Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archive 4

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Foreign names in the lead

Is it established WP:CONSENSUS to mention relevant foreign names (in this case German names of Pomeranian villages) in the WP:LEAD section?

@Rockypedia: deleted several dozens of German placenames from such articles (e.g.[1], [2], [3],[4], [5], [6], [7], [8], For a complete overview see [9] I already pointed out WP:PLACE and the Gdansk vote [10] but Rocky removed my message from his talk page [11] and instead continued to delete foreign names [12]. HerkusMonte (talk) 12:43, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, to my knowledge, but I've never seen it in words. Its most usually done for places that are disputed, (See the Paracel Islands) or else a topic with a long history, like a city, who switched owners a lot in the past. -- Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 13:06, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

While MOS:FORLANG mentions using only a single foreign name in parentheses, WP:ALTNAME (on the same page) notes a variety of names can be included in the lead paragraph if they are very relevant to the topic, leaving ambiguity. However, geographical location standards are more specifically covered in the aforementioned Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names) (WP:PLACE), which reflects consensus. The tricky part is that what makes a name "relevant" is a far more localised question. One diff you gave had the user in question noting they'd tried to discuss with you. Where did this take place? CMD (talk) 14:32, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

IMHO, foreign language names should not be used in articles bios/non bios. As this is the English language Wikipedia, we should be only using english. This (for example) was always the basis behind my opposition to usage of diacritics. GoodDay (talk) 14:55, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

According to the general guidelines of WP:PLACE "Relevant foreign language names (...used by a group of people which used to inhabit this geographical place) are permitted" in the lead (No 2 of these guidelines). The villages we are talking about were part of Germany until 1945 and the German name was the official name used by the local population. It's certainly not a problem of relevance, For German/Polish placenames there's also a consensuns as defined in the Gdansk vote: "For Gdansk and other locations that share a history between Germany and Poland, the first reference of one name in an article should also include a reference to other names, e.g. Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) or Gdańsk (Danzig)."

As the lead is the first reference of the name in the article the German name should be mentioned right at the start. However, Rockypedia sometimes deletes the name completely or sometimes mentions the name in the main body. Regarding the discussion he probably refers to my talk page, where he tried to argue that only direct translations belong to the lead while "other" names should only be mentioned elsewhere, which is absurd because German names are not translations but simply foreign names (which I tried to explain to him at his talkpage which he deleted). HerkusMonte (talk) 15:05, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

According to the general guidelines of WP:PLACE "Relevant foreign language names (...used by a group of people which used to inhabit this geographical place) are permitted" Permitted doesn't mean necessary. Should we name Warsaw with German translation since they were inhabited by Germans in 1939-1945?

The villages we are talking about were part of Germany until 1945 and the German name was the official name used by the local population. This is dubious. Germany existed only in short period of 1871-1945 there, and the local population was often Polish or Slavic. which is absurd because German names are not translations but simply foreign names Where did you get this absurd idea from ? Most of the places there originally had Slavic names and were translated into German language later. For example Szczecin.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 12:15, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, looking at the examples, a couple things come to mind. First, assuming the existing version was reasonably stable, you can and maybe should roll back these changes per WP:BRD and let's make the editor prove his case.

Second, I can see merits to both approaches. I can see the point that "Krajnik (German Buddenbrock) is a village..." implies a direct translation, since that is exactly how we (or anyone) shows translations of any word.

We have had this discussion at Falkland Islands. The current lede is "The Falkland Islands (Spanish: Islas Malvinas) are...", but Islas Malvinas is not the Spanish translation of "Falkland Islands" (that would be "Islas Falkland"), but rather an entirely different name that most (but not all) Spanish sources use. So some people feel the current lede is wrong and misleading (I'm one of them).

I run across this from time time, for geographical entities where all or part of the name has actual meaning. (I'm using Google translate here so the words are probably wrong, but the point holds): Let's suppose you have a village in Poland which used to be in Germany. The Poles call it "Green Hill" or Zielony Wzgórze in their language (that would be Grünhügel in German). The Germans used to call it "Swift River" (Schnellfluss in German, which would be Szybki Rzeka in Polish).

So... is it proper to say "Zielony Wzgórze (German: Schnellfluss) is a village..."? I'm just asking. Maybe it is proper. Does it imply that "Zielony Wzgórze" means "Swift River" (which is not true), or do we get a pass on this because its a proper name? Is it a different case if the name (like most names) is just a meaningless sound cluster that can't be translated? If it is a different case, does that mean we should have two rules, and won't that lead to contention?

So I can see the merit in saying "Krajnik is a village... ... Before 1945 the village was in Germany and known as Buddenbrock." instead of "Krajnik (German Buddenbrock) is a village...". I can also see the merit of the converse (it's more succinct, and you can argue that the reader will understand exactly what we're saying). I'm against roiling the text to substitute one's personal preference for another's, so if these articles were on my watchlist I'd maybe roll back those changes.

But on the general question, I'm generally anti-rule so I'm a little of leery of saying "you can't do it that way". Willing to be persuaded. Herostratus (talk) 16:44, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

• another option would be: 'Krajjnik (historically, Buddenbrock) is a village" Blueboar (talk) 17:40, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I was warned to be blocked [13] because I restored several dozens of deletions of foreign names. I don't want to be blocked for following what is IMO consensus per WP:PLACE and Gdansk vote. I don't want to editwar with a user who simply ignores these rules. What am I supposed to do? HerkusMonte (talk) 13:28, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

User:Gamebuster19901 is not a admin and he can't block you. So relax. He is allowed to warn you and to make an appeal to the admin corps to block you if you've been bad. But he has to convince the admins that it's true. If it's not true, he can't, so don't overly worry.

User:Gamebuster19901's notice says you were "purposefully and blatantly harassing" someone, which is way different from restoring deletions or even edit warring. And he went straight to "This is your only warning". So either User:Gamebuster19901 is out of line or you've been bad. This is outside the scope of this discussion, but I'll drop User:Gamebuster19901 a line.

On the merits of your particular case, my opinion is:

1. Both formations such as "Krajnik is a village... ... Before 1945 the village was in Germany and known as Buddenbrock." or "Krajnik (German Buddenbrock) is a village..." are correct, and as far as I know there's no strict rule either way.
2. This being the case, whatever is the stable version of a particular article is the correct version, until a new consensus is reached. What this means is, if an article uses the form "Krajnik (German Buddenbrock) is a village...", and it had been that way for at least a couple months or whatever, and someone changes it, and if you (or anyone) objects to the change, then per WP:BRD it may be returned to the way it was, and that's that. Similarly if the stable form was "Krajnik is a village... ... Before 1945 the village was in Germany and known as Buddenbrock.", then it should stay in that form pending a new consensus.

