Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)/U.S. convention change (August 2006)

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[edit] Changing the U.S. Convention

I think it's about time that the U.S. convention be changed to be similar to the Canada convention so that city names that are unique, or clearly the most significant, don't require the state name. Examples:

...and so on.

NOT

It seems quite silly that a city like Vancouver (metro pop. 2.1 million) isn't at Vancouver, British Columbia, but Los Angeles (metro pop. 12.9 million), with an equally unique name, is at Los Angeles, California. I'm sure I'm far from the only one who feels this way. However, now is the time to get the ball rolling on getting the convention changed. -- tariqabjotu 20:52, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. For one thing, what about Vancouver, Washington? As an American, I could make a strong argument that Vancouver, Washington should be at Vancouver, since it is a major suburb of Portland, Oregon, and a significant contributor to the economy of Washington state. Plus there is the Kansas City mess, the Augusta mess, the San Jose mess, etc.
Besides, we have debated this issue many, many times over the past three years and the consensus has always been to keep the city, state convention which practically all Americans are accustomed to, because they write city and state on their mail all the time. --Coolcaesar 21:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure how Vancouver, Washington is relevant here. Sure you could make a case that Vancouver, Washington is more significant than Vancouver, British Columbia. But perhaps someone could do that for Moscow, Idaho, home to the University of Idaho, being more significant than Moscow, Russia. But those both are really stretches. The current naming convention already addresses this, as Vancouver, British Columbia is already at Vancouver and Moscow, Russia is at Moscow. Regarding Kansas City, Augusta, and San Jose, those would be examples of city names that wouldn't have the state name omitted. What I am referring to are the major cities with unique names (like the ones mentioned in my first post), in then same manner that major Canadian cities with unique names have the provinces omitted. And in regards to the last statement, I'm not sure why you would say that most Americans refer to American cities with their state names (I couldn't disagree more, particularly with major cities). Americans may write state names when addressing mail, but they also write zip codes. And Canadians also use province names (and zip codes). The similarities are so plentiful that it doesn't make sense not to be consistent between Canadian and American city articles. Perhaps you (or someone else) could reiterate some of the major selling points behind the current system. -- tariqabjotu 22:25, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
I always find the Vancouver vs. Vancouver, Washington references perplexing, as the former is globally-known Olympic city, and the other is a suburb. When someone proposed moving the Canadian Vancouver article to Vancouver, British Columbia on the basis that the Portland suburb was just as well known, the proposal was laughed out of the room. Skeezix1000 20:16, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
  • If one wants to make CA and US the same, could he also change the CA convention? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 22:41, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Be careful what you abbreviate; please don't abbreviate it so it can be misinterpreted; CA is widely known as standing for California. Georgia guy 23:01, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
      • maybe widely in the narrow context of Northern North America. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:09, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
No. The abbreviation for Canada is CDA (or CAD for the currency), or sometimes CDN (the latter used more often for Canadian). Skeezix1000 20:16, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Americans may write state names when addressing mail, but they also write zip codes. And Canadians also use province names (and zip codes). The similarities are so plentiful that it doesn't make sense not to be consistent between Canadian and American city articles.
    • Isn't Canada in America?
    • Shall all city articles of countries that use province or state names and use zip code be handled by one convention? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:18, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
A discussion page on the U.S. convention is not the place to discuss changes to the naming conventions of other countries. Canadians in particular established their own naming convention so as to avoid becoming involved in the U.S. naming debate. Skeezix1000 20:16, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Tariq's suggestion. It should only be done for major cities where there is no ambiguity, but if that is held to, I see no reason to be slavishly devoted to the "City, State" format, which was overwhelmingly voted down in the recent move of Chicago. john k 23:24, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

then let's drop the US convention and only use one global convention. But apply the primary topic very strict. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:27, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Agree with Tariq as well. We should determine which cities should be moved on a case-by-case basis. Kirjtc2 23:32, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

This topic has been discussed repeatedly. A strawpoll on a similar proposal was held earlier this year, and is still at the top of this page. Since then it has been raised from time to time. There are many benefits to using the "city, state" format for U.S. cities. For starters, it is already in place in tens of thousands of articles. Consistency is an important quality in an encyclopedia. The convention allows readers to instantly identify the topic of an article or link as a city. It is much easier for editors to know what the name of an article will be, without having to search around. The existence of a convention avoids (most of) the numerous debates that would exist of what to name cities. -Will Beback 23:36, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

The change of title of the article from Cityname, State to plain Cityname should only be done if there is no doubt that it will ever need to be returned. The work of checking and fixing all the links would be huge. As it is now, some of these have thousands of links to the Cityname redirect, making it difficult to decide that the redirect should be changed to point to the disambiguation page instead (this was a recent issue with Philadelphia).
I suspect there is a case for using the primary name for the Alpha and Beta U.S. cities on Global city, but probably no further down. --Scott Davis Talk 00:56, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
IMO, drop US convention and implement strict Alpha-only primary topic convention for all settlements around the world. Primary topic should only be used if there is no doubt that other uses may outweight the topic in the next 10 years. Case by case poll with 1000 of places is IMO not in the current interest of WP. Can be done if WP is near complete in year 2020. Until then, postpone this please. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 01:04, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Hmm... I don't think we need to just stick with alpha cities; that seems like too small a set with primary name. -- tariqabjotu 01:37, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I see this discussion as a debate between (1) a usability orientation and (2) a classification orientation based on taxonomy and library science. Unfortunately, Wikipedia goals seem to support both approaches. It's supposed to be an encyclopedia, but that definition is not helpful in resolving the conflict between the usability and classification camps (assuming they exist). Usability is important, but I fall in the classification camp, mainly because most usability issues can be solved with redirects. What's left boils down to which words appear at the top of the article (Name, State vs. Name). But this already has a solution: The first sentence of most articles. For example, contested articles such as Boston, Massachusetts and San Francisco, California both begin as follows:

[CommonNameOfCity] is blahblahblah in the [State|Commonwealth] of [NameOfState|NameOfCommonwealth] ...

