sustaining either slavery or the racisms of the various periods since.)
The proposal is in fact a highly PoV one, rather than a reduction of PoV. It is not only PoV in intent, by assuming and validating the extreme PoVs that
It also is PoV in effect, serving to impede recollection of what a reader already knows (or believes -- and don't forget that the difference is their business, not ours) about less visible groups. This favors the PoVs of fringe groups over mainstream ones, since smaller ones are much more likely to have their alienating past obscured by our use of an obscure name that has not passed the muster of the market place of ideas.
This is not, BTW, a matter applying just to groups the size of sects (whether religious or political). For instance, if any significant number of Americans could remember the obscure names of the highly significant PRK,
The West Wing would never discuss the "Republic of North Korea". --
Jerzy
(t) 23:10, 2004 Mar 4 (UTC)
On Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names), the following addition was suggested:
"Use the name the group calls itself People should be called what they say their name is, and groups should be called what they call themselves. This should only not be the case if there is a conflict between groups over who has the rights to a name (such as Taiwan and the mainland PRC both claiming that they represented China). When there is a refusal to call a group what it asks to be called, and instead an outside dominant group claims the right to assign it a pejorative, or propaganda name that it be called, this seems to be the end of any kind of NPOV. Some examples of this would be the Vietnamese National Liberation Front being called "Viet Cong" (as if anyone in South Vietnam opposed to the government was a de facto communist), the Communist Party of Kampuchea being called "Khmer Rouge", the Communist Party of Peru being called "Shining Path" and so forth. These names would usually be created and propagated by a small elite group, from government leaders to the corporate media, in an attempt to make the use of the name widespread."
Then reasoning for this was spelled out on the discussion page. More names spring to mind as I think about it "(American) Indian", "anti-globalization movement", and so on and so forth. -- Richardchilton 21:49, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
A lot of these arguments remind me of the novel 1984, where the government puts out a new Newspeak dictionary every year, and everyone complies right away, rewriting all the old words so they comply with the new ones. Then they are all "common usage" and all of the arguments presented here, after all, the government called them that, the corporate media complied, and tried to propagate that. Thus words like freedom would become thoughtcrime in the common usage. I think one thing that is instructive is to note how there are only a small number of groups where the US government (and corporate media) refuses to call them by their names, whether anglicized or not (Partido Comunista del Peru = Communist Party of Peru). You can't find many instances where a political group is refused even to name itself. The ones where this is done are just total propaganda from what I've read. This just seems like the kind of totalitarian white collar American arrogance that exists - most white, white-collar Americans call a group a certain name, thus, that will be its name. Richardchilton 23:03, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The issue of "two groups fighting for the same name" seems to me to apply to what we have to date calling the "Shining Path". They call themselves the "Partido Comunista de Peru", but, in fact, references to the "Partido Comunista de Peru" nearly always mean the party that used to be part of the Comintern. "Shining Path" is a literal translation of "Sendero Luminoso", a name that to the best of my knowledge is -- at least in part for just this reason -- used both in Peru and elsewhere, by friend and foe alike. (E.g. it is used by the RCP, who claim the Senderistas as an affiliated party.) It seems to me that it would be OK to list what a group calls itself as a very important factor in what to call an article, but not to make this an absolute and immutable rule. And in any case, I hope we can all agree that all of the relevant forwards and disambiguations should always be in place, and all commonly used names should be mentioned in the first paragraph, making this all more of an issue for partisans (of either side) than for end users of our site. -- Jmabel 00:43, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The policy on this page is often quoted when there are discussions about the appropriate naming of pages in
medicine. There are various arguments why
heart attack might be preferable over
myocardial infarction (basically the same), but some lay terms for medical phenomena are exceedingly imprecise, loaded with bias or simply wrong ("heartburn" is neither
cardiac nor
oxidative).
I would like to start the discussion by pointing at
talk:Heart attack and
Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion#April 18. Undersigned has also conducted a similar discussion on
Talk:Neutrophil granulocyte.
Chemistry and
biology pages are generally phrased in specialist/scientific terminology; in my view, a similar thing ought to happen to medical material on Wikipedia.
As for
heart attack, there seems to be some concensus that "lay term pages" should contain brief introductions phrased in non-technical terms, while pointing at a more technical and detailed discussion on another page that employs more technical terminology. This might be the best solution, but fails whenever there is no real lay term available (e.g.
diabetes mellitus).
Finally, even the lay person might learn something from being redirected.
JFW |
T@lk 01:08, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
There seems to be some confusion about how changes of name should be handled. The policy here says use the commonly used name, which implies ignoring the name change since the old name would be more familiar and used in old texts etc.I disagree with this since I think accuracy and being up-to-date are more important, especially since the old name will redirect to the new one and nobody will have any trouble finding the article.
In any case in practice this is applied inconsistenly. Examples that (justifiably I think) violate the current policy:
While I found a big argument about another similar case:
I'm sure there are many other examples. Somebody needs to clarify this point in the policy page.
Hans Zarkov 11:40, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
From User talk:SamuelWantman / User talk:Tillwe, after I moved "G. Spencer Brown" back to "George Spencer Brown". Could someone help us?
Welcome too! I just reverted your move of the content of
George Spencer Brown to
G. Spencer-Brown. I did this for two reasons: firstly, Wikipedia name policy is to use the most common form of the full name. I'm not sure if this is "George Spencer Brown" or "George Spencer-Brown"; in German language texts by
Luhmann I only have see the former. So I made
George Spencer Brown again the main entry and turned
George Spencer-Brown as well as
G. Spencer-Brown into REDIRECTs. The second reason is, that for moving a page -- which is essentially what you tried to do -- you should use the "move" function. It copies not only content, but also history. If it doesn't work, this means there is an article with history already; in such cases maybe an admin can help by deleting that article. BTW: If you want to use abbreviated names in an article, you can do so like this [[George Spencer Brown|G. Spencer-Brown]]
. --
till we ☼☽ |
Talk 19:31, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
Any useful contributions to this discuaion will be appreciated, at talk:Ebonics.
I'm fresh from stumbling into a naming convention dispute at Mahatma Gandhi. Shoulda known better, but it brought me here, where I was suprised to read the following:
We want to maximize the likelihood of being listed in other search engines, thereby attracting more people to Wikipedia. Also, the Jimmy Carter page has the string "Jimmy Carter" in the page title. This is important because other search engines will often give greater weight to the contents of the title than to the body of the page. Since "Jimmy Carter" is the most common form of the name, it will be searched on more often, and having that exact string in our page title will often mean our page shows up higher in other search engines.
I thought that's what redirect pages were for. I mean, I wouldn't expect any other reference work to list Jimmy Carter as "Jimmy Carter." I guess I'd be in the "James Earl Carter" camp myself, though I wouldn't make a huge deal about it on Wikipedia.
But that's beside the point.
I just can't help thinking that maximizing hits and properly naming entries may sometimes be mutually exclusive goals. I can understand how a redirect page named for the common usage of a less commonly known term might foul up search engine results. But isn't the whole point of Wikipedia -- or any encyclopedia -- to inform people about less commonly known facts?
That said, I also don't think that this is an insurmountable problem, though perhaps one that might require some technical elbow grease. How about if there were some way to include the first 100 or so words from the "redirected-to" page on the redirect page itself? Why not retool the #REDIRECT template to include that text in its META tag?
I admit I don't know the nuts and bolts of Wikipedia coding, but what if the code that #REDIRECT whatever produced also took a small chunk of text from the beginning of the whatever article and put it in the redirect page's META tag, so that search engines would display it while remaining invisible to Wikipedia users? That way contributors would have more flexibility in presenting information without compromising Wikipedia's "searchability."
Again, I don't know how feasible this is, but I hope that we can figure out some way to prevent Wikipedia's necessary pursuit of hits from compromising its pursuit of knowledge. -- Dablaze 00:54, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)
I'll add my voice to those who prefer that articles be under full formal names where possible and common names as redirects...to do otherwise is to abdicate the role of place people go to look up more than they already know.I don't see the idea of calling people whatever they want to be called as logical either...it benefits the egotistical at the expense of the modest.(For this reason I have always disliked pinyin transliteration of Chinese,an invasion of the Roman alphabet created by those who do not use it without regard for its conventions).There is no reason that Chinese cities should have to be called by their native-language names while European ones are not.(Athens hosted the Olympics and didn't insist on being called Athinai,Peking insists on being "Beijing" and that probably gave Turin,the intervening Winter Olympic host,the idea of promoting "Torino").--L.E/le@put.com/ 12.144.5.2 18:38, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
One of the obvious differences between Wikipedia and almost every other reference work is that we list people by first name instead of by surname.
I understand the rationale for wanting to use the most common name for a person but it has some drawbacks. For example, any automated alphabetical listing of biographical entries will not be ordered by surname.
Is there any way to have a special tag for the formal name of the person for sorting, etc.? It should also automatically become a redirect.
I'd like to start a discussion on striking this convention. I'll keep my initial argument short (by my standards) and to the point by countering the three primary points made in the article. I'll name them the three points and please refer to them (or my response) by number if you need to.
A good article should have the full name as well as the common name. A search engine indexing the page would find both. So this point boils down to that of the title of the article (and the thus the purpose of the naming convention).
I will call this a technical problem that is being patched by naming articles after common names. For example, if the article of Jimmy Carter was really named James Earl Carter, Jr. then the title of the page returned should be something of the order "James Earl Carter, Jr. -> Jimmy Carter" or "Jimmy Carter <- James Earl Carter, Jr." This change in the title of redirect pages would void this point since the common name would still appear in the title.
Naming people with their full name or other articles by official titles builds in an automatic disambiguation. Very possible to have another "Jimmy Carter" but much less to have a "James Earl Carter, Jr."
By creating an article at it's full name or official title and redirecting reduces duplication (no one will make a page at Jimmy Carter). Fundamentally, naming the article after the common name and redirecting from the proper name is no different than naming the article after the proper name and redirecting from the common name: both names are covered and get you to the article.
This is under the presumption that linking to redirects is a Bad Thing (TM) and that "redirected from" announcements are also a Bad Thing (TM). Linking to a redirect is only bad when the redirect name becomes ambiguous (e.g., another "Jimmy Carter"; and believe it or not, IMDB shows 4 other "Jimmy Carter"s but none as notable). I would contend that linking to redirects is not a bad thing. How trivial is it to take a script/bot and have all uses of "Jimmy Carter" be changed to "James Earl Carter, Jr.|Jimmy Carter" when "Jimmy Carter" becomes ambiguous?
After something like "Jimmy Carter" becomes ambiguous then it will require more attention to what links are named regardless of which naming convention is used.
Summary of points:
One final point to make.
Due to the limitation of wikipedia (it has no namespaces for content, only (roughly) functionality) the further population of popular/common terms will require more disambiguations in the future.
For example, since there's no way to seperate
Cyrano de Bergerac the person from the play and films, it must be done by altering the article name (e.g.,
Cyrano de Bergerac (play),
Cyrano de Bergerac (1950 film), &
Cyrano de Bergerac (1990 film)) instead of being able to seperate the three articles into different namespaces or into a hierarchy (like the subcategorization of articles in Wolfram's
World of Science, though the web pages are still all in a single directory).
The best solution would be to have "people/Cyrano de Bergerac", "plays/Cyrano de Bergerac", "films/1950/Cyrano de Bergerac", & "films/1990/Cyrano de Bergerac" to which a disambiguation page at "Cyrano de Bergerac" & "films/Cyrano de Bergerac" could automatically be generated based on the articles in "subdirectories", which would also easily lend to an implicit category creation.
But this is a huge tangent.
