Wikipedia talk:Geographical names naming policy (proposed)

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Message posted to wikien-l

In the wake of the recent naming policy poll, which was sparked by the debate on Talk:Kiev as well as the poll on the New York City talk page, it cannot be denied that a firm policy needs to be adopted regarding the naming of articles about places.

The current policy at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names) is neither supported by consensus nor complete enough to handle the variety of problems with these articles' names.

I have drafted a proposed policy on the naming of articles about geographical places. I expect that there are some aspects of it which will be controversial, and some aspects which will be changed, but I have tried to justify the particulars of the policy. It is formulated as a set of principles and rejected principles.

It includes a proposed policy for dealing with disputes about article names, which would work for any kind of article, not just articles about places.

I propose a 4-week discussion and revision period followed by a two week binding voting period with a 70% majority rule. There will be separate votes for each section: "Multiple names", "Ambiguous names", and "Exceptions and naming polls". There will also be a separate vote about whether the naming polls policy shall apply to all articles or just to geographical place articles if it is adopted.

Unless there is strong objection to this voting proposal, the voting period will begin at midnight UTC June 11 and end at midnight UTC June 25.

For discussions about the details of the policy, please discuss on the relevant talk page. You can voice your objections to the voting proposal either here on the list or on the wiki.

I strongly urge that we have congenial discussion and make compromises in the proposed policy so that the vote will succeed, because I believe having a firm policy on naming will go a long way towards reducing the amount of energy expended on naming debates.

Nohat 02:24, 2004 May 11 (UTC)

Hey Nohat. I have some quibbles with the idea that we should start off by disambiguating by largest unit. I don't think there's anything wrong with specific policies for specific countries. I'll give more detailed objections at a later time. john 19:34, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, I have more than a few quibbles, but this is a start. In particular, I strongly object to any policy which uses the Google Test as the primary and binding method of discrimination. older≠wiser 19:57, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, I tend to think that in most of the actual discussed cases, the Google test will be inapplicable. I don't think that having a poll in every such case is a good way of settling. I think there are various problems with the proposal, and I think that, between various proposals, it's highly unlikely to result in a consensus. I'd also suggest that the question of disambiguation of city names is really not all that related to the question of translation of names, or whatever, and that it's not necessarily productive to combine the two questions. But I don't know... john 20:15, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

I think I largely agree--although these things came to the fore in various forms in the NYC discussion: 1) does the de facto (if not entirely consensual) policy of preemptive disambiguation for US cities take precedence over using the most Common Name and (this is where the Google Test comes in) 2) if the Common Name is preferred, then just how do we definitively establish what that is? I mean, the policy of "Use Common Names" is not much help if there isn't a solid (and consens-based) method for establishing what is the most common name used in the world-wide english-speaking community. Otherwise we are only left with periodic popularity polls (or perhaps that is the best method for the time being). With NYC, the question of what is the most common name was less of an issue, but as you saw, there were many advocates for NY,NY. On a different note, I'm also not terribly fond of the possibility of revisiting contentious votes every six months. I'd much rather see some clear statement of policy which can be used to settle these without the rancor and disruption of periodic votes. older≠wiser 20:58, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

For the most part, the procedure for choosing geographical names makes sense -- as a set of guidelines. I'm averse to calling someting "policy" when there's a procedure for making exceptions to it, though. We seem to be going on a policy binge lately, and I don't know that it's very helpful. It seems to often just be a tool by which users who are legalists can bludgeon other users who aren't so legalistic without attempting to engage in a cordial discussion first. I'd rather just have guidelines and let people hash things out through thoughtful deliberation, rather than uncritically pointing at rules.

I don't think it really matters what we call it as long as people follow it. Also, whether we call it a guideline or a policy or even WikiLaw, people will still argue about its legitimacy. Nohat 15:54, 2004 May 12 (UTC)

On a related question, I'm a bit flummoxed by rule no. 4 on the poll procedures: "Votes from users who have not made any edits in the 6 months previous to the re-opening of the poll should be removed. This means if a poll is re-opened immediately after the 6 month waiting period is over, then no votes can be removed." Can someone elucidate this for me? -- Seth Ilys 12:52, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

I admit it's a little confusing and needs revision. The main idea is that if you vote for a naming poll once, that vote should stay no matter how many times the poll is re-opened, unless you change or remove it yourself. However, it seemed that people might protest that the votes of users who have left Wikipedia shouldn't count. So I added this clause that says that you can remove votes from a naming poll if the user hasn't made any edits in the previous six months before the poll was opened.

