Talk:Soča

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Contents

[edit] Move from "Soča - Isonzo River" to "Soča"

Rationale: Soča is the Slovenian, and Isonzo the Italian name for this river. Article titles should not be lists of names in various languages. Soča is currently a redirect. AFAIK there is not a single widely accepted English name for the river. About 70% of the length of the river is in Slovenia. See also the discussion below, and #Rivers with multiple names. Markussep 18:17, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

Add "* Support" or "* Oppose" followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

There's a trick to get "Isonzo" in the category: put [[category:Rivers of Italy]] in the redirect. It works. Markussep 13:03, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Looks quite interesting and useful. Has this been discussed elsewhere? Olessi 16:30, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
No, just something that I thought might work, and it does. Markussep 17:08, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Very interesting: could help to clean up a lot of messy category pages, too. (I’ve nullified my vote above.) Incidentally there’s some discussion of this at Wikipedia_talk:Redirect#New_section_proposal:_Categories_inside_redirects—Ian Spackman 19:45, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I've seen it discussed before somewhere, and I've used it several times. I think most of the discussion was when it didn't work as well as it does now. At one time, I think the category listing in the redirect had to be right after the redirect wording on the same logical line; that might not be necessary any longer. Gene Nygaard 07:37, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Oops: the trick very nearly works, but not quite in the way that is needed. We now have the river appearing twice in the Rivers of Italy cat:once from the redirect page, and once from the main page. When I tried removing the cat from the main page to fix that problem, it created a bigger one: the link to Category:Rivers of Italy longer appeared at the foot of the main page. —Ian Spackman 07:51, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Fixed the problem of Category:Rivers of Italy not appearing on the articles main page, by moving the category listing on the redirect page to the same logical line as the redirect. Apparently that's where the problems in using categorization with redirects comes in, so you just need to be sure you don't put in a line break before or between the categories. Gene Nygaard 14:57, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Is it a problem if both Isonzo and Soča appear in the category Rivers of Italy? Markussep 09:18, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I think so: it will look as though they are separate rivers. The cat-redirect trick could usefully be employed to fill a new Category:Names of rivers which run through Italy, which would include Tevere and Tiberis as well as Tiber, for instance. But I do find the current category, with its one-to-one relationship between category-entries and articles, a useful one. —Ian Spackman 11:19, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
I can't imagine that one-to-one correspondence being useful for anything other than counting the number of elements of that particular category which have Wikipedia articles, which won't often be that useful to anybody. It is far more important that people looking for some particular element of a category are able to find it, so that existing information doesn't remain hidden. Gene Nygaard 15:01, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
If you want to look at all the articles in a category (quite common, I’d have thought) you want that one-to-one correspondance, or something close to it. But since you’ve fixed the problem of the redirect category not appearing in the main article, the question has become a bit moot. And this talk page is now overwhelming the article! —Ian Spackman 07:14, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Support per nom and Olessi. On a passing note, it would appear that the opposing editor, Giovanni Giove, has also been involved in adding Italian(?) names to some other articles. No prior discussion or survey that would justify such changes. I am not sure what the fixation is all about, but it doesn't seem right. RedZebra 18:04, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose, prefer Isonzo. I do not support the present naming either, but strongly suspect that the river is best known as the Isonzo. There were at least ten WWI battles, all over the same valley. Septentrionalis 18:24, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I did a little Google test (english language, no wikipedia): Isonzo and Italy gets 86,200 hits (most about towns in Italy with Isonzo in their name, e.g. Gradisca d'Isonzo, and the WW1 battles), and Soča and Slovenia gets 102,000 hits (most about outdoor activities). No clear preference, I guess, but I can live with "Isonzo" as well. Markussep 18:50, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
One name solution is definitely preferrable to what we have now. I lean, however, more to the Slovenian name as the river originates there and two thirds of it seem to be in Slovenia. For what is worth The Guardian, apparently, has even a photo gallery in its online tourist guide on Slovenia where the river is clearly identified as Soca [1]. RedZebra 19:06, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
But Soca is not what is proposed as the move; if it is best known in English as Soca rather than Soča, then that should be the article name, setting aside the fact that Isonzo is the best name. Gene Nygaard 07:37, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Sorry about Soca and Soča misunderstanding. I don't have Slavic letters on my keyboard. I am in favour of Soča. As far as I can tell, the fact that English-speaking media (or Western media in general) inadvertently leave out the hacek should not prove as a hinderance to using the Slovenian name. After all, the former Romanian dictator is also known as Nicolae Ceausescu and not Nicolae Ceauşescu. British sources often refer to Citroen and not to Citroën [2]. As for the WWI battles they are clearly identified as the Battle of the Isonzo. On the other hand, the river originates in Slovenia, two thirds of it flow through the country and, apparently, contemporary sources predominantly refer to it as Soča. RedZebra 08:27, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
No, it is usually not "inadvertent". We have every bit as much right to establish our own identity by using our own alphabet when writing in our own language, as do any others who have no better way of establishing their indentity than by seeing if they can make cuter letters than their neighbors can. It is not an error to write in English without using those diacritics. Furthermore, this whole discussion is tainted since that option hasn't received just consideration. Gene Nygaard 15:21, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose, Pmanderson/Septroionalis reasoning supports Isonzo. Gene Nygaard 07:37, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. Historical sources may prefer Isonzo, but contemporary usage prefers Soča and the river runs mostly in Slovenia. To point out another example, historical sources refer to the town of Kobarid almost exclusively as Karfreit or Caporetto (the German and Italian names, respectively), even though the town has no native Italian or German population. It is more of a consequence of the second-grade status of the Slovenian language at the time, even in areas that were over 99% Slovenian. A similar case is Ljubljana, which used to be reffered to as Laibach in English, reflecting the official language at the time (German), yet today the city is called Ljubljana in English. The establishment of the Slovenian names has gone so far that now Kobarid and Ljubljana are used more often than Karfreit or Laibach in the German language itself. Also, a quick Google search revealed that there are 1.5 million hits for isonzo while there are 4.8 million hits for soca (sic) and 207 thousand hits for soča. However, I do not believe the diacritic mark should have any effect on the decision for the simple fact that on standard English-language keyboards (UK and US), there is simply no key for the hacek symbol neither is it supported in Western European coding and as such very inpractical to write. edolen1 17:10, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
