Talk:Columbus

Requested move (2006)

The following discussion is an archived debate 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The result of the debate was withdrawn --Usgnus 15:40, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Move Columbus to Columbus (disambiguation) and make Columbus a redirect to Columbus, Ohio. Requested by Bcirker 00:18, August 2, 2006

Survey

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

• Oppose per earlier discussion below . older ≠ wiser 02:32, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose per city naming convention. Vegaswikian 05:35, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose, should stay as disambiguation at least because of Christopher Columbus. Kusma (討論) 11:57, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose, and I've even been to the city. --Usgnus 20:59, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose as I imagine most folk would expect Christopher Columbus or the disambiguation page to appear first if they searched for "Columbus". David Kernow 03:10, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose, especially with a disambig page with a list this long, there's too many possible things people could be looking for. --Fumo7887 03:37, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. 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.

Redirect

I believe that this page should redirect to Columbus, Ohio. It is by far the largest city with that name, having more than five times the population of the next largest city of the same name (Columbus, Georgia). Further, those searching for Christopher Columbus almost certainly know his first name. Thus it is unlikely that they would end up here by accident.

Like all redirects, there should be a disambiguation link at the top of the page. It would read as follows: "This article is about the state capital of Ohio. For other uses, see Columbus (disambiguation)"

This kind of redirect has precident on Wikipedia. For an example, see Topeka.

If no adverse comments are received, I will make the change in a week or so.

Bcirker 22:43, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Um, ever hear of someone named Christopher Columbus, often referred to as simply "Columbus"? older ≠ wiser 01:58, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

It is true that Christopher Columbus is sometimes refered to by only his last name, but this is hardly unique to him. For example, if I type Love into wikipedia, I don't expect Courtney Love to show up, yet the media and people frequently refer to her simply as "Love". This is true of many other well known people. Perhaps you could elaborate on your point a bit more. Bcirker 13:04, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

In a general context, no one (at least not with half an ounce of warm gray matter) would link to Love and expect the link to go to the relatively insignificant musician. In contrast, it would not at all be unusual for someone creating a link to Columbus to expect the link to go to the world-famous explorer. But because they could also very well expect the link to go to the city in Ohio, disambiguation is appropriate. In order to claim primary topic status, you need to demonstrate (provide evidence, not merely make an unsupported claim) that one use of a term is predominant over all the others. older ≠ wiser 13:25, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Let's try and have a civil discussion here and not use insults. Your responses come off as really demeaning. Disambiguation by default for Columbus is in fact inappropriate, as the use of google will show. Using their advanced search feature, we can be specific about excluding certain things. It provides interesting insight. First, try searching for [|Columbus + Ohio and excluding Christopher]. Here we see there are 75,900,000 hits recorded. Now searching for [Christopher Columbus and excluding Ohio], we find there are 8,430,000 hits. Furthermore, this isn't excluding other Columbus city references, such as those in Georgia and Indiana. Thus there is clearly more interest in the city rather than the explorer. Bcirker 13:15, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, my comment about gray matter was not directed toward you personally. Google should only be taken as a very, very rough gauge of notability. There is considerable systemic bias inherent in Google web searches. If you think you have a reasonable case for renaming the articles, then go ahead and make the proposal at Wikipedia:Requested moves. However, I'd be very surprised if it garnered even a modicum of support. older ≠ wiser 17:16, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Please elaborate more about the bias at Google. I'm not aware of any as such. Bcirker 00:19, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Search engine test and Wikipedia:Systemic bias. older ≠ wiser 12:22, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Most notable place

I've visited this disambiguation page many times. I admit, I like to track the national and international perception of my city. Yes, I would like to see Columbus redirect to what I consider the Columbus, but that would be unfair to Christopher and a small but not insignificant minority of people living in places called Columbus. So I accept the decision to have the Columbus article be a disambiguation page. In all my previous visits, the biggest city called Columbus was listed first, and quite rightly. On a recent visit, I noticed there was even a brief note describing why that Columbus is more notable than the others. But today, it's just another item sorted alphabetically in a long list. What the crap? If people are looking for information about a place called Columbus, they're probably thinking of the one in Ohio, so that should be the first item listed under the Places heading. Perhaps the small cities in Georgia and Indiana could be listed next, followed by the alphabetical listing of the rest which don't generally even show up on state maps. And maybe somewhere there should be a link to Colón, Panama because that too was named after Christopher Columbus. 99.177.172.109 (talk) 12:11, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Most notable place continuation