The idea was that if a poll is re-opened immediately after it becomes eligible, then no votes could be removed, but I realize now this dosn't make sense because a poll can only be opened 6 months after the poll has closed, so if any vote in the previous incarnation of the poll was a user's last vote, then it would have occurred more than 6 months in the past, and would therefore be eligible for removal. Maybe it should be changed to be a one-year timeout for missing users. This particular detail is not really important: the point is that, in general, votes in a poll persist, and can only be removed by the voter, or if the voter has left, by someone else, but only if the voter has been gone for a while. Nohat 15:54, 2004 May 12 (UTC)

Conventions are not policy, they are conventions. The only policy we have in regards to conventions is to follow them. Also the comma convention is pretty much a North American thing - few other nations outside the U.S. and Canada use it as often. Cities outside of the U.S. should either:

• Follow a convention already in wide use and used by English speakers for disambiguating cities in that nation (adding the river name is often done in Europe for disambiguation - other places put the state/province/county in parenthesis when needed)
• Follow regular rules of disambiguation and thus use parenthesis - DO NOT use commas where they are not already in common use!

Preemptively disambiguating U.S. city names is not about providing context, it is about making a set of articles in the same subject area conform to a standard already in wide use outside of the project. Since U.S. city names are rarely unique, Americans have dealt with this issue by devising a way to name cities. This is so ingrained that the state name in the [City, State] format is almost treated like the last name of the city - even for every major city I can think of except maybe New York (where it does sound a bit odd). Having all U.S. cities in the same format (with the possible exception of the City of New York since New York, New York may not really be correct) prevents any controversy over the name and this format is very widely used preemptively outside of Wikipedia already. So when 99% of a set of things are named in one format, the others come along for the ride (just like ship names). Nobody will get lost due to redirects and disambiguation pages.

The only real issue I see, is that redirected pages have looked rather ugly in MediaWiki ever since Phase III came online (it gives me the feeling that I made some type of error). Phase II had the 'redirected from' message further up on the page. But that is a technical issue that can be fixed. I will bug the developers about this. --mav 06:55, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

Mav, the current naming convention doesn't seem to be doing a very good job of preventing controversy, does it? What with all the controversy. So that's not a very good reason. Also, I think you're greatly exaggerating the extent to which the city, state format is used. Certainly it is sometimes used. But the idea that this is the standard way of referring to major cities is, I think, unsustainable. Basically, I don't see why articles on the most important cities in the US should look completely different from articles on world cities everywhere else (except for Canada and, even more bizarrely, Japan). Especially when this is utterly needless, since most of those cities have the city name article already redirecting to the city, state article. At any rate, in what other context do we "pre-emptively disambiguate"? john 07:15, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

The controversy you are talking about comes from people who want to overturn the convention. The controversy I'm talking about would be the thousands of individual decisions that would have to be made and debated if the convention did not exist. The [City, State] convention provides a way to name all cities in the U.S. without need to debate just what each city should be named and which ones are "important enough" to be at the [City] (or whatever) format. It gives one answer to the naming question instead of many thousands of individual ones - each needing to be decided separately. 'Very often by out-of-staters' when the state has not already been established as the context would be a better way to characterize the usage of the [City, State] format within the U.S. Having the redirect go to a standardized title (when those standards are in very wide use) hurts no one. See: aircraft (the maker gets appended to the start of the name for almost all modern aircraft), Ships (U.S. Navy ships all get their hull numbers in their titles). -- mav