Which is fine IMO: let the person who wrote the article decide. You need to familiarize yourself with WP:BRD and cite it when you undo someone's change; it is your friend if you are defending articles against what you consider to be unwarranted changes. As you'll note, WP:BRD requires discussion. In discussions, it might be pointed out that "Krajnik (German Buddenbrock) is a village..." is how we usually do it (I don't know if that's true, but I think so) and in the absence of a rule usual practice rules. Conversely, it might be pointed out that the documentation for {{lang-de}} says it "is a template usually used to indicate to readers that the previous term or phrase is translated from a foreign language" and the German word "Buddenbrock" is not a translation of the Polish word "Krajnik". I think that's pedantic (and note it says "usually") but these are the kind of arguments you need to make and counter in order to win your case.

Whether we ought to settle this with a WP:RFC and set a general rule... dunno. Maybe. Herostratus (talk) 23:53, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Both formations such as "Krajnik is a village... ... Before 1945 the village was in Germany and known as Buddenbrock." or "Krajnik (German Buddenbrock) is a village..." are correct, and as far as I know there's no strict rule either way.

First proposal is better, since second one would indicate it is still named in German. Also in the first proposal the "Before 1945 the village was in Germany and known as Buddenbrock could be misleading. Germany only existed since 1871 and the places often had Polish/Slavic names that were later translated into German.

says it "is a template usually used to indicate to readers that the previous term or phrase is translated from a foreign language" and the German word "Buddenbrock" is not a translation of the Polish word "Krajnik".

I see a problem here. How do we know it is not a translation ? For example Szczecin is original name of Stettin and in fact Stettin is a translation of old Slavic name of the city.

--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 12:19, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Um... while Germany as a state) only existed from 1871.... Prussia (a German state) had existed for centuries prior to that. Most of the Pomeranian coast was Prussian for centuries. Mentioning the German names of towns that were Prussian for much of their history seems appropriate. Blueboar (talk) 14:47, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Prussia was not Germany. Most of the Pomeranian coast was Prussian for centuries-it also belonged to Poland, Sweden and other countries. In some cases like Gdansk for far longer than any Prussian rule or German.Heck, Prussia didn't even own Gdansk Pomerania for a century... Mentioning the German names of towns that were Prussian for much of their history seems appropriate How do we know they were Prussian if their history is missing ? Also some of these names were actually put in places by Nazis during their Germanization campaigns and really shouldn't be in the lead as "normal alternative" name(as some editors have been trying to do in the past.

I don't mind putting these names in history sections, provided there is one, and they are explained. Putting statements like "before 1945 this city was German" is on the other hand simply wrong, and serves no purpose besides nationalistic territory marking. --MyMoloboaccount (talk) 15:17, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Gdansk rule was just a vote done almost a decade ago and is not a rule. In the vote Polish voters were ignored by counting admin who expressed pro-German views. While in theory the vote proposed adding name in case of shared history, in practice it meant Polish names for German locales with shared history were removed, while Germans were always added.

You will have problem with this, as it is highly offensive to name for example Warsaw Warschau(as it was taken by Nazi Germany). In Central Europe almost all places changed names and hands, and if you base the foreign name on the fact that it was part of another country than for example Warsaw should have both German and Russian name, and Moscow Polish one. The best solution is to use current accepted English name. --MyMoloboaccount (talk) 12:10, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Well "highly offensive" is not a good argument here. Lots of things in history are offensive to lots of people. Our job is still to report them.

Besides which it is not highly offensive. "Krajnik is inhabited mostly by low-life mooks" would be offensive. Just giving the name in another language isn't, it its reasonably called for.

We do use the accepted English name for places (when there is one) for the titles and first mention in the lede (Rome rather than Roma, Munich rather than München), although we also mention the native name and names in other languages, usually (not always) in the lede. Of course only fairly famous towns have English names, villages such as Krajnik don't.

After thinking about this some, I've concluded that both "Krajnik is a village... ... Before 1945 the village was in Germany and known as Buddenbrock." and "Krajnik (German Buddenbrock) is a village..." have problems and aren't technically correct.

"Before 1945 the village was in Germany and known as Buddenbrock" oversimplifies. More likely, both before and after 1945 Polish speakers and sources referred to it as Krajnik and German as Buddenbrock. At any rate this is true of large cities such as Lemburg/Lvov etc.

But "Krajnik (German Buddenbrock) is a village..." kinda-sorta implies one is a translation of the other, and that's not true.

And other formations are convoluted and probably have their own problems.

If this was an voting-type RfC, I would vote for "Krajnik (German Buddenbrock) is a village...", because:

1. It is succinct and fits easily into the top of the lede.
2. I think that most readers will get that we are saying "German speakers use or used this name" not "This is the actual translation of the term".
3. think (not positive) that it's how we mostly do it now. Continuing to use the format that most articles use is a great virtue. (And since rules mostly codify existing practice, the argument that existing practice does create a sort of de facto rule has been used successfully in many discussion.)
4. We do have a rule that says to do it like that. WP:NCPLACE says ""The title can be followed in the first line by a list of alternative names in parentheses, e.g.: Gulf of Finland (Estonian: Soome laht; Finnish: Suomenlahti; [Финский залив, Finskiy zaliv] Error: {{Lang-xx}}: text has italic markup (help); Swedish: Finska viken) is a large bay in the easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea". And note that the "lang-" templates are specifically used.
5. And FWIW (but I don't think this ancient discussion focused on something else is worth much), the Gdansk vote examples support this format.
6. And as I said above, the alternative also has accuracy issues.

Against this I only see a couple of points, one of which is weak IMO:

1. The "lang-xx" documentation says "lang-xx is a template usually used to indicate to readers that the previous term or phrase is translated from a foreign language". (But so? It's some piece of documentation somebody wrote. And it does say "usually". And the meaning of the word "translate" is slippery: I don't know if you can state unequivocally that (say) "Soome" is the Estonian name for Finland and not a translation of the Finnish word "Suomi" -- maybe, maybe not. (I'm not a language expert.))
2. For cases such as "Zielony Wzgórze (German: Schnellfluss) is a village...", where terms have actual meanings, it could be seen that you're indicating that "Schnellfluss" ("Swift River") is the German translation of the Polish term "Zielony Wzgórze" ("Green Hill"), which isn't true. (A reasonable point, but there's no perfect solution here, and the great majority of place names don't have common meanings, in these cases the editor is free to expound on all this later in the article.)

For my part I think the arguments for "Krajnik (German Buddenbrock) is a village..." outlined above are a lot stronger: current practice, existing rule, succinct, clear.

But all this is secondary to the question "What is best for the reader? What will convey the desired information to the reader most efficiently? What is the best way to give the reader a smooth reading experience?"

This is more arguable and open to opinion, but for my part I think "Krajnik (German Buddenbrock) is a village..." is at least as good as the alternative. It's very succinct, and clear enough. Herostratus (talk) 16:34, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Well "highly offensive" is not a good argument here. Lots of things in history are offensive to lots of people. Our job is still to report them.