This format (1) clearly calls out the common name of the location; (2) is already in widespread use; (3) avoids classification problems, and (4) is reader friendly, since (with proper redirects) it allows readers to find what they want via common name. Notably, nearly all ambiguous entries such as Portland and Oakland follow this format as well. That is, the article name is not used in the article itself. This situation is very different for other types of entries with common names, such as people (e.g., John Smith, animals, or things. --ishu 00:55, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possibilities

Below are the fifty largest cities in the United States. Crossed out are the blatantly problematic, while I commented on a few others. Perhaps this would be a reasonable launching point:

What was going on would be a lot clearer if Tobias could write properly in English. I don't really understand what is being discussed. In terms of which cities, I'd suggest everyone go to United States metropolitan area and look at the main cities that are not ambiguous - New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Miami, Houston, Atlanta, Detroit, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis, San Diego, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Denver, and Cincinnati would all seem to be primary topics with little risk of confusion, and most, if not all, already redirect to the American city of that name. Cleveland and Tampa would perhaps be on the borderline. New Orleans is a place outside the top 25 that would probably qualify. There's a lot of smaller cities that could theoretically be moved, but could also be left as is, depending on how radical we want to be - Louisville, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Nashville, Knoxville, Indianapolis, Tucson, Sacramento, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Honolulu, Spokane, Boise, Little Rock, Baton Rouge, Wichita, Topeka, Omaha, Salt Lake City, Des Moines, Oakland, Milwaukee, New Haven, Annapolis, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Raleigh, San Antonio, Jacksonville, Shreveport, Chattanooga, etc. I think in all of these cases if one refers to the city with no further elaboration, there is only one city that is arguably meant. There are other cities that we obviously shouldn't move. In the top 25, Washington, St. Louis, and Portland are clearly ambiguous. So also the aforementioned Kansas City, Memphis, Phoenix, San Jose, St. Paul, St. Petersburg, Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, Worcester, Springfield (of course), Madison (probably), and so forth. Most places that the average person won't have heard of should have the state name regardless - I'd say any places with less than a few hundred thousand people should have no debate, and should remain where it is regardless of uniqueness. john k 01:48, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Just to note, I somehow wrote all this without realizing that Tariq had alread made out a list. Cities that I mentioned that don't seem to be on his list are Knoxville, Boise, Spokane, Little Rock, Baton Rouge, Topeka, Des Moines, Annapolis, [{New Haven]], Salt Lake City, Shreveport, and Chattanooga. john k 02:26, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

As the list above shows, there are plenty of problems, just with these cities. Why change such as simple, easy-to-understand and implement solution as the current naming standard, and replace it with something that ends up with lots of exceptions and problems. BlankVerse 02:41, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

BlankVerse, I don't see "plenty of problems". All I see is that some city names are ambiguous and some are not. Some of the ones that aren't ambiguous aren't terribly well known outside the United States. What exactly would be the exceptions and problems if we replaced the current rule with one that said that lesser known American cities, and those that need to be disambiguated, go at City, State, while well known cities that are not ambiguous go at City? Obviously, the exact boundaries of this would need to be ironed out article by article, but each article would remain where it is (i.e. at City, State) in the absence of a consensus to move. What exactly is the huge deal about this? This is how article titles generally work for other articles on cities in Wikipedia, and, for that matter, for most subjects in wikipedia. john k 15:31, 22 August 2006 (UTC)q
Some of the names in the above list surprised me that they're in the 50 biggest cities in the USA. Some names to my (non-US) mind do not indicate the city at first glance (although they might mean something named after the city), and some seem to always have a state attached for no good reason - Atlanta, Georgia always seems to be named that way in my head, even though I have no idea what else Atlanta would mean. I've added some other remarks next to a few - they're a bit lighthearted, but are intended to point out that people don't always think the same way about a word when they already have a different context in mind. None of my examples are wildly contrived in common use compared to the city.
Tobias' idea below that the city should only get to be the main page for a name if more than 50% of all the links to any of the disambiguated meanings are to the city seems like a fairly objective measure. I think I'd still prefer that most of the articles stay at the Cityname, State page, with a redirect from the plain name though - it just provides that little bit more help to readers. --Scott Davis Talk 05:19, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Why not simply do away with the convention altogether, and use the same naming scheme as the rest of the encyclopedia? If some 2000-person town in central Utah has an entirely unique name, their article gets that name. That way, we don't have to make all kinds of lists about cities here, away from their actual articles. --Yath 18:44, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. --Serge 18:56, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Why not simply do away with the convention altogether, and use the same naming scheme as the rest of the encyclopedia? - Because wikipedia is not complete yet. To avoid future changing of millions of links, currently preemtive dab is used for geographic topics where future collisions can be expected. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 20:24, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
You exaggerate. And if people need to jockey a little to determine which (if any) city gets a primary article, it is not your place to decide that none will. The idea there will be great edit wars, dogs and cats living together, has been repeatedly overstated and abused. Wikipedians are grownups and can handle it. That's how we figure out what's best, not by dragging everything to the lowest common denominator. --Yath 20:45, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
I have news for you, Tobias. Wikipedia is as "complete" as it is ever going to be - because it will never be complete. The amount of information out there is practically infinite and is growing all the time. There is no end in sight for Wikipedia, by any measure. Wikipedia is an evolving process and entity. In the mean time, dealing with each ambiguity as it is encountered is the best way to go. The concept of "pre-disambiguation" is a non-starter. Articles with disambiguity issues should be disambiguated based on the other articles with which they have ab issues. The only way to do that correctlty is on a case by case basis. This is the system that is used for all Wikipedia articles, I don't see why cities should be exceptions. Plus, what Yath said. --Serge 20:58, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Firstly, it depends on future definitions of completness, whether this will be reached. Secondly, in geography I could well imagine that one day it is complete with respect to whether each city, village, town, neighborhood etc has an article. At this time, we could maybe start moving. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 22:45, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Like every other field that has a naming convention, it is better to have a consistent approach to naming cities in the U.S. then to have the chaos of ten thousand case-by-case decisions. -Will Beback 21:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Exactly. Which is why city article names should be consistent with the conventions of all Wikipedia articles: use the most common/used name if there is no ambiguity issue. --Serge 21:22, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
this will be done when all cities have an article. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 22:45, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possibilities simplified

How about this? For any article about a city named city that is currently entitled city, state, if [[city]] redirects to that article, then change the article name to city (and make [[city, state]] redirect to [[city]]). Simple. No lists. --Serge 21:22, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