Reverted back to the annotations that provide additional clarification for those looking up Columbus. Also agree with the above section. There is a Manhattan, Kansas but does that mean the Wikipedia article for 'Manhattan' should redirect to ambiguous. Go try to search Manhattan and see what comes up. There is a Cincinnati, California, Arkansas, Iowa, and Indiana but do you honestly think that when you type in Cincinnati it should redirect to an ambiguous. 99% of people who search for Columbus are either looking for the famous explorer Christopher Columbus or Columbus, the capital and largest city in Ohio which is one of the largest states in the United States. Please use common sense. Reverted back to an appropriate and reasonable annotation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.101.50.10 (talk) 20:57, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

This has been proposed in various forms previously (see above sections) and rejected. Consensus can change, so you are welcome to propose moving the disambiguation page again, but I see no evidence other than your opinion. How do you know that 99% are looking for the explorer or the city in Ohio? And the guidelines for disambiguation pages WP:MOSDAB recommend keeping descriptions to a minimum and avoid inclusion of content that is not relevant for disambiguation. older ≠ wiser 15:43, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the consensus, if not right now, will continue to evolve and change. There are 5 other cities in the United States that are called Omaha but when you type it in in Wikipedia, where does it redirect? The only Omaha the majority of viewers have ever heard of. There are 4 cities in the United States named Philadelphia so why does that page not link to a disambiguous page? What evidence would you need to support making this change because I can likely find several pieces of empirical evidence to support my assertion. I am fine keeping it more ambiguous to something like "Ohio's state capital" and bolding it. Also, in no way am I saying that larger equals better, just more instantly recallable and associatable. 174.101.50.10 (talk) 19:19, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Surely there's a middle ground between the page moves proposed in 2006, and listing Columbus, Ohio among a mere alphabetical listing of towns called Columbus. I still think Columbus, Ohio should be the first place listed, and/or have a comment drawing attention to it as the largest and most notable place called Columbus. Seriously, in a general context, is there any other place called Columbus that's arguably more notable than the capital of Ohio? (Here's some anecdotal evidence: I once went looking for images of Columbus to use as desktop wallpaper. A Google image search for "Columbus" returned a mixture of, in decreasing order of commonality, Columbus, Ohio, Columbus Circle, and Columbus, Georgia.) Vid the Kid (t/c) Yeah, that guy. 04:17, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Most notable people

• Christopher Columbus, navigator, explorer, and colonizer who captained the first European ship to reach the Caribbean

??? Neil Armstrong "only " set a foot on the Moon.?? C'mon ,it is reductive.I temporarily reworked it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Newsrivers (talk • contribs) 11:16, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Requested move (2011) Reopening the move debate

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. 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 move request was: not moved. Clear consensus, and nominator has withdrawn request. Favonian (talk) 11:25, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

---

• Columbus → Columbus (disambiguation)
• Columbus, Ohio → Columbus

– There is no reason that I can find for Columbus not being a redirect to Columbus, Ohio. In past discussions, it's been suggested that cities that are listed in the AP Stylebook's list of domestic dateline cities that can be standalone are the only ones that get this redirection consideration. However, quite a few cities get this consideration regardless - including Austin, Nashville, Fort Worth, Charlotte, Memphis, Dayton, Akron, Louisville, Jacksonville, Oakland, Omaha, Lansing, and probably others I haven't checked. Columbus is larger than all but two of these - only Jacksonville and Austin are larger - and indeed it is the only city in the top 25 in the List of United States cities by population whose city name doesn't immediately redirect to it. (The next such affected city is Portland, Oregon at #29).

Arguments have been made that there might be a disambiguation concern with Christopher Columbus, but several cities that get this consideration have similar concerns - Austin has Stephen F. Austin, Charlotte is a given name, Lansing is a common surname, Houston has Sam Houston, Cleveland has Grover Cleveland, Memphis has the historical Egyptian city of the same name (compare and contrast with Toledo), Cincinnati has Cincinnatus.