So all Polish cities should have German names in the lead? Because all Polish cities were occupied at one time by Prussia or Nazi Germany and had their names changed by them. Do you think Lodz should be named Litzmanstadd as it was named by Nazis ? Your suggestion would mean all Polish cities should have German and Russian names in the lead. Should Vilnius have Polish name in the lead and Russian one too ? Besides which it is not highly offensive. "Krajnik is inhabited mostly by low-life mooks" would be offensive. Just giving the name in another language isn't, it its reasonably called for. Prussia and Nazi Germany engaged in widescale Germanization campaign in Poland replcacing Polish city names with German. It is considered highly offensive to use these names instead of English or Polish ones in Poland.Again, this can be in history section but not in the lead, casually. --MyMoloboaccount (talk) 16:48, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 16:38, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, I can't answer that. It depends, and has to go on a case-by-case basis. It depends on history and sources.

Without studying the matter in depth, I would say that just being occupied and given a German name for a few years by the Nazis does not mean we ought to the give the German name in the lede, no. It's too trivial for the lede, probably. We could give it in the WWII part of the History section, maybe.

There are lots of Polish towns, though, where lots of Germans lived there, or that were held by German states for a long time, such that there is an accumulation of sources using the German name, and so then we should give it in the lede. What, are we going to withold this information from the reader?

Vilnius does have a Polish name in the lede, although not a Russian name. I'm not familiar with the history of Vilnius so I don't know if it should have a Russian name. It was part of the Russian Empire for quite a while, so maybe. If sources that some readers are likely to encounter, including in old histories and whatever, use the Russian name, then yeah probably.

Lviv has a Polish and a Russian name in the lede, and a Yiddish name and German name (and even a Latin name for some reason). And fine. It's at a crossroads of the world, it's a cosmopolitan city, it's been owned by various states and inhabited by various ethnicities, and it's been called all those names by sufficient people and in sufficient sources for us to describe all those names, I assume.

Prussia... engaged in widescale Germanization campaign in Poland replacing Polish city names with German. It is considered highly offensive to use these names... in Poland.

Well but if the widescale Germanization campaign was successful, what are we supposed to do? Pretend it wasn't? Pretending that true things aren't true isn't the way to go here, even if the true things are unfortunate. If a lot of Germans moved into a Polish town and they changed the maps and road signs and this went on for a long time, such that many people and historical documents and historical sources use or used the German name, then it is what it is.

I don't like to make people sad, but I can't worry about the sensibilities of Polish people. You are arguing for removing information on political grounds, and that is not going to fly here. Give it up.

For individual cases, you can make the point "This town was occupied by the Nazis for just a few years, it wasn't part of historical Prussia or Austria, and few German-speaking people settled there, so let's not have the German name, especially not in the lede". That's a very reasonable case. For other towns, you don't have that case. Herostratus (talk) 17:24, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Really quickly here, in reference to "and has to go on a case-by-case basis". Case by case basis might work for big cities. The issue here is that some users, HerkusMonte as well as several indef banned ones, basically SPAM the German name into hundreds of Polish villages and small towns with only tenuous rationale for inclusion of the said names. You can't do case-by-case basis when we're talking hundreds if not thousands of articles. Some of these villages have like, literally EIGHT people in'em (I think that was the lowest one I've seen) and these editors will edit war like crazy to make sure that this "village" has the German name in it's article. So, case-by-case might work fine for Gdansk or Wroclaw but it's not gonna work here.Volunteer Marek (talk) 16:33, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

What, are we going to withold this information from the reader? Absolutely not. It should be in the history section.

but I can't worry about the sensibilities of Polish people. You are arguing for removing information on political grounds, and that is not going to fly here. Give it up. If you want to have Nazi names for Polish cities in the lead, than I suspect you will find a lot of people disagreeing with you. --MyMoloboaccount (talk) 17:36, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Um, I said "[J]ust being occupied and given a German name for a few years by the Nazis does not mean we ought to the give the German name in the lede, no". There's probably no call for giving German names to localities that were never part of Prussia or Austria. Herostratus (talk) 06:37, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

However, for localities that were part of Prussia or Austria (and were so for significant periods of time), it is not only appropriate to mention the German name in the lead, it is a necessity.

Since these towns are likely to be mentioned in historical sources by their German name, there is a strong likelihood that historically minded readers will search WP using that German name. It is important that they not only be redirected to the right article (ie the German name should redirect to the article with the Polish name as its title)... they also have to quickly understand that they have been redirected to the right article ... thus the German name should be prominently mentioned in the first few sentences (so that the reader will quickly understand that "ah... yes, this is indeed the article on the town I was searching for.")

How that German name should be mentioned can vary from article to article (for example, the question of translation with different meaning is valid, if nit-picky... and so that question influences how we should phrase the mention), but the German name should be prominently mentioned in the lead in some form. Blueboar (talk) 13:55, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi, this is Rockypedia; I've been out of Wikipedia contact for a few days but I'm back. Here's my few thoughts on this discussion:

I have no problem with {{lang-de}} being used right there in the first sentence of articles on villages when the German name is a direct translation of the current Polish name. That's what the translation tag is there for.

I believe the {{lang-de}} tag is inappropriate when the former German name is not a translation of the current Polish name. In these cases, I think it's fine to have a line noting what the former name of the town was when it was part of Germany. Having a line such as "Before 1945, the village was part of Germany and known as (German name)" seems sufficient. It's in the lead when it's the second or third paragraph.

I think adding the sentence "For more information, see History of Pomerania" to hundreds of village and town articles is ridiculous. That's not content; that's someone copy-pasting and pushing a particular point of view over and over again. A "See also - History of Pomerania" is more than sufficient.

I believe those three points address the disagreements that Herkus has with my edits. I was a bit irked when he simply rolled back almost a hundred edits of mine and refused to engage in discussion on his talk page, but you can't expect everyone to engage in a discussion until they're forced to, I guess. For this I thank Gamebuster19901 (Talk║Contributions) profusely. Rockypedia (talk) 14:13, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

OK. You believe the {{lang-de}} tag is inappropriate when the former German name is not a translation of the current Polish name. But there's no consensus for that so for the time being that's what we do, and so you probably shouldn't make any more changes substituting your preferred formulation for the {{lang-de}} method. Unless or until we have a WP:RFC to support this change. Your point is reasonable but there's no consensus for it. (For my part I'd be OK with not using the {{lang-de}} template but just writing "(German:Germanname)" by hand instead (it looks the same to the reader, except "German" is not a link to the German language article), if that makes a difference. But I wouldn't make even that change without discussion and consensus.