This seems very sensible. If the redirect was already well-established, then that means there is already consensus that the unqualified name primarily refers to the city. --Polaron | Talk 21:32, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
That seems reasonable. -- tariqabjotu 21:35, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
If the redirect is happily in existence why do we need to change the article name at all? Also, some cities have several redirects. -Will Beback 21:47, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
The reasons TO change an article name from CityName, StateName to CityName are:
  1. The title of the article should specify the most common name that is used to reference the subject of the article (e.g., New York City, Chicago, water).
  2. CityName, StateName is NOT the name of the subject of the article about a city named CityName (e.g., San Francisco, California).
  3. CityName is the name of the subject of the article about a city named CityName.
  4. There is no ambiguity conflict with CityName since CityName already redirects to this page.
  • Note: As part of the change, when applicable, any other redirects to CityName, StateName should be changed to point to CityName.
--Serge 22:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
The purpose of every convention is to standardize naming. This change would make city names non-standard. I oppose any change which will result in citynames which aren't consistent. That would be unprofessional and chaotic, both for readers and editors. -Will Beback 22:06, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Whether you like it or not, the well-established standard in Wikipedia, that you insist on being inconsistent with, is to use the most common name, unless there is an ambiguity issue, in which case the ambiguity is supposed to be resolved with a parenthetic remark. There is nothing professional about naming an encyclopedia article San Francisco, California that is about the city of San Francisco. And "consistency for the sake of consistency, at all costs", which is what you favor, is a juvenile approach, not a professional one. --Serge 22:23, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
There is a huge ambiguity issue with U.S. cities, hence the need for a naming convention. -Will Beback 22:25, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Sigh. We've come full circle. There are no ambiguity issues for [[Name]] when [[Name]] redirects to the page in question, which is what we're talking about in this section. If there is a "need" for a naming convention (which I question also, but that's a separate issue), it is only for those cases where there is an actual ambiguity. --Serge 22:31, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
WRONG: There are no ambiguity issues for [[Name]] when [[Name]] redirects to the page in question, which is what we're talking about in this section. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 22:34, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. But there are no known dab issues for Name if the [[Name]] page redirects to a particular article. If a new article is created with a Name that does have a name collision, then the dab issue can be dealt with, and it's the responsibility of the creator of the new article to manage it. This is standard stuff, and consistent with Wikipedia policy, including the primary naming principle of putting the interests of the readers ahead of the interests of the editors. --Serge 23:00, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Serge's original idea is simple and easily comprehensible. I don't understand the claims by editors opposed that this will lead to "chaos." This seems to be meaningless hyperbole. In terms of ambiguity, the whole point is that cities with ambiguous names stay where they are. I don't believe anyone has suggested otherwise. john k 23:13, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. No "chaos" happened with the recent move from Chicago, Illinois to Chicago. The fact that the unqualified name already redirects indicates that people already agree that it is the primary usage. --Polaron | Talk 23:16, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Agreed indeed. The Canadian convention has yet to produce chaos; I'm not sure why a similar convention for U.S. cities would. -- tariqabjotu 23:20, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Call me an idealist, or a simpleton, but I prefer Serge's suggestion to use Wikipedia's fundamental naming conventions rather than to write up a bunch of special-case rules for every topic on Wikipedia for which someone foresees a naming conflict. The conventions account for conflict and it is not beyond the capacity of an encyclopedia with tens of thousands of editors to resolve them as they arise. --Dystopos 23:23, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
The chaos at talk:Chicago was made up of the many debates and strawpolls over what to name the article. The bigger chaos would be if the process is repeated at dozens, hundres, thousands of other articles, and then city names are open to changing again every time someone wants to argue over who gets "Lancaster". As for Dystopos comment about writing up rules - The rule is in place already, used in tens of thousands of articles. There is a very strong status quo in existence already which doens't need any special rules. All we need is one simple guideline, the one we already have: U.S. cities are titled "cityname, "statename". Like any guideline, article editors can decide to override the rule for particular articles, as was done recently in Chicago. -Will Beback 23:43, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
You've got to be kidding. The root cause of the chaos at Talk:Chicago (and countless other city article pages) was the promotion and application of the unconventional predisambiguation naming convention for cities. If you and the rest of your gang abided by the standard Wikipedia naming convention, to use the most common name when there is no ambiguity, it would have remained Chicago from the start, and there would have been no chaos. Note that in the last vote, it was still the same bunch of usual chaos-makers, including you, causing all the trouble, supporting the non-standard name of Chicago, Illinois. It's laughable that one of the primary creators of the chaos is now using the chaos that you created as an excuse to defend your chaos-causing naming convention. Unbelievable. Seriously. --Serge 23:56, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
I disagree. I believe the move of the city article to Chicago was incorrect because the article on the band would be more appropriate under that article title. For one thing, the band is probably much better known, due to the daily airplay of its hits on radio stations throughout English-speaking North America. In contrast, I haven't seen Chicago's skyline regularly on a TV screen since Perfect Strangers and Family Matters went off the air; after all, ER doesn't film on location in Chicago. Also, out of curiosity, Serge, how do you address your mail? City and ZIP only? No state? Because it wouldn't be encyclopedic? --Coolcaesar 02:40, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
But the band is named after the city, isn't it? Also, the way postal addresses are formed don't have anything to do with what the city is called. Would you support moving the state names of the U.S. to something like Georgia, United States. Don't you need yo put the country name when addressing international mail? --Polaron | Talk 02:51, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
The idea that the band is more central to the concept of "Chicago" than the city baffles me. In any case, I don't mean to get caught up in an ongoing dispute about one article. My opinion is with regard to the general practice of elaborating rules that work quite well enough on their own. In the same way that I prefer to go by the Golden Rule than by the Halakha. When there is conflict, I would rather hold our options up to an ideal than to a preconception. --Dystopos 04:46, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
I hope Coolcaesar was being facetious. Otherwise, I have to imagine he spends a lot of time listening to "25 or 6 to 4". john k 10:19, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

The opposition to changing the convention seems to be based around a) the straw man notion that articles on obviously ambiguous city names like Lancaster or Portland would come under dispute; and b) a bizarre distaste for the normal processes by which article titles are decided. It really is not that hard to determine if a city is the primary use - we've already determined this for most major US cities by having CityName redirect to CityName, StateName. There is rarely any controversy over decisions to do this, that I am aware of. If there's a considerable dispute over such a usage, then that's obviously a sign that it isn't the primary use. I think this is true of most American cities named for British places, for instance. The basic fact is that there's nothing so unique about the United States that requires different treatment from cities everywhere else in the world. The fact that opponents of a change seem to be resorting to incomprehensible computer science jargon only strengthens the case. john k 10:19, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not to be Mr.-Let's-Do-a-Straw-Poll

But let's take a look at the options (regarding the U.S. convention). Add others at your leisure and support more than one if you so desire.

