Talk:Sněžka-Śnieżka

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 an overwhelming Oppose to the requested move. I'm closing it as per WP:SNOW (and in case that doesn't fly, per WP:IAR itself – the proposed move bears no benefit and would be inherently divisive). Yes, talk page sections are to be closed, per the very existence of the templates, and as evidenced by this example. Administrators are not leaders, they are people with additional powers. Non-administrators can close if they wish. Example here, which incidentally is a vote I started and I bear no ill will. I hope this addresses your concerns Matthead, and don't take this personally. And by the way, you didn't follow WP:RM. :) +Hexagon1 ^(t) 06:49, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Sněžka-Śnieżka is a rather odd name in English, actually not in English, but both in Czech and Polish, two Slavic languages which only since 1945 are spoken by locals there, after the expulsion of the Germans living on both sides, in Sudetenland and Silesia. On the other hand, Schneekoppe is established in international use for centuries, as e.g. proven by John Quincy Adams in his 1804 report.

Schneekoppe is anything but forgotten in modern day English use: In post-1990 Google books in English (requiring "mountain"), one yields these hits:

• Śnieżka 0
• Sniezka 29
• Sněžka 1
• Snezka 18
• Schneekoppe 35

Between the wars, with the new state of Czechoslovakia just having gained access to the Western side, but Poland still being far away, the hits are as follows:

• Śnieżka 0
• Sniezka 0
• Sněžka 0
• Snezka 4
• Schneekoppe 54

So, it is safe to say that in literature, Schneekoppe was almost exclusive common English use before 1945, and it is still the most common name (and by far the easiest to spell, I dare to say).

In general Google internet search, the clumsy double naming yields under "Sněžka-Śnieżka" +mountain -wiki -wikipedia under 300 hits Outside Wikipedia, while the three languages (with or without diacritics) are roughly tied in the 10,000 - 20,000 range.-- Matthead  DisOuß   09:10, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose-guidelines use local names if available. Furthermore this isn't a German wikipedia Matthead. Besides english also Uses Snezka far more then Germanised version[1]246 results. The above results by Matthead are manipulated-if you click them you will see he used the combination of certain words with the names, which limited the results and missed several without the combination--Molobo (talk) 09:55, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Dear Molobo, do I detect bad faith here? I did not manipulate, I quite openly stated that I limited my searches to post-1990 books which include "mountain" to enforce English. Regarding the "Germanised version" (do clocks run backwards where you come from?), your link to Polish books.google.pl yields 793 dotyczących schneekoppe compared to 247 dotyczących snezka for Czech and 409 dotyczących sniezka or 465 dotyczących Śnieżka in Polish - including "autorstwa Marianna Śnieżka". Polish books using a German name rather than the local Czech one or the brandnew Polish one is quite funny, isn't it? Molobo, if you read WP:NCGN, you may find that "we recommend Encyclopedia Britannica, Columbia Encyclopedia, Encarta, ... Consult Google Scholar and Google Book". Now, EB: Snezka (in Sudeten, Giant Mountains, Relief) and sniezka in Geography Columbia Encyclopedia: Snĕžka (Ger. Schneekoppe, Pol. Śnieźka) in Krkonoše, MS Encarta Sněžka (in Sudety and Czech Republic) while Śnieżka is unknown. Arccording to these three, the double naming must be dropped in favour of the Czech naming. Google Scholar does not make much difference in regard to diacritics (same or similar results), and yields Sněžka 108, Śnieżka 200, Schneekoppe 393 in total, and in English Sněžka +peak 28, Śnieżka +peak 32, Schneekoppe +peak 50. Thus, among scholars, the neutral Schneekoppe equals or betters both local names combined. Ceterum censo: Śnieżka has to get removed from the English naming. -- Matthead  DisOuß   13:35, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

• Strong oppose, Schneekoppe, oh man you must be kidding all the time. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 10:10, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh yes I found it quite amusing myself also. However let's focus on facts shall we ? The searches by Matthead are for combination of the words he used with other words. This gives false results as for instance it misses Snezka peak, Snezka alone and so on and on. Furthermore we know that best known version of local name should be used.--Molobo (talk) 10:14, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

