Talk:Lyon

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A mediaeval Pope's admiration ofh the red vestments of the canons of Lyon is said to have given rise to red becoming the signature color of the cardinals. I didn't pull this statement, but does any adult think that this is how things really work? Wetman 06:29, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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[edit] Pictures

Can the article's pictures lose the watermarked text? It looks quite tacky and unprofessional. Move the info into the EXIF tags, that's why they are there. Josh3736 04:01, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Move to Lyons

I disagree: see "Lyons" discussion below, here. --Kessler 00:42, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

I add my disagreement, although I don't think it's necessary for me to add to the conversation below. 64.19.134.3 02:47, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

I think "Lyons" is more than occasional. Of the 600000+ links which turn up [1], a nice example is from the French Government [2] --Henrygb 13:42, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Cultural bias, creeping in here: the reason why English-speaker spellings predominate on the Internet is that most of the current users of the Internet are English-speakers, still... That's why those Google "popularity"-ranked data retrievals, one of which you used here, are not as "objective" as they are considered by so many to be: if the folks you ask about haircuts are primarily barbers, they're going to tell you that you need the haircut...
Household penetration rates of things like the Internet and computers still are lousy, in France and in French-speaking places -- where they will insist that the city name be spelled "Lyon" & not "Lyons" -- at least by comparison to the US, UK, Scandinavia, and other digitally-deluged places. Someday, maybe soon, France will be represented equally online per cap -- the Internet will become democratic -- and then we'll all have "Lyon", and lots of accents aigues -- but not yet. And just wait 'til the Chinese and the Indians get there: lots of spelling and punctuation changes to be made, then -- just ask ICANN, they're already wrestling with this -- don't call it "Bombay", or "Madras" -- the disambiguation task will take on a whole new dimension.
Easy answer for the "French Government" example you cite: http://www.france.diplomatie.fr/label_france/ENGLISH/DOSSIER/G7/g7.2.html -- those are French diplomats, trying to be diplomatic, plus showing off their Eton or at least Cambridge or at least Cambridge ESL School educations -- and it's their "English" page... -- but back 'ome you can bet they spell it the way grandpère does, "Lyon".
Valid political correctness question to me, for Wikipedia generally, is what spellings & punctuations to use here on the "WikipediaEnglish" site, particularly considering that there now is a "WikipediaFrench"... There must be a policy somewhere on this but I don't know what it is, myself. I suppose said policy might demand English spellings on "WikipediaEnglish", French spellings on "WikipediaFrench": that might solve the "Lyon / Lyons" conundrum here -- altho it might then get into "colour vs. color" and "whilst vs. while" and that sort of thing, with "the Americans" -- so maybe we'd need a "WikipediaAmerican" site too... and then there's "WikipediaTexan", y'all...
--Kessler 21:35, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
It does. See WP:UE; there is also policy to leave "color"/"colour" alone, because that is between two varieties of English. Septentrionalis 22:24, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I think movement generally is to move away from "Anglicised" spellings like Lyons and Marseilles to the original spellings, where they are just as easy to pronounce. The Guardian style guide has suggested Lyon for some years.