Cburnett 22:21, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Several edits are taking place, (see for example the Kerala page) where the "Initials in names should each be followed by a period and a space" is applied for South Indian names. This is not correct, as the two or three first letters in a South Indian name are not the same as a Western initial. The general naming convention in India is to write the name without spaces between the letters indicating the father's name and home-town name, such as A.K. Gopalan, etc. -- Soman 09:42, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The current convention says that middle names are only to be used when the person is normally known by them. However, it seems to me that it is preferable, when it is necessary to disambiguate, to use a middle name, if available, rather than a parenthetical explanation, which seems awkward and unnecessary if we can avoid it. Any thoughts? john k 16:31, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Well, of course there need to be redirects and disambiguations. But see the case of the British politician Herbert Morrison. He cannot be at Herbert Morrison, because this must disambiguate between him and another Herbert Morrison, who is famous for saying "oh the humanity" in the Hindenburg broadcast. Let us ignore for now the possibility of putting him under his peerage title at Herbert Morrison, Baron Morrison of Lambeth, simply noting that he was given this title after his retirement, and is rarely called by it. My preference, then, would be to put him at Herbert Stanley Morrison. Adam Carr disagrees, and wants Herbert Morrison (politician). I find the latter both unsightly and kind of unprofessional - with people, I'd prefer some kind of system. If possible, I'd suggest going with middle name/initials (depending on which is more commonly used), and then birth and death dates, when available. Since Morrison is distinguished from the other Herbert Morrison by his middle name, I say he sould be at Herbert Stanley Morrison. This is not to say that there should not be redirects at Herbert Morrison (politician) or Herbert Morrison (1888-1965). What do you mean, by the way, about birthdates being moot, and are you suggesting the two articles should be at Herbert Morrison (1965) and Herbert Morrison (1989). This seems odd - one would have to know that these were the deathdates. If no birthdate is available, though, something like John Smith (d. 1371) is better than John Smith (Archbishop of Canterbury) - people have many roles, and it seems inherently POV to just pick one of them out of the ether, and there's no consistency. All the various US politicians named John Brown are at places like John Brown (Maryland). But this John Brown's near contemporary and co-Marylander, Senator John Henry, is at John Henry (senator). This seems inherently unwieldy to me. There's no reason not to have sensible policies for how to disambiguate people with the same name. john k 23:43, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I agree with the main point. My feeling about dates is uncertain - if it's absolutely clear what someone's occupation is, maybe. But sometimes it can be awkward. I don't know. john k 02:07, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I am looking for a clear specification on what is meant by common. What kind of numbers should be used as an indicator that something is common? (Related to discussion on renaming article Calcutta to Kolkata!) -- Urnonav 06:38, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Good question. In particular, is "common" supposed to be construed with or without regard to the Manual of Style, which explicitly takes into account national varieties of English? Alai 06:40, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I agree that tsunami is more appropriate than tidal wave for the article name, because this is the most commonly used expression. However, it is a bad example for "misleading naming" and violate the rule of using English names where they are available. My understanding is that tsunami translates to "harbor wave." We can ignore this because the foreign word masks its meaning for most English speakers, but "harbor wave" is no more accurate to describe the phenomenon than "tidal wave." -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 20:25, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, it's like using "military intelligence" as an example of an oxymoron. Let's try to think of a case which exemplifies what we're talking about.
And by the way, this:
... is not true. There are special subpage features. See help:subpage. Uncle Ed 19:41, July 9, 2005 (UTC)
I'm one of those who think that the "Names and Titles" naming conventions guideline could be written in a format that makes it sound less as an exception to general wikipedia principles on article naming ref.
The issue has been discussed recently on severeral talk pages, and there appears to be a group of wikipedians that neither wants to get really involved, neither is particularily fond of the present complications for naming a "lucky-by-birth stiff who had some pretentions to a hereditary right to rule others or had the remotest ancestral connections to such a person" ref
The problem is, these wikipedians have no alternative: either it's the complicated "exception" rule, either it's only the basic rules that lead to ambiguity in many cases of article naming on persons.
That's why I announce here my plan to start a {{proposed}} guideline for dealing with article naming of articles on people. I think the logical name for such guideline would be:
Using a guideline name differing from the existing ones, as long as it's merely a proposal, also helps not to disturb existing rules (and their talk pages) too much: while in the end it might result in no more than a few ideas of this proposition being "absorbed" by other guidelines (or the other way around). But that's for the wikipedia community to decide then. First I try to cooperate in building a valid alternative, better in line with general Naming Conventions guidelines. -- Francis Schonken 11:56, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
I have two specific cases in which my preference clashes with this policy: Czech Republic vs. Czechia and East Timor vs. Timor-Leste.
In both cases, the first name is clearly the more common one, I admit that. However, the governments of those two countries explicitly stated that they want to be referred to by the second name — Timor-Leste wants to be called Timor-Leste in each and every language, just like Côte d'Ivoire; and Czechia wants to be called Czechia in English. There has been some discussion about this on those articles' talk pages, and the final argument regularily was that my view contradicted official Wikipedia policy, and that I should just let it be.
However, I still think that these two cases merit special attention. After all, it's not just a matter of what's more common, but also a matter of what's correct. The fact that it's undoubtably more common to say wegen dem Unfall in spoken German doesn't change the fact that wegen des Unfalls is still the only correct way of saying it. So – any comments? — ナイトスタリオン ㇳ–ㇰ — 16:26, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
Now then: Timor Leste is Portuguese, if you translate that to English, you get East Timor, the "common English version of the name", which, according to that guideline should get precedence. See also "Dealing with self-identifying terms" lower on that same page, giving more detail about the argumentation for translating to English.Where a choice exists between native and common English versions of names (e.g. Deutsch/German), always use the common English version of the name.
I agree that the common name should be used as the article title, but that doesn't mean it should be treated as the technical or formal name. This isn't a problem for people's names, like Jimmy Carter, because these are self-explanatory. However, for some things, it isn't. If the article begins as "[common name], also known as [technical name], is . . ." then it sounds like the technical name is just a less-used, alternative name. For example, in the article for nitrous oxide, it starts with "Nitrous oxide, also known as dinitrogen oxide or dinitrogen monoxide, is a . . ." What this doesn't say is that, following standard naming procedures, the second two names are correct, while the first is outdated. No one actually talks about "dinitrogen oxide," so the article's name is correct. What I am proposing is that the policy be changed, so that in any articles where this applies (not just compounds) it begins with "[common name], formally known as [technical name], is . . ." If anyone has any objections, please say so; if there are none, I'll change the policy. (For another example of what this would fix, nitric oxide, which would be called nitrogen monoxide by the standard naming system, doesn't even mention that name.) Twilight Realm 21:02, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Not really. For example, sodium hydroxide says "also known as lye or caustic soda..." which could be improved by saying "commonly known as..." This isn't the best example, because it's sort of obvious what's a chemical name and what's a common name. I'm not able to come up with any good examples that aren't obvious right now, other than compounds with similarly outdated names (the suffixes "-ous" (nitrous, ferrous)and "-ic" (nitric, ferric) are outdated, but are still in common use in some compounds). I'm not that good at coming up with examples, though; if anyone else can think of some examples of anything (chemical, organism, object), please share it. Twilight Realm 00:25, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Here's an example. Sorta. The cannabis article should mention something about marijuana, in the introduction. If it did, it would be a good example. (By the way, I got to that article through the grass article. I didn't think of it by myself.) Twilight Realm 00:25, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Hi there, I think that it would be great if this guideline explicitly stated that stage names are more appropriate than real names of famous people (of course, if they are better known by their stage names), and included examples of, for instance, Sting (musician) and Madonna (entertainer). -- Dijxtra 12:49, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
Francis wrote: Haukurth, if your abuse of this guideline wouldn't be so blatant, esp. the George Bush example (see Talk:Níðhöggr/Archive 1#A brief history of the article) I'd accept the change
You replaced this clause:
With this clause:
Your edit summary makes no mention of this change, it says only:
I felt this was heavy-handed. - Haukur 16:29, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm trying to make the example section less focused on US politicians. I think Bill Clinton is a good and very illustrative example and I'd think that would be enough. Francis says that George W. Bush is also a very useful example. Very well, I won't wage a revert war over that. But I do think Ted Kennedy is a particularly bad example. A search on books.google.com yields the following:
His own homepage lists him as "Edward M. Kennedy" and so do Britannica and Encarta. I think that this guideline would suggest that his article be moved to Edward M. Kennedy. I will not, however, request such a move since I've never edited the article and I feel move requests from "outsiders" are a bit invasive. That talk page has enough conflict already.
But the Kennedy example should be removed from this guideline. - Haukur 14:14, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
"Melos" is not more technical than Milo.
Milo is the French name of the Greek island, Melos isn't even the current version of the Greek island in English (which seems to have moved to Milos, after "Aphrodite of Melos" was sometimes used to refer to the statue in the Louvre).
Note that that example effectively marks an exception to the "use English" guideline, that's why I'm particularily fond of keeping it in the list: while most of the art production by French artists are at an English title in wikipedia, this one, totally irrational, is at a French name (and based on the Latin equivalent of the Greek godess that is supposed to be portrayed by it). The example is good while in English it is indeed "common" to name the statue thus (try websearch...: virtually unanimous with a very high score, apart from a few dozen "Aphrodite de Melos") -- Francis Schonken 14:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Okay - tell us what is wrong with the burping example, then. - Haukur 14:47, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
This is not a word. Could the lead be changed to:
Examples of common names that Wikipedia uses instead other versions which may be fuller, more formal, scientific, specific, or elaborate:
This is long but at least the sentence doesn't branch into four distinct sentences. Stefán Ingi 14:53, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm concerned Stefán and I might come across as too agressive here. We tend to agree on things and it might look like we're ganging up on you, Francis. I'm going to withdraw from this discussion for a bit. I'll be back before long. - Haukur 15:15, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
The issue of Occam's razor vs. Ockham's razor was hotly debated and some people argued that the latter was more common (and/or more suitable for other reasons). There was no consensus there. Does the fact that "Occam" prevailed in the end make it a good example for this guideline? Should the example section be a "trophy room" of past disputes? Or should it feature examples for which there is a reasonably good consensus? I'm asking your opinions honestly, we can do either as long as we're consistent. I would personally prefer the first option but I'm willing to work with the trophy room model if there's a consensus for that. - Haukur 15:44, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Francis, it feels like you're being a tad possessive about this guideline. As far as I can see you added the entire "See also" section yourself in one edit without any prior discussion [7]
And when I make a minor rewording edit to this section [8] you do a blanket revert and accuse me of "messing with" the guideline and not understanding it. - Haukur 13:21, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
...you barely understand - use the talk page instead.
It is by now clear you want to push your POV that the "common names" principle should be bent another way. I don't agree to it. Period. So if you're looking for agreement rather than edit-warring, use the talk page. -- Francis Schonken 13:00, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
"Wikipedia is a fast medium" - one of the lamest excuses for edit-warring I ever heard. -- Francis Schonken 13:42, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Francis, It seems to me that there is some difficulty in us two cooperating productively here even in minor issues. Bringing in more contributors would probably be helpful. I'll ask some people if they're interested in helping. - Haukur 14:52, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
As said above, if I'd come up with something that sounds like a good example I'd mention it here: what about:
The example is interesting as the Guinea pig has no relation to Guinea (as an example that a misnomer is sometimes used when it's the common name).
As far as I'm concerned this example could replace the more outlandisch sea cucumber example. -- Francis Schonken 23:07, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
@ Philip: note that I never removed the example, instead I started & elaborated the "Exceptions" section, noting that several NC guidelines implicitly or explicitly contain exceptions, but that the one surpassing all others in this respect was the names & titles NC.
Then, later, for the brief period I thought that three weeks of "current surveys" listing + notification of the same for the same period on several talk pages (including the names & titles NC talk page) without receiving a single negative comment was enough to move that guideline to wikipedia:naming conventions (Western nobility) I had exchanged the link to the names & titles NC guideline for a straight link to what I thought was agreed to be the new one.
Now, we know how all that ended, I don't think I have to explain. Anyway, the "Western nobility" NC page is a redirect to the "names & titles" NC guideline page, and still indicated as the "major exception" in the "Exceptions" section of the common names NC guideline. I have no problem the link is made without the redirect via "Western nobility" (I must say, I kind of forgot about it after the "Western nobility" vote).
But my proposal is to keep the treatment of "exceptions" in the "Exceptions" section, and not scatter it all over the guideline.
@ HaukurÞ: The same goes for Þ's new proposal to add more examples of exceptions (or "counterexamples") all over the place: I don't think this a good idea. Keep exceptions in the "Exceptions" section. The "Don't overdo it" section is only meant to illustrate that using "common sense" is always what should be done, and is not the same as "exception", or to put it more technically, that there's no real tension between the "common names" guideline and the current version of the "Precision" NC guideline, if both are well understood. In fact both guidelines are two halves of the same idea: "maximum recognisability for English speaking people", which is about the only thing that is core issue of the "official policy" regarding naming conventions, see wikipedia:Naming conventions, third paragraph of the intro.