I like the proposed policy, particularly because it lists common name, the name most commonly used, as the first principle. One of the examples listed, though, Los Angeles, is not currently listed at the most commonly used name, but at a ridiculious name based on current 'policy', which endorses using strange, uncommon names by pre-emptively disambiguating US cities. The biggest improvement the new policy could make would be to list pre-emptive disambiguation of US cities as a rejected policy because that's not what people do, not how people talk, not how people write, not what Wikipedia does with cites eleswhere. And, besides that, it's just plain silly. Pre-emptive disambiguation of US cities is the biggest problem with the current policy. Los Angeles does not need disambiguation any more then Kiev does. Nobody says Los Angeles, California. If L.A. is going to be listed like that, then Paris should be at Paris, France, London at London, England, etc. Common usage: Los Angeles, New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, etc. and no amount of rationalization is going to change that, nor make Los Angeles, California look any sillier, nor make titles of the articles on major US cities any less inconsistent with the title of the article on Kiev, for example. Bluelion 08:31, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

Nobody says "Los Angeles, California"? You are kidding right? According to Google about 4.7 million webpages do.[1] The mention of non-U.S. cities is completely and totally a strawman since the comma convetion simply is not used in most other places in the world. --mav

I agree, Bluelion. Mav, has there ever been any serious dispute about the names of cities in other parts of the world? I'd also note that I don't think pre-emptively disambiguating small US towns is a bad idea. But for large, basically unambiguous places, it seems worthless. john 16:03, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

See above about strawmen. --mav

I for one do not see how anyone can think that Los Angeles, California is a silly title. Also, there is a factor that needs to be brought up. The nearer you are to a place, the less likely it is that you will use a disambiguating qualifier for it. I say "Vienna" and mean "Vienna, Virginia" quite often, because in the Washington metro area, I have more reason to talk about Vienna, Va. than Vienna, Austria. When I say "Baltimore" I don't mean "Baltimore, Ohio" because Baltimore, Md. is relatively close by. A former roommate of mine who came from the Columbus, Ohio area and whose grandmother lived in Baltimore, Ohio, however, often did mean "Baltimore, Ohio" by "Baltimore." This is, I am certain, why Europeans may not understand Americans' saying "Paris, France." My own proposal (except for the fact that it would never be acceptable to most other Wikipedians) would be for all cities to be at [City, State/Province] in the U. S., Canada, or Australia and [City, Country] elsewhere, except where an additional level of disambiguation is necessary, so that [City, County, State/Province] has to be done. -- BRG

Ga, Most people who say "Baltimore" mean "Baltimore, Maryland" not because it is close by, but because it is by far the largest city named Baltimore. john 05:04, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

So then why is "Baltimore, Maryland" so common? Could it be that it is used in a way not unlike the full common name of a person? --mav

The fact that Baltimore, Maryland is the largest city named Baltimore certainly enters into the discussion. However, my point is that nearness also does. My friend/ex-roommate demonstrated that when one is near enough to another place named Baltimore, that trumps size. There are at least three factors that enter into the discussion: (1) size, (2) proximity, and (3) context. Somewhere, I think you indicated that you live in Montgomery County, Maryland (as do I). How often, when you say "Rockville," do you mean any place other than our county seat? Yet, years ago, when my father, who had a job in the vicinity of Hartford, said "Rockville," he meant a similarly named place in Connecticut. Now, Rockville, Connecticut has a population of under 8000; Rockville, Maryland is over 6 times as big. But my father probably never even heard of Rockville, Maryland; his familiarity with Rockville, Conn. was far greater. On the other hand, how often do you speak of "Wheaton" and mean anything other than the place in Maryland? Since Wheaton, Illinois is rather larger, is a county seat, and is an incorporated city (which Wheaton, Md. is not), it is clear that you can't give any reason other than proximity for the fact that, I'm certain, you never say "Wheaton" and mean any place other than the one in Maryland. -- BRG 14:28, May 14, 2004 (UTC)

I read at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names): "Convention: In general, there are no special naming conventions for cities..." But it's not true. There seems to be a very special convention that is being applied only to certain cities (those in the US and Canada) and not to other cities. The title Los Angeles, California is silly in light of the way other articles are named, which is by most common English language usage. I suspect that the policy of imposed disambiguation for US cities is as much a source of controversy as a means of avoiding it. If the Paris article were at Paris, France and the London article at London, England, that would at least be consistent for cities, even if not consistent with a more general policy of naming articles based on common usage. The problem is that the special convention for US cities is not consistent with the general convention for all of Wikipedia. It's not even consistent with the convention used for other cities. Bluelion 22:18, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

See above about strawmen. The comma convention is rarely applied to non-US cities outside the US. --mav