This is factually just incorrect. Take a look at the actual {{lang-de}} page: "{{lang-de}} is a template usually used to indicate to readers that the previous term or phrase is translated from a foreign language." Read the entire page and the examples given, and it logically follows that for names like Czarna Woda, which literally means "black water", the German town name of Schwarzwasser is a straight-up translation, and that's the appropriate time to use the template. Short of that, there's nothing wrong with stating the previous name of the village or town somewhere in the lead, provided that there's a source. There's certainly no need for it to be in the first few sentences, and even saying "(German:Germanname)" implies that it's a translation, which it often isn't. Many names are just the name of the town from 71+ years ago. Are we to go through every town and village in Europe and add the previous names in the languages of each country that included them within its borders in the first line? I think you'd find very little support for that, other than for these formerly-German towns from very pro-German editors, which you must admit you are. I don't think you're approaching this with a neutral point of view at all. Rockypedia (talk) 23:27, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

You are correct about "For the history of the region, see History of Pomerania" though (although that's outside the scope of this page). We don't generally use formulations like that in the body of article text and shouldn't, but rather perhaps add a link in the "See also" section. Herostratus (talk) 20:03, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Noted. I wish you hadn't mass-reverted a bunch of pages where I did exactly this, and refused to discuss it, but "Seitdem ist viel Wasser den Bach heruntergeflossen", as they say. Rockypedia (talk) 23:30, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

To stick to the facts, I told Rocky about WP:PLACE and the Gdansk vote and asked him to stop. He ignored this and instead reverted several dozens of my edits. Rockypedia did not move the German name to a "better" place but he deleted several dozens just like my attempts to discuss the issue on his talkpage.

However, the current consensus ad defined in WP:PLACE and the Gdansk vote is to mention the foreign name in the lead. I will start to restore these names until a new consensus may be reached. HerkusMonte (talk) 16:45, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

You're not sticking to facts at all. It appears more people agree that you're using the {{lang-de}} incorrectly, and what's more, you're attempting to apply the Gdansk vote to an entirely different situation. AND you've started mass-reverting edits again with no discussion. I'm asking you one final time to stop this edit warring. Rockypedia (talk) 17:20, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

The Gdansk vote is NOT "current consensus". It has been supplemented by subsequent discussion and consensus at NAMING CONVENTIONS and other pages. For many years now. You've just refused to recognize that the Gdansk Vote has ceased to be valid, oh, in 2011 or something and keep using it because it provides an excuse for your spamming edits.Volunteer Marek (talk) 16:35, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

"It has been supplemented by subsequent discussion and consensus at NAMING CONVENTIONS and other pages."

I'm not aware of any kind of such a discussion or consensus. Please provide evidence. "Spamming edits"? Seriously? HerkusMonte (talk) 17:51, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

A current summation

First, I need to point out that HerkusMonte is incorrect in a point that he has repeated, here and on other talk pages - I did not systematically remove "hundreds, perhaps thousands" of German town names from article pages. My edits were "undo"s of an IP-hopping anon user who was hell-bent on adding language to literally thousands of article pages that implied Poles were ethnically cleansing Germans in the formerly German territory that became part of Poland after 1945. There's a debate as to whether the Gdansk vote applies here: Herkus says it does, Volunteer Marek has pointed out that it does not represent community consensus, since "about 2011", and I have read it and don't even feel it applies to these articles, whether it's been superseded or not. MyMoloboaccount also appears to agree that HerkusMonte is overstepping here. However, I have no problem with the former German names being included in the lead of these articles. As most of them are stubs, a line stating the former name as the second or third paragraph is, by definition, in the lead. When the name is a literal translation of the Polish name, the {{lang-de}} format right after the first words of the article is appropriate.

Regarding the "See also" edits that HerkusMonte has also been reverting, multiple editors at this point have stated that that's the right way to go, rather than the long copy-paste sentence that was added to thousands of articles, so I'm going with that. Again, I'm hoping that HerkusMonte will stop edit-warring on that point as well, as it appears consensus is for the "See also" method. Rockypedia (talk) 17:26, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

First, using quotation marks indicates a citation. I never said "hundreds, probably thousands", it seems you are intentionally trying to provoke. And off course you deleted several dozens of foreign names which were completely unrelated to these IP edits.

That is a flat-out lie. Rockypedia (talk) 18:40, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Second: I'm not aware of any discussion or consensus overruling the Gdansk vote. It is an established consensus and has avoided conflicts for many years now.

Even if that were true (which according to multiple editors, it isn't), the Gdansk vote "is a vote to decide the usage of the name of Gdansk/Danzig." Also, I already stated that I have no problem with German names being on the pages in question, so your whole "Second" point is a red herring. Rockypedia (talk) 18:40, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Third: the whole idea to distinguish "translations" and other names is completely absurd. Relevant foreign names need to be mentioned in a consistent and neat way. Which is the case when mentioned right at the start as defined by WP:PLACE. HerkusMonte (talk) 17:47, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

You can call it ridiculous all you want, but the fact remains, on the {{lang-de}} page itself, it states that the template is "used to indicate to readers that the previous term or phrase is translated from a foreign language." When one name is clearly not a translation of the other, it's inappropriate, and the German name can be included elsewhere in the lead. You're the only one in this entire discussion attempting to force your particular view on this point. Rockypedia (talk) 18:40, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Whether we use lang-de or (German:.. ) is completely irrelevant for this discussion. Does a relevant foreign name belong to the lead as defined in WP:PLACE or only if that foreign name is a "translation" while non-translations don't. IMO this artificial distinction is absurd. HerkusMonte (talk) 21:07, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't think the distinction is absurd, but it isn't how do we do things: we do not translate proper names. I personally think we should (when the name has an actual meaning), but we don't. It's always "He was born in the town of Schnellerfluss" (not "...town of Swift River")". And the majority of Wikipedians like it that way, I'm pretty sure. That is why Ecole des Sciences Byimana is titled that way and not "Byimana School of Sciences" and so on.

Because of this, there's no reason to differentiate: to the Wikipedia, all geographical terms are just sound clusters. They are never translations.

So, I mean, in a pedantic but true sense, Rockypedia has a point. I don't think his point about what the {{lang-de}} documentation says is important (we can just change that, and anyway it already says "usually used"). But rather, since we're not translating, what is the point of the generated link? It goes to German language. But under our system names of things are not German language words. If they were, we'd translate them, and would not have articles titled Sankt Petri Schule etc. So the link is pointless and misleading red herring for the reader.

Rather "(German: Schnellerfluss)" just means "People who speak German also generally use this name". It's really an entirely different thing. I think that "(German: Schnellerfluss)" conveys this just fine. But if the word "German" is going to be linked (maybe not necessary) it should maybe be to Germans rather than German language. Herostratus (talk) 22:42, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Pedantic or absurd, it's completely irrelevant. Whether we use the "lang-" template or (Foreign name) is completely irrelevant for the question raised above: Does a relevant foreign name belong to the lead? (note: Rocky does not replace the lang-de template, he deletes the names at least from the lead)HerkusMonte (talk) 11:47, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

That's about the tenth time you've repeated this lie. I inadvertently deleted names from a handful of articles while undoing the pro-German-POV edits from an IP-hopping anon editor who was adding language that implied Poles were ethnically cleansing Germans from the former German areas post-1945. Still don't know who that editor was, but he added that language to over 1200 articles and was very obviously pushing some heavy pro-Germany POV edits. In my most recent edits I've actually been ADDING names back into the lead. So I'd appreciate if you'd stop trotting out the same lie over and over again. Rockypedia (talk) 15:25, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

You are deleting either completely [14] or at least from the lead [15], [16], [17], and those are just your latest edits.