Arguments have also been made that the size of this disambiguation page suggests that there is a large possibility of ambiguity. There are quite a few cities that have even larger disambiguation pages - Oakland in particular has one almost twice the size.

Given all of these considerations, I see no particular reason why Columbus in particular is being singled out in this fashion. I therefore request that, in keeping with evident precedent as demonstrated above, Columbus be moved to Columbus (disambiguation) and Columbus become a redirect to Columbus, Ohio.

(Alternatively, I suppose one could conceivably conclude that most of those examples are against policy and should themselves be changed. However, nominating those strikes me as being a bit too WP:POINTy, so I opted not to.)

-- Viqsi (talk) 23:04, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. Nothing personal against the city in Ohio; but Christopher Columbus is such a prominent figure, and so often referred to by just his surname (unlike Stephen F. Austin, for instance), that I really don't think we can declare a primary topic for the word. Powers ^T 23:38, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Christopher Columbus is a far more significant historically figure then the other examples listed, and is much more likely to be searched for. Compare [1] and [2], Christopher receives 3 times more page views, if anything it should be Columbus → Christopher Columbus. Monty₈₄₅ 23:41, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Nothing new since the last move discussion and quite a lot of misunderstanding expressed in the current request. First, the guidance at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(geographic_names)#United_States is incorrectly summarized. The actual text is as follows:

Cities listed in the AP Stylebook as not requiring the state modifier may or may not have their articles named [[City]] provided they are the primary topic for that name. The cities listed by the AP are 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 and Washington.

You'll notice that these cities are all located at the base name with no state appended in their title. Viqsi points to these cities Austin, Nashville, Fort Worth, Charlotte, Memphis, Dayton, Akron, Louisville, Jacksonville, Oakland, Omaha, and Lansing as evidence of the naming convention not being followed. However, for all of these cities, the article title is the CITY, STATE with CITY being a redirect. This is a recognition that these cities are the primary topic for these names, but the articles nonetheless follow the standard naming convention. For most of the rest, the suggestion that Christopher Columbus, with 614,560 views in July, is comparable to Stephen F. Austin with 9,966 views in July is laughable. It's worth noting that the article for Columbus, Ohio had only 64,291 views in July. If anything, there is a stronger case for Columbus to be a redirect to Christopher Columbus than for the city in Ohio to occupy the place. older ≠ wiser 23:53, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't go that far, since it's only a partial title match for CC. Powers ^T 00:04, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

On the one hand, I wasn't seriously suggesting that, but on the other hand, if there were no other considerations there's no reason that Columbus could not redirect to Christopher Columbus as the primary topic. older ≠ wiser 00:20, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Oh, of course... I only meant that the raw pageviews for CC are not an indication of how many people are looking for him under "Columbus". =) Powers ^T 02:07, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I feel I should point out that the Christopher Columbus pageviews in July are affected by a massive spike in traffic to that page starting on the 13th and tapering down a few days later; in June the total was 179,552, in May, 250,670, and in April, 216,214. While this admittedly does not refute your argument, the difference is typically considerably less than the order of magnitude it is presented as here. --Viqsi (talk) 18:06, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. I think you're greatly overestimating the visibility of Columbus, Ohio. I know it, but in the UK hardly anyone has heard of it. To refer to sources, if you look at Google Books with "Columbus" in the title published since 1990, about 11,000 refer to "Ohio" in the text, 17,000 to "Christopher Columbus". It's not clearly the primary topic, so Columbus should stay as a disambiguation page. Fences&Windows 00:14, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Christopher Columbus is primary. Wiki's article on him is the first thing that pops up on both Google and Bing. On Google Books, the entire first pages of results refers to the explorer. He also gets triple the page views of Columbus, Ohio. Kauffner (talk) 04:25, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

• I have to admit I didn't know of any way to look up page views on Wikipedia - and now that I do, I'm feeling a tad foolish here. Under the circumstances, it does look like it makes more sense to just have this as a disambiguation page and just indicate the two most common topics (the explorer and the Ohio city) at the top - which appears to have been done since I put in this request. If that becomes an issue then that's something else I'd feel compelled to push, but it would be a separate issue from this request; therefore if this could be considered somehow withdrawn, I'd appreciate it. (IOW: "Oh. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Ehehe. I'll shut up now. Sorry." ;) ) --Viqsi (talk) 18:17, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. 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.