See below, common English, not local hieroyglyphs. Besides, Snezka peak 31 vs. 278 Schneekoppe peak, you are digging yourself a hole.-- Matthead  DisOuß   13:35, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose. Nice try Matthead. However, this is not German Wikipedia; this is not a historical issue. We know Snezka lie in historical Sudetenland, or geographically in the Sudetes but nowadays it lies between the sovereign nations of Poland and the Czech Republic. In geographical issues WP strongly stands behind local naming, if it is not a strong use of other name in English. So I oppose per current local names, although I think Schneekoppe is damn sexy name :). Hey Matthead, how about moving Liberec to Reichenberg? - Darwinek (talk) 10:21, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

You can leave the city in place, but in Google Books, since 1990 and in connection with "+city" (yup, English use, and no authors), Reichenberg beats Liberec about 250 to 150, with some having both. And no, I doubt other de:Reichenberg (Begriffsklärung) places are nearly as well-known, or considered a city. Any other suggestions, while we are at it? Many of the Slavic namings made up after wars lose out to older ones established in English(!) use. Damn stubborn, those Anglo-Saxons. Many Germans though, politically overcorrect, echo anything foreign, of course. They adopted verbal cannibalism, eating "Hamburger". -- Matthead  DisOuß   13:35, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. Good for 1911 Britannica edition, but now it's almost 100 years later. Local names should prevail, not historical ones. Just a rough assessment: Sněžka and Śnieżka searched in English, both separately, give 40000 Ghits in total, from which about 25000 for Sněžka as opposed to 6800 to Schneekoppe and I'm not counting versions without diacritics. MarkBA ^t/c/@ 16:06, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

It is the common English name that needs to prevail in English Wikipedia, not "local names" in foreign languages. Else, we would call other mountains on international borders 乔戈里峰-کے ٹو and Cervino-ds'Horu-Mont Cervin-Matterhorn. Schneekoppe was established in English much longer ago than the names of these two mountains. Okay, so you want to use plain Google in English rather than Google Books, getting (diacritics don't make much of a difference here) Sněžka 27k, Śnieżka 17k, Schneekoppe 7k. How about enforcing English, and excluding the wiki-mirrors with "+peak -wiki -wikipedia", and the native domains with "-site:.cz -site:.pl -site:.de"? This reduces the results to: Sněžka 887, Śnieżka 1,070, Schneekoppe 261. Among those hits are probably still many local travel agencies using dot.com sites. The surprising result is that the presumed extinct "Schneekoppe" still has that many hits. Quite interesting is that the local Czech skilift website "German" version uses Sneekoppe /Sněžka. The Polish Observatorium knows quite well German history, but uses ahistoric Polish naming in English -- Matthead  DisOuß   13:35, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

• Strong sup....wait, this is not Unencyclopedia? Oppose, no brainer.Oh, and the commons:Category:Schneekoppe needs to be renamed to reflect the consensus here. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:27, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Dear Mr. no brainer, how about renaming the two year old commons:Category:Sniezka first? And Piotrus, it seems you missed that one somehow, surely you don't want to neglect the Czech part of "the consensus here"? -- Matthead  DisOuß   13:35, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 23:25, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose, whilst I'd prefer a Czech name for this, the mountain being far more significant to Czechs then Poles, I am very satisfied with the current Czech-Polish compromise. German doesn't even enter the equation here. Policy states that a COMMON English name takes precedence, however Schwepps or whatever it was is not common, nor English. So a local language is used. And in case policy disagrees I invoke WP:IAR, this vote has no possible benefit. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 08:14, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

  PS: How about the French Sniejka/La neigeuse? Or Esperanto Neĝulo? I'm sure with clever Google manipulation we could get them to become the most common English term too! (I'm sorry, I couldn't resist) +Hexagon1 ^(t) 15:26, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Many editors found their way here who seem to never have edited the article before, and started to vote, always oppose BTW. Hexagon1 even tried to close the discussion as if it were a poll, and as if he was an admin, stating [2] an overwhelming Oppose to the requested move. I'm closing it as per WP:SNOW (and in case that doesn't fly, per WP:IAR itself – the proposed move bears no benefit and would be inherently divisive). I doubt that talk page sections are supposed to be closed, and remove the poll top/bottom templates. Regarding "no benefit and would be inherently divisive", I've provided evidence for alternative naming and recent common use in English when adding this section. -- Matthead  DisOuß   16:26, 12 January 2008 (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.