I do agree that Tsunami/Tidal wave is not a good example. "Tidal waves" exist (actually, they're called Tidal bore), but they're not interchangeable with Tsunami. Also Tidal wave is a disambig page now, separate from the Tsunami page. So that example should be dropped IMHO. -- Francis Schonken 16:49, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
There's a poll at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Numismatics#Currency_Rename_POLL to rename a bunch of articles on currencies to the [adjective denomination] format. The controversy is that the format being proposed for the sake of "consistency" clearly runs counter to the "use common names" rule. I really don't see the need to violate this rule for the sake of imposing a consistency that does not exist. Those wishing to comment on this should take a look at the page as this affects a good number of articles.-- Jiang 01:27, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I have to speak up about the horrible usage of these president's "familiar" names, "Bill" Clinton and "Jimmy" Carter, rather than their regular names. Although these are probably the best known names for the particular presidents, they are not, in fact, their names.
James Earl Carter's Nobel Peace Prize would not, in fact, reflect, Jimmy Carter. The use in article titles of these men's "familiar" names rather than their regular names demeans the individuals as well as their office. What is the Clinton or Carter's name on the books that they write? Doesn't that preclude the use of Bill or Jimmy in their article title?
Oddly enough, in later years this seems to be only an issue with living presidents of one Party versus another. I don't see Gerry Ford as an article, and yet wasn't that the man's common name.
I was under the impression that Wikipedia is above all else, an encyclopedia. People have real names, regardless of their familiar names. Bastique 19:25, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
P.S. As far as Dick is concerned, thay only give him that name because it makes him seem less insidious... ☺ B
I'm not sure I understand. First it's the Clinton and Carter articles and naming conventions in general; now it's only about Carter. Case closed, I guess. android 79 22:06, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm personally fine with using nicknames (like "Bill Clinton") instead of fuller names (like "William J. Clinton") provided that both of the following conditions are met:
In cases where either or both of these conditions are not met (as for Senator Kennedy) I think we should use a fuller name.
In borderline cases where it is not clear whether a nickname is the most common way of referring to a person or where it is not clear if the person fully approves of the nickname I think people will expect an encyclopedia to err on the side of formality. - Haukur 10:48, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
e.g., up till now other guidelines only advise to seek a "third less common solution" in the case of a British/American English dichotomy. Not in the case of (for example) two synonyms exist in English, that can not be assigned to either British or American variants. This guideline should not suggest "exceptions" that are no way covered by other guidelines. For the "exceptions" the idea is to point to these other guidelines, not reformulate them, while in the end these other guidelines might be reformulated too at some point in time.
Just pointers towards the guidelines where presently such exceptions are elaborated.
Anyway,
When adherents of two different spellings cannot reach an agreement sometimes a third alternative is chosen to end the conflict. That alternative may be less commonly used than either spelling of the common name. For example there is currently an article at the somewhat technical term fixed-wing aircraft to avoid a conflict between aeroplane and airplane.
is a presently unsupported extrapolation of WP:MoS, which *only* advises the less common for British/American English problems. Not as a general principle to be applied in all kind of circumstances. -- Francis Schonken 10:53, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
While the basic principle of this guideline enjoys wide support there are some cases where its application is disputed or overridden by other concerns. A few such cases are listed here.
More generally, several guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation, and solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are "the most obvious" rather than strictly speaking "the most used". Some of these exceptions are contained in the Manual of Style.
Several guidelines try to systematise certain types of article titles, for example article titles using abbreviations:
Many guidelines systematise titles of articles grouped by topic, for example M/S Herald of Free Enterprise and not Herald of Free Enterprise, according to Wikipedia:naming conventions (ships). For articles on people some minor practical exceptions are contained in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people).
For reasons I explained above, I don't agree with it. Reckless extrapolation. -- Francis Schonken 11:21, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I've already commented out the part which you called extrapolation. Let's discuss this a bit and hope someone else chimes in. Do you object to William the Conqueror being mentioned? Do you object to a mention of diacritics? - Haukur 11:32, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
This guideline should put itself in the context of our naming conventions as a whole. That means explaining where the boundaries between it and other guidelines lie and then linking to those guidelines for more detail. That's exactly what the guideline has been doing and I didn't add much. I think a brief mention of diacritics and "use English" is useful here because those two guidelines often come up in those kind of debates.
If you think anything I added is a not a true description please let's discuss that. - Haukur 10:57, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Once the vote is over on that article's talk page (and I don't expect it to change much any more) I'd propose following example:
The example is interesting while in French there's no diacritical on the a. Neither in Latin, and the name is supposed to be in Latin (the guy never lived in France, only in German and Dutch countries) - needless to say that neither in German nor in Dutch an accent is used. Just for some funny, inexplicable reason, in English it is most common with an accent. -- Francis Schonken 11:03, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I've reverted to Philip's last version while we discuss our differences. This discards all changes made by Francis, Stefán and me for the last couple of days (even though I think most of them were quite helpful). I hope more people will comment so we can get a broader feel for what people think is useful to have in this guideline. - Haukur 11:51, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I propose starting the Exceptions section of this guideline with something like the following:
While the basic principle of this guideline enjoys wide support there are some cases where its application is disputed or overridden by other concerns. A few such cases are listed here.
I think it's useful to mention that the most common principle does not apply to British vs. American spellings. That's often what people new to the debate start doing - counting Google hits for "aluminum" or calculating the number of Indian English speakers who spell it "colour" etc. Stating here that this won't get you anywhere may help prevent those little fights.
I also think it's useful to briefly mention the diacritics debate and link to more on that in the "use English" guideline. Then we can avoid giving any examples with diacritics over here.
Finally I think the King William example is useful and makes it clearer at a glance what this mysterious "names and title" convention says :)
Thoughts? - Haukur 12:31, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, here's how I see the "exceptions" section:
Many wikipedia naming conventions guidelines contain implicit or explicit exceptions to the "common names" principle. Some of these exceptions are due to technical limitations, for example " C Plus Plus" while "C++" is technically not possible as a page name.
Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used", for example Laurent-Désiré Kabila and not Laurent-Desire Kabila (which is more used on the internet).
Some of these exceptions are contained in the Manual of Style, for example the National varieties of English section in that guideline leads to fixed-wing aircraft being used instead of aeroplane or airplane, in order not to give precedence to either British or American spelling.
Several guidelines try to systematise certain types of article titles, for example article titles using abbreviations:
Many guidelines systematise titles of articles grouped by topic, for example M/S Herald of Free Enterprise and not Herald of Free Enterprise, according to Wikipedia:naming conventions (ships).
For articles on people some minor practical exceptions are contained in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people). The principal exception is in the case of naming royalty and people with titles. For details of the naming conventions in those cases, see the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) page.
note that this version includes moving the "names and titles" exception from the intro section to the "exceptions" section, and similarly with the "fixed-wing aircraft" example, moved from the "don't overdo it" section to this "exceptions" section.
Advantages (as I see them):
-- Francis Schonken 14:13, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
For reference here's a draft of what I'm proposing: [9]
And here's the version Francis prefers: [10]
I personally think that discarding the Laurent-Désiré Kabila example which Francis added is the right thing to do at this point. There's hardly room in this guideline to treat the diacritics question properly and we're better off linking to the guideline which does deal with that than including an off-hand example which might imply that there is a consensus to include diacritics in all cases like that.
The fixed-wing aircraft/ aeroplane/ airplane example can be included or not, it's not a big deal.
If we're concerned about the length of the guideline we might consider putting the section on subpages into a separate guideline - it doesn't really fit in well here and kind of breaks up the flow between the "Don't overdo it" section and the "Exceptions" section. - Haukur 15:01, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Just an innocent dropping by, but why are Þ, þ, Ð, ð, Ö, ö etc. not standard? They are all (along with many others) solidly entrenced in the languages of a large number of solidly Western, Christian, Pro-American and democratic nations. Is it so difficult to set up a redirect page, if necessary? (Personally I'm solidly Western and democratic.) Admittedly this is an English Wikipedia, but even here we see a split between English and American. And don't forget those thousands of people who have toiled to bring their history and heritage within reach of American readers. I believe the readers benefit from it, whether consciously or not. There is a world out there, and it can't all be spelt with 128 characters. That's a fact. If you want to broaden your education, let native spellings prevail, and you might even be tempted to look up languages. For our American readers it may come as a surprise, that English is one of the the most atypical languagues of the world. And, again, if an accent offends you, make a redirect, don't go to war. Cheers Io 19:22, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
From a somewhat naïve newcomer to this debate: Why is it a problem to have Jimmy Carter as a primary lookup? Cheers Io 19:59, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I have trouble with many articles which use a name that's obviously common in American usage instead of the one that's in common usage elsewhere or at least in Australia. Sometimes I put in a redirect from the term I know to the existing article, sometimes I request a name change, sometimes two separate but largely synonymous article develop. Can we have a recommendation on how to deal with these problems. There are a few things to consider here:
Donama 22:41, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
which you inserted in the guideline yesterday: in fact the issue re. "technically-correct" terms as article titles is a little more complex than you present it. It's extensively treated at wikipedia:naming conflict. That guideline is linked from the "common names" guideline (like so many others). I don't think the "common names" guideline should attempt at summarizing all guidelines that relate to this guideline. As is indicated in the "Exceptions" section, there's barely a single Naming Conventions guideline (and there are some dozens of such guidelines) that doesn't make an exception at one level or another to the "common names" principle.Sometimes, the technically-correct title for the article may be more useful if it is the only authoritative term, but more than one synonymous common or colloquial terms exist.
But I can live with the second half of this paragraph using the formulation introduced in the common names guideline several years ago (that is: before many, many other NC guidelines started to use exceptions), and re-introduced by Philip a few days ago (but then I'd prefer it in the "exceptions" section and not in the lead section of the guideline).For articles on people some minor practical exceptions are contained in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) - these are however hardly sufficient to cover the complexities for naming royals and other nobility: hence Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles), and several other nobility-related Naming Conventions guidelines, contain many detailed exceptions.
-- Francis Schonken 10:20, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Okay, we've now had a cooling period of one week so maybe we now have a better chance of updating the guideline in peace and harmony.
The point about naming disputes like Gasoline/Petrol, Orange (colour)/Orange (color) and Aluminium/Aluminum is that they are pointless and stupid. One option is as good as the other and we should explicitly state that the "most common" principle does not apply. If you don't feel that this is already a rule then let's make it a rule :) Francis objected to my use of the word "armistice" and that's fine. I'm not wedded to the wording as long as the point is there.
As for diacritics currently the guideline contains this clause written by Francis:
"...article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used", for example Laurent-Désiré Kabila and not Laurent-Desire Kabila (which is more used on the internet)."
This sounds like it settles the dispute between forms with and without diacritics in one fell swoop in favor of diacritics. That's misleading. But removing the example and replacing it with nothing would misleadingly suggest that the most common principle is consistently applied to names with diacritics. That would also be misleading since many Wikipedians do feel that diacritics should be used in proper names even when they are more often omitted in English. In order for this guideline to be helpful it should simply mention that this issue is disputed and give a link to more information (at WP:UE). That's why I think this clause is more appropriate than the current Laurent-Désiré Kabila clause:
I'm sure the wording can be improved but do you see my point, Francis? - Haukur 17:53, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Francis asked me to wait 24 hours between proposing changes and implementing them. Since this time has passed and since Stefán and Philip (as well as Nightstallion earlier) have expressed approval of my proposal I'm taking the baby step of replacing the Laurent-Désiré Kabila note with the proposed diacritics clause. I'm not making any other change now. - Haukur 22:23, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Re.
"The point about naming disputes like Gasoline/Petrol, Orange (colour)/Orange (color) and Aluminium/Aluminum is that they are pointless and stupid. One option is as good as the other and we should explicitly state that the "most common" principle does not apply. If you don't feel that this is already a rule then let's make it a rule :)"
"Gasoline/Petrol", "Orange (colour)/Orange (color)", "Aluminium/Aluminum", "Airplane/Aeroplane" and "Mobile phone/Cellular" are all examples of what is described in the guideline Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English - no thanks for making a new rule about that. The guideline already exists. Extending the principle beyond "National varieties of English" is unrequested. So, the "common names" guideline can point towards the existing guideline (like it can point to many other guidelines that make exception to the "common names" principle), but not muse about something that has been unable to find community approval in other guidelines.
Do you see my point Haukur, Philip, Stefan, etc?
Re. Kabila example, I said I thought it would be best to get rid of that, while the discussion where this was decided would be difficult to retrieve - I said the example was random, and unimportant. It was not a "diacritics wording", which I never intended.
As long as there is no other example we all agree upon, I keep my preference to the wording of the second paragraph of the "Exceptions" section as it is now, only omitting the example:
Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used".