Requested move 15 March 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. The opposers have provided some evidence (google hits) that Christopher Columbus is not the primary topic, and so there is insufficient evidence of primary usage to close this as a move. DrKiernan (talk) 17:14, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

---

Columbus → Columbus (disambiguation) – I am proposing to move this page and turn "Columbus" into a redirect to Christopher Columbus. This looks like a clear case of WP:BIAS. I don't believe that the US city is particularly well known outside the US, but the explorer, whatever your view of him, is a major figure in world history. PatGallacher (talk) 23:59, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

• Support. This should have happened long ago. Christopher Columbus is the primary topic of the term "Columbus", and the largest city named after him is not - much less the other items listed here, most of which are named after Christopher Columbus. 209.211.131.181 (talk) 01:47, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose (keep primary page as disambig). There are at least two topics that are the primary use of the term "Columbus" within their particular contexts. Editors with the mindset of just that context (e.g. Geography of the USA; world history) will create wikilinks without checking that they have linked to what they think is obvious. It is far easier for other Wikipedians to detect and fix these errors if they link to a disambiguation page, and easier for readers to find their way in the meantime, than if the link is to a valid article (but the wrong one). For a person browsing or searching, they know which topic they want today, and picking it from the disambig page is no harder than picking it from a Google or other generic Internet search results page. --Scott Davis ^Talk 03:52, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose there are many high profile things named "Columbus" ; and we still have to fix real WP:BIAS issues like for Birmingham and Plymouth, having a disambiguation page as the primary landing spot fixes bias. -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 04:22, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
• Reply "Primary within their particular context" is, as far as I am aware, not a recognized concept on Wikipedia. Surely world history is more important than US geography, suggesting otherwise is a classic example of systemic bias. Any alleged bias anywhere else on Wikipedia should be dealt with on its own merits, see WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. PatGallacher (talk) 15:23, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

"Primary within their particular context" doesn't need to be a recognised concept. My point is that a lot of links will continue to be made to Columbus by editors who don't check the target. Rwalker (below) resolves ambiguous links to this page, and says most of them are not to the explorer. This is much easier (including tool support) if the target is a disambig page than if it is the wrong article. Neither of the most likely topics have "Columbus" as the preferred article title under WP:USPLACE or WP:NCP respectively. --Scott Davis ^Talk 00:27, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose - Previous moves have all been unsuccessful for various reasons, all of which are applicable here as well. WildWikiGuy (talk) 20:56, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Without the ability to read previous commenters' minds, it's impossible to know why the previous moves failed - but it appears they failed mainly because all the previous discussions attempted to make the largest city named after Christopher Columbus the primary topic, rather than Christopher Columbus, the man who the city is named after. Objections to that move don't necessarily apply to this one. 209.211.131.181 (talk) 21:46, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Agree with anon. "We've already discussed this" is not a valid motivation; state your case, please. Peter ^Isotalo 23:15, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Sure, when searching columbus on something like google, both the city and the explorer wiki articles are 1 and 2 in the results, there is no definitive nor consensus agreement on which one is the primary or most popular, having it go to the well laid out disambiguation page is the best option.WildWikiGuy (talk) 00:36, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

That's a really weak argument, though. It's an obvious example of over-representation of US topics online. On a global scale, it's merely a middling regional capital that is little known outside of North America.

Peter ^Isotalo 16:30, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

• Support There is nothing called "Columbus" that even comes close to the notability of Columbus, Ohio and the city is a very distant second to the explorer. Peter ^Isotalo 23:15, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
• Support per nom. The explorer is most definitely the primary topic. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:15, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - As a dab solver, the vast majority of links to Columbus I've fixed are for Columbus, Ohio. This tells me that the content being created is still in need of a DAB page for Columbus. Rwalker (talk) 00:35, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
  • To me it seems like it's more indicative of huge numbers of US-based editors. Peter ^Isotalo 16:33, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
• Support. Christopher Columbus is overwhelmingly the primary topic. kennethaw88 • talk 03:01, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
• Support tepidly. It says something that of the two items most commonly referred to as "Columbus", one is named after the other. Obviously, Columbus, Ohio is not a primary usage since its name is based on Christopher Columbus. That said, I don't *really* care... it just seems logical. Famartin (talk) 03:19, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. There are too many other uses, and everybody knows how to get to Christopher Columbus: by typing in the name Christopher Columbus. Red Slash 21:54, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - Columbus, Ohio is a strong contender for this name, since it's an exact match for the city name, not a match on a surname in the case of the man. But in truth there is no primary topic, the city and the explorer are of similar importance.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:20, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