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 I am closing this as another WP:SNOW, consensus in the past has shown that there is strong opposition to a move and this compromise is adequate to nearly everyone. The Dominator (talk) 05:04, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

There is little doubt in my mind but that the current name for this mountain errs on the side of compromise. WP:NCGN is quite clear on a case like this:

There are cases in which the local authority recognizes equally two or more names from different languages, but English discussion of the place is so limited that none of the above tests indicate which of them is widely used in English; so there is no single local name, and English usage is hard to determine.

Experience shows that the straightforward solution of a double or triple name is often unsatisfactory; there are all too many complaints that one or the other name should be first. We also deprecate any discussion of which name the place ought to have.

We recommend choosing a single name, by some objective criterion, even a somewhat arbitrary one. Simple Google tests are acceptable to settle the matter, despite their problems.

The above archived move proposal tried to move in this direction. In my mind, and that of the majority of respondents, opting for a German name — no matter it's historical legacy — was rightly labeled as having a "snowball's chance in hell" of succeeding. After all, WP:NCGN also states:that the modern name should take precedence, except when the article or section is clearly referencing an historical period. Examples given include the preference for Gdansk over Danzig (in the main article about the city) and Volgograd vs Stalingrad (the former is preferred when talking about the city today; the latter for talking about the Battle of Stalingrad).

Clearly, Schneekoppe is the Stalingrad or Danzig of this discussion. But if not that, what single name should we choose?

In the first place, remembering that this is English Wikipedia, we should follow English language convention when giving the name of the mountain. Sometimes, truly mammoth mountains that go by their name alone — but this is almost always for logical cause. For instance Anapurna isn't a single mountain, but the name of a small series of peaks. And "Mount Nanga Parbat" or "Mount Dhaulagiri" would in fact be redundant. because the word "mountain" is inherent in the non-English word that has passed into English. Thus you find the usage, "Mount something" to be predominant for single-peak mountains in English in locations around the globe. Hence: Mount Fuji, Mount Mitchell, Mount Ararat, Mount Kilimanjaro. Even the world's most famous mountain, Mount Everest, follows this convention. A cursory glance at a list of mountains in the English-dominated sections of the world will reveal the predominance of this naming convention, with other varations like "<possessive adjective> Mountain" and "<possessive adjective> Peak" being the only other formulations that even weakly approach the "Mount something" paradigm. It's interesting to note, too, that every single mountain on the moon, as named by English speakers, follows this convention (albeit in Latin). This suggests to me that, given a blank slate, English speakers will naturally reach for "Mount something" just by reflex.

Encyclopedia Britannica, a resource which WP:NCGN sees as helpful in settling questions like this, agrees. It returns hits for both Mount Śnieżka and Mount Sněžka.

It would thus seem logical to me that this article should be entitled Mount something. But what should that something be?

Well, look, as WP:NCGN suggests, at these simple Google tests:

• The word alone
  • The word Śnieżka returns 1.9 million hits.
  • The word Sněžka returns 267 thousand hits.
  • The unaccented word Sniezka returns 630 thousand hits.
  • The unaccented word Snezka returns 267 thousand hits, just like the properly-accented word.
• Mount something
  • Mount Śnieżka returns 9,630 hits
  • Mount Sniezka, unaccented, returns 21,900 hits
  • Mount Sněžka returns 2,920 hits
  • Mount Snezka, unaccented, returns 9,680 hits

It's pretty clear that the Polish variant handily wins all contests. It's also revealing to me that Britannica hits for Sněžka are only in another article about Czech geography, while the Polish variant is used in an article about Polish geography. The lack of a specific article about the mountain itself confirms that this is a subject well below the radar of all but a few English speakers. Thus, WP:NCGN's recommendation for arbitrary decision clearly applies here. The fact that these simple Google tests all point heavily in favor of the Polish variant serves as the effective tiebreaker. At the end of the day, there are just more Poles in the world than Czechs, so their usage is more likely to dominate. The only real question left open is whether to use diacritics or not. Yes, the most "popular" of all the "Mount something" searches is the unaccented Mount Sniezka, but Britannica includes the diacritics.