[edit] Adopt The Canadian Convention

The canonical form for cities in the United States is [[City, State]] (the "comma convention"). Places which either have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name, such as Atlanta or Los Angeles, can have undisambiguated titles. Those cities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish.

An article for a city in the United States, however, should never be titled simply "city, United States" (e.g "Phoenix, United States".)

  1. Support this fully. -- tariqabjotu 13:42, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  2. Second choice. Unlikely to be more than 20-30 exceptions. --Scott Davis Talk 15:03, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  3. Support. There would only be a couple dozen cities that would be moved. Kirjtc2 16:37, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  4. Support. Would be better than the current mess. --Yath 19:52, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  5. Support. Having to type [[Boston, Massachusetts|Boston]], [[Massachusetts]] instead of the simple [[Boston]], [[Massachusetts]] is simply annoying with no benefit at all. Can someone explain the benefit to doing the former? To my knowledge, the city articles were originally generated from the U.S. Census and that's the main reason for the easily-programmed [[City, State]] convention. —Wknight94 (talk) 23:51, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  6. Second choice. My first choice is to eliminate the US standards completely, but I am willing to accept this as a compromise.--DaveOinSF 20:25, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
  7. Support this as a compromise as well. --Polaron | Talk 20:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
  8. Support as compromise and step in right direction. --Serge 21:42, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
  9. Second choice. I'd prefer, however, to just go by the general Wikipedia convention for naming articles rather than something peculiar to the U.S. and to place names. --Atemperman 22:43, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


  1. Oppose. That would once again lead to disputes at every major city over whether it is sufficiently major to qualify. This is simialr tot he "global city" exception that was the subject of a straw poll earlier this year (see above). -Will Beback 22:09, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
    • You're kidding, right? Those disputes exist only because you guys keep insisting on enforcing the city, name convention where it makes no sense, where no disambiguation is required. If you didn't do that, then there would be no dispute. --Serge 22:33, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
  2. Oppose. The point of conventions is to stop the arguments every couple months. After five years arguing the same points over and over. Just stick to the agreements and get on with writing the articles. Rmhermen 04:31, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
  3. Oppose. Canada has 13 provinces and territories vs. 50 states; 32 million people vs. 300 million. The US has many more opportunities for conflicts and unnecessary disputes, and greater need for disambiguation. As most Canadians will tell you, Canada is not the same as the US. --ishu 21:58, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Comments
  • Especially small cities, regardless of whether a redirect exists, will not be moved. -- tariqabjotu 13:42, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm not clear on how this differs from the current state of the guideline. Isn't this the same as "maintain status quo"? Kafziel 14:06, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
    • The current convention would state that even major U.S. cities with unique names or that are the most significant place sharing their name would have the state. Thus, under this idea, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco and the other cities listed under #Possibilities would be at Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. Under status quo, they would be at Atlanta, Georgia, Los Angeles, California, San Francisco, California, etc., as they are now. -- tariqabjotu 14:15, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
      • The current convention does have exceptions, though. So it seems to me that the point of this option is to make a longer list of exceptions, but there's not really a need to do that. Since it's just a guideline (not policy) exceptions can be made at any time. Kafziel 14:42, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
The effect is to make a "standard exception" that can be pointed at rather than long protracted discussions on the talk page of each city. --Scott Davis Talk 15:03, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Move US Cities Across Redirects

All U.S. cities that have the name of the city without the state name redirecting to the name of the city with the state name will be moved to the location without the state name.

  1. Support -- If the unqualified name already redirects, then there is already wide agreement that the city name by itself refers to the city. --Polaron | Talk 18:43, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
    • This is a false conclusion. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 00:03, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
      • If it's a false conclusion, then you should have no problem providing some counter examples - examples of cities where the unqualified name redirects to the article, but there is less than wide agreement that the name by itself refers to the city. Not holding my breath... --Serge 00:22, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
        • Again a false conclusion. I have no examples at hand, nevertheless the original conclusion was a short cut. The simple existence of a redirect just does not garantuee wide agreement. The redirect could be created by only one person, or even a bot. Allways keep in mind that WP is not complete yet and that not all redirects went through big reviews. Redirect Somecity -> "Somecity, A" may even stay for month or years until someone finds out that there is also "Somecity, B". I very often encountered such situations. Luckily it's easy to turn Somecity into a dab then, and if Somecity has no incoming links the work is done. Otherwise one would have to fix all the incoming links. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 00:44, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
  2. Support. This would fix a lot of cities right away. --Yath 19:52, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
    So why don't you just do it? That's what I don't understand with all of this stuff. Kafziel 19:58, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
    Because existence of the current U.S. city naming guideline motivates people to oppose such no-brainer moves as Miami, Florida to Miami. --Yath 20:59, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  3. Strongly Support. There is no downside to doing this - it only improves Wikipedia and makes city naming convention more consistent with the conventions used by all other Wikipedia articles. Consistency... good! --Serge 21:47, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
    • of course there is a downside. It's only that you are not aware of it or that you on purpose try to mislead other editors. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 00:47, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
      • Note that you nor anyone else can state what the downside is. --Serge 17:24, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
        • Agree. That's why I did not talk of THE downside, but of A downside. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 18:48, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
  4. Strongly Support. Would resolve current problems (user entering Boston in search looking for the Boston in England gets an article entitled Boston and when (s)he realises it is the wrong Boston goes 'doah, I should have realised'; rather than getting an article entitled Boston, Massachusetts and saying 'stupid Wikipedia, why did it give me that one'.-- Chris j wood 22:03, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