I'd be in favor of a general Wikipedia policy "localizing" all place-name spellings and versions -- Mumbai instead of Bombay, Chennai instead of Madras, as examples of the latter -- both because it seems inevitable given current "movements generally", just mentioned, and because it seems practical in that the number of "local" folks everywhere who are getting online is going up rather than down. So "local" folks and their resources increasingly would be in conflict with other standards & spellings adopted online.
Not that this would cut down on the anomalies and name-changes: local folks seem to change these names as often as other "authorities" do -- witness the maps of India & China & Africa and most other ex-colonial and / or politically-unsettled places. Also this doesn't resolve the character sets problem: OK for Mumbai and Chennai, but what to do about Københaven?
Is there an overall Wikipedia policy on this sort of place-name language standardization, anybody know?
--Kessler 00:23, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
WP:UE -- the Wikipedia standard, for this sort of thing -- says,
"American spellings need not be respelled to British standards nor vice-versa; for example, either Colour or Color is acceptable. But bear in mind that using one English variant may cause searches in another variant to fail. To prevent this, it is recommended that you create a new article using the alternative spelling which redirects to the main article."
The request to redirect the article to "Lyons" says,
"Talk:Lyon - Lyon → Lyons. WP:UE is clear: the English Wikipedia should use the established English spelling. Official spelling in French matters to fr:Lyon. Septentrionalis 22:29, 9 August 2005 (UTC) "
-- but that begs the question, here, because not only the French but also the Americans spell the thing "Lyon" --
"Lyon n., a city in southeastern France, on the Rhone: English name, Lyons", Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language (Cleveland & New York : World Publishing, 1960)
I believe there is a confusion here. Webster's is not distinguishing English usage from American (which differs only in that Americans discuss Lyons less often) but from French. For example, even translations from the French, published in New York, often use Lyons; and translators are more likely than most to retain the foreign usage in front of them. Webster's also makes clear in the introduction that its intention is to follow the opposite course from Wikipedia, to follow native usage unless unavoidable. This is quite reasonable for a gazeteer, which only needs to discuss each foreign city once, and has reason to discuss the foreign pronounciation. Septentrionalis 01:40, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
So I vote for leaving the article where it is, at "Lyon", and putting in the redirect at "Lyons" instead. My motivation is not to dis the British but more to respect the "local" spelling preference.
I wonder how WP:UE would deal with my Bombay/Mumbai and Madras/Chennai examples -- I don't see anything there about that.
--Kessler 00:42, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
See the archived talk page Talk:Kolkata/archive2. But India is diffrent from France because there is a valid local English dialect. So in none English Speaking countries the rule is the most common English usage (WP:UE). If there is a diffrence between AE and CE (Commonwealth English) then use the one in line with the spelling on the rest of the page. There has been discussion on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style to make all of the articles on EU countries CE based but there is no agreement to do so. Philip Baird Shearer 07:48, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

You are incorrect about Webster's. Their entire point, in the entry for "Lyon" which I cite, is to distinguish the English usage from the American. Reproducing the entry exactly as it appears, in my edition,

Lyon (lyōn), n. a city in southeastern France, on the Rhone: pop., 461,000 (1946): English name, Lyons.

-- this is as per the full title of the work, as well, Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language [emphasis added] -- there is a long history to this... I don't see the Webster's Introduction passage which you cite, in my edition, but it supports my point: the French spell it "Lyon", too.

For Wikipedia purposes here, though, to me it seems enough that, a) Wikipedia policy is against it, WP:UE saying, "American spellings need not be respelled to British standards nor vice-versa", also, b) it would be pretty pointless, and confusing, to start combing through Wikipedia to change all American spellings to the British, anyway. (And my own motivation too, as I've said, is to preserve the "local" spelling -- in this case that of the French themselves -- whenever possible.) So I'd leave it where it is, at "Lyon".

--Kessler 17:58, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

This page http://www.lgib.gov.uk/international/Establishing_a_partnership/twinning_db.html lists all the twinned towns and cities in the UK and their twins. For example Edinburgh is twinned with Munich (Munchen) and Kiev amoung others. Brimingham is twinned with Milan and Lyon amoung others. So it seems that the British spelling of Lyon is the same as the French.

I think this vote should be closed so I am going to remove the request to move from the top of this page and the request from the WP:RM page. I do not think that a clear consensus to move the page has emerged within five days. But if anyone disagrees with me then please make a new request and use the format for the talk page recommended in the WP:RM subsection WP:RM#A guide for a Requested move section on a talk page. --Philip Baird Shearer 07:33, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] geolocation coordinates in a GoogleEarth age

It seems to me that geolocation coordinates are going to become more and more important in any sort of reference work, now that GoogleEarth is upon us -- and so need to be moved to the top of entries instead of getting buried down into text bodies and "geography" headings where they only get discovered belatedly.

