Talk:Maple Ridge

Requested move

The following is a closed 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 Move to Maple Ridge. Note: Based on the discussion here and Talk:Maple_Ridge,_British_Columbia#Requested_move, I think that the consensus for Maple Ridge being the disambiguation page is a lot stronger than the consensus to move Maple Ridge, British Columbia to Maple Ridge. The common name argument, that that particular Maple Ridge is not well-known enough to be the primary topic is particularly strong.--RegentsPark (My narrowboat) 21:56, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Maple Ridge (disambiguation) → Maple Ridge — There are many different locations that use this name and none are more notable than any other, so Maple Ridge should be the disambiguation — TJ Spyke 23:19, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• Support. Clearly there is no primary use. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:16, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support & Comment. The rationale used to change Maple Ridge, British Columbia to Maple Ridge (which was undiscussed and has been reverted) was initially that it was the largest of the places named Maple Ridge; a parallel move proposal is currently pending at Talk:Maple Ridge, British Columbia, sponsored by the same editor who made the now-reverted move, using the rationale that Canadian citynames have all become undisambiguated; I have not weighed in there yet but that policy is meant for unique placenames like Pitt Meadows and Kamloops and Nanaimo; of the one that's not unique - Vancouver - the size issue is why that's dismabiguated not uniqueness. While the other Maple Ridges are indeed very small, I don't see anything truly notable enough about Maple Ridge BC other than it being the most populous; it's an otherwise nondescript suburb and there's no reason why it shoudl not have the usual comma-province disambiguation.Skookum1 (talk) 02:30, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support - There's no case for primary use, searches should go to the disambig.ƒingers^on_Roids 02:37, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
• Strongest Oppose Possible - Check out the page views and you will find that Maple Ridge, BC gets the most page views of all of the Maple Ridges out there. Maple Ridge, BC is also the largest city with that name.  єmarsee  • Speak up! 03:04, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Page views and size do not establish primary use. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:02, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose, I call the Maple Ridge requested move first, just like they got between the articles and disambiguation pages to Sherbrooke and Swift Current. Steam5 (talk) 04:05, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment Those are both disingenuous comparisons; the Swift Current disambiguation page has only two other entries, one the electoral district named for the city, the other for the rural municipality surrounding it. The Sherbrooke page contains only things named for the city (e.g. streets, colleges, electoral disttricts), and given that the Australian town was founded in 1891, it's more than likely it was named, also, for the city in Quebec, and the forest near it was named therefore as a consequence. By comparison, Maple Ridge, Ohio, was not named for Maple Ridge, British Columbia.Skookum1 (talk) 13:05, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
• Wait for the discussion at Talk:Maple Ridge, British Columbia to reach a conclusion. If that move succeeds, this one should be closed. If that one fails, we should just move this page to Maple Ridge. No point in arguing the same question (that is, whether or not Maple Ridge, BC is primary topic) in two places. Jafeluv (talk) 05:57, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

This move request conflicts with the other open move request of the same day... Maple Ridge, British Columbia → Maple Ridge

76.66.202.139 (talk) 05:22, 19 May 2009 (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.

Just for clarity about this and other potential moves of this type, I'd like to call attention to WP:CANSTYLE. Specifically, items #2 and #3 under "Places":

• Towns (unless the town's population is akin to that of a city), villages, neighbourhoods and other smaller settlements must have unique place names to qualify for a page move. At this smaller level, [comparing] importance is too subjective to be a viable criterion.

To clarify, the issue here is that at nearly any level smaller than that of a city of at least regional prominence, debating importance is far too prone to circular and unresolvable debates on the level of "mine is more important than yours because mine is the one I've heard of."

• Population and Google-hit comparisons between cities of the same name may be helpful in determining primary usage, but are not conclusive in isolation.

It's possible for a big city to be less internationally significant than a much smaller place of the same name. One of the examples cited at CANSTYLE is Hamilton, Ontario, which although larger than any other place of that name when measured by population alone, has to contend with the fact that one of the smaller Hamiltons is a national capital, and several of the others are cities of significant regional importance in their respective countries. In another case I can recall, a person tried to argue that Embrun, Ontario should have non-disambiguation primacy over Embrun, France on the basis of a larger population, when both communities are smaller than 10,000 people and thus the population difference is marginal at best. While a population difference may be taken into account as part of the reasoning behind a potential page move, we don't just do a raw population comparison and automatically accord undisambiguated status to the largest place.

Accordingly, I'd agree that the current situation, with the disambiguation page rather than the district municipality in British Columbia being located at the plain title, is the appropriate one here, but I hope that the clarification helps people a bit going forward. Bearcat (talk) 22:40, 27 May 2009 (UTC)