A simple visit to the disambiguation page at Soca will expose the major flaw in your analysis of the Google results. Isonzo probably isn't used for anything else; soca clearly is, and likely for several things not even on that disambiguation page.
Furthermore, on the first page of 100 hits, in a quick scan, I see a single hit dealing with this particular river, to the Wikipedia page when redirected from Soča River. Gene Nygaard 01:31, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
Ah yes I didn't notice that, but that wasn't my main argument anyway. However in any case I strongly oppose having this double name. There already was a discussion about this and the result was that the river was named Soča. However, a certain user again moved the river from Soča to Soča-Isonzo and here we are again.
And about those Google results.. Well, not that it should be the defining factor, but searching for soca river and isonzo river revealed 294,000 versus 57,200 hits respectively. edolen1 12:35, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
You searched for "soca" AND "river", etc., any article containing both words. Searching for the exact phrases "Soca river" gives 12,200 hits and "Isonzo river" 10,500 hits, clearly a toss-up as far as what can be ascertained from any Google search. So dual naming probably isn't a bad idea. Gene Nygaard 13:48, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
To which I would just like to add that I have not yet seen an argument here (or one convincing enough for me to remember) against dual-naming. The first sentence of the article will be derisory if it doesn’t mention the two names, and should probably include the Friulian one too. Why should the URL be different? —Ian Spackman 20:29, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
My main argument against bilingual naming in general (also for towns, see Bozen-Bolzano and the current survey at Talk:Communes of South Tyrol) is that it's ambiguous and confusing. The title suggests that the name of the river is Soča-Isonzo, while it's actually the two names of the same river in two languages. Markussep 15:13, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Indeed. Besides (to answer Ian Spackman's argument) no one is contesting the inclusion of Slovenian, Italian and any other relevant name in the first sentence of the article. By all means, let the article provide the reader with as much relevant information as possible. However, dual name of the article is IMO altogether a different issue. It is cumbersome, confusing and, as Markussep has pointed out, misleading. Moreover, thousands of toponyms, in Europe in any case, have several names. I can only dread the prospect of someone embarking on renaming, say, Wikipedia entries for towns and vilages in Silesia with the aim of creating articles carrying dual Polish and German names. Not to mention that such a change would extend over hundreds of articles. RedZebra 18:13, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
I still do not see how it’s confusing or misleading. It would be better, perhaps, if we could call it the Soča/Isonzo so that it was instantly clear that this was not intended as a canonical name. But wikitext doesn’t allow that. As it is we have the next best thing, which is to put spaces on either side of the hyphen. But the article title is no more than a URL: and it really doesn’t matter what that is as long as there are redirects from everything a sane user is likely to be looking for. Is there currently any chance that any such reader is likely to be unable to find the article? The heart of the matter is the first sentence of the article, which seems ok. I could understand the apparent passion over this debate if it were on the (apparently resolved) issue of Derry vs. Londonderry. But this isn’t an area of such live politics: nobody’s seriously trying to redraw the boundaries between Italy and Slovenia; and nobody’s trying to divert the river—let alone (a somewhat more difficult project) trying to move its source. Why worry? Today I started a short article on a musical instrument which has two names. I chose one for the URL—the one I thought was probably the least uncommon. I could have chosen the other or done a combination of both. It didn’t seem to matter much. And I don’t think it matters much what URL is assigned to Wikipedia’s treatment of this river. (As to Soča - Isonzo River being cumbersome I would entirely agree: absolutely I would assert that the ‘R’ should be lower-case. Should be, yes. But is it worth a fight? No.) Executive version: Who cares? Wouldn’t it be better to extend the article rather than fussin over its URL? —Ian Spackman 20:56, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
I haven't got the impression that this debate is any way heated nor do I believe that the reason why this article should be moved to its original name has anything to do with the fear of Italian irredentism that I gather you are referring to. Dual name is confusing because it deviates from Wikipedia practice. There are hundreds, if not thousands of toponyms which could well have "dual name", but they haven't. An article on Breslau is entitled Wroclaw and not Wroclaw_Breslau or Breslau_Wroclaw. Note, however, that there is an article about the Battle of Breslau. Similarly Danzig is Gdańsk and not Gdańsk_Danzig or Danzig_Gdańsk. And yet in both of these cases, unlike this one, you could easily compile a list of valid arguments for the above-listed dual names. Your question about the purpose of fussiness over the dual name brings me also to another point. In this case the original name of the article seems to have been changed to its current version on two occasions: the 6th of December 2005 by currently an inactive user and the 11th of August 2006 by Giovanni Giove. Both of these users changed the name without discussing the change first, let alone trying to reach a consensus regarding the proposed move. The first dormant user has in the meantime been accused of sock-puppetry [3] and the second user seems to demonstrate inexplicable fixation with changing the names of obscure articles. Not to mention that Giovanni Giove's correspondence makes it very difficult for me to assume his good faith. In a nutshell, I don't see why we should preserve the novelty that he seems eager, for whatever reason, to introduce into Wikipedia. Listing all the different language versions of this river in the first sentence of the article is perfectly acceptable approach that has been used in thousands of other articles. I cannot see why this article should be an exception. RedZebra 11:27, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Support a move to anything other than a double name. -  AjaxSmack  22:30, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Isonzo Soca is ok. There is no reason for a single name. Totally against--Giovanni Giove 18:57, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