I hadn't linked "precision" in that sentence to wikipedia:naming conventions (precision), while that would've been the third link to that other guideline in the "common names" guideline, and I didn't want to overlink. Anyhow, as people tend to overlook that also with "precision" the link to another guideline was intended, I'd be glad to change that paragraph to:
Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used".
Anyway, the message should be clear: no "exception" to the "common names" principle, except for what has been agreed upon in other guidelines.
All attempts to abuse the "common names" guideline in order force things for which in other guidelines it has been established that no consensus could be reached, should IMHO be stopped.
I don't agree with Haukur's "reformulation", while it is either void of meaning ("nothing to report" on use of diacritics), either trying to influence the "no consensus" status re. diacritics, as currently expressed in the "use English" guideline.
I don't agree with:
[...] removing the example and replacing it with nothing would misleadingly suggest that the most common principle is consistently applied to names with diacritics. That would also be misleading since many Wikipedians do feel that diacritics should be used in proper names even when they are more often omitted in English.
C'mon now - I tend to look at Haukur's honest intentions, but this is nonsense, there's nothing "misleading" about it. And again, he tries to read something in something that isn't there... only in order to push things his way (which is: unchecked use of diacritics, and next: extend that to uncommon characters).
I also can't agree with:
When the native name of an entity contains characters with diacritics some Wikipedians prefer to use those diacritics in the relevant article title, even in cases where they are more often omitted in English texts. Others prefer to apply the most common principle throughout.
while I don't fit in either category:
So I don't fit in either of the groups Haukur mentions. I think Haukur's formulation only intended to set wikipedians up against each other, while the poor guy/girl who formost intends to use his/her common sense belongs in neither of the mutually exclusive categories Haukur mentions. It's a formulation that only tries to push people in one corner or another, favouring that above equilibrated discussion. -- Francis Schonken 22:32, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
(never mind whether we link to precision or not). This already mentions several other guidelines so Francis doesn't mind that. Haukur and Philip want to mention the question about diacritics in this context. Now, certainly Francis is correct that there isn't any guideline about that, because there is disagreement. I don't see the need to restrict ourselves to mention things that have consensus, we should mention all relevant issues that have been discussed in the community. In cases where there is consensus we should link to the guideline, in cases where there isn't consensus, especially cases that have been hotly debated, we should mention that there is disagreement so people are aware of the situation.Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used".
The diacritics question is discussed -> here <-
The question of the use of diacritics in article titles is discussed -> here <-
I don't feel Thomas à Kempis v Thomas of Kempen is a very instructive example or very relevant to the vote that took place. The choice in the vote was between Thomas à Kempis and Thomas a Kempis - no-one was arguing for Thomas of Kempen and it didn't even exist as a redirect until Francis created it — helpfully and correctly — today. I think the dog example, on the other hand, is very good and shouldn't be removed.- Haukur 10:32, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Please read the sixteen point introduction at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Lists by religion-ethnicity and profession#Move to delete 99% of all Lists and Categories of Jews: Sixteen reasons why this should become a fixed Wikipedia policy and related discussions at Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Lists by religion-ethnicity and profession#Proposed amendment: remove all Jewish-related lists. Thank you. IZAK 11:26, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
The second part of the following sentence annoys me:
Some of these exceptions follow from guidelines that give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used".
My feeling is that the "most used" name is also the "most obvious" and therefore the sentence does not make much sence. E.g. do people feel that that Roger Meddows-Taylor is more obvious than just Roger Taylor? I'm removing this for now. Stefán Ingi 10:49, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
(removed incorrect quotation, see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)#A Czech/Bohemian-English example and Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)#A Polish-English example: "most obvious" was no part of my argumentation. -- Francis Schonken 12:22, 5 January 2006 (UTC))
...so, there's no problem with the formulation. -- Francis Schonken 13:34, 5 January 2006 (UTC)Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used".
Some of these exceptions follow from guidelines that give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and solution of naming conflicts.
Sorry, don't agree for a letter. Once you started talking about "evil companies" and the like that closed the door for me. There's no consensus to do any of the things you propose, and you couldn't convince me otherwise. -- Francis Schonken 15:44, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Of course it represents an "exception" to the common names principle (otherwise no use to put it in the "exceptions" section is it?)
The point is that neither of the three mentioned guidelines (that are general guidelines, as opposed to specific royalty NC guidelines, or American/British English MoS, etc...) warrants deviating into something non-obvious. E.g. wikipedia:naming conflict: Do not invent names as a means of compromising between opposing POVs. Wikipedia describes current usage but cannot prescribe a particular usage or invent new names.
If you want a non-obvious name, it has to be covered by a specific guideline, e.g. wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) leads in some instances to non-obvious names, that why it's called an over-all exception to the common names principle.
wikipedia:naming conventions (precision), wikipedia:disambiguation and Wikipedia:Naming conflict (without applying one of the specific guidelines) might lead to article names that are strictly spoken not the "most common", but in that case the naming should still remain obvious, in fact "the most obvious" in the exceptional case that "the most common" can't be used.
It has been tried multiple times to stretch the "common names" guideline beyond what is obvious (mis-quoting it like Haukurth did re. the Norse mythology NC, or Deeptrivia on talk:Arabic numerals, etc...) - so no, abuse is too frequent to leave that remark about "most obvious" out. -- Francis Schonken 09:12, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
The Arabic numerals WP:RM vote is concluded on that name. The misleading didn't stick. All other arguments by Haukurth can easily be summarized to "creating tensions about non-issues" - it is a non-issue that an article name, unless a specific NC guideline decides otherwise, should always be obvious. That has always been so, and will not be changed against consensus. And "consensus" means more than three or four people being against it. -- Francis Schonken 11:07, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
@Stefan: You say:
Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which, e.g., suggests that SCO group should be the obvious one.
I say:
Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used", for which SCO group is an example.
So where's the difference? That you use "should be the obvious one", and I say "rather the most obvious"? Sorry, your argument is void.
I looked into Roger Meddows-Taylor today. I can only say that at talk:Roger Meddows-Taylor it was decided in less than 10 lines of text that Roger Meddows-Taylor would be "the most obvious" page name for this drummer. If you don't agree with that, use talk:Roger Meddows-Taylor. Of course in the case of this drummer only the most obvious page name can be used - that is after sorting out the many precision, disambiguation and naming conflict issues that are involved regarding this example. And really, if you think the people didn't sort that out properly at talk:Roger Meddows-Taylor, use that talk page, that's what talk pages are for. But the page name should be the most obvious one if it isn't today.
Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and solution of naming conflicts. An example of this is SCO Group, which is used instead of SCO.
@Deeptrivia: Is your intervention part of this discussion? I don't see where it links. So I don't think we need to take account of it here.
@Haukurth: I think that was already answered. -- Francis Schonken 00:25, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are more suitable than strictly the most used.
What is the policy regarding POV titles... If there is an article with a name used by one of the participants in the conflict, isn't that considered POV? If there are alternate titles, which are used in other encyclopedias and are NPOV, but perhaps not the 'common name', wouldn't it make sense to use that one instead? - Spaceriqui 21:14, 6 January 2006 (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 2 | Archive 3 |
And yet Mozart and Bach are both disambiguation pages, and Goethe redirects to his full name. Is the above really correct, or have I just wasted my time relinking all the Mozarts to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? -- Camembert
You're right that the assertion made in the article is refuted by actual practice. -- The Cunctator
So why are we not allowing Margrethe II to be at her proper name, but rather at some English variant of the name? It's pretty stupid to think you Americans have the right to change every name in the world to some American version. Lir 21:22 Nov 10, 2002 (UTC)
Much discussion has taken place about this very subject. Here are some threads:
After some discussion with mav I've added a paragraph on the metapage to state what has become and is enforced as the norm: no subpages. The current practice needed to be state more plainly on the metapage because the links to the threads on this issue are too arduous (for experienced contributors) to guide newcomers. Editors moving subpages should point newcomers to this metapage and its talk page. BoNoMoJo 15:56 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)
What is the best option given the polemic. But, in the middle of the article, ´( Luis Inacio Lula da Silva should we use the international (american?) common form (Mr. da Silva) or the way he is called in Brazil (not only by his supporters), "Lula"?
In this case, it´s curious that Lula himself has made clear that he WANTS to be called with the word "Lula" in the middle, like "Lula", "Lula da silva", "President Lula", etc. In his opinion and also from all brazilians, he shouldn´t be called "Mr. da Silva", but "Mr. Lula" or any variant of that.
As a brazilian, I would suggest to refer to him as Lula. What is the wikipedia rule for that? "Use the English form" (anglicize) is not like "Use the form he is called in countries of english language".
Yves 15:09 Jan 29, 2003 (UTC)
Related to the recent mailing list discussion is the issue of unnecessary disambiguation. This has become very tedious for me to move bands and albums to the most simple location because people see Kansas (band), U.F.O. (band) and Styx (band) and want to put every band at similarly disambiguated titles, in spite of there being nothing encyclopedic to disambiguate against. Maybe a note should be included here or elsewhere about disambiguation-mania, just so I have something to point to? (though most of the offenders are the KROQ guy and other anonymous users who probably would never see me point). Tokerboy
I am confused by this header. I would have expected it to read Don't Overdo it, which makes more sense if only to me personally. Is the current one perhaps (a) a US usage which I don't know about, (b) a clever pun, or something, which I don't get, or (c) a mistake? If it's A then fine, if B then dubious because others may also miss the joke, if C then it needs changing. All enlightenment gratefully received. Nevilley
What about kings, queens, princes, princesses, etc? IE, Laurent, Prince of Belgium ? Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom or Elizabeth Windows ? Martin
That is all covered in the naming conventions pages on royal titles. STÓD/ÉÍRE 20:57 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)
In the UK and the Republic, people who are members of the Welsh (or London) Assemblies have AM after their names. Members of the Parliament at Westminster use MP after their names. Members of the Scottish Parliament put MSP after their name. Members of the NI Assembly put MLA after their names and Members of Dáil Éireann put TD after their names. Here's what i'm wondering, should a Wikipedian refer to a person who is a member of a body that uses a TLA with that TLA or without the TLA? Like this:
John Doe, TLA
or
John Doe
In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was fairly common practice on the Continent that a person was called by their last given name rather than the first one as is common today. So the French painter Alexandre-Georges-Henri Regnault was commonly referred to as Henri Regnault. His father Henri Victor Regnault was probably called Victor when he wasn't called Monsieur. In cases like this, it makes sense to list the person by the given name they were most frequently called by, rather than a full name or the name we could guess from our modern conceptions of name order. Agreements? Disagreements? Shimmin 03:27, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)
When used, which one are we to prefer:
The first four variants showed up quite often on Daniel Quinlan's redirect-project. -- User:Docu
At Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)#Don't Overdo it, i have converted "unreasonably offensive" to "commonly regarded as offensive" in the following two passages:
I am making no argument against the usage of these preferred terms. Nevertheless, it is a PoV to say that the reason is unreasonable offensiveness. Another PoV (mine and perhaps others) is that these are matters of politeness, rejected in modernized societies not bcz they are offensive but for more pragmatic (but IMO equally good) reasons. Actually, to the extent they are offensive, it's bcz the alternatives are polite (or considered polite, arguably the same thing).
It'll take me a while to put across my explanation; three anecdotes help in that:
My point with all three of these is that what is "unreasonably offensive" grabs a reasonable person by the throat, without them stopping to deal with the nuances that this terminology has gone thru, and doesn't change in a year or two. What we have here is a social convention, or rather a series of them; i happen to regard each of them as a good social convention in its time (that's my PoV), but i think it is a fact (or much closer to an objective fact) that they are conventions, and that these conventions have served the role of helping African-Americans reorganize and propagate their collective goals and self-conceptions, and enlist different forms (or nuances) of support from sympathetic people of more privileged racial identity. It's IMO unreasonable to violate any of these conventions in its own time, but not unreasonably offensive. Unreasonable, and offensive, but offensive only because the convention is accepted as important (which i agree with); that's my PoV, and the idea of "unreasonably offensive" is another PoV. But whether they're "commonly regarded as offensive" is a fact. -- Jerzy 21:51, 2004 Jan 19 (UTC)
On Talk:Citric acid cycle, there has for a while been a disagreement going on about how to title the page. There is some evidence from Google searches that "Krebs cycle" is a more common name than "citric acid cycle", and no-one has, as far as I can see, argued that this is not true.
...Therefore, following the convention to use the most common name, unless it is misleading or offensive, the page should be at Krebs cycle.