Yes, exactly. john 05:04, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

That "... the special convention for US cities is not consistent with the general convention for all of Wikipedia. It's not even consistent with the convention used for other cities" may be true. But in my case, I simply think that perhaps "the convention used for other cities" needs to be changed, not the convention for US (and, btw, Canadian) cities. I think that for cities, the most common way to refer to a city (or town, or unincorporated CDP) depends on where you are. In my normal usage, talking to local people, "Vienna" means "Vienna, Virginia," not "Vienna, Austria," most of the time, except when context points the other way (like if I was talking about Strauss waltzes). I think we need a rule that if a name like "Vienna" could, in any reasonable context, be understood as being a place other than the largest place of that name, then it must certainly be a disambiguation page and the place best known by that name might be specially indicated on that page, but the main article on it should have a disambiguated title. -- BRG 14:37, May 14, 2004 (UTC)

BRG, your (unlikely-to-be-consensed-upon) proposal begins to really grab a hold of me. At least I'm now convinced that [City] in the case of ambiguous names should always be a disambiguation page, however famous one of the cities are. (Yes, that is Paris, France and Vienna, Vienna to you.) And if that disambiguation were to always be made pre-emptively – if only for the sake of worldwide consistency –, I for one wouldn't mind much. Worse things could happen to me than being removed to a city named Linköping, Sweden. =) -- Jao 15:22, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

The comma convention is un-natural when applied to non-US/Canadian cities. --mav

Thanks. Though did you mean "Vienna, Vienna"? Or "Vienna, Austria"? -- BRG 19:00, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

I think the merit of this system would be that it's valid everywhere. So if you have Los Angeles, California – City, State – in one federation, you should really follow the same format in all federations, hence Vienna, Vienna. (Another thing with countries that are not federations, of course, thence the French and Swedish examples.) -- Jao 19:10, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

But why on earth should we do that? The comma isn't even used most places, and it looks ridiculous, and all for no reason at all. We absolutely don't need a rule where simply because in some reasonable context, it might be understood to mean something different (which is a much more accurate description of the Vienna case), that we need to disambiguate. If I have a friend named Tony Blair, it would be reasonable among me and his other friends to mean him when we're talking about Tony Blair. That doesn't mean we need to have a disambiguation. The argument you're making isn't an argument at all - it's entirely circular, and based on the premise that Wikipedia has no right to make judgments about whether one usage is better known than another. I think that's false - no matter how we do it, we are making a POV judgment, and we may as well make the one that leads to the simplest article titles. john 16:17, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

It is used very commonly in the U.S. But I agree to not extend that to other places. --mav

"Simplest article titles" is not a valid reason to use your criterion, John. The point is that Wikipedia will be used by many people whose experiences are bound to be different. Case in point, not involving a geographical name: A while ago I noticed in the "list of disambiguation pages" the name Don Cherry. I knew of only one, a singer and professional golfer. So I was curious to see who else there was. I found two names, neither being the Don Cherry I had heard of. (I wrote the Don Cherry (singer/golf) article as a result!) This is why I feel that even if article names are somewhat longer under my plan, they are more useful. If someone had only heard of the one big city of Detroit, he might under my plan get put on a disambiguation page when he didn't expect to, but with one more click, he'd get to Detroit, Michigan. (Really, I have no problem with, and would even recommend, putting on the disambiguation page a notation that the biggest, most frequently-cited, Detroit is the one in Michigan!) OTOH, when sone misguided Wikipedian writes an article in which (because the context led him to forget about the big one) he made his link point to "Philadelphia" when he meant "Philadelphia, Mississippi" (say, in an article on the Goodman-Schwerner-Cheney murders) someone hitting the link would also be sent to a disambiguation page from which one click gets him to the right page, rather than to a page on Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from which he has a devil of a time getting to the right place. -- BRG 18:55, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

And this isn't a circular argument. It's based on the premise that we never can be sure what background a Wikipedia reader is bringing to his search. -- BRG 18:57, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

Well, since you can never be sure, use ZIP codes. Ignore common usage in a misguided attempt to make Wikipedia idiot proof. Lots of luck with that! Bluelion 19:31, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