Very quickly now, I believe, the connectivity between general public GIS -- like GoogleEarth but also GPS systems and flipfones and all the rest -- and text & imaging is improving so that before too long all this will have merged. Seamless web, then, between a Wikipedia text entry and "linked" mapping & other resources: already -- as of this month, in fact -- it's just a cut&paste, and very quickly it will be just a link click.

So a terrestrial location like "Lyon", in Wikipedia, needs to be easily linked to mapping resources like GoogleEarth which are in use by the general public. GIS has been available to specialists for some time: the difference now is that Google is going to give this access to everybody -- to all of Wikipedia's users. It's the old Internet phenom: where a technology previous well-known to the initiated suddenly, 1992-3, became accessible to the great unwashed as well, and look at what changes that produced...

So to be prepared for this I believe geolocation coordinates need to come up first / initially / at or near the beginning of a Wikipedia entry. Just the lat & long, not how many volcanoes there are there: the latter still can be buried somewhere further down where only the geologists will seek and find them -- but every user, increasingly, is going to want to "see where this thing is located", now that GoogleEarth is here.

Also, coordinates need to include seconds: those make a pretty big difference to anyone trying to locate an ancient ruin or a city at a GoogleEarth altitude of only 400 feet.

--Kessler 21:04, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

See Template:Infobox Town Septentrionalis 01:40, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dating services...

I don't think the addition of services like the following, which just was added to the article,

http://www.lyon-dating.com/ Lyon dating

is appropriate, or is safe for Wikipedia to allow.

There is no way of checking out sites like this -- and these "dating" services may start off ok but then change, and there is no way to keep up with that. And per the overall Wikipedia policy this isn't "encyclopedia-like" information. I recommend this link be deleted.

for those interested (not me), it still in the discussion page anyway Dingy 03:42, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

--Kessler 18:13, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. 'Tis done. Anville 18:24, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

There are usually other sites which keep track of current information realevent to people living in the city, for Lyon the best is Le Petit Bulletin which tells everyone when all the shows are. i'll add it. JeffBurdges 13:41, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New Infobox Template proposition

I'd like to bring your attention to a new - or other - version of the "Large French Cities" infobox presently at use in a few French cities pages. The present version is much too large, partly because it consecrates too much space to information having little importance to French demography and an only distant and indirect relevence to the city itself. Instead I propose to follow a less cumbersome model closer to that used by the New York City article - you can view the new version in the Paris talk page here. Please view and comment. THEPROMENADER 22:21, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

As a result of some discussion over the past weeks, there is an updated template available for perusal in its 'published ' form (filled with data) here - all comments welcome. -- THEPROMENADER 07:25, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Not sure how to picture that working for Lyon - thankfully Lyon doesn't have 37 different ways of defining itself ;) But if you have a proposition to make of a template with Lyon's figures etc filled in, I'd be interested in seeing it. Stevage 09:05, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
LOL - you are, and it's in place - the above message is outdated. Discussion was long and lively, and half of it has been archived. For now it seems that discussion is centred around 'optional fields' .... wait a sec, are you talking about the 'demographic' infobox you first see when you click 'here'? LOL.... no, not very suited to Lyon : ) Time to archive this section perhaps. THEPROMENADER 09:47, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Picture requests?

I live in Lyon and have a digital camera. Can anyone think of some pictures that this article really needs? Drop me a line if you like. Stevage 09:05, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, well now I no longer live in Lyon. ;) Stevage 09:52, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Silk trade

When did the Silk trade get going, and is there enough material to either add a section or a page? ThuranX 16:23, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Arpitan nonsense

Is there a way that we can stop all this "Arpitan" nonsense? There are people who keep changing "Franco-Provençal" into "Arpitan", a name little known in the English-speaking world (this is the ENGLISH Wikipedia mind you). I suspect there is a very bizarre agenda behind this continuous revert war. One editor even went as far as describing Lyon as a city originally inhabited by "Arpitans". What the heck is that?? So according to that bizarre agenda, Lyon is an Arpitan city currently occupied by France. I must have missed a chapter in world history. LOL. Godefroy (talk) 18:35, 16 December 2007 (UTC)