However, there seems to be a lot of disapproval of this title on the talk page. They've even set up a silly poll to justify not applying the convention to that particular article. And, as usual, that has killed all rational debate. After all, why provide reasons for a point of view when you can force it through with sheer weight of numbers? No-one has taken up my suggestion to discuss a possible change in the policy here, so I'm bringing it up myself.
It seems that a lot of people want to title pages according to names used by professionals in the fields in question - for example, authors of textbooks. It seems that terms like " citric acid cycle" and so on are used by academics, while alternative terms are better known to the general public. My current point of view is that since this is a general encyclopaedia, meant for the general public, we should use the terms that the general public will be most likely to recognise. Comments...? (Hint: all humanly devised designations are arbitrary, and none can be considered objectively more "correct" than any other, so don't even think about trying that argument... :P ) -- Oliver P. 04:46, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)
People should be called what they say their name is, and groups should be called what they call themselves. This should only not be the case if there is a conflict between groups over who has the rights to a name (such as Taiwan and the mainland PRC both claiming that they represented China). When there is a refusal to call a group what it asks to be called, and instead an outside dominant group claims the right to assign it a pejorative, or propaganda name that it be called, this seems to be the end of any kind of NPOV. Some examples of this would be the Vietnamese National Liberation Front being called "Viet Cong" (as if anyone in South Vietnam opposed to the government was a de facto communist), the Communist Party of Kampuchea being called "Khmer Rouge", the Communist Party of Peru being called "Shining Path" and so forth. These names would usually be created and propagated by a small elite group, from government leaders to the corporate media, in an attempt to make the use of the name widespread.
I added a section called "call the group what it calls itself". Obviously, I would like a discussion of this so we can hammer this idea out. I have noticed that the US corporate media will not even call groups by the names they call themselves, and assign propaganda/pejorative names to groups. Examples, National Liberation Front -> Viet Cong; Communist Party of Peru -> Shining Path; Communist Party of Kampuchea -> Khmer Rouge. This is definitely a propaganda tool controlled by a small elite (<2% of the US population has any control of the corporate media, even less worldwide). Communist Parties get exotic, scary sounding names. Non-communist groups, or popular front groups which include communists have the label communist applied to them (and in the case of Viet Cong, it has an exotic, scary sounding name as well).
To me, this is the end of NPOV. When people say that the small elite who control the US corporate media have the right to determine everything's name, perhaps due to some divine Judeo-Christian right that biblical reference can be found to OK (Genesis 2:19-20 ?), even when the group asks that it be called by the groups name, then you can just forget about any NPOV after that. I see articles which are just straight propaganda after propaganda, and then I see that the group isn't even allowed it's own name, it has to be called whatever the US government and corporate media elite DECIDED it should be called. It would be as if a group called itself African-Americans, but wealthy white Americans decided they would rather that group be called niggers, have the corporate media propagate that, and there you go. Then you can have the article filled with scientific proof about how African-Americans, I mean, niggers, have lower IQ's then white people, are more crime-prone then white people, have never achieved anything near the pinnacle of white achievement, then there can be some links to the Bell Curve and the like at the bottom. If I had to decide where to start on all that, I would say, this group calls itself African-American, so let's call them African-American, we can allow them the right to determine what they are called, and go from there. And everyone knows what I am talking about, I mentioned real name disputes in the article. Those disputes are between two groups trying to get the same name - not one group with "two" names pinned on them, one by themselves and used by their friends, and one pejorative/propaganda ones pinned on them by their enemies. Richardchilton 09:23, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
It's an interesting point; a similar argument was made concerning the placement of the article on Linda Boreman. My own feeling is that the policy doesn't give the media conglomerates the right to decide names; rather, it recognizes the idea that common names, however derived, are the best place to put the article in order to get hits from search engines. It is a sad fact (or opinion) that media conglomerates control the public discourse, but Wikipedia's role is to provide information to the reader in the article, not make political statements by locating the article under a particular title. -- Cyan 22:03, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
To some extent, this policy is already in place; for instance, even though some aircraft might be best known to English speakers by their NATO reporting names ( Fishbed for instance), we've agreed to use the official designations. In any case, it's WP's role to report what is, rather than what we would think would make a better world. An organization that continually shifts its official name around for propaganda purposes would be more rationally categorized by a constant familiar name for instance; this is often the case for articles about companies. So I think familiarity should trump official names if there is a huge disparity (10-to-1 in Google, books, etc), but that official should be considered at, say, 2-to-1 or less, or if the "familiar" usage is nearly all in obsolete sources. Stan 22:20, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
One more thought: the official policy should remind people to find out the official name, and to determine if the familiar one is a pejorative applied by enemies - Viet Cong seems to be unclear for instance, somebody needs to do more research on the point, cite some authoritative sources. Stan 22:27, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The normal English form should be used for the article and any official name mentioned early in it. A look at the edit history of the proposer will also be instructive. Jamesday 22:36, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Richard's para is already policy and has been since time immemorial. There are many examples. In other words, Richard was simply spelling out the existing de facto policy in more explicit terms. On the other hand, I think his examples were poorly chosen, and the rhetoric needs to be toned down. However, in the interests of amity, I'll refrain from reverting the revert, at least for a little while. Tannin 22:58, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
It is a shame that this proposal is put forward with arguments that so invite suggestions like "[the] edit history of the proposer will also be instructive". I am honestly tempted to propose a consensus that the proposal be stripped down to its essentials, and discussed while every edit by Richard to this page is reverted to avoid him further inflaming the discussion with issues that could only interfere with the outcome he seeks, so we can discuss the issue and not him.
(With that in mind, i am holding my tongue about the details of the insults, against both of the two most relevant races, implicit in Richard's views of the role of that word in sustaining either slavery or the racisms of the various periods since.)
The proposal is in fact a highly PoV one, rather than a reduction of PoV. It is not only PoV in intent, by assuming and validating the extreme PoVs that
It also is PoV in effect, serving to impede recollection of what a reader already knows (or believes -- and don't forget that the difference is their business, not ours) about less visible groups. This favors the PoVs of fringe groups over mainstream ones, since smaller ones are much more likely to have their alienating past obscured by our use of an obscure name that has not passed the muster of the market place of ideas.
This is not, BTW, a matter applying just to groups the size of sects (whether religious or political). For instance, if any significant number of Americans could remember the obscure names of the highly significant PRK,
The West Wing would never discuss the "Republic of North Korea". --
Jerzy
(t) 23:10, 2004 Mar 4 (UTC)
On Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names), the following addition was suggested:
"Use the name the group calls itself People should be called what they say their name is, and groups should be called what they call themselves. This should only not be the case if there is a conflict between groups over who has the rights to a name (such as Taiwan and the mainland PRC both claiming that they represented China). When there is a refusal to call a group what it asks to be called, and instead an outside dominant group claims the right to assign it a pejorative, or propaganda name that it be called, this seems to be the end of any kind of NPOV. Some examples of this would be the Vietnamese National Liberation Front being called "Viet Cong" (as if anyone in South Vietnam opposed to the government was a de facto communist), the Communist Party of Kampuchea being called "Khmer Rouge", the Communist Party of Peru being called "Shining Path" and so forth. These names would usually be created and propagated by a small elite group, from government leaders to the corporate media, in an attempt to make the use of the name widespread."
Then reasoning for this was spelled out on the discussion page. More names spring to mind as I think about it "(American) Indian", "anti-globalization movement", and so on and so forth. -- Richardchilton 21:49, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
A lot of these arguments remind me of the novel 1984, where the government puts out a new Newspeak dictionary every year, and everyone complies right away, rewriting all the old words so they comply with the new ones. Then they are all "common usage" and all of the arguments presented here, after all, the government called them that, the corporate media complied, and tried to propagate that. Thus words like freedom would become thoughtcrime in the common usage. I think one thing that is instructive is to note how there are only a small number of groups where the US government (and corporate media) refuses to call them by their names, whether anglicized or not (Partido Comunista del Peru = Communist Party of Peru). You can't find many instances where a political group is refused even to name itself. The ones where this is done are just total propaganda from what I've read. This just seems like the kind of totalitarian white collar American arrogance that exists - most white, white-collar Americans call a group a certain name, thus, that will be its name. Richardchilton 23:03, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The issue of "two groups fighting for the same name" seems to me to apply to what we have to date calling the "Shining Path". They call themselves the "Partido Comunista de Peru", but, in fact, references to the "Partido Comunista de Peru" nearly always mean the party that used to be part of the Comintern. "Shining Path" is a literal translation of "Sendero Luminoso", a name that to the best of my knowledge is -- at least in part for just this reason -- used both in Peru and elsewhere, by friend and foe alike. (E.g. it is used by the RCP, who claim the Senderistas as an affiliated party.) It seems to me that it would be OK to list what a group calls itself as a very important factor in what to call an article, but not to make this an absolute and immutable rule. And in any case, I hope we can all agree that all of the relevant forwards and disambiguations should always be in place, and all commonly used names should be mentioned in the first paragraph, making this all more of an issue for partisans (of either side) than for end users of our site. -- Jmabel 00:43, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The policy on this page is often quoted when there are discussions about the appropriate naming of pages in
medicine. There are various arguments why
heart attack might be preferable over
myocardial infarction (basically the same), but some lay terms for medical phenomena are exceedingly imprecise, loaded with bias or simply wrong ("heartburn" is neither
cardiac nor
oxidative).
I would like to start the discussion by pointing at
talk:Heart attack and
Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion#April 18. Undersigned has also conducted a similar discussion on
Talk:Neutrophil granulocyte.
Chemistry and
biology pages are generally phrased in specialist/scientific terminology; in my view, a similar thing ought to happen to medical material on Wikipedia.
As for
heart attack, there seems to be some concensus that "lay term pages" should contain brief introductions phrased in non-technical terms, while pointing at a more technical and detailed discussion on another page that employs more technical terminology. This might be the best solution, but fails whenever there is no real lay term available (e.g.
diabetes mellitus).
Finally, even the lay person might learn something from being redirected.
JFW |
T@lk 01:08, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
There seems to be some confusion about how changes of name should be handled. The policy here says use the commonly used name, which implies ignoring the name change since the old name would be more familiar and used in old texts etc.I disagree with this since I think accuracy and being up-to-date are more important, especially since the old name will redirect to the new one and nobody will have any trouble finding the article.
In any case in practice this is applied inconsistenly. Examples that (justifiably I think) violate the current policy:
While I found a big argument about another similar case:
I'm sure there are many other examples. Somebody needs to clarify this point in the policy page.
Hans Zarkov 11:40, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
From User talk:SamuelWantman / User talk:Tillwe, after I moved "G. Spencer Brown" back to "George Spencer Brown". Could someone help us?
Welcome too! I just reverted your move of the content of
George Spencer Brown to
G. Spencer-Brown. I did this for two reasons: firstly, Wikipedia name policy is to use the most common form of the full name. I'm not sure if this is "George Spencer Brown" or "George Spencer-Brown"; in German language texts by
Luhmann I only have see the former. So I made
George Spencer Brown again the main entry and turned
George Spencer-Brown as well as
G. Spencer-Brown into REDIRECTs. The second reason is, that for moving a page -- which is essentially what you tried to do -- you should use the "move" function. It copies not only content, but also history. If it doesn't work, this means there is an article with history already; in such cases maybe an admin can help by deleting that article. BTW: If you want to use abbreviated names in an article, you can do so like this [[George Spencer Brown|G. Spencer-Brown]]
. --
till we ☼☽ |
Talk 19:31, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
Any useful contributions to this discuaion will be appreciated, at talk:Ebonics.
I'm fresh from stumbling into a naming convention dispute at Mahatma Gandhi. Shoulda known better, but it brought me here, where I was suprised to read the following:
We want to maximize the likelihood of being listed in other search engines, thereby attracting more people to Wikipedia. Also, the Jimmy Carter page has the string "Jimmy Carter" in the page title. This is important because other search engines will often give greater weight to the contents of the title than to the body of the page. Since "Jimmy Carter" is the most common form of the name, it will be searched on more often, and having that exact string in our page title will often mean our page shows up higher in other search engines.
I thought that's what redirect pages were for. I mean, I wouldn't expect any other reference work to list Jimmy Carter as "Jimmy Carter." I guess I'd be in the "James Earl Carter" camp myself, though I wouldn't make a huge deal about it on Wikipedia.
But that's beside the point.
I just can't help thinking that maximizing hits and properly naming entries may sometimes be mutually exclusive goals. I can understand how a redirect page named for the common usage of a less commonly known term might foul up search engine results. But isn't the whole point of Wikipedia -- or any encyclopedia -- to inform people about less commonly known facts?