BRG--I can't believe you want to make things more difficult for the vast majority of users in order to accomodate a small number of cases that should use a properly disambiguated link. Also if you were to acutally have looked at the Philadelphia page, you would have noticed a link prominently placed at the top to alternate uses -- now is that really what you call "a devil of a time getting to the right place"? older≠wiser 19:42, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

I just looked there. First from "Philadelphia" you get to click once to get to "Philadelphia (disambiguation)," and then yet another click to get to the specific Philadephia you want. Under my plan, "Philadelphia" would contain the page that now is found at "Philadelphia (disambiguation)," and only one click gets you to the right one, whether you want the one in Pennsylvania or the one in Mississippi. That seems to be more NPOV, for one, as well as easier for people. I assume most people know that the big Philadelphia is the one in Pennsylvania and would go to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania anyway, even though someone here claimed he did not know Detroit was in Michigan... which I find hard to believe. -- BRG 14:48, May 18, 2004 (UTC)

While your approach may result in one less click for the extremely small minority of references to Philadelphia that are NOT for the one in PA, it results in a completely unnecessary (and annoying) extra click for the vast majority of references that are for the one in PA. Anyone making a link to one of the Philadelphias not in PA should realize that they need to properly disambiguate the link--if the small number of links that are not to Philly, PA are properly disambiguated in the first place, then everyone is happy. Well, except for those using the Search box -- but IMO there's not much to be done for that case. Re Detroit and Michigan -- for people outside of the U.S., there is, in general, much less familiarity with states than with important cities. older≠wiser 15:19, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

The proposal of BRG seems to equate with Encyclopædia Britannica which lists the Mississippi city before the Pennsylvania city for alphabetical reasons. Also, Encyclopedia.com lists 'ancient cities' before the Pennsylvania city, I believe for the same reason. Pædia 17:34, 2004 May 18 (UTC)

It does nothing of the sort. Alphabetizing is completely different from what's going on here. john 18:13, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps I was not clear. Encyclopædia Britannica is not preferential with Philadelphia, and is preceded by former name of Amman. Pædia 13:25, 2004 May 20 (UTC)

I understand. But the situations are not analogous. Britannica s able to have a whole series of articles called "Philadelphia" john 16:09, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia is currently preferential with Philadelphia. Why are the situations not analogous? We also can have 'whole series of articles'; we just disambiguate differently. Pædia 18:42, 2004 May 25 (UTC)

Britannica doesn't have articles on every U.S. city. We are almost there. That forms a database with nearly all pages in the same format. --mav

I didn't know Detroit was in Michigan. Nor did I know that Philadelphia was in Pennsylvania. As they're always called simply "Detroit" and "Philadelphia" outside the US I see no reason why I would know what state they're in. I doubt many Americans could say which county most British cities are in. Proteus (Talk) 15:28, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

And yet following Detroit gets you to the article. You don't have to know. --mav

I can believe that the advocates of enforced unnecessary disambiguation want to make things as difficult as possible, because that's what they are doing. On what planet does Philadelphia need disambiguation? Bluelion 19:59, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

Not disambiguation - making that city's title conform to a very widely used convention in the U.S. --mav

Surely even people from Mississippi would know that the Philadelphia in Pennsylvania was a more notable city, and assume that the one on their philadelphia would be at Philadelphia, Mississippi. Certainly that's my feeling on Vienna. And if not, the disambiguation notice at the top should do the trick, as Bkonrad says. This is utterly silly. john 20:10, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

A disambig block at the top of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania will play the same role - just like at Napoleon I of France (which, BTW, also is a name that follows a standard convention in spite of common useage). --mav

It's worse than I thought. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is being disambiguated. That's beyond ridiculous, bordering on the obscene. Bluelion 20:17, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

Yes, but the unqualified Philadelphia automatically redirects to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Much of the recent discussion has centered on precisely this point -- the unqualified titles for many of the large cities ALREADY automatically redirect to the state-qualified titles. Some of us feel this is evidence that it is not necessary to include the state in the title. I agree with this position, but I can live with leaving things as they are (except NY,NY just looks peculiar)--but I would very strongly object to BRG's suggestion that the main page for ALL places with common names be a disambiguation page. older≠wiser 20:38, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