You are either lying yet again, or are unaware what the "lead" is, perhaps because German is your first language. From WP:LEAD: "The lead section (also known as the lead or introduction) of a Wikipedia article is the section before the table of contents and the first heading." The lead is not just the first sentence. The town's former German name from over 70 years ago being in the second or third paragraph is still in the lead. Rockypedia (talk) 00:00, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

So, basically all of these articles (which are just stubs) are just lead sections. I disagree and I don't think such semantic pedantry is helpful. It's pretty clear we're discussing WP:PLACE ("The title can be followed in the first line by a list of alternative names in parentheses...") and your attempt to delete relevant foreign names from the first sentence. Do you think (Polish: Wilno) should be removed from the first sentence of Vilnius, (Polish: Lwów) from Lviv? Because that would be the consequence of your POV or does your rationale apply to Germans only? HerkusMonte (talk) 12:03, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Do you think (Polish: Wilno) should be removed from the first sentence of Vilnius, (Polish: Lwów) from Lviv? Because that would be the consequence of your POV or does your rationale apply to Germans only? This seems a good idea. We should remove both German and Polish names from first sentences of the cities. Former names can be mentioned later and described appropriately.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 14:32, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

I happen to agree with this statement by MyMoloboaccount. There's no good reason for it to be in the first sentence, regardless of the language. I know herkus is primarily concerned with Germany and all things German, and it seems he's transferring his own biases onto others, assuming everyone against him in this discussion has some sort of pro-Polish agenda. I couldn't care less whether the village in question is formerly Polish, German, Lithuanian or Aztec Indian. Former names can be mentioned somewhere in the lead but none of the current policies in place state that they have to be the second or third words in the whole article, and it would be foolish to start applying that standard to every single village and town in Europe. Rockypedia (talk) 15:39, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

So you agree that WP:PLACE ("The title can be followed in the first line by a list of alternative names in parentheses...") is the current consensus and it's up to you to search for a new consensus? (BTW: Please stop your perpetual personal attacks) HerkusMonte (talk) 12:12, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Is every participant aware that WP:PLACE does not only apply to German/Polish placenames but is general rule which also affects the lead of towns like Lviv, Vilnius, Brody and probably hundreds of other settlements? HerkusMonte (talk) 17:50, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

I read WP:Place and it struck me the current article Konigsberg, violates almost all of its rules. Since the city still exists, its content should be moved to Kaliningrad as per WP:Place--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 22:42, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Actually Königsberg is a good example why the alternative names are needed. For the same reason Byzantium and Constantinople are not merged into Istanbul. Smaller entities do not have enough material for such spin-out articles, but the names by which they were known in historical context must be retained. Agathoclea (talk) 13:54, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Possible Liancourt Rocks title change

There is discussion of a possible change of the article title Liancourt Rocks, a disputed island. Discussion here Siuenti (talk) 14:55, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

An RfC which would ban local names in Indian-language scripts in the infobox

Here's the link to this RfC: Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics#RfC on Indicscript in infoboxes. This RfC would ban local names in Indian-language scripts in the infobox (currently, they're already banned from the lead). Advertising this here since it's very much relevant for the geographic naming conventions here. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ ^тʌʟк 18:58, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

River disambiguation

• There is currently an RFC on what the disambiguation convention should be for rivers over at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Rivers Kmusser (talk) 19:29, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

What are, or should be, the disambiguation guidelines for buildings?

A request for conversation around these questions: Are buildings "places" such that article titles fall under WP:PLACE? If not, should we have a separate guideline for them? If yes, what should it say? Herostratus (talk) 04:50, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Exposition of the issues

Are buildings "places"? What about rooms in buildings, and statues? What about other immovable things with a single fixed location -- are they "places", or "things"? What about HMS Victory? Is it a "ship" -- it doesn't float and can't move -- or a "place"? After all it has a fixed {{coord}} location. What about institutions? Is Harvard University a "place"? What about Harvard Yard?

But let's just stick to buildings for now. An editor is claiming that buildings are places and fall under WP:PLACE for disambiguation purposes. Let us consider Douglas County Courthouse (Wisconsin) which is a Requested Move right now.

If Douglas County Courthouse is a "place" it would be a WP:USPLACE and so the title should be "Douglas County Courthouse, Wisconsin" (comma-delimited). We don't usually do this, which indicates that buildings are mostly not considered to fall under WP:PLACE. (But look at Victoria Memorial (disambiguation), a dog's breakfast -- you have "Victoria Memorial, London" side by side with Victoria Memorial (Montreal). So consistency is lacking.)

Anyway, continuing with Douglas County Courthouse... the building is in the town of Superior, so the hierarchy of location goes USA -> Wisconsin -> Douglas County -> Superior -> Douglas County Courthouse. We don't jump levels (I think) so the proper place name would be "Douglas County Courthouse, Superior", assuming there isn't another Douglas County Courthouse in another state which also happens to be in a town named Superior (there isn't).

However, this is IMO not necessarily optimal. I think that buildings are different from places, because even big ones are so small, that even the next step up in their location hierarchy is liable to quite small also. Therefore buildings often benefit by a second level of disambiguation even when this is not strictly required.

"Bank of America Plaza (Atlanta)" is OK since Atlanta is large city. But lots of times this doesn't work. Let's take Old Stone House (Vale, Oregon)

"Old Stone House (Vale)" doesn't work well. Vale where? "Old Stone House (Vale)" doesn't work while Vale, Oregon does because Oregon is not obscure. Vale, Oregon (population 1,800) is. Might as well title it "Old Stone House (Main Street)". That, like "Old Stone House (Vale)" serves the minimum technical need of disambiguation, a unique title. But nothing else. It bigly violates Recognizability IMO. We do not want readers to look at our article titles and be scratching their heads and saying "Well, but where is it?"

And in fact editors recognize this, because if you look at Old Stone House there are 12 Old Stone Houses listed; 11 of them use "Old Stone House (Town, State)" and the other is in Brooklyn which is a great city.

However, "Old Stone House (Oregon)" could work. It depends on how attached you are to titles being as short as humanly possible. Anyway, that is jumping a level of geographic heirarchy and so a guideline specifying that we want this would be helpful IMO.

IMO WP:AT is unclear about this. WP:AT wants Conciseness, and no more Precision than necessary. But then Recognizability might militate for "Building (Town, State)" as I have said, and maybe that's the minimum Precision. So it's arguable. And we are arguing over it, and there have been move wars and so forth. So IMO we need a guideline for buildings, and let's start making one.