That said, I also don't think that this is an insurmountable problem, though perhaps one that might require some technical elbow grease. How about if there were some way to include the first 100 or so words from the "redirected-to" page on the redirect page itself? Why not retool the #REDIRECT template to include that text in its META tag?
I admit I don't know the nuts and bolts of Wikipedia coding, but what if the code that #REDIRECT whatever produced also took a small chunk of text from the beginning of the whatever article and put it in the redirect page's META tag, so that search engines would display it while remaining invisible to Wikipedia users? That way contributors would have more flexibility in presenting information without compromising Wikipedia's "searchability."
Again, I don't know how feasible this is, but I hope that we can figure out some way to prevent Wikipedia's necessary pursuit of hits from compromising its pursuit of knowledge. -- Dablaze 00:54, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)
I'll add my voice to those who prefer that articles be under full formal names where possible and common names as redirects...to do otherwise is to abdicate the role of place people go to look up more than they already know.I don't see the idea of calling people whatever they want to be called as logical either...it benefits the egotistical at the expense of the modest.(For this reason I have always disliked pinyin transliteration of Chinese,an invasion of the Roman alphabet created by those who do not use it without regard for its conventions).There is no reason that Chinese cities should have to be called by their native-language names while European ones are not.(Athens hosted the Olympics and didn't insist on being called Athinai,Peking insists on being "Beijing" and that probably gave Turin,the intervening Winter Olympic host,the idea of promoting "Torino").--L.E/le@put.com/ 12.144.5.2 18:38, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
One of the obvious differences between Wikipedia and almost every other reference work is that we list people by first name instead of by surname.
I understand the rationale for wanting to use the most common name for a person but it has some drawbacks. For example, any automated alphabetical listing of biographical entries will not be ordered by surname.
Is there any way to have a special tag for the formal name of the person for sorting, etc.? It should also automatically become a redirect.
I'd like to start a discussion on striking this convention. I'll keep my initial argument short (by my standards) and to the point by countering the three primary points made in the article. I'll name them the three points and please refer to them (or my response) by number if you need to.
A good article should have the full name as well as the common name. A search engine indexing the page would find both. So this point boils down to that of the title of the article (and the thus the purpose of the naming convention).
I will call this a technical problem that is being patched by naming articles after common names. For example, if the article of Jimmy Carter was really named James Earl Carter, Jr. then the title of the page returned should be something of the order "James Earl Carter, Jr. -> Jimmy Carter" or "Jimmy Carter <- James Earl Carter, Jr." This change in the title of redirect pages would void this point since the common name would still appear in the title.
Naming people with their full name or other articles by official titles builds in an automatic disambiguation. Very possible to have another "Jimmy Carter" but much less to have a "James Earl Carter, Jr."
By creating an article at it's full name or official title and redirecting reduces duplication (no one will make a page at Jimmy Carter). Fundamentally, naming the article after the common name and redirecting from the proper name is no different than naming the article after the proper name and redirecting from the common name: both names are covered and get you to the article.
This is under the presumption that linking to redirects is a Bad Thing (TM) and that "redirected from" announcements are also a Bad Thing (TM). Linking to a redirect is only bad when the redirect name becomes ambiguous (e.g., another "Jimmy Carter"; and believe it or not, IMDB shows 4 other "Jimmy Carter"s but none as notable). I would contend that linking to redirects is not a bad thing. How trivial is it to take a script/bot and have all uses of "Jimmy Carter" be changed to "James Earl Carter, Jr.|Jimmy Carter" when "Jimmy Carter" becomes ambiguous?
After something like "Jimmy Carter" becomes ambiguous then it will require more attention to what links are named regardless of which naming convention is used.
Summary of points:
One final point to make.
Due to the limitation of wikipedia (it has no namespaces for content, only (roughly) functionality) the further population of popular/common terms will require more disambiguations in the future.
For example, since there's no way to seperate
Cyrano de Bergerac the person from the play and films, it must be done by altering the article name (e.g.,
Cyrano de Bergerac (play),
Cyrano de Bergerac (1950 film), &
Cyrano de Bergerac (1990 film)) instead of being able to seperate the three articles into different namespaces or into a hierarchy (like the subcategorization of articles in Wolfram's
World of Science, though the web pages are still all in a single directory).
The best solution would be to have "people/Cyrano de Bergerac", "plays/Cyrano de Bergerac", "films/1950/Cyrano de Bergerac", & "films/1990/Cyrano de Bergerac" to which a disambiguation page at "Cyrano de Bergerac" & "films/Cyrano de Bergerac" could automatically be generated based on the articles in "subdirectories", which would also easily lend to an implicit category creation.
But this is a huge tangent.
Cburnett 22:21, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Several edits are taking place, (see for example the Kerala page) where the "Initials in names should each be followed by a period and a space" is applied for South Indian names. This is not correct, as the two or three first letters in a South Indian name are not the same as a Western initial. The general naming convention in India is to write the name without spaces between the letters indicating the father's name and home-town name, such as A.K. Gopalan, etc. -- Soman 09:42, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The current convention says that middle names are only to be used when the person is normally known by them. However, it seems to me that it is preferable, when it is necessary to disambiguate, to use a middle name, if available, rather than a parenthetical explanation, which seems awkward and unnecessary if we can avoid it. Any thoughts? john k 16:31, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Well, of course there need to be redirects and disambiguations. But see the case of the British politician Herbert Morrison. He cannot be at Herbert Morrison, because this must disambiguate between him and another Herbert Morrison, who is famous for saying "oh the humanity" in the Hindenburg broadcast. Let us ignore for now the possibility of putting him under his peerage title at Herbert Morrison, Baron Morrison of Lambeth, simply noting that he was given this title after his retirement, and is rarely called by it. My preference, then, would be to put him at Herbert Stanley Morrison. Adam Carr disagrees, and wants Herbert Morrison (politician). I find the latter both unsightly and kind of unprofessional - with people, I'd prefer some kind of system. If possible, I'd suggest going with middle name/initials (depending on which is more commonly used), and then birth and death dates, when available. Since Morrison is distinguished from the other Herbert Morrison by his middle name, I say he sould be at Herbert Stanley Morrison. This is not to say that there should not be redirects at Herbert Morrison (politician) or Herbert Morrison (1888-1965). What do you mean, by the way, about birthdates being moot, and are you suggesting the two articles should be at Herbert Morrison (1965) and Herbert Morrison (1989). This seems odd - one would have to know that these were the deathdates. If no birthdate is available, though, something like John Smith (d. 1371) is better than John Smith (Archbishop of Canterbury) - people have many roles, and it seems inherently POV to just pick one of them out of the ether, and there's no consistency. All the various US politicians named John Brown are at places like John Brown (Maryland). But this John Brown's near contemporary and co-Marylander, Senator John Henry, is at John Henry (senator). This seems inherently unwieldy to me. There's no reason not to have sensible policies for how to disambiguate people with the same name. john k 23:43, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I agree with the main point. My feeling about dates is uncertain - if it's absolutely clear what someone's occupation is, maybe. But sometimes it can be awkward. I don't know. john k 02:07, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I am looking for a clear specification on what is meant by common. What kind of numbers should be used as an indicator that something is common? (Related to discussion on renaming article Calcutta to Kolkata!) -- Urnonav 06:38, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Good question. In particular, is "common" supposed to be construed with or without regard to the Manual of Style, which explicitly takes into account national varieties of English? Alai 06:40, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I agree that tsunami is more appropriate than tidal wave for the article name, because this is the most commonly used expression. However, it is a bad example for "misleading naming" and violate the rule of using English names where they are available. My understanding is that tsunami translates to "harbor wave." We can ignore this because the foreign word masks its meaning for most English speakers, but "harbor wave" is no more accurate to describe the phenomenon than "tidal wave." -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 20:25, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, it's like using "military intelligence" as an example of an oxymoron. Let's try to think of a case which exemplifies what we're talking about.
And by the way, this:
... is not true. There are special subpage features. See help:subpage. Uncle Ed 19:41, July 9, 2005 (UTC)
I'm one of those who think that the "Names and Titles" naming conventions guideline could be written in a format that makes it sound less as an exception to general wikipedia principles on article naming ref.
The issue has been discussed recently on severeral talk pages, and there appears to be a group of wikipedians that neither wants to get really involved, neither is particularily fond of the present complications for naming a "lucky-by-birth stiff who had some pretentions to a hereditary right to rule others or had the remotest ancestral connections to such a person" ref
The problem is, these wikipedians have no alternative: either it's the complicated "exception" rule, either it's only the basic rules that lead to ambiguity in many cases of article naming on persons.
That's why I announce here my plan to start a {{proposed}} guideline for dealing with article naming of articles on people. I think the logical name for such guideline would be:
Using a guideline name differing from the existing ones, as long as it's merely a proposal, also helps not to disturb existing rules (and their talk pages) too much: while in the end it might result in no more than a few ideas of this proposition being "absorbed" by other guidelines (or the other way around). But that's for the wikipedia community to decide then. First I try to cooperate in building a valid alternative, better in line with general Naming Conventions guidelines. -- Francis Schonken 11:56, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
I have two specific cases in which my preference clashes with this policy: Czech Republic vs. Czechia and East Timor vs. Timor-Leste.
In both cases, the first name is clearly the more common one, I admit that. However, the governments of those two countries explicitly stated that they want to be referred to by the second name — Timor-Leste wants to be called Timor-Leste in each and every language, just like Côte d'Ivoire; and Czechia wants to be called Czechia in English. There has been some discussion about this on those articles' talk pages, and the final argument regularily was that my view contradicted official Wikipedia policy, and that I should just let it be.
However, I still think that these two cases merit special attention. After all, it's not just a matter of what's more common, but also a matter of what's correct. The fact that it's undoubtably more common to say wegen dem Unfall in spoken German doesn't change the fact that wegen des Unfalls is still the only correct way of saying it. So – any comments? — ナイトスタリオン ㇳ–ㇰ — 16:26, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
Now then: Timor Leste is Portuguese, if you translate that to English, you get East Timor, the "common English version of the name", which, according to that guideline should get precedence. See also "Dealing with self-identifying terms" lower on that same page, giving more detail about the argumentation for translating to English.Where a choice exists between native and common English versions of names (e.g. Deutsch/German), always use the common English version of the name.
I agree that the common name should be used as the article title, but that doesn't mean it should be treated as the technical or formal name. This isn't a problem for people's names, like Jimmy Carter, because these are self-explanatory. However, for some things, it isn't. If the article begins as "[common name], also known as [technical name], is . . ." then it sounds like the technical name is just a less-used, alternative name. For example, in the article for nitrous oxide, it starts with "Nitrous oxide, also known as dinitrogen oxide or dinitrogen monoxide, is a . . ." What this doesn't say is that, following standard naming procedures, the second two names are correct, while the first is outdated. No one actually talks about "dinitrogen oxide," so the article's name is correct. What I am proposing is that the policy be changed, so that in any articles where this applies (not just compounds) it begins with "[common name], formally known as [technical name], is . . ." If anyone has any objections, please say so; if there are none, I'll change the policy. (For another example of what this would fix, nitric oxide, which would be called nitrogen monoxide by the standard naming system, doesn't even mention that name.) Twilight Realm 21:02, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Not really. For example, sodium hydroxide says "also known as lye or caustic soda..." which could be improved by saying "commonly known as..." This isn't the best example, because it's sort of obvious what's a chemical name and what's a common name. I'm not able to come up with any good examples that aren't obvious right now, other than compounds with similarly outdated names (the suffixes "-ous" (nitrous, ferrous)and "-ic" (nitric, ferric) are outdated, but are still in common use in some compounds). I'm not that good at coming up with examples, though; if anyone else can think of some examples of anything (chemical, organism, object), please share it. Twilight Realm 00:25, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Here's an example. Sorta. The cannabis article should mention something about marijuana, in the introduction. If it did, it would be a good example. (By the way, I got to that article through the grass article. I didn't think of it by myself.) Twilight Realm 00:25, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Hi there, I think that it would be great if this guideline explicitly stated that stage names are more appropriate than real names of famous people (of course, if they are better known by their stage names), and included examples of, for instance, Sting (musician) and Madonna (entertainer). -- Dijxtra 12:49, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
Francis wrote: Haukurth, if your abuse of this guideline wouldn't be so blatant, esp. the George Bush example (see Talk:Níðhöggr/Archive 1#A brief history of the article) I'd accept the change
You replaced this clause:
With this clause:
Your edit summary makes no mention of this change, it says only:
I felt this was heavy-handed. - Haukur 16:29, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm trying to make the example section less focused on US politicians. I think Bill Clinton is a good and very illustrative example and I'd think that would be enough. Francis says that George W. Bush is also a very useful example. Very well, I won't wage a revert war over that. But I do think Ted Kennedy is a particularly bad example. A search on books.google.com yields the following:
His own homepage lists him as "Edward M. Kennedy" and so do Britannica and Encarta. I think that this guideline would suggest that his article be moved to Edward M. Kennedy. I will not, however, request such a move since I've never edited the article and I feel move requests from "outsiders" are a bit invasive. That talk page has enough conflict already.