What looks peculiar is having 99% of U.S. city articles in one format, and the other 1% in another. "Philadelphia, Pennsylvania" gets 4,660,000 hits on Google - hardly peculiar. -- mav

peculiar
    adj 1: beyond or deviating from the usual or expected; "a curious
           hybrid accent"; "her speech has a funny twang"; "they
           have some funny ideas about war"; "had an odd name";
           "the peculiar aromatic odor of cloves"; "something
           definitely queer about this town"; "what a rum
           fellow"; "singular behavior" [syn: curious, funny,
            odd, queer, rum, rummy, singular]

When 99% of a set of articles are in one format, then how is it unusual or unexpected for the rest to be in the same format? --mav

"Some of us feel this is evidence that it is not necessary to include the state in the title." You can inculde me in that group. Bluelion 20:52, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

We do the same thing for modern Kings - they all get the 'of' titles, even the rare ones that have unique names. Consistency is a virtue. --mav

I've never heard anyone refer to Vienna, Austria, let alone the downright confusing Vienna, Vienna. If I was making a link to the capital of Austria, I would make it to Vienna without thinking somebody might have so counter-intuitively placed it elsewhere. Of course, if there's a village near you called Vienna, you will just refer to it as "Vienna" in everyday conversation with locals, but if anyone from another part of the world referred to Vienna, you'd know exactly where they meant without any further explanation. Cities which are by far the best-known one with their names should have undisambiguated names, or at the very least redirects from them.

"I've never heard anyone refer to Vienna, Austria"??? Gee, your experience is very different from mine, as not only do I refer to it that way quite often, I see and hear it all the time. -- BRG 14:32, May 18, 2004 (UTC)

Are you American? Americans are very used to referring to cities that way and often carry that over to non-U.S. cities. --mav

Gee, well I guess that's why usage conventions shouldn't be based only on one person's experience. older≠wiser 15:19, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Exactly. Since "usage conventions shouldn't be based only on one person's experience," we need to follow a convention that makes just as much sense if the "Vienna" that is most familiar to you is the one in Virginia as to the majority, who think automatically of the place in Austria! -- BRG 13:39, May 19, 2004 (UTC)

Oh, stop being absurd. Practically every topic in Wikipedia would need to be disambiguated under your reasoning, as it'd be very difficult to find a term that meant one thing to every single person in the world. I mean, we'd have to have Italy (country) or Italy, Europe for the benefit of those living near Italy, Texas, and that's clearly ridiculous. Proteus (Talk) 14:57, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

How is Vienna, Vienna any bit more confusing than, for instance, New York, New York or Kyoto, Kyoto? -- Jao 19:51, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

"Vienna, Vienna" 93,500 hits, "Kyoto, Kyoto" 22,400 hits, "New York, New York" 3,300,000 hits. Obviously the first two are confusing and the third is rather common. --mav

Err...I think most of us would say that Vienna, New York City, and Kyoto all ought to be the locations. The Japanese prefecture rule seems particularly ridiculous, I'd add - this is clearly a type of disambiguation that should only be used when necessary - are there any other cities in the world named Kyoto, even? There is no Kyoto (disambiguation), and there is no real confusion with the prefecture, which is located at Kyoto prefecture. john k 20:09, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

I actually agree with that statement and have seen no evidence to suggest that the comma convention is at all common for naming Japanese cities. --mav

A second point: starting with the largest unit for federations. General consensus has emerged on places in the UK needing disambiguation that they are disambiguated by county, not by nation. I'd not object to the idea in principle, but it would mean a lot of work for whoever was moving all the articles. Warofdreams 17:22, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Each nation to its own I say. What works for the UK may not work for other nations. What works for the US may not work for other nations. --mav 07:39, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 Trying to Refocus the Discussion 2 One point I want to make 3 Whatever happened to this? 4 Wikipedia archives?

