Talk:American wine

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus to move.--Fuhghettaboutit 01:45, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

American wine → USA wine — No need to use a 'difficult' word for an article name when there's a perfectly good neutral alternative FlagSteward 11:44, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

I suggest you should read the (short) article section Use_of_the_word_American#Political-cultural_views and ideally WP:BIAS before commenting. It would also be useful to declare your nationality.

Add  # '''Support'''  or  # '''Oppose'''  on a new line in the appropriate section followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~. Please remember that this is not a vote; comments must include reasons to carry weight.

• Support As above - "USA Wine" is a more accurate and much more neutral name. FlagSteward (UK) 11:46, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
• Opppose. The current name is commonly used with the meaning "wine from the United States". It has 10x as many Ghits as "USA wine", and many of the hits for "USA wine" are spurious (e.g. USA and wine are separated by punctuation). "USA" is not usually used as an adjective. You cite bias above; I assume that the articles you are concerned about talk about wine from Argentina, Chile, and Canada. I understand your argument, but the proposed title doesn't seem to me to be the right way to solve the issue. Dekimasuよ! 12:01, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose as per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). While it may not be the best of all possible names "American Wine" is in common usage, a claim that can not be made for the proposed "USA wine". --Allen3 ^talk 12:22, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose American is commonly used to name people from the USA. I think it is pretty obvious for anyone that reads it that American is from the US. Besides, there is no other proper adjective to describe people from the USA in the ENglish language. There are in other languages, but not in ENglish.--Charleenmerced ^Talk 13:41, 11 April 2007 (UTC)Charleenmerced
• Oppose Although I agree with the idea that USA Wine is a more neutral name, when one is looking for a Chilean wine, Argentinian Wine, Canadian Wine etc. they don't think American wine, they think of the names of those countries. American is the generic term used for people from the United States and that is the general naming convention of the wine from this country as well. Depending on your view, books would label it differently but if Wikipedia is garnering more hits for American Wine over USA Wine then that means more searchers agree with that name. If perchance it was changed then there needs to be a redirect because American Wine other than referring to wine from the United States is pretty unheard of as a generic term to describe all of North and South America. As always there is room for convincing me otherwise.--Christopher Tanner, CCC 17:16, 11 April 2007 (UTC)tanner-christopher
• Oppose Wikipedia isn't meant to change the names of things. Wine produced in the United States is commonly called "American wine"; that's how Wikipedia should refer to it. Noel S McFerran 17:26, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose This is by far the most common name for the area. As Chris noted above, if people are speaking about different countries you will hear them talk about "Chilean wine", "Canadian wine", etc. As a side note, I know my Canadian friends would be downright insulted if they were called American and their wines considered "American wine". If you say that phrase to them, they (like most in the world) will know exactly what you mean. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 18:57, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose "USA wine" is not English; whether some other English phrase should be substituted for the present title is another question. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:14, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose I do wish that there was another adjective to describe items from the U.S., however "American" is really the only one. When it comes to win, "American wine" is a more common name and more freely flowing description than "USA Wine". --- The Bethling^(Talk) 01:16, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose this proposal but would support Wine of the United States or Wine from the United States per WP:BIAS. (cf. Wine from the United Kingdom, the other state name that doesn't easily become an adjective). —  AjaxSmack  06:07, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually Wine from the United Kingdom is the odd duck and inconsistent with other regional country articles. Take a look at the articles linked to List of wine producing countries. With the exception of the UK, all of them follow the XXXX wine format. Rather then try and create more inconsistency, we should probably be thinking how to get Wine from the United Kingdom more consistent with the naming format. The article itself seems to suggest that English wine would be a better title. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 19:06, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose per User:Pmanderson and User:AjaxSmack. "Wine in the United States" or "Wines of the United States" seem like reasonable titles for articles, but is this article either of them? --Quuxplusone 02:33, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose - in wine shops it might be American wines, or more commonly Californian wines, but never, never, USA wine. TerriersFan 22:32, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Add any additional comments:

• It doesn't have to be an adjective - there's lots of wine region articles where the name is used instead of an adjective, for instance Alsace wine rather than Alsatian wine. I could live with US wines instead, US is a more common adjective but has some accuracy and bias issues of its own. I can live with having American wine as a redirect, as Alsatian wine is now.
• I'd be a bit wary of trying Google popularity games, as they will inevitably suffer from the same unwitting WP:BIAS that has been demonstrated so far in this discussion. But I would note that searches for "American wine" will be inflated by hits for "South American wine" etc.