But the Kennedy example should be removed from this guideline. - Haukur 14:14, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
"Melos" is not more technical than Milo.
Milo is the French name of the Greek island, Melos isn't even the current version of the Greek island in English (which seems to have moved to Milos, after "Aphrodite of Melos" was sometimes used to refer to the statue in the Louvre).
Note that that example effectively marks an exception to the "use English" guideline, that's why I'm particularily fond of keeping it in the list: while most of the art production by French artists are at an English title in wikipedia, this one, totally irrational, is at a French name (and based on the Latin equivalent of the Greek godess that is supposed to be portrayed by it). The example is good while in English it is indeed "common" to name the statue thus (try websearch...: virtually unanimous with a very high score, apart from a few dozen "Aphrodite de Melos") -- Francis Schonken 14:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Okay - tell us what is wrong with the burping example, then. - Haukur 14:47, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
This is not a word. Could the lead be changed to:
Examples of common names that Wikipedia uses instead other versions which may be fuller, more formal, scientific, specific, or elaborate:
This is long but at least the sentence doesn't branch into four distinct sentences. Stefán Ingi 14:53, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm concerned Stefán and I might come across as too agressive here. We tend to agree on things and it might look like we're ganging up on you, Francis. I'm going to withdraw from this discussion for a bit. I'll be back before long. - Haukur 15:15, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
The issue of Occam's razor vs. Ockham's razor was hotly debated and some people argued that the latter was more common (and/or more suitable for other reasons). There was no consensus there. Does the fact that "Occam" prevailed in the end make it a good example for this guideline? Should the example section be a "trophy room" of past disputes? Or should it feature examples for which there is a reasonably good consensus? I'm asking your opinions honestly, we can do either as long as we're consistent. I would personally prefer the first option but I'm willing to work with the trophy room model if there's a consensus for that. - Haukur 15:44, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Francis, it feels like you're being a tad possessive about this guideline. As far as I can see you added the entire "See also" section yourself in one edit without any prior discussion [7]
And when I make a minor rewording edit to this section [8] you do a blanket revert and accuse me of "messing with" the guideline and not understanding it. - Haukur 13:21, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
...you barely understand - use the talk page instead.
It is by now clear you want to push your POV that the "common names" principle should be bent another way. I don't agree to it. Period. So if you're looking for agreement rather than edit-warring, use the talk page. -- Francis Schonken 13:00, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
"Wikipedia is a fast medium" - one of the lamest excuses for edit-warring I ever heard. -- Francis Schonken 13:42, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Francis, It seems to me that there is some difficulty in us two cooperating productively here even in minor issues. Bringing in more contributors would probably be helpful. I'll ask some people if they're interested in helping. - Haukur 14:52, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
As said above, if I'd come up with something that sounds like a good example I'd mention it here: what about:
The example is interesting as the Guinea pig has no relation to Guinea (as an example that a misnomer is sometimes used when it's the common name).
As far as I'm concerned this example could replace the more outlandisch sea cucumber example. -- Francis Schonken 23:07, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
@ Philip: note that I never removed the example, instead I started & elaborated the "Exceptions" section, noting that several NC guidelines implicitly or explicitly contain exceptions, but that the one surpassing all others in this respect was the names & titles NC.
Then, later, for the brief period I thought that three weeks of "current surveys" listing + notification of the same for the same period on several talk pages (including the names & titles NC talk page) without receiving a single negative comment was enough to move that guideline to wikipedia:naming conventions (Western nobility) I had exchanged the link to the names & titles NC guideline for a straight link to what I thought was agreed to be the new one.
Now, we know how all that ended, I don't think I have to explain. Anyway, the "Western nobility" NC page is a redirect to the "names & titles" NC guideline page, and still indicated as the "major exception" in the "Exceptions" section of the common names NC guideline. I have no problem the link is made without the redirect via "Western nobility" (I must say, I kind of forgot about it after the "Western nobility" vote).
But my proposal is to keep the treatment of "exceptions" in the "Exceptions" section, and not scatter it all over the guideline.
@ HaukurÞ: The same goes for Þ's new proposal to add more examples of exceptions (or "counterexamples") all over the place: I don't think this a good idea. Keep exceptions in the "Exceptions" section. The "Don't overdo it" section is only meant to illustrate that using "common sense" is always what should be done, and is not the same as "exception", or to put it more technically, that there's no real tension between the "common names" guideline and the current version of the "Precision" NC guideline, if both are well understood. In fact both guidelines are two halves of the same idea: "maximum recognisability for English speaking people", which is about the only thing that is core issue of the "official policy" regarding naming conventions, see wikipedia:Naming conventions, third paragraph of the intro.
I do agree that Tsunami/Tidal wave is not a good example. "Tidal waves" exist (actually, they're called Tidal bore), but they're not interchangeable with Tsunami. Also Tidal wave is a disambig page now, separate from the Tsunami page. So that example should be dropped IMHO. -- Francis Schonken 16:49, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
There's a poll at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Numismatics#Currency_Rename_POLL to rename a bunch of articles on currencies to the [adjective denomination] format. The controversy is that the format being proposed for the sake of "consistency" clearly runs counter to the "use common names" rule. I really don't see the need to violate this rule for the sake of imposing a consistency that does not exist. Those wishing to comment on this should take a look at the page as this affects a good number of articles.-- Jiang 01:27, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I have to speak up about the horrible usage of these president's "familiar" names, "Bill" Clinton and "Jimmy" Carter, rather than their regular names. Although these are probably the best known names for the particular presidents, they are not, in fact, their names.
James Earl Carter's Nobel Peace Prize would not, in fact, reflect, Jimmy Carter. The use in article titles of these men's "familiar" names rather than their regular names demeans the individuals as well as their office. What is the Clinton or Carter's name on the books that they write? Doesn't that preclude the use of Bill or Jimmy in their article title?
Oddly enough, in later years this seems to be only an issue with living presidents of one Party versus another. I don't see Gerry Ford as an article, and yet wasn't that the man's common name.
I was under the impression that Wikipedia is above all else, an encyclopedia. People have real names, regardless of their familiar names. Bastique 19:25, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
P.S. As far as Dick is concerned, thay only give him that name because it makes him seem less insidious... ☺ B
I'm not sure I understand. First it's the Clinton and Carter articles and naming conventions in general; now it's only about Carter. Case closed, I guess. android 79 22:06, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm personally fine with using nicknames (like "Bill Clinton") instead of fuller names (like "William J. Clinton") provided that both of the following conditions are met:
In cases where either or both of these conditions are not met (as for Senator Kennedy) I think we should use a fuller name.
In borderline cases where it is not clear whether a nickname is the most common way of referring to a person or where it is not clear if the person fully approves of the nickname I think people will expect an encyclopedia to err on the side of formality. - Haukur 10:48, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
e.g., up till now other guidelines only advise to seek a "third less common solution" in the case of a British/American English dichotomy. Not in the case of (for example) two synonyms exist in English, that can not be assigned to either British or American variants. This guideline should not suggest "exceptions" that are no way covered by other guidelines. For the "exceptions" the idea is to point to these other guidelines, not reformulate them, while in the end these other guidelines might be reformulated too at some point in time.
Just pointers towards the guidelines where presently such exceptions are elaborated.
Anyway,
When adherents of two different spellings cannot reach an agreement sometimes a third alternative is chosen to end the conflict. That alternative may be less commonly used than either spelling of the common name. For example there is currently an article at the somewhat technical term fixed-wing aircraft to avoid a conflict between aeroplane and airplane.
is a presently unsupported extrapolation of WP:MoS, which *only* advises the less common for British/American English problems. Not as a general principle to be applied in all kind of circumstances. -- Francis Schonken 10:53, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
While the basic principle of this guideline enjoys wide support there are some cases where its application is disputed or overridden by other concerns. A few such cases are listed here.
More generally, several guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation, and solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are "the most obvious" rather than strictly speaking "the most used". Some of these exceptions are contained in the Manual of Style.
Several guidelines try to systematise certain types of article titles, for example article titles using abbreviations:
Many guidelines systematise titles of articles grouped by topic, for example M/S Herald of Free Enterprise and not Herald of Free Enterprise, according to Wikipedia:naming conventions (ships). For articles on people some minor practical exceptions are contained in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people).
For reasons I explained above, I don't agree with it. Reckless extrapolation. -- Francis Schonken 11:21, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I've already commented out the part which you called extrapolation. Let's discuss this a bit and hope someone else chimes in. Do you object to William the Conqueror being mentioned? Do you object to a mention of diacritics? - Haukur 11:32, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
This guideline should put itself in the context of our naming conventions as a whole. That means explaining where the boundaries between it and other guidelines lie and then linking to those guidelines for more detail. That's exactly what the guideline has been doing and I didn't add much. I think a brief mention of diacritics and "use English" is useful here because those two guidelines often come up in those kind of debates.
If you think anything I added is a not a true description please let's discuss that. - Haukur 10:57, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Once the vote is over on that article's talk page (and I don't expect it to change much any more) I'd propose following example:
The example is interesting while in French there's no diacritical on the a. Neither in Latin, and the name is supposed to be in Latin (the guy never lived in France, only in German and Dutch countries) - needless to say that neither in German nor in Dutch an accent is used. Just for some funny, inexplicable reason, in English it is most common with an accent. -- Francis Schonken 11:03, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I've reverted to Philip's last version while we discuss our differences. This discards all changes made by Francis, Stefán and me for the last couple of days (even though I think most of them were quite helpful). I hope more people will comment so we can get a broader feel for what people think is useful to have in this guideline. - Haukur 11:51, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I propose starting the Exceptions section of this guideline with something like the following:
While the basic principle of this guideline enjoys wide support there are some cases where its application is disputed or overridden by other concerns. A few such cases are listed here.
I think it's useful to mention that the most common principle does not apply to British vs. American spellings. That's often what people new to the debate start doing - counting Google hits for "aluminum" or calculating the number of Indian English speakers who spell it "colour" etc. Stating here that this won't get you anywhere may help prevent those little fights.
I also think it's useful to briefly mention the diacritics debate and link to more on that in the "use English" guideline. Then we can avoid giving any examples with diacritics over here.
Finally I think the King William example is useful and makes it clearer at a glance what this mysterious "names and title" convention says :)
Thoughts? - Haukur 12:31, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, here's how I see the "exceptions" section:
Many wikipedia naming conventions guidelines contain implicit or explicit exceptions to the "common names" principle. Some of these exceptions are due to technical limitations, for example " C Plus Plus" while "C++" is technically not possible as a page name.
Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used", for example Laurent-Désiré Kabila and not Laurent-Desire Kabila (which is more used on the internet).
Some of these exceptions are contained in the Manual of Style, for example the National varieties of English section in that guideline leads to fixed-wing aircraft being used instead of aeroplane or airplane, in order not to give precedence to either British or American spelling.
Several guidelines try to systematise certain types of article titles, for example article titles using abbreviations:
Many guidelines systematise titles of articles grouped by topic, for example M/S Herald of Free Enterprise and not Herald of Free Enterprise, according to Wikipedia:naming conventions (ships).
For articles on people some minor practical exceptions are contained in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people). The principal exception is in the case of naming royalty and people with titles. For details of the naming conventions in those cases, see the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) page.
note that this version includes moving the "names and titles" exception from the intro section to the "exceptions" section, and similarly with the "fixed-wing aircraft" example, moved from the "don't overdo it" section to this "exceptions" section.
Advantages (as I see them):
-- Francis Schonken 14:13, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
For reference here's a draft of what I'm proposing: [9]
And here's the version Francis prefers: [10]
I personally think that discarding the Laurent-Désiré Kabila example which Francis added is the right thing to do at this point. There's hardly room in this guideline to treat the diacritics question properly and we're better off linking to the guideline which does deal with that than including an off-hand example which might imply that there is a consensus to include diacritics in all cases like that.