So I offer these four questions to my colleagues:

• Buildings are not places for our purposes -- yes or no.
• Buildings require their own titling guideline, WP:BUILDINGS -- yes or no. (Maybe WP:AT is all we need).
• If yes, what should be in WP:BUILDINGS?
• What does WP:BUILDINGS cover? Statues? Schools? Shopping malls? Other large man-made objects fixed in place?

I didn't enable a voting section and I don't expect "support/oppose" type votes. The first questions are are just to see if there is reasonable support for creating a guideline page, working on it, and formally proposing it, which would be the next step; and the last two are open-ended.

Conversation

• I don't think this is really much of a problem. Buildings have never been considered places. When buildings need disambiguating and it's not clear from the name precisely what the topic is, we should use qualifiers like Lyndhurst (mansion) for buildings, vice Lyndhurst, Victoria to specify a "place". When what is already clear from the name, we usually use qualifiers simply indicating where, like Grand Hotel (Taipei) or Grand Hotel, Birmingham for buildings, to distinguish them from each other and from non-building topics like Grand Hotel (1932 film). In cases where the building is in an American location other than the largest cities, the full "town, state" qualifier is usually used: James Brown House (Manhattan) but James Brown House (Riverdale, Iowa). Where the relevant location is already part of the name, though, and/or where the building has special significance beyond its city, just the state usually suffices as a qualifier: Douglas County Courthouse (Wisconsin) or Old State Capitol (Kentucky). I don't know if any of this needs to be put in a guideline, though; most editors tend to follow these conventions already and we need to be careful about instruction creep. Station1 (talk) 06:43, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Maybe. But I mean look at Category:County courthouses in Wisconsin for instance. At this writing, of the ten requiring disambiguation, 8 are just "(State)" and two are "(Town, State)". Which I guess you're saying "whatever", and see the benefit of that: just let the person naming the article decide what to call it.

Except that 1) some people would prefer consistency on general principles, but more importantly people fight over this, and move them back and forth, generate Request Move discussions, and it's a waste of time. And since there's no guideline and no clear right-or-wrong, its hard to adjudicate these things. If "most people follows such-and-such convention" then let's put it into a guideline to point to. And I think it's reasonable to give people creating articles some guidance, although I can see the benefit of "just do what you want" also.

And I mean one example you give above -- Grand Hotel (Taipei) or Grand Hotel, Birmingham. They are delineated differently. If Grand Hotel, Birmingham is not a place, why is it comma-delineated? It's an invitation for pointless moves and pointless move wars and Requested Move discussion where there's no guideline to point to and so really not satisfactory conclusion possible. Herostratus (talk) 07:06, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, perhaps you're right. I'm not dead set against a guideline, just unsure so far. Re the County courthouses in Wisconsin, I'm definitely not saying "whatever", but most if not all of the cases where a county courthouse uses "(Town, State)" (in any state) seem to be the work of just one particular editor who often edits against consensus, whereas the eight articles at "(Wisconsin)", for example, were written by at least 5 separate editors (if I counted correctly) who followed WP:AT with no problem. In 2 or 3 Wisconsin cases, that one editor moved the articles to the longer title but still another editor reverted to the original shorter titles. That can and should be done for the two outstanding articles as well. But I doubt an editor who doesn't follow WP:AT and requests on his talk page would be any more likely to follow a new guideline. I haven't noticed any other fights or RMs on this issue.

As to comma versus parentheses, that has long bothered me too, but, unless I'm mistaken, it seems to be a WP:ENGVAR type of situation. Generally, British topics seem to use the comma while American topics use parentheses. If changing that solely for consistency leads to any kind of contention, I think it better to let sleeping dogs lie. I don't remember noticing any move wars on that issue either. Station1 (talk) 08:05, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

• I'd point out this is a weakness in WP:NCDAB: That guideline only endorses "where" disambiguation for places. Parentheses seem to be for type-specific disambiguation only, and as written they aren't allowed for "where" disambiguation, except when WP:PLACE says to.

By "building" I think we should include all human-made objects with a static location - so things like bridges, memorials, radio masts. However, do not include statues or other public works of art, as we would use the artist's name to disambiguate (David (Michelangelo)).

Comma vs parentheses does seem to be ENGVAR, compare Category:Grade II* listed churches in Nottinghamshire to Category:Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Michigan. Seems like a waste of time to make thousands of moves for the sake of consistency alone, especially when the British commas do reflect sources (eg [18] or [19]).

In terms of putative guidance the following could be a starting point:

1. Only disambiguate if necessary
2. Use building type in parentheses, if sufficient
3. Otherwise use the location:
   1. The relevant section of WP:PLACE to provides the correct string (USPLACE in the US, UKPLACE in UK ...). That means US buildings will typically use "town, state", while those in other countries just "town".
   2. If the building name includes the location name, just use the higher-level unit mandated in PLACE to disambiguate. This avoids obvious repetition.
   3. If the default title for the location is ambiguous, meaning the actual article on the place is disambiguated (eg Arnold, Nottinghamshire not Arnold), do not also disambiguate the building (eg St Mary's Church, Arnold not St Mary's Church, Arnold, Nottinghamshire), unless the resulting title is still ambiguous.
   4. Use of commas or parentheses should reflect local practice.
   5. Allow other exceptions for specific classes of buildings.

I think that covers most things. I sense there is an existing convention for US County Courts (State-name only), which wouldn't be overruled by the above.--Nilfanion (talk) 11:48, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

OK, thanks, nice exposition. Addressing only your last point right now, yes I can see an exception for US county courthouses (and similar), because the county location is already in the name. Thus under WP:PLACE "Douglas County Courthouse, Douglas County" would arguably be your first stab at disambiguation, but obviously useless, so then you go to "Douglas County Courthouse, Douglas County, Wisconsin" but that's silly because of course its in Douglas County. Pinging @Born2cycle: who has given much though to titling issues. Herostratus (talk) 17:19, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

OK. Regarding "do not include statues or other public works of art, as we would use the artist's name to disambiguate (David (Michelangelo))"... yes of course for that statue but anyway that is indoors. For most outdoor statues, I think the location is the most important characteristic. Thus we have Queen Victoria Statue, Bristol and not Queen Victoria Statue (Joseph Edgar Boehm) and that works for me.

I don't think I agree with using building type as the default.

Let's suppose we have two buildings with the common name "John Hancock Building". One is in Boston and is a skyscraper, the other is in Cleveland and is concert hall. Which is the best disambiguation:

• John Hancock Building (Boston) and John Hancock Building (Cleveland), or
• John Hancock Building (skyscraper) and John Hancock Building (auditorium)?

It's not an easy question to answer! Each gives a benefit. For my part I slightly prefer the disambiguation by location. I can't prove it is better. My guess is that maybe more people will know it city than by function, although I could be wrong about that. Interesting question.