Therefore, I propose that this article's name be changed to Mount Śnieżka. Or Mount Sniezka. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 18:22, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

These Google results badly need filtering to make sure we're looking at English-language results. My comments on the inappropriateness of the results as concern diacritics are below. Knepflerle (talk) 17:19, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose'''. If in support, also indicate whether you prefer the accented or unaccented version. Then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• I am OK with both versions, i.e. it doesn't matter for me if the article will bear Czech or Polish name. One thing is for sure, it should be with proper diacritics as per precedential naming conventions. - Darwinek (talk) 12:18, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

• Completely disagree that a priori the name should be Mount XXX. For names we use what English-language texts use - we do not try to second-guess usage by inventing rules based on vague general patterns. Most lakes are called "Lake XXX" in English, but IJsselmeer is called IJsselmeer in English, Chiemsee is Chiemsee and Windermere (which is in an English-speaking country!) is just Windermere. And Ben Nevis certainly isn't Mount Ben Nevis either...

Couple of points, here. If we should use what English language texts use, what do you make of the fact that Britannica is employing the Mount prefix? As for your Lake analogy, the examples you give aren't particularly strong ones. Windermere means "Vinandr's lake"; a second "lake" would be redundant. Chiemsee means "Bavarian Sea"; adding Lake would be counter-intuitive. And as for Ijsselmeer, what does meer mean? Yep, you got it: lake. Therefore sometimes the English translation is Lake Ijssel, while other English-speakers are happy to leave it alone. And you find this sort of thing with a ton of non-English mountain names too. Where "mount", "mountain", "peak", "hill", etc. is already implied in the literal translation, the English name will generally avoid redundancy. And that applies to Ben Nevis, too, where Ben is an anglicization of the Gaelic Beinn, meaning "mountain". CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:37, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm fully aware of the etymologies. The thing is, most English speakers are not aware and get the usage right! It doesn't matter why Ben Nevis doesn't have Mount in front - English speakers just know that it doesn't, purely because they've never seen it or heard it that way and specifically not because they have rationalised the name through a knowledge of Gaelic, Dutch, German, whatever. And English speakers wouldn't expect to see the non-English here either. We can't and shouldn't invent usage here to fit some model which would be more consistent. We can't create something more "English" than what English speakersactually speak by removing inconsistency or by adding English words in non-native ways. We merely follow usage with all it's inconsistencies. Knepflerle (talk) 16:54, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I certainly agree that the average person doesn't know the etymology. But both in the United States and England, while there may not be general English language Academies, there are governmental agencies in charge of cartographic naming conventions. The people that sit on these boards do look into the etymologies and choose names that the rest of us use that make sense. Thus, English speakers not local to the area in question get it right by virtue of others' knowledge. And this proposal isn't about the wholesale invention of usage; it's more about pointing out the rationale for what already exists. "Mount Sniezka" isn't something I came up with. It's one of the possibilities based on current usage. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:16, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Second point - Google's search engine is incompetent at parsing diacritics and should not be used for making decisions as to their use here - ż may parse as z, ź, ž or something you may not even have thought of (e.g. ū often parses as o, and ł as t). This means that there's massive cross-contamination of results - click on your results for unaccented Snezka and actually look at the first few pages. For me the 3rd, 4th, 6th and 8th all have diacritics. Sometimes this happens even when the extract in the result on the Google page has none! If you want to use Google to check for diacritic usage, use Google Books and Google Scholar and click on, check and count each result by hand. Laborious but the only way to get a half accurate picture.