---

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

This Old Thing Again

We now have another editor who's decided not to move the page this time, but rather to remove Columbus, Ohio from the list of items at the top of the page as "most common references", in spite of past discussion indicating that these are both commonly notable references. As this is flying in the face of past consensus on this issue (and includes some inappropriate editorializing - in particular, the "where it belongs" bit in the original edit comment makes it very hard to WP:AGF), perhaps this should be formalized somehow. --Viqsi (talk) 21:16, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

• @Viqsi: Columbus, Ohio may be the most important thing in the world to people who live there, and people who live there may feel that their city is as big, and important to the world, as Christopher Columbus (heck, I've even seen people claim that Columbus, Ohio should be the primary subject of the title...), but to the rest of us it's just one of a whole bunch of cities named for the explorer. What I did was remove a duplicated link on the page, leaving the link to Columbus, Ohio that was among the cities a bit further down on the page (where it should be), and making the top section point only to the "Columbus" that most people look for, that is Christopher Columbus (known as Cristoforo Colombo in his native Italy and Cristóbal Colon to Spanish speakers, but often just "Columbus" to people elsewhere). - Tom | Thomas.W ^talk 21:29, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

This archived move discussion on Talk:Birmingham is another interesting example of the total lack of international perspective shown by some editors here... - Tom | Thomas.W ^talk 21:34, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

I would then argue that the duplicate link to be removed is the one lower in the page, among the list of cities with that name. "Columbus" is indeed frequently used as a reference to the explorer, but it does not unambiguously identify him - so the "Birmingham example" may not necessarily apply for determining WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. I understood that to be the loose consensus arrived at from previous move debates. --Viqsi (talk) 21:59, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Additionally, it should also be noted that with regard to that "whole bunch of cities" consideration, pageview stats show that the Ohio capital is consistently ahead of the rest, generally by a large margin. (There's one exception on February 24th that was due to a tornado ripping up Columbus, Mississippi on that day.) --Viqsi (talk) 22:09, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

@Viqsi: For some reason you "forgot" to add Christopher Columbus when you looked at page views, so I did it for you, and the resulting graph shows that the the article about the man whose name was adopted by all of those cities gets several times as many visits per day as all of the city articles combined, totally dwarfing the importance of all of them, including Columbus, Ohio... - Tom | Thomas.W ^talk 19:43, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

@Thomas.W: I didn't add that because it's not particularly relevant to the debate. What goes on top of a disambiguation page are the most common topics, and nobody disagrees that Christopher Columbus is the most common topic. A look at pageviews for every page on this disambiguation page pretty clearly reveals that Columbus, Ohio is the #2 topic on this page by a considerable margin (presuming one disregards the Disambiguation help page, which is otherwise a close third). --Viqsi (talk) 22:12, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

@Viqsi: It is totally relevant since the explorer is commonly known as just "Columbus" in a large part of the world. So Columbus, Ohio is a very distant second to the explorer when it comes to notability, and should be listed only among the cities further down on the page, not at the top of the page next to the explorer. - Tom | Thomas.W ^talk 07:16, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Familiar nickname does not a primary topic make. Let's look at some other examples: 'Washington', as another "person versus places named after him", or 'Dutch', as another example of one topic completely overwhelming the others but other topics still getting top-of-the-page recognition because they're an exact name match instead of a recognized nickname. I am frankly unclear as to why a different standard should apply to American cities, particularly when one is a blatant standout in terms of notability compared to the others. --Viqsi (talk) 13:16, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