  • Evanston, Illinois, as mentioned in an example above, actually will not be moved under this proposal. The same goes with Highland Park, Illinois. -- tariqabjotu 13:42, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Not a bad idea, although I envision this being difficult to put into words for the convention. -- tariqabjotu 13:42, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
    • It's easy to say... The title of any wikipedia article should be the most common name used to reference the subject of the title, unless there is a known ambiguity issue; do not use a disambiguated naming convention unless there is a known ambiguity issue with that name. --Serge 16:44, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
      • This and the Canadian convention are actually quite similar. Perhaps we should merge the two options (although this is just a non-binding straw poll, so I suppose it doesn't matter that people support two very similar proposals). -- tariqabjotu 19:20, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
        • In fact, both of those options are very similar to the last option of just leaving it alone. Places with unique names are already exceptions as it is, and none of these conventions are binding policy anyway. But, as you said - straw poll. No biggie. Kafziel 19:45, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
          • Hey Serge you voted in the comments section. --Yath 19:52, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
            • Doh! Fixed. --Serge 21:47, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
          • The problem is a lot of people don't treat this like a guideline, but instead policy. See Talk:Los Angeles, California#Requested move where almost every oppose !vote says, in one way or another, per the convention, with little to no discussion over the rationale behind the move. A couple !voters said get the convention changed first. And I can't blame them either; guidelines are, after all, created for a reason. And thus, here we are. The Canadian convention makes it very clear that well-known major cities can be at just [[City name]] despite the general guideline that they should be at [[City name, province]]. The U.S. convention, however, does not make that clarification and instead of saying that there can be exceptions says there are two exceptions: Chicago and New York City. It appears as though the naming convention specifically designated Chicago and New York City as exceptions, instead of that a consensus to change the page name, despite the general guideline, resulted in those exceptions. At the very least, the convention should be clearer that if there is a good enough reason, the city article can be moved to just [[City name]]. That way, future move requests will be discussions regarding the goodness (is that a word?) of the requestor's reason rather than a tug-of-war with a guideline. I'd be happy to hear (read) what others believe. -- tariqabjotu 22:49, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] City, State, Country

Move all U.S. cities to [[City, State, United States]] (e.g. Chicago, Illinois, United States).

  1. Oppose. That would be going from bad to worse! --Serge 21:51, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
  2. Oppose. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 00:01, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
  3. Oppose as unnecessarily cumbersome; City+State requires almost no further disambiguation. To offer a parallel, animals are listed as [[Painted turtle]] not [[Painted turtle (reptile)]]. If a reader wishes to know additional detail, it is provided in the article.--ishu 00:24, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
  4. Oppose Worst of all possible choices. --physicq210 23:52, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

  • Most English readers would recognise the names of the States of the USA (and of Australia, provinces of Canada and counties of the UK) even if they can't list many of them. Therefore the third level in the titles is not required for comprehension. --Scott Davis Talk 14:43, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  • This would be horribly cumbersome.--cj | talk 16:19, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Please, no. Even at present, there are some editors who believe linking to redirects is evil and who, instead of spending their time adding content, take the trouble to (i) chide others who do link to rd's and (ii) open up articles to change a piped link in order to "skip rd"). And how would this affect cities in other countries? Paris, France, as someone rightly pointed out on Talk:Chicago, sounds rustic; and Paris, Île de France, France, actually imposes a POV about the relative importance of France's regions vis-à-vis its departments. (Which also serves to underscore that one-size-fits-all won't necessarily work for every single country in the world.) Sgt Pinback 13:28, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
    France's département/région example is a good point - not because of any animosity or POV, as a région is an undeniable administrative step up from a département - but because of the recently-changed status. The région area has only officially existed administratively since around '72-'82. What of other changes in other countries? I also see your point about the 'evil' of linking to redirects... thepromenader 14:21, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] [[City, State, Country]] with redirects from [[City]] and [[City, State]]

Move all Cities to [[City, State, Country]] and redirect all 'shorter' namespaces (City, State) and (City) there.

Comments

  • The clumsiness of a highly-informative longer title would be eliminated by redirects from shorter namespaces. With this solution the pipe trick would not be needed at all save for cases of disambiguation. Also, anyone looking for any item of the three combinations will fall upon the correct article. This will also help searches - searching for a state will turn up not only the state, but the cities in that state. Et cetera. ThePromenader 15:38, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Same comments as above. Some users hate seeing "redirected from" at the top of the article. Sgt Pinback 13:42, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
    *smacking forehead* - right. But quite honestly I see little use in that message - other than its role as an access to the redirect itself. thepromenader 14:08, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Status Quo

Don't change the U.S. convention at all.

  1. It works. Each article should be named based on most common usage by that country's populace, as those are the editors most likely to work on articles associated with them (and therefore create links to them). That goes not just for the U.S., but Canada, Uzbekistan, and everything in between. Kafziel 14:01, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  2. It works and is consistent with other English-speaking federal countries. --Scott Davis Talk 14:59, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  3. As above. It ain't broke in my opinion.--cj | talk 16:19, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  4. Strongly agree. -Will Beback 18:15, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  5. Considering that the WIkipedia is an international English-language encyclopedia with readers and editors from across the globe, choice 1 is the most precise and least ambigous, as well as the least likely to lead to misunderstandings about the status of a particular community. It is also the clearest instruction on naming a community article so that hopefully it will lead to an end to the interminable debates on naming various community articles (for examples, look at talk:Anaheim Hills, Anaheim, California or talk:La Jolla, San Diego, California. Blank</font>Verse 22:04, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  6. I agree. Why fix it if it ain't broke? --physicq210 22:46, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  7. Support to secure correct linking. There are too many equal toponyms, especially in english and spanish speaking countries. I expect similiar amount of ambigous toponyms for chinese, indian and maybe arabic places in the future. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:58, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
  8. Support. My way of looking at it is, the default way of referring to an arbitrary city or town in the United States is "Cityname, Statename". The fact that larger and more familiar cities are referred to by "Cityname" alone is simply an artifact of the fact that they are more familiar; it doesn't change the default. All U.S. city and town articles should have the same naming protocol, and where possible, that should follow the default way of referring to a city or town. Basically, I agree Andrew c's example of Sgt. Pepper is a good one: using Boston as the article name for Boston, Massachusetts is like using Sgt. Pepper as the article name for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: it may be the more commonly used name, because the thing is sufficiently prominent that you can get away with using the shorter version, but that doesn't mean it ought to be the title of the article. The arguments that using Boston, Massachusetts as an article title forces one to write links like [[Boston, Massachusetts|Boston]] [[Massachusetts]] doesn't hold water; because of redirects, there's nothign to stop anyone from writing [[Boston]], [[Massachusetts]]. AJD 01:25, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
    Yes, but this default is at odds with general Wikipedia conventions. It's not just not the same as the general convention, but under the general convention, the status quo means something else (see the Paris, Texas problem). The problem isn't that normally "Portland, Oregon" would be "Portland (Oregon)"; rather, it's that "Portland, Oregon" means something different under the comma convention than it does under the general Wikipedia convention. I'll explain this better in a separate comment.--Atemperman 22:53, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
  9. Support. Get over it and get back to writing the articles. Rmhermen 04:33, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
  10. Support. Constrain fights to redirects (eg Augusta), not to the articles' actual locations. Bolivian Unicyclist 16:35, 26 August 2006 (UTC)