I do however dislike the current title - one thing is for sure, the predominant name for the mountain is probably one of the two alternatives, and not both at once. Find out which is the most common in quality English texts and use just that, making sure redirects care for any other possibilities that arise. Knepflerle (talk) 12:48, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I would love to be able to do this. But when Britannica actually uses both, separately, and other texts (see the former debate, above), are no less clear, we gotta just go to WP:NCGN's advice and arbitrarily pick one. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:37, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Sure I agree it's difficult - but I want to pick one of the two alternatives English actually uses, than one of the two you proposed which they use far less often. Britannica's usage seems a little exceptional from what I've read, and it wouldn't be decisive either way. Britannica uses one, Encarta uses Sněžka; no reason there to pick one over the other.

The most important point is that if a fairly even split of sources use Śnieżka and Sněžka, then whichever one we pick the same number of people will arrive at this page and be vaguely surprised by the name, and with redirects and explanation of various names their reading experience will not be impaired. Whichever we pick the same number of people will read the article and not be inconvenienced - so it makes absolutely no difference overall which of the two is used. Spending ages pointlessly dithering between the two will however affect the reader's experience by diverting time off the editing they would actually benefit from. Knepflerle (talk) 17:06, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose I am good with the current name. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 13:00, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose I understand your motivation, CzechOut, and obviously the current name isn't ideal, but it seems to be the best solution. As Knepflerle says, the "mount" is hardly necessary. More importantly, I don't think there's a clear favourite in the English language. The fact that there are more polish entries is likely the result of the difference in population size between the two countries: 38million to 10million. If we allowed that kind of population difference to decide naming/spelling, all wikipedia articles would use american spelling. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 13:21, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. That's the arbitrary decision maker. Polish wins simply by virtue of the number of Poles. Therefore there's more source material in Polish, therefore it has the greatest influence on the English language. It sucks to have to do it that way, but sometimes life ain't fair. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:37, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

There's no "fairness" about it. It doesn't matter why one is predominant in English - there are many complicated reasons for preferences of various words when adopted into English usage, but generally words are not adopted to prefer one country over another - certainly not in this case, anyway. Even if it were somehow unfair we would still use what English does - if English used, say, a Hungarian name predominantly for this mountain(!) then we'd use that. Knepflerle (talk) 17:15, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose, strong disagreement with the name Mount, this mountain is not commonly referred to that way at all and generally no foreign language mountains (other than the very well known) are referred to as Mount. As for Google search, that is completely irrelevant, Polish websites will use the Polish name, Czech websites the Czech name and English websites will just use whatever name their source uses. There is no logic here, the mountain is obviously more significant to the Czechs as our highest peak, but is obviously in Poland as well. Normally a name like the current one is rather clumsy, but in this case I'm adequately satisfied with it. No need to add another layer to these nationalistic Wikiwars. The Dominator (talk) 13:24, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the mountain is referred to as "Mount <one of the two>" by a wide range of English speakers. Click on the Google phrase searches linked below in the Discussion section. You'll find native English speakers posting their vacation pics online using Mount. A Polish university site's official English-translated page on scientific study of the mountain range using Mount. Non-Polish/Czech travel agents using Mount. Polish/Czech travel agents using Mount. Computer wallpaper designers using Mount. There's just a wide range of people who use "Mount" when speaking about the mountain in English. Despite all this talk about the unreliability of Google, some of which may be justified, doing a search for the phrase "Mount (pick one)" does reveal a ton of hits showing that "Mount whatever" is in English language use. While I appreciate that it doesn't sound right to a non-native English speaker, to my mind, the Mount prefix is the least controversial part of this proposal. It's completely natural in English. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:04, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

It is one English usage of several; it does not seem to be the predominant one however. Knepflerle (talk) 17:09, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, so what does, and what's your method for arriving at that conclusion? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:51, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Note that "HIV virus" scores half a million Google hits. People often add an explanatory noun to the name of something, without causing that noun to become part of its (encyclopedic) name. --Kotniski (talk) 17:19, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

• • I wouldn't fear a wikiwar in this case. Czech and Polish editors generally have good relations here on WP and stuck together in the past when one user tried to move it to Schneekoppe. - Darwinek (talk) 15:58, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose Mount version, would support just Śnieżka.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 15:09, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose adding Mount (I don't believe it's the norm in modern English to add Mount before mountain names which don't have it established by past usage). Oppose removing diacritics (goes against general WP policy, and destroys information - it's easy to imagine what a word looks like without diacritics, without having to see it, but not vice versa). Not too fussed whether the current title is kept or reduced to just one form (Czech because of the greater significance for that nation; Polish because of wider use).--Kotniski (talk) 17:05, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose. The form "Mount something" appears to refer to this mountain less frequently than the names without "Mount". Tankred (talk) 02:59, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose move. It has been established there is no common English version, and as such this is a great compromise not likely to be conflict-prone. Also, nice, I direct you to an article in mock of the naming disputes and the first thing you start a new one. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 04:05, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Any additional comments:

• More data from Google. This is the result of phrase search rather than a work search.