@Viqsi: ... and that brings us back to my first comment here: your exaggerated view of how important Columbus, Ohio is to the world, and Wikipedia. If Columbus, Ohio had been even half as notable, and important to the world, and Wikipedia, as you seem to think it is, it would have had a very large number of page views per day here, but it hasn't, heck, it's not even a stand-out when compared to other cities in that region, or even other cities in Ohio, as can be seen in this graph, showing that Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Louisville, Kentucky on average get about as many page views here as Columbus, Ohio does, i.e. hovering around the 2,000-mark, while Atlanta and Boston, although not shown in that graph, average around 5,000 page views per day, San Fransisco averages around 6,000 page views per day, Christopher Columbus around 8,000 page views per day, Los Angeles around 10,000 page views per day, and London around 12,000 page views per day... - Tom | Thomas.W ^talk 14:01, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

It's the #2 topic by a large margin, and demonstrably the most notable thing that's just named "Columbus". You yourself have acknowledged that "Columbus" is a translation of Christoforo Colombo's actual name. Meanwhile, several of those neighboring cities you cite that Columbus is comparable to in size and regular viewing here are recognized as being primary topics for those names, so the "it's just yet another item in a sea of non-notability" argument seems a tad misplaced. More to the point, demoting a city because of its neighbors strikes me as silly and arbitrary just on base principles (we don't penalize Birmingham in its notability debate for being closer to similarly-frequently-viewed Liverpool than Columbus is to any of those examples). And finally and frankly, if we're going to start subtextually critically editorializing about motivations, I might venture a word or two about misplaced crusades being launched against American topics for the crime of being American. --Viqsi (talk) 18:25, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Columbus, Ohio is the most important city by that name, but it is so far behind the namesake of all of those cities, Christopher Columbus, that it only merits being placed first among the cities listed, not being placed at the top of the page alongside the explorer, where you want it to be... - Tom | Thomas.W ^talk 18:46, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

As has been previously shown, Columbus, Ohio is the most frequently-viewed (and thus arguably most important) anything by that name on Wikipedia save the explorer, by a considerable margin. Not just cities - everything else named "Columbus". Anonymized searches of "Columbus" on Google, Bing, Yandex, and Baidu show the Ohio capital (and in some cases, Ohio capital-related topics) before they show the explorer. There is therefore so far no demonstrable basis for demoting Columbus, Ohio on the disambiguation page. --Viqsi (talk) 19:02, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

@Viqsi: The results of such searches depend entirely on your geographical location (which is known to Google and the others, since they can see your IP...). Searches made in Europe return not a single page about Columbus, Ohio but lots of results for the explorer, and various other things named Columbus, and I bet that searches made in California or other parts of the U.S. also would return far fewer pages about Columbus, Ohio than your searches did... - Tom | Thomas.W ^talk 12:39, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure Tor rather hinders geolocation-based results. --Viqsi (talk) 13:16, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

@Viqsi: No, Tor does not hinder geolocation-based results, all it does is give you a slightly different result than you would get using your own IP, with the result you get depending on where the IP Tor gives you is geolocated (and that's not speculation but something I know for a fact...). Because all Tor does is give you an IP that isn't your own (but the IP you get could very well still be in your general area...). - Tom | Thomas.W ^talk 14:10, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

...so now we've gone from "Columbus only showed up more often for you because your IP was geolocated, so your evidence is wrong" to "but it's distantly possible that you might have still gotten a Tor exitpoint somewhat near you, therefore your evidence is still wrong." This is getting patently absurd. I'm not the only one who's done those searches and confirmed notability (see previous move discussions above), and I think it's more than fair to presume that not everybody who's presented such evidence in the past lives in Ohio. --Viqsi (talk) 14:28, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

current usage stats

I happened to come across this by going through the list of places that linked to Charlotte.

https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Columbus indicates that in October '23, there were 4.9k incoming views of Columbus, a substantial part of which could be identified as 3k clickstreams to 25 destinations. Of those, 2.07k were to Christopher (~42%), 325 to the Ohio city (~7%), 145 to the 2017 film (~3%), 94 to the Georgia city (~2%), 54 to the surname (~1%) and then the long tail. The surname is linked first, but it doesn't lead to a list of people with the surname Columbus, which is instead below (and presumably part of the long tail here).

This seems to indicate there's no primary topic by usage. The archive of clickstreams that goes back to 2017 could be consulted to get a more coherent view of this. --Joy (talk) 14:31, 14 December 2023 (UTC)