I just disagree about St Mary's Church, Arnold being better than St Mary's Church, Arnold, Nottinghamshire. As I said above, my response is "Arnold, where"? The title doesn't tell me where it is so in that sense it doesn't tell me what it is, and titles need to do that. I'd guess maybe Arnold, Missouri since that's the only one I've heard of. Of course if I dig down into the article I will find out where it is, but the point of a title is not to have to do that. We don't take the approach "Oh, name the article any old thing, they can always read the article to find out what its about" (I'm not accusing you or anyone of this, just making the point). Lots of times your looking at article titles in a list (of search results, say) and want an immediate clue as as if it's what you're looking for.

OK. Here's an offering by me:

• Names of buildings should follow all article title rules, particularly those specified in WP:AT. The following addresses some special considerations of buildings.
• "Buildings" are not considered to be geographic places in the sense of being covered by Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names) for titling purposes.
• "Buildings" usually covers outdoors statues, monuments, and stadiums. It does not necessarily cover schools, institutions, non-statue art installations, shopping malls, embassies, or other man-made entities fixed in place (although it may be considered to in cases where this is helpful).
• "Buildings" does not cover things which are indoors, such as indoor statues, furniture, or rooms in buildings.
• Buildings change name more often than most fixed entities. Do not assume a change in legal name mandates an immediate change in article title. As with all entities, use the common name first. In determining common name, the current most-used name is the most important indicator, but the name used in historical documents may merit some consideration. If no common name can be determined, the legal name or some variation thereof is usually the best choice
• Unless there is a reason otherwise, as a general rule buildings should usually be disambiguated by their city or town location.

Example: Old Stone House (Vale, Oregon) (not Old Stone House (built 1872) or Old Stone House (museum))

Note: this is a general guideline and a weak prescription. If good reason exists to use another diambiguation -- such as type, previous owner, or other, its OK to use that.

• Buildings in locations that use the town and city for disambiguation should use use two levels of geographic description, such as (Town, Province), except for famous cities considered likely to be known by the city name alone (e. g. Melbourne, Kuala Lumpur, Samarkand). [N.B.: the AP stylebook lists these, but I don't if it covers the whole world... this needs to be considered some more... it is possible that for instance (Shah Alam, Malaysia) might be better than (Shah Alam, Selangor)...]

Example: Old Stone House (Vale, Oregon) (not Old Stone House (Vale) or Old Stone House (Oregon)). But Bank of America Plaza (Atlanta) since the city of Atlanta does not require further elucidation

In rare cases where the town or city has three levels of geographic description, usually only two are required for building disambiguation: thus Gieger Building (Panola, Alabama) not Gieger Building (Panola, Sumter County, Alabama), even though Panola, Sumter County, Alabama has three terms of geographic description.

• Buildings which contain a location name as part of their name usually require only a single other location for disambiguation.

Example: Perth City Hall (Australia) and Perth City Hall (Scotland), not Perth City Hall (Perth, Australia) and Perth City Hall (Perth, Scotland).

United States courthouses are disambiguated by state only, since they contain their county location as part of the name: Douglas County Courthouse (Wisconsin). Similar logic should be used in similar cases.

Oh I would maybe add one more thing. As a matter of practical fact, many buildings are disambiguated with parentheses, many are not. It may be partly a WP:ENGVAR thing, or it may be that some people think of buildings as "places" and some don't. But in recognition of that fact, I would allow both.

• Unlike most entities, buildings may be disambiguated either by commas or parenthesis -- Grand Hotel (Taipei) and Grand Hotel, Birmingham are both and equally acceptable. Choice is left to the article creator or disambiguator, and editors are strongly discouraged from changing from one format to the other, absent some other overarching reason.

Some might find this untidy. But the alternative is a big war over which is to be used, and a crusade to change over all the articles on the "losing" side, which we don't need. Herostratus (talk) 21:21, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

I would not exclude certain classes of buildings (schools, malls and the like). Its not worth adding an exclusion, all it does is complicate things. Furthermore, when it comes to things like Schools, if they are ambiguous, the location is the best way to do clarify

The stuff about change-of-name can be covered by COMMONNAME - it doesn't need repeating IMO.

I would not expand USPLACE (<town>, <state>) outside of the US, remember it is the exception globaally and outside the US, just <town> is preferred. A second placename is not necessary in most cases, and if we are fine with article titles like Carburton, I can't see why we would insist on St Giles Church, Carburton, Nottinghamshire instead of St Giles Church, Carburton.

To switch back to the Arnold church, the title tells you the subject of the article (a church called "St Mary's"). If you are looking for a specific St Mary's church, then the qualifier "Arnold" is sufficient to tell you if that's the church you want or not. Its not the purpose of the article title on St Mary's Church to tell you where Arnold is, as Arnold isn't the subject.--Nilfanion (talk) 23:03, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, the common name stuff is just because buildings do change their names a lot-- particularly sports arenas, in the US at least, but also office buildings -- in a way that people, places, and other things mostly don't. So it's a particular issue for buildings. And there's a tendency for people to go change the name as soon as the new owner (or naming-rights owner, for stadiums) announces the name change. For my part I would prefer to discourage that... But I mean yeah, its under WP:COMMONNAME. But people do it anyway and probably always will.

Yes OK I'm fine with including schools and stuff. The only thing is I'm leery of the school people going "I object to this new guideline" (if it ever gets that far). Schools are in buildings, but they aren't really buildings themselves. Is St Andrew's School (Adelaide) etc. really an article about a building? It is and yet it isn't... But yes, schools are usually disambiguated by location anyway, so why not. Point taken.

OK I understand that for place names Britain uses just the name of the town, and fine. Britain doesn't really have provinces or states like the USA or Germany or France etc. I gather, just counties, and maybe doesn't refer to them that much. So fine, for the UK, that's fine. Non-USA non-UK place names I'm not up on. Will have to look into. Places like Russia with large provinces, you would think the benefit there would be "Town, Province", but not sure of that.

Since buildings aren't places (we are saying), we aren't necessarily stuck with the UKPLACES rule. But it exists for a reason I assume and as you say maybe ought to be carried over to UK buildings. Herostratus (talk) 04:07, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

You are right that schools are organisations, not buildings, but as location will be the disambiguation used by default it makes sense to include them. Singling them out may draw objections, but there's no reason to single them out. Just clarify that the guideline also includes things that aren't strictly buildings (like monuments) and move on.

Every country except the US uses <town>, not <town>, <region> for placenames. That is unless disambiguation is required, and the local guidance tells you which second term to use in those cases. With regards to the UK, the counties are not analogous to US counties, in terms of recognition they are comparable to the US states. You are right that the PLACE guidelines do not apply to buildings, but its silly to say buildings must have two locations, when the location itself only needs one.