The prase Mount something

• "Mount Śnieżka" returns 1,330 hits
• "Mount Sniezka", unaccented, returns 118 hits
• "Mount Sněžka" returns 568 hits
• "Mount Snezka", unaccented, returns 568 hits

but a better question I think is what what do the people at the base of the mountain call it. --DRoll (talk) 09:29, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

• More facts: The search results for "Mount Sniezka" is a subset of the search results for "Mount Śnieżka" as the search using the accented form returns accented and unaccented results. For some strange googley reason the searches for "Mount Sněžka" and "Mount Snezka" return identical results, that is the same pages. --DRoll (talk) 09:56, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Indeed - see my comment above. Using Google to assess diacritic usage is pointless, unless you are willing to examine and count the results by hand, assuming that the parsing was even good enough to pull up all the relevant results. Knepflerle (talk) 12:53, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. But WP:NCGN says that "simple Google tests are acceptable" in this particular case. And we've now done three different tests, two word tests and one phrase test, and on every one of them the Polish version comes out on top (allowing for the fact that something funky is making the unaccented Czech test to return results that are obviously too high. I wish I'd though to do this phrase search, because it's the clearest indication of English language preference. When combining an English word with the Polish or Czech word, the accented, unambiguously Polish word wins by a margin of better than 2:1. Hence, in English it's the real deal. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:45, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Look; it doesn't matter if the guideline says you may use Google results - the results for diacritic use do not make sense due to technical limitations! What's the point of using results completely inappropriate for a given conclusion just because we are allowed to?

All we know from the above is that in there is a fraction of English usage that uses Mount+*, and that of those the sum of the Polish ones with diacritics and without diacritics is greater than the sum of the Czech ones with diacritics and without diacritics (and that's assuming Google takes all the relevant results and parses them to Snezka or Sněžka (in the Czech case) and not to any other combination because it gets confused... see [3] and [4] where Düsseldorf goes to DOsseldorf and DGsseldorf rather than Düsseldorf or Dusseldorf for example... how do we know if ž isn't being read as something crazy, and is missing from our results?)

If Google worked properly in these cases, it would be a useful thing to use. In these cases where we have no idea how it processing the diacritics it's just not up to the job, and we nned to look elsewhere. Knepflerle (talk) 17:33, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I guess I'm not understanding how it's completely inappropriate. I get that it's prone to error; WP:NCGN says that it's prone to error, but use it anyway. I'm just a guy trying to get a better name for a really horribly-named article, here.  :) And the only thing that makes sense to me is to follow the guideline. You're saying Google gives awful results here, but every one of these hits that I'm looking at shows English usage of some variation of the name Mount Sniezka, and they're from a wide variety of different sources, academic, business and personal, native and non-native speakers alike. It may not be perfect, but it's far from useless. If this isn't the way to go, what is? You agree with me at least in principal that we've got to go to a different, more singular name for the article. How would you propose we come up with a fair settlement, if not by the method laid down by the guideline? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:49, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I think it is completely inappropriate because Poland's population is thrice that of the Czech Republic. The Dominator (talk) 22:08, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Not to mention I am angry about you starting a vote on an article I directed you to in the very mocking of how sad nomenclature disputes get, but this is just ridiculous. Not only have you failed to grasp what a consensus is - nothing to do with sheer numbers, but you're starting more disputes on comfortably settled articles between Czechs and Poles in exactly the way my current proposal hopes to avoid on articles that are actually undergoing a serious dispute. Per WP:SNOW alone this vote is moot. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 04:12, 1 April 2008 (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.