  1. Oppose. It IS broken, and it needs fixing. These constant debates keep occuring because the current convention is fundamentally broken: it violates the primaring naming principles, including title specifies common name and don't disambiguate unless there is a name collisions. It results in silly and unprofessional article titles like Los Angeles, California. It uses the comma for disambigutation when the parenthetic remark is the standard. It's an attempt to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Broken, broken, broken... But it's easy to fix (see proposals above). --Serge 21:56, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
    Using your logic, all of the naming conventions should be thrown out the window because they "violate the primary naming principles." --physicq210 23:47, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
    With such a misunderstanding of my logic, no wonder you disagree. Yes, all naming convention that violate the primary naming principles should be thrown out. But any convention that expands on, without violating, the primary principles, is fine, or, at least, should not be thrown out for violating the primary principles. --Serge 22:19, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
    Are you implicating that I'm stupid? As far as I can see, naming comventions are there to promote consistency within articles related to the same topic. This convention serves that purpose. --physicq210 02:29, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
  2. Oppose Mandating disambiguation when no such ambiguity exists is ridiculous. If I go to Cher, it's about the singer/actress. As Wikipedia:Naming conventions says: there may be cases where a particular convention is "obviously" inappropriate. Following one convention for Los Angeles and a different one for London is stupid.--DaveOinSF 23:30, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
    since wikipedia is not complete yet, we are probably not aware of all current ambiguities. Leaving alone things that will be created even in the real world only in the future. And now, since we know that we don't know all ambiguities it may be wise to disambiguate. This is called planning. Some people do not plan, and then have to fix and fix and fix all the time. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:46, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
    Right, we might be overlooking a notable usage of Los Angeles because Wikipedia is not yet complete. These "arguments" are pathetic. --Serge 22:22, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
    Just a note: calling people's arguments "pathetic," no matter how much you disagree, is considered incivil. We can do without the last sentence. --physicq210 02:25, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
  3. Oppose Same reasons largely as Serge, DaveO, et al.--Atemperman 22:53, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


Comments
  • Question: When creating links to these places that use the U.S. convention, is it more common to use [[place, larger place]] or [[place, larger place|place]]? --Polaron | Talk 14:04, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
    • In my opinion, it's more popular to do [[place, larger place|place]]. Sometimes I see [[place, larger place|place]], [[larger place]] though, and [[place, larger place]] is not too uncommon either (maybe because it's the easiest?). -- tariqabjotu 14:24, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
    • It depends on context. If it has already been established, for instance, that the subject is towns in New York, then it's not necessary to have [[Town, New York]] for every entry. They will generally end up being piped once it's made clear which state is being discussed. Same as any other place. Kafziel 14:46, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
    • (edit conflicted - mostly already said) Depends on the context. "[[place, state|place]]" is fine for links where the context is obvious (such as the next town up the highway). "[[place, state]]" works when the state border happens to cross the highway or whatever. "[[place, state|place]] in [[state]]" or "[[place, state|place]] in [[Australia]]" often work better in biographies or history.--Scott Davis Talk 14:59, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Even if we keep the current standard, could we at least clarify that, as Kafziel said, the U.S. convention is just a guideline and that exceptions are okay. See this comment by me. -- tariqabjotu 22:57, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  • I am torn over this issue. My biggest feeling is that every single place should be consistent. If you are writing an article about a city, no matter if it is the most well known city in the world, it should be in a consistent format such as "City, Larger place". I think it would be much more confusing and inconsistent to have some cities titles just their name, and others their name plus a larger place. I think the Paris, Texas solution below illustrates this best. While it makes perfect sense that the solution is following naming conventions to the T, I think it is really confusing to have so many different rules and formats of city names: some use ", Larger place", some use "(Larger place)" and some use nothing at all. However, I have to concede that it is harder to wikilink to cities if the titles are longer. I think it is ok to have the more common city names stay as redirects, and leave it at that. Sgt. Pepper may be the more common name and is a redirect, but we'd never want that to be the title of the main page. Similarly, it just seems sloppy to me to not include a ", Larger place" after a city name.--Andrew c 17:04, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
    • This is what I don't get. Why do you (or anyone else) feel "that every single place should be consistent"? In particular, why do you feel that articles that need to be disambiguated have to be consistent with those that don't? No other category of names in Wikipedia is so restricted... not even cities in other countries. Why insist on this restriction for U.S. cities in particular? Why? --Serge 03:05, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
    • In response to Andrew c: the example of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band isn't perfectly analogous. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is in fact the name of the album and Sgt. Pepper's is just a common short name. On the other hand, Boston is the actual name of the city; it's not just a common short name. Boston, Massachusetts is just more specific (and, to some, unnecessarily specific). -- tariqabjotu 03:34, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
      • I wouldn't say "more specific" in the context of naming - that implies Boston, Massachusetts is another name for the city of Boston. It's not. Boston is the name, , Massachusetts is more specific information about where Boston is, not about its name. Only information about the name belongs in the title, not information about location (unless, arguably, it is required for disambiguation). Information other than the name (e.g., location information) belongs not in the title of the article, but in the text of the article. --Serge 03:51, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
  • For some of us at least, it seems that there's tension between wanting to go by the standard Wikipedia convention and wanting to go by the convention in general use for place names in the U.S.. There are two keys to resolving this tension:
  1. Figuring out why one convention should take precedence over another, and
  2. Determining whether the name of an article by one convention will appear ambiguous or nonsensical when parsed using the other convention.

On the basis of both of these, we should go by the standard Wikipedia convention rather than the peculiar convention for naming U.S. cities.