It would be OK if Isonzo Soca were the name of the river, but it's two names of one river. It's like Brussel-Bruxelles, or Fribourg-Freiburg, or Gerona-Girona, or Koper-Capodistria (oh I see you just moved that one to Koper - Capodistria!).
Indeed. Two name are ok. Like Brussel-Bruxelles, Koper-Capodistria, Bolzano-Bozen--Giovanni Giove 19:53, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Furthermore, the fact that this is two names could be made clearer by naming it along the lines of Soča River/Isonzo River, including "River" in each name. Gene Nygaard 13:51, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

For those interested, check out move request at Talk:Koper - Capodistria -  AjaxSmack  22:43, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I also invite those who are interested to share their views on the requested moves on the following pages:

RedZebra 09:32, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Survey summary

If I read the posts above correctly, these are the preliminary results of the survey:

  • Soča (62,5%): Markussep, Olessi, Red Zebra, edolen1, AjaxSmack
  • Isonzo (25%): Septentrionalis, Gene Nygaard
  • title with both Soča and Isonzo (12,5%): Ian Spackman

Please check my interpretation of your votes. Markussep 17:40, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Seems to me that you're right. Therefore, I'm moving the page to Soča. --Dijxtra 12:53, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
No problem—it’s just a URL—as long as you fix all the double redirects that have been created, of course. —Ian Spackman 13:49, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
My thanks goes to User:Edolen1 for fixing the redirects :-) --Dijxtra 00:13, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Older move discussions

I'm not happy with this move to "Soča-Isonzo River". Nobody calls this river Soča-Isonzo, it's Soča in Slovenian, and Isonzo in Italian. It probably has another name in Friulian, another important language of the region. I propose a move to either Isonzo or Soča. Take a look at how other language wikipedias and paper encyclopedias treat these cases, it's usually Isonzo, except (of course) in the Slovenian wikipedia. The name to use in other article should depend on the context: Gorizia lies on the Isonzo, Nova Gorica on the Soča. Related to this: let's get rid of all these double names in South Tyrol! Markussep 11:38, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

The Friulians call it Lusinç. I agree that the name is inexistant, it is almost a political construction. The river streams for almost 100 km in Slovenia, for a bit more than 40km on Italian territory. I move it therefor to Soča, with a redirect from Isonzo. Besednjak 13:41, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
What matters is not where it flows, but what it's usually called in English. Zocky | picture popups 00:23, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
This is messy. I am particularly unhappy with the use of word 'Fiume' in the title, it's inappropriate for the title of an article to use a foreign language common noun that won't be found in an English language dictionary (and is not readily understood by English language speakers without knowledge of a romance language). I will move to Isonzo - Soča River. Nick Fraser 15:23, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rivers with multiple names

From Wikipedia:WikiProject_Rivers:

Some rivers have names with multiple spellings which vary with the different countries the rivers pass through. (An example would be the Cunene River in Angola, which is known as the Kunene River in Namibia. Occasionally, a river can have several genuinely distinct names. For example, the Cuando River not only has the variant spelling Kwando, it's also called the Linyanti and the Chobe. The following rules are suggested for choosing a primary name for such a river:

  • If the river is particularly famous under one name, then choose that name.
  • If the section of the river that uses a particular name is much longer than other sections, then use that as the name.
  • If everything else is equal, then choose the name for the section of the river closest to the river's mouth, since generally that is where the river is widest.

I wouldn't know which name is most used in English, maybe Isonzo because of the WW1 battle. If Isonzo and Soča are both used in English, the second rule applies (Soča then). But well, anything is better than Soča-Isonzo. Markussep 10:52, 17 February 2006 (UTC)