[edit] Trying to Refocus the Discussion

I'd like to propose some changes to Nohat's proposal. Because if we're going to vote on changing the current naming policies, I'd like to actually vote for changing the current naming policies, and I do not feel that I could support Nohat's current proposal. At the moment, I'd like to focus on the "ambiguous names" part of Nohat's proposal. So:

1) Principle: disambiguation by largest unambiguous enclosing political entity. I strongly reject this principle. Relatedly, I disagree with Nohat's views at Rejected principle: disambiguation by country-specific entity level. I don't see how using country-specific standards for disambiguation is harmful, and the idea that it "creates inequality in article naming from country to country" is just silly - it is more respectful to each country to use the form of disambiguation commonly used in that country. For instance, in Germany we should not have Frankfurt, Hesse and Frankfurt, Brandenburg, but Frankfurt am Main and Frankfurt an der Oder. The whole problem with the current naming system for US cities is that it needlessly imposes a "one size fits all" policy. I think this problem also afflicts Nohat's proposal in its current form.

2) Rejected principle: non well-known names should be preemptively disambiguated I think that for very small places that nobody will have heard of a) it frequently becomes hard to say if the name is actually unique or not; and b) it provides useful context to the reader. I see nothing wrong with having somewhat unnecessary disambiguation at, say, Garrett Park, Maryland.

As far as the other parts of Nohat's proposal, I agree with what others have said that I am wary of constant naming polls. But I'll reserve judgment on proposing changes. I await your comments. john 16:44, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

I actually agree with John regarding the comment he made about Frankfurt: here, in fact, the Germans have a traditional way to disambiguate the two, and it serves well. But within the USA, and I believe in Canada and Australia, the state (province in Canada) is the normal and traditional way. I think our disagreement is not on how to disambiguate, but when --- I feel just about always, John seems to think not in many cases where I would. -- BRG 17:38, May 24, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, this would seem to be the case. I tend to think Nohat's formulation is rather too rigid, and would likely result in at least a few article titles as ridiculous as the current ones I've been objecting to. As to the broader question, I'd be interested to know if you think that everything should be disambiguated if there's any chance of confusion. If not, could you explain why such a rule should apply to city names, but not to other things? john k 20:09, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm more concerned with city names, because I've been writing a lot of city name disambiguation pages. But I certainly do think that "everything should be disambiguated if there's" a reasonable "chance of confusion." Not any, though. -- BRG 14:54, May 25, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] One point I want to make

If this thing should ever get to a vote, I think that whenever there are alternative policy proposals, something like approval voting ought to be used. I don't want to be put into a position where I really like one proposal, but can't vote for it because it would hurt the chances for a plan I don't like as much that has more chance of carrying. -- BRG 14:59, May 28, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Whatever happened to this?

Whatever happened to this? The debate seems to have simply disappeared. The original proponent has not posted very much since mid-May, but I think some sort of conclusion to this issue is in order. It was originally proposed that voting begin several days ago, but I don't think we're at that point. Is anybody still interested in this? john k 00:22, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, if something isn't done, then we'll be stuck with City of New York forever, which obviously isn't a good thing. I'd be happy to continue the debate. (I haven't been online much recently because of my exams, but they're over now and long holidays await.) Proteus (Talk) 09:43, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Looks as though everybody just ran out of steam... although, considering how heated the discussion was getting, the break could be quite a blessing. - jredmond 01:45, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

From near the top of this page: "The current policy at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names) is neither supported by consensus nor complete enough to handle the variety of problems with these articles' names." Word. Bluelion 07:41, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Proteus: Well, if something isn't done, then we'll be stuck with City of New York forever... Well, unfortunately, we may stuck with a number of silly article names because they already exist. In the meantime, some of the consequences of the current policy are pretty amusing.

At the top of the New York City article is a note: "This article is about New York City. For other uses, see New York, New York (disambiguation)". If that isn't funny, I don't know what is. When there's a disambiguation page for New York, New York, something is seriously wrong.

If I'm reading things right, there was a vote on what the New York article should be named, and "City of New York" wasn't even one of the options. Are we sure that whoever moved the page to "City of New York" wasn't engaging in some good-natured satire?

If so, I applaud it. The current policy at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names) doesn't come close to addressing the real issues regarding the naming of articles on cities in the US. It's a bankrupt policy. There are so many problems with current policy that it's difficult to know where to begin. It ignores the real issues and, in many cases, it's misleading.

My guess as to Whatever happened to this? is that people got tired of trying to fight city hall. Bluelion 08:31, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia archives?

In what sense has this page been "superseded?" It never went anywhere, but the underlying issue is exactly where it was a year ago. john k 18:05, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)