Certainly on this side of the pond, you will tend to find US wine used more often than "American wine", for instance in the title of this Decanter article - and in fact merchants tend to use country/continent names such as "USA", "North America" (eg Berrys) or "California" etc (J&B, the Wine Society)

• I'll say it again - read Use_of_the_word_American#Political-cultural_views before making off-the-cuff comments about things being "obvious" to a non-US audience.

FlagSteward 17:00, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

As a point of reference, wine regions in the United States are known as American Viticultural Area (AVA). It is obviously a common and natural association that American wines are produced in American Viticultural Areas. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 19:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

That doesn't prove anything, as it's demonstrating the same local POV bias. If it had been a Chilean calling them AVAs, or a Guyanian, I'd be much more impressed. Just because the US calls a local sports competition the World Series doesn't mean that North America now = the World. And no, letting a few Canucks in does not make it a truly global competition ;-/ - we even let them play in the Cricket World Cup.... ;-/ FlagSteward 18:56, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

No, it demonstrates the worldwide acceptance of American as a descriptor for wines from the US. If Chileans, Argentinians, Mexicans, Canadians etc objected to the US usage then you would have heard of it by now. But the acceptance has been beyond reproach in the wine community. Hence the perfect application of WP:COMMONNAME. It is OR-ish to try and introduce uncommon names to a title that is not in dispute in the wine world. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 19:10, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

But US wine is not an uncommon name - I've demonstrated it being used as an article title in perhaps the leading English-language wine magazine outside the USA. Thus given the problems with "American" I think there's a clear case under Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(common_names)#Do_not_overdo_it - that snowball is looking prettry chilled ;-/ I'd rather have USA wine as it's more accurate, but I'll accept that that's looking too ambitious now. I'll say again, I'm quite happy to alter the move to US wine, or Wine from the United States for consistency with the UK article, or Wine of the United States for consistency with the general Wiki naming rules, and in all cases American wine would be a redirect. I'm not trying to be wilful here, I genuinely think that this is a problematic name and that most of the opposition comes from people within the United States whose systemic bias prevents objectivity. Views from elsewhere on the globe would be particularly welcome - I think that snowball is still looking chilly. ;-/ FlagSteward 19:57, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

• Ok, I think this discussion should be closed already since there is only one supporting member and a number of opposing ones.--Charleenmerced ^Talk 17:19, 13 April 2007 (UTC)Charleenmerced
  • Doesn't work like that Charleen - it's a formal rename, so the Wiki gods give it 5 days and then they make a decision. And you can't just do it by numbers, as they will be systemically biased to a massive degree - which is what the original rename meant to counter. FWIW I'm quite happy to go with AjaxSmack's idea of Wine from the United States by analogy with the UK article, or with US wine for consistency with just about all the other national wine articles. Having a "United States" without the America bit is not ideal from a neutrality POV, as there are other countries that are united states, but anything along those lines is much, much better than the massively biased American wine. And I still haven't heard any arguments against something like "US wine" or "Wine from the United States" as a primary article name, with American wine as a redirect, other than 'that's what it is at the moment' ;-/ FlagSteward 18:56, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
    • A discussion can be cut short under some conditions. See WP:SNOWBALL. I think it is clear that this applies with regard to this request. Gentgeen 19:24, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
• On the UK article point, the real problem is not that there's no adjective for the UK, it's that British wine is legally defined as wine that originates outside the UK (!) So you have English wine and Welsh wine, so that article currently covers both English and Welsh wine. Logically I suppose it has the potential to cover English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish wine as 4 distinct entities - Wine from the United Kingdom may not be elegant, but it is better than some of those alternatives ;-/ I can see an argument for Wikifying the title into Wine of the United Kingdom, but English wine is inappropriate - we'll just have to live with that one as a special case. At the same time it does set a precedent for Wine from the United States OTOH. FlagSteward 19:57, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.