The fixed-wing aircraft/ aeroplane/ airplane example can be included or not, it's not a big deal.
If we're concerned about the length of the guideline we might consider putting the section on subpages into a separate guideline - it doesn't really fit in well here and kind of breaks up the flow between the "Don't overdo it" section and the "Exceptions" section. - Haukur 15:01, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Just an innocent dropping by, but why are Þ, þ, Ð, ð, Ö, ö etc. not standard? They are all (along with many others) solidly entrenced in the languages of a large number of solidly Western, Christian, Pro-American and democratic nations. Is it so difficult to set up a redirect page, if necessary? (Personally I'm solidly Western and democratic.) Admittedly this is an English Wikipedia, but even here we see a split between English and American. And don't forget those thousands of people who have toiled to bring their history and heritage within reach of American readers. I believe the readers benefit from it, whether consciously or not. There is a world out there, and it can't all be spelt with 128 characters. That's a fact. If you want to broaden your education, let native spellings prevail, and you might even be tempted to look up languages. For our American readers it may come as a surprise, that English is one of the the most atypical languagues of the world. And, again, if an accent offends you, make a redirect, don't go to war. Cheers Io 19:22, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
From a somewhat naïve newcomer to this debate: Why is it a problem to have Jimmy Carter as a primary lookup? Cheers Io 19:59, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I have trouble with many articles which use a name that's obviously common in American usage instead of the one that's in common usage elsewhere or at least in Australia. Sometimes I put in a redirect from the term I know to the existing article, sometimes I request a name change, sometimes two separate but largely synonymous article develop. Can we have a recommendation on how to deal with these problems. There are a few things to consider here:
Donama 22:41, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
which you inserted in the guideline yesterday: in fact the issue re. "technically-correct" terms as article titles is a little more complex than you present it. It's extensively treated at wikipedia:naming conflict. That guideline is linked from the "common names" guideline (like so many others). I don't think the "common names" guideline should attempt at summarizing all guidelines that relate to this guideline. As is indicated in the "Exceptions" section, there's barely a single Naming Conventions guideline (and there are some dozens of such guidelines) that doesn't make an exception at one level or another to the "common names" principle.Sometimes, the technically-correct title for the article may be more useful if it is the only authoritative term, but more than one synonymous common or colloquial terms exist.
But I can live with the second half of this paragraph using the formulation introduced in the common names guideline several years ago (that is: before many, many other NC guidelines started to use exceptions), and re-introduced by Philip a few days ago (but then I'd prefer it in the "exceptions" section and not in the lead section of the guideline).For articles on people some minor practical exceptions are contained in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) - these are however hardly sufficient to cover the complexities for naming royals and other nobility: hence Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles), and several other nobility-related Naming Conventions guidelines, contain many detailed exceptions.
-- Francis Schonken 10:20, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Okay, we've now had a cooling period of one week so maybe we now have a better chance of updating the guideline in peace and harmony.
The point about naming disputes like Gasoline/Petrol, Orange (colour)/Orange (color) and Aluminium/Aluminum is that they are pointless and stupid. One option is as good as the other and we should explicitly state that the "most common" principle does not apply. If you don't feel that this is already a rule then let's make it a rule :) Francis objected to my use of the word "armistice" and that's fine. I'm not wedded to the wording as long as the point is there.
As for diacritics currently the guideline contains this clause written by Francis:
"...article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used", for example Laurent-Désiré Kabila and not Laurent-Desire Kabila (which is more used on the internet)."
This sounds like it settles the dispute between forms with and without diacritics in one fell swoop in favor of diacritics. That's misleading. But removing the example and replacing it with nothing would misleadingly suggest that the most common principle is consistently applied to names with diacritics. That would also be misleading since many Wikipedians do feel that diacritics should be used in proper names even when they are more often omitted in English. In order for this guideline to be helpful it should simply mention that this issue is disputed and give a link to more information (at WP:UE). That's why I think this clause is more appropriate than the current Laurent-Désiré Kabila clause:
I'm sure the wording can be improved but do you see my point, Francis? - Haukur 17:53, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Francis asked me to wait 24 hours between proposing changes and implementing them. Since this time has passed and since Stefán and Philip (as well as Nightstallion earlier) have expressed approval of my proposal I'm taking the baby step of replacing the Laurent-Désiré Kabila note with the proposed diacritics clause. I'm not making any other change now. - Haukur 22:23, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Re.
"The point about naming disputes like Gasoline/Petrol, Orange (colour)/Orange (color) and Aluminium/Aluminum is that they are pointless and stupid. One option is as good as the other and we should explicitly state that the "most common" principle does not apply. If you don't feel that this is already a rule then let's make it a rule :)"
"Gasoline/Petrol", "Orange (colour)/Orange (color)", "Aluminium/Aluminum", "Airplane/Aeroplane" and "Mobile phone/Cellular" are all examples of what is described in the guideline Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English - no thanks for making a new rule about that. The guideline already exists. Extending the principle beyond "National varieties of English" is unrequested. So, the "common names" guideline can point towards the existing guideline (like it can point to many other guidelines that make exception to the "common names" principle), but not muse about something that has been unable to find community approval in other guidelines.
Do you see my point Haukur, Philip, Stefan, etc?
Re. Kabila example, I said I thought it would be best to get rid of that, while the discussion where this was decided would be difficult to retrieve - I said the example was random, and unimportant. It was not a "diacritics wording", which I never intended.
As long as there is no other example we all agree upon, I keep my preference to the wording of the second paragraph of the "Exceptions" section as it is now, only omitting the example:
Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used".
I hadn't linked "precision" in that sentence to wikipedia:naming conventions (precision), while that would've been the third link to that other guideline in the "common names" guideline, and I didn't want to overlink. Anyhow, as people tend to overlook that also with "precision" the link to another guideline was intended, I'd be glad to change that paragraph to:
Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used".
Anyway, the message should be clear: no "exception" to the "common names" principle, except for what has been agreed upon in other guidelines.
All attempts to abuse the "common names" guideline in order force things for which in other guidelines it has been established that no consensus could be reached, should IMHO be stopped.
I don't agree with Haukur's "reformulation", while it is either void of meaning ("nothing to report" on use of diacritics), either trying to influence the "no consensus" status re. diacritics, as currently expressed in the "use English" guideline.
I don't agree with:
[...] removing the example and replacing it with nothing would misleadingly suggest that the most common principle is consistently applied to names with diacritics. That would also be misleading since many Wikipedians do feel that diacritics should be used in proper names even when they are more often omitted in English.
C'mon now - I tend to look at Haukur's honest intentions, but this is nonsense, there's nothing "misleading" about it. And again, he tries to read something in something that isn't there... only in order to push things his way (which is: unchecked use of diacritics, and next: extend that to uncommon characters).
I also can't agree with:
When the native name of an entity contains characters with diacritics some Wikipedians prefer to use those diacritics in the relevant article title, even in cases where they are more often omitted in English texts. Others prefer to apply the most common principle throughout.
while I don't fit in either category:
So I don't fit in either of the groups Haukur mentions. I think Haukur's formulation only intended to set wikipedians up against each other, while the poor guy/girl who formost intends to use his/her common sense belongs in neither of the mutually exclusive categories Haukur mentions. It's a formulation that only tries to push people in one corner or another, favouring that above equilibrated discussion. -- Francis Schonken 22:32, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
(never mind whether we link to precision or not). This already mentions several other guidelines so Francis doesn't mind that. Haukur and Philip want to mention the question about diacritics in this context. Now, certainly Francis is correct that there isn't any guideline about that, because there is disagreement. I don't see the need to restrict ourselves to mention things that have consensus, we should mention all relevant issues that have been discussed in the community. In cases where there is consensus we should link to the guideline, in cases where there isn't consensus, especially cases that have been hotly debated, we should mention that there is disagreement so people are aware of the situation.Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used".
The diacritics question is discussed -> here <-
The question of the use of diacritics in article titles is discussed -> here <-
I don't feel Thomas à Kempis v Thomas of Kempen is a very instructive example or very relevant to the vote that took place. The choice in the vote was between Thomas à Kempis and Thomas a Kempis - no-one was arguing for Thomas of Kempen and it didn't even exist as a redirect until Francis created it — helpfully and correctly — today. I think the dog example, on the other hand, is very good and shouldn't be removed.- Haukur 10:32, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Please read the sixteen point introduction at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Lists by religion-ethnicity and profession#Move to delete 99% of all Lists and Categories of Jews: Sixteen reasons why this should become a fixed Wikipedia policy and related discussions at Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Lists by religion-ethnicity and profession#Proposed amendment: remove all Jewish-related lists. Thank you. IZAK 11:26, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
The second part of the following sentence annoys me:
Some of these exceptions follow from guidelines that give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used".
My feeling is that the "most used" name is also the "most obvious" and therefore the sentence does not make much sence. E.g. do people feel that that Roger Meddows-Taylor is more obvious than just Roger Taylor? I'm removing this for now. Stefán Ingi 10:49, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
(removed incorrect quotation, see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)#A Czech/Bohemian-English example and Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)#A Polish-English example: "most obvious" was no part of my argumentation. -- Francis Schonken 12:22, 5 January 2006 (UTC))
...so, there's no problem with the formulation. -- Francis Schonken 13:34, 5 January 2006 (UTC)Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used".
Some of these exceptions follow from guidelines that give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and solution of naming conflicts.
Sorry, don't agree for a letter. Once you started talking about "evil companies" and the like that closed the door for me. There's no consensus to do any of the things you propose, and you couldn't convince me otherwise. -- Francis Schonken 15:44, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Of course it represents an "exception" to the common names principle (otherwise no use to put it in the "exceptions" section is it?)
The point is that neither of the three mentioned guidelines (that are general guidelines, as opposed to specific royalty NC guidelines, or American/British English MoS, etc...) warrants deviating into something non-obvious. E.g. wikipedia:naming conflict: Do not invent names as a means of compromising between opposing POVs. Wikipedia describes current usage but cannot prescribe a particular usage or invent new names.
If you want a non-obvious name, it has to be covered by a specific guideline, e.g. wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) leads in some instances to non-obvious names, that why it's called an over-all exception to the common names principle.
wikipedia:naming conventions (precision), wikipedia:disambiguation and Wikipedia:Naming conflict (without applying one of the specific guidelines) might lead to article names that are strictly spoken not the "most common", but in that case the naming should still remain obvious, in fact "the most obvious" in the exceptional case that "the most common" can't be used.
It has been tried multiple times to stretch the "common names" guideline beyond what is obvious (mis-quoting it like Haukurth did re. the Norse mythology NC, or Deeptrivia on talk:Arabic numerals, etc...) - so no, abuse is too frequent to leave that remark about "most obvious" out. -- Francis Schonken 09:12, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
The Arabic numerals WP:RM vote is concluded on that name. The misleading didn't stick. All other arguments by Haukurth can easily be summarized to "creating tensions about non-issues" - it is a non-issue that an article name, unless a specific NC guideline decides otherwise, should always be obvious. That has always been so, and will not be changed against consensus. And "consensus" means more than three or four people being against it. -- Francis Schonken 11:07, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
@Stefan: You say:
Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which, e.g., suggests that SCO group should be the obvious one.
I say:
Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used", for which SCO group is an example.
So where's the difference? That you use "should be the obvious one", and I say "rather the most obvious"? Sorry, your argument is void.
I looked into Roger Meddows-Taylor today. I can only say that at talk:Roger Meddows-Taylor it was decided in less than 10 lines of text that Roger Meddows-Taylor would be "the most obvious" page name for this drummer. If you don't agree with that, use talk:Roger Meddows-Taylor. Of course in the case of this drummer only the most obvious page name can be used - that is after sorting out the many precision, disambiguation and naming conflict issues that are involved regarding this example. And really, if you think the people didn't sort that out properly at talk:Roger Meddows-Taylor, use that talk page, that's what talk pages are for. But the page name should be the most obvious one if it isn't today.
Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and solution of naming conflicts. An example of this is SCO Group, which is used instead of SCO.
@Deeptrivia: Is your intervention part of this discussion? I don't see where it links. So I don't think we need to take account of it here.
@Haukurth: I think that was already answered. -- Francis Schonken 00:25, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are more suitable than strictly the most used.
What is the policy regarding POV titles... If there is an article with a name used by one of the participants in the conflict, isn't that considered POV? If there are alternate titles, which are used in other encyclopedias and are NPOV, but perhaps not the 'common name', wouldn't it make sense to use that one instead? - Spaceriqui 21:14, 6 January 2006 (UTC)