  1. Wikipedia has a number of conventions that are absorbed by users and editors as they increasingly use the resource. We want users to be able to apply what they have learned and gotten used to from the rest of the encyclopedia to new articles they encounter. Most importantly, however, is that the whole purpose of creating a standard way of naming articles is so that whenever an article is created, the editor only has to know one convention, the Wikipedia convention, rather than checking to see whether the particular area in which he or she is creating an article has a special convention for naming. Accordingly, the article for Berlin-Friedrichstadt (an area in Berlin) is named "Friedrichstadt_(Berlin)", even though the convention in German for referring to areas within cities is "Cityname-Areaname". Unless we are prepared to identify the naming conventions that hold in every corner of the world and then rename articles accordingly, then we are being (a) inconsistent and (b) biased toward an American point of view in naming articles.
  2. The cases in which the second issue arises are very few indeed, although Serge's remarks w/r/t Paris, Texas are relevant here. --Atemperman 23:24, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Change the U.S. Convention to Eliminate Exceptions

Change the U.S. convention so that there are no exceptions for any place, including New York and Chicago.

  1. Support, because I think it's better to have no exceptions. Given the history on this issue, nothing will close the door on these debates. But if we're going to have a "do-over" it may as well be a complete do-over with all of the old options re-presented. We might do better with a cut-and-paste of the old arguments into this discussion. It would save time. --ishu 13:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
    Guess what one of the headers at Talk:New York City says?? Have you read it yet?? Georgia guy 13:52, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
    Isn't the answer to your question clear from what I wrote?: "Given the history on this issue," "with all of the old options re-presented," and "old arguments." Of course I saw the talk at Talk:New York City. And at Talk:Los Angeles, California. And at Talk:San Francisco, California. And at... [sigh] Nobody's going to budge on this issue. I get that. ("Nothing will close the door on these debates.") But I'm still allowed to have my opinion. --ishu 14:15, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
    Since NYC was the exception, it should stay. However new ones should not be allowed if we went with this scheme. I don't think there would be consensus for this and the problem of two standards would not be addressed by this, leaving the bigger issue unsettled. Vegaswikian 18:07, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discard the U.S. naming convention

The broader policies described at Wikipedia:Naming conventions cover cities perfectly well, and additional guidelines are unnecessary.

  1. Support - cities fit easily within the standard naming guidelines. --Yath 19:52, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  2. Strongly Support. Treating articles titles for U.S. cities inconsistently with other Wikipedia articles is, well, inconsistent. Plus, the comma is a horrible choice for specifigyin disambiguation information, since the meaning of the comma itself is ambiguous. Is it and everything after it part of the name, as in Sammy Davis, Jr.? Or is the purpose of the comma to separate the common name from disambiguation information after it? It's unclear. --Serge 19:59, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
    Question. What part exactly in the Wikipedia:Naming conventions does this proposal refer to? Wikipedia:Naming conventions#City names points to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements), which indeed should work just fine. If this proposal means using Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements), then I support it. It does mean using commas, though, whih I don't see as a problem at all.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:06, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
    Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements) does not in fact work just fine. It encourages people to promote article titles such as Denver, Colorado over the simpler and more direct Denver. What I was referring to was the statement In general, there are no special naming conventions for cities, unless multiple cities with the same name exist., which is really all that needs to be said about city names. If you want to add a sentence "Disambiguates cities will use ", Statename" or ", Statename, Countryname" as necessary in (list of countries), that would be cool too. But as you can see, having a whole separate article for city names is overkill. --Yath 21:04, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  3. Strong Support. Global wikipedia standards should trump topic-specific conventions which half the people think are silly.--DaveOinSF 17:41, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
    Please note that this is my first choice, and my second choice is to adopt the Canadian convention as a compromise.--DaveOinSF 20:26, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
  4. Strong support Pre-emptive disambiguation (using a potentially ambiguous comma style) is not needed and should definitely not be required. --Polaron | Talk 21:51, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
  5. Strong support On the basis of Yath's, Serge's, Polaron's, and DaveOinSF's arguments.--Atemperman 22:46, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


  1. Strongly oppose. BlankVerse 22:14, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Why oppose? Why do you think we need naming conventions for cities, and especially U.S. cities, that are inconsistent with the fundamental and very wise Wikipedia naming conventions? --Serge 07:06, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
  2. Strongly oppose. Naming conventions are more for consistency and logic than for "pre-emptive disambiguation". If this convention is discarded then I don't understand why we'd keep any others, as the same reasoning would apply to them. -Will Beback 22:07, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
  3. Strongly oppose. Rmhermen 04:32, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
  4. Oppose. ishu 23:24, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AP Stylebook and other style guides

Does anybody have a recent copy of the AP Stylebook? I only have a copy of the 1998 edition, but I find it interesting in the "Datelines" entry that it has a list of cities that should be standalone (i.e. you should only use City instead of City, State, Country or City, State) because of the "population of the city, the population of the metropolitian region, the frequency of the city in the news, the uniqueness of the name, and the experience that has shown the name to almost synonymous with the state or nation where it is located."

In either case, I think we should also consider how other reliable published style guides treat the issue. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 23:43, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Using a relatively respectable source like the AP (and other similar sources, if possible) would seem like a potentially good solution for determining which cities to move. john k 17:18, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Keep in mind that this is the 1998 version, but I doubt it has significantly changed in eight years. Also keep in mind that this was printed in the United States, so it divides them into "Domestic" (American) and "Foreign" (International) places:

"Domestic" (American) "Foreign" (International)
  • Atlanta
  • Baltimore
  • Boston
  • Chicago
  • Cincinnati
  • Cleveland
  • Dallas
  • Denver
  • Detroit
  • Honolulu
  • Houston
  • Indianapolis
  • Las Vegas
  • Los Angeles
  • Miami
  • Milwaukee
  • Minneapolis
  • New Orleans
  • New York City
  • Oklahoma City
  • Philadelphia
  • Phoenix
  • Pittsburgh
  • St. Louis
  • Salt Lake City
  • San Antonio
  • San Diego
  • San Francisco
  • Seattle
  • Washington DC
  • Beijing
  • Berlin
  • Djibouti City
  • Geneva
  • Gibraltar
  • Guatemala City
  • Havana
  • Hong Kong
  • Jerusalam
  • Kuwait City
  • London
  • Luxembourg City
  • Macau
  • Mexico City
  • Monaco
  • Montreal
  • Moscow
  • Ottawa
  • Panama City
  • Paris
  • Quebec City
  • Rome
  • San Marino
  • Singapore
  • Tokyo
  • Toronto
  • Vatican City

Obviously, we might not be able to shorten the names for some of them, like moving Phoenix, Arizona to Phoenix because Phoenix (mythology) seems equally significant. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 00:00, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Paris, Texas problem... and proposed solution...

[edit] Problem

Here's another problem with the city, state convention that I have not yet seen mentioned. I have pointed out repeatedly that the convention produces titles that are ambiguous about the one piece of information titles are supposed to specify: the name most commonly used to reference the subject of the article. To illustrate, consider these examples using the current city, state convention:

Now consider the same examples using standard Wikipedia naming rules:

Note that in the first set, we have no way of knowing what the "common name" is for each city. But in the second set, it's clear and unambiguous: San Francisco, Portland and Paris, Texas. That's right, because Paris is so commonly used to refer to the city in France, the name most often used to refer to the city in Texas is not Paris, but Paris, Texas, and we should reflect that in the title. On the other hand, while Portland is often referred to as Portland, Oregon, it is most commonly referred to as Portland alone, so it should be disambiguated accordingly. Naming it Portland, Oregon implies that that form is its most common name; while Portland (Oregon) clearly specifies the common name is Portland while still disambiguating it from other Portlands.

[edit] Solution

There is no reason to predisambiguate, and there is no reason to specify the state in the title of a city with a comma, unless city, state does happen to be the name most commonly used to refer to it (as in the case of Paris, Texas). The following "convention" would solve all the problems and, unlike the current city, state convention, still would be consistent with the general Wikipedia conventions:

  • If there is no ambiguity issue (i.e., under current conventions, [[City]] redirects to the city article), use the most common name (usually just City; in very rare cases, like Paris, Texas, it would be City, Name). (e.g., San Francisco, Paris, Texas).
  • If there is an ambiguity issue (i.e., under current conventions, [[City]] does not redirect to the city article), disambiguate with a parenthetic remark according to the nature of the ambiguity issue...
    • If none of the other Names are cities, then disambiguate this one with Name (city) (e.g. Chevy Chase (city)).
    • If the other Name is a city in another state, then disambiguate each with the state name... Name (StateName) (e.g., Portland (Oregon)).
    • If the other Name is a city in another country, then disambiguate each with the country name... Name (CountryName) (e.g., Moscow (United States)).

Comments?

--Serge 07:04, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

While I like the city-only convention when it makes sense, when it doesn't make sense, I say go back to the original U.S. convention. I don't like Portland (Oregon) at all. I prefer to use parenthesized article names only when completely necessary and, in this case, it's not only unnecessary but it's actually a detriment. Every editor would have to type "born in [[Portland (Oregon)|Portland]], [[Oregon]]" which defeats the large brevity advantage of the city-only approach IMHO. —Wknight94 (talk) 11:19, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
The problem seems made for the solution IMHO : ) Both can only exist/apply if every article already had a single-name convention. Is it really useful to use brackets to disambiguate subjects and places? This would be confusing and create more exceptions.
Ambiguation brackets should be avoided if at all possible - they are ugly and need recoding. Creating single-name namespaces makes the title short and sweet for sure, but it does create a myriad of occasions for disambiguity. This is why I increasingly like the idea of a final "city, state, country" namespace - this way disambiguation and short names can become redirects to a namespace needing no further clarification or explanation. thepromenader 12:11, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
People can still use the [[city, state]] redirects if the particular phrasing requires that the state name be supplied. Besides many such links I've seen are currrently written as [[Portland, Oregon|Portland]], [[Oregon]] anyway and parentheses makes creating such links easier. --Polaron | Talk 13:26, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Here are some examples of what you would have to type to get the same results using the current and proposed methods.
Using the current method:
Using the proposed method:
Which seems simpler and more straightforward to you? --Serge 15:32, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Hey, I din't realise that brackets in a link disappeared like that with an 'empty pipe'. Thanks for pointing that out. thepromenader 16:22, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
PS: But brackets in a namespace are still ugly, don't you think? thepromenader 16:24, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Ugly? No. I will agree parentheses aren't real pretty, but the convention for disambiguating in Wikipedia is to use them - that's why the "pipe trick" works. There is a lot to be said for consistency.
Use of the comma for disambiguation, however, is nonstandard. Also, commas are often legitimately part of the common name as specified in the title, not as a separator for disambiguation (e.g., John F. Kennedy, Jr., Sammy Davis, Jr. , University of California, Berkeley, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, etc., etc. The use of the comma as a disambiguator in some contexts, and as part of the specified common name in others, is confusing and produces ambiguous results.
Consider what common name the titles of Paris, Texas and Paris, Texas (film) specify under the current conventions. Is the comma a disambiguator in both cases, so the names are Paris and Paris, respectively? Or is it a disambiguator in the first, but not in the second, producing the names Paris and Paris, Texas? Or is it not a disambiguator in either... Paris, Texas and Paris, Texas? How is a reader, who doesn't already know, supposed to figure it out? Why use such unclear, ambiguous and conflicting conventions? To what end?
The city, state convention is a solution for a problem that is already solved (with parenthetic remark disambiguation only when necessary), and itself just creates problems. --Serge 17:47, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
And even shorter:
no collision with river naming, which use brackets. And no splitted linking like New York City. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 16:31, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
I see. The enormous "river naming collision problem" warrants creating a separate naming convention for cities that is completely inconsistent with the rest of Wikipedia. The grasping for straws to defend the comma convention is quite pathetic. As to your examples...
  • [[San Francisco, California]] San Francisco, California doesn't allow the reader to click on California separately, like San Francisco, California ([[San Francisco]], [[California]]) does. Article title does not clearly specify what the most common name is. Is it San Francisco or is it San Francisco, California? The reader has no way of knowing.
  • [[San Francisco]], under the current guidelines, must be reference through a redirect.
  • [[Portland, Oregon]] Portland, Oregon doesn't allow the reader to click on Oregon separately, like Portland, Oregon ([[Portland (Oregon)|]], [[Oregon]]) does. Article title does not not clearly specify what the most common name is. Is it Portland or is it Portland, Oregon?
--Serge 18:05, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
[[Portland (Oregon)|]] -> Portland - Wow, I feel stupid but I had no idea you could do this. I completely retract my last complaint. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:18, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
The usefullness of separate clicking is questionable: "New York City" . If I see Portland seperatly underlined this may let the user think he can find where the name Portland comes from. A generall article about "Portland"s Tobias Conradi (Talk) 18:55, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Add geographic hierarchy as first line

I think one possible solution that might satisfy those who insist on common names and those who like to see the state name is to add a geographic hierarchy as the first line of the city article. For example:

Los Angeles

California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles

If this is added to all city articles, then the title can be at the common name while people can immediately glance and see what the state and even county is. Just a thought.