A case could be made for saying US buildings only require a single locality: We aren't bound to follow USPLACE for buildings, so why add the state? However that's a change from the status quo and IMO the initial guideline should just document and mirror existing practices. Once its established, then working out what to change (if anything) is a separate discussion.--Nilfanion (talk) 09:17, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

We add the state mainly because the US is quite large, I guess. (California is much bigger than England and not much less populous, and that's one state of 50.) So we are in the habit of referencing the state name, in the same way one would add "France" rather than just "Europe" when drilling down on a location, I guess.

Old Stone House (Vale) tells us little about the subject. Sure, "Vale" serves as a text string so that the software can differentiate it from other Old Stone House articles. But any string would do that -- Old Stone House (Main Street), Old Stone House (97 square meters), Old Stone House (built 1872), even Old Stone House (1 of 12) or whatever. There are eight Vale's in the US, and this is typical -- as I say, the US is large -- and all are obscure, so "Vale" doesn't tell much.

So if we must disambiguate, we should add a string that tells the reader something about the entity, and helps her pick it from a list, search results list or whatever. Old Stone House (97 square meters) tells her how big it is and Old Stone House (built 1872) tells her how old it is, and are probably unique strings. And in fact that could be key info and maybe it'd be reasonable to differentiate buildings on date built, size, or function actually. But going forward with place... Old Stone House (1 of 12) doesn't add much, and Old Stone House (Vale) doesn't add much, unless she's already is familiar with the subject. It doesn't even tell her what continent it's on. It's just a random string pretty much. Old Stone House (Vale, Oregon) tells her, if she's familiar with the concept "Oregon", that it is in the USA and even narrows down the location a lot. So it's more useful I think, although longer.

As to schools, OK. Theoretically I can imagine people wanting to differentiate along the lines if "X School (Methodist)" or "X School (secondary)"... but probably a non-issue in reality. Herostratus (talk) 04:41, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Re-enabling archiving?

This page is very long, and archiving has been disabled for quite some time. Any objection to my re-enabling it? I'll increment the archive page counter and clean up the links to old archive pages when I'm at it. Power~enwiki (talk) 22:47, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Auto-archiving re-enabled, a bunch of threads should move to "Archive 3" tonight. Power~enwiki (talk) 16:33, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation of article titles re built environment

Comma vs parentheses. Please see Talk:Statue of Margaret Thatcher (London Guildhall)#Requested move 2 October 2017. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:36, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

State abbreviations

Is there a guideline on whether we should use the two-letter state abbreviations instead of the full state name? I think they are obscure for non-US readers. USPLACE doesn't use them, but nor does it discourage them. Thanks! Spicemix (talk) 18:57, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

MOS:ABBR applies generally. Basically, we do not use them for the exact reason you give. Not even Americans can always keep them straight (especially the M states: MA, MI, MO, MS – they're pretty arbitrary). We could add specific mention of them to MOS:ABBR but it hasn't really seemed necessary.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  20:39, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

That's very helpful, thanks. I think a line at USPLACE would be a good thing—I was recently reverted by an editor who said they weren't specifically deprecated there. Cheers! Spicemix (talk) 21:29, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

USPLACE makes it clear that Placename, State is the convention to be used, not Placename, ST (AP exception notwithstanding). I don't think any more guidance is warranted. -- Tavix ^(talk) 21:36, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Probably worth mentioning at MOS:ABBR, and in more general form – we also do not use Canadian (ON, NB; Vanc., N.S.) or British (Staff., Hants.; LNH, HWR), or anywhere-else postal codes. They're meaningless to most non-residents of the country in question.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  21:54, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

• Agree... although there are exceptions... for example, in List of US state abbreviations we obviously should include the abbreviations... since that is the article topic. Blueboar (talk) 22:26, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Sure; MOS:WAW is generally going to be an exception for anything of the character of discussing a term or symbol as a thing unto itself, by necessity.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  23:23, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish, Blueboar, and Spicemix: As the editor who made the revert, let me give some context: The abbreviation in question was used in the "location" parameter of a footnote. It had long been my understanding from previous discussions that USPLACE's conventions, while indisputably applicable to body text, were not universally understood as applying to use in purely informational parameters of footnotes, like the rarely used "location" parameter in the {{cite}} family (In this case I used it because it might not be immediately clear to readers that the TV station cited for that story is relative near where the homicides in question occurred; they would otherwise wonder why some TV station somewhere that could not be identified was reporting on this and perhaps doubt the reliability of the information).

This is analogous to their use in agate type sections of newspapers, where the double capitals make them easier to distinguish from surrounding text. I note that sometime ago, we decided to deprecate "½" in favor of the more-readable "1⁄2" despite the latter requiring a template to type (OK, the former is a member of the extended character set, but we made it easy by putting it in that little menu below the edit window.

I can see where some of the counterarguments above come from, although some admit of easy responses.

First, if people link "city, ST" to the appropriate article (i.e. "Evansville, IN", a mouseover alleviates the confusion (although, granted, that's not something that can be done in print, but not every stylistic decision here takes in "as understandable in print as it is on screen" as much as we like to think it does (and frankly, since people rarely read footnotes online, why should we worry about what they look like in print, where the full URL is going to be printed out anyway?

Second, those two-letter codes have been in use now for years, certainly since I was a kid; it doesn't seem to me like too many people get anything other than Montana (MT) and Minnesota (MN) confused these days. And lastly, the fact that people don't use the similar two-letter Canadian provincial abbreviations doesn't, to me, mean that we should necessarily discourage the use of the more widely used American ones; the same arguments I've made above exist, I think everyone would agree, for allowing their use in the limited context of footnote text. Also, another problem we've had is bots, or more often editors determined to show that even the most clumsily coded bot can still be smarter than at least a few humans, who go through articles and replace all two-letter abbrevs with the corresponding state's full name. Sometimes, they do this in image filenames as well. I am not alone in using those two-letter abbreviations in my image filenames, and this editing has sometimes left an article with little redlinks glowing in the middle of a frame where once a picture I worked hard on creating and editing with the article in mind in, and then later another editor coming back and removing the image syntax completely out of the mistaken but entirely forgivable belief that the image was deleted. Or we could just decide that the "location" paramater in {{cite}} is deprecated and get rid of it ... Daniel Case (talk) 22:57, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

The same rationale applies: "Clovis, NM" is as meaningless to millions of readers in |location=Clovis, NM in a citation as it is in running prose in the article text. PS, re: 'Or we could just decide that the "location" paramater in {{cite}} is deprecated and get rid of it' – Off-topic for WP:Naming conventions (geographic names). You could propose that at WT:CS1, I guess, but I predict the outcome will be rejection of the proposal, because location of publisher is integral to citation data, especially when a publisher name is not unique or is obscure. We're already usually omitting it when the publisher is well-known or when the publisher's name already indicates the location ("University of Chicago Press"), so there is no problem to solve.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  23:20, 20 November 2017 (UTC); rev'd.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  00:02, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure that I understand the question, but please remember that this is en.wikipedia, not USA.wikipedia. If you use local abbreviations, many people won't understand them. Which is more important, saving a few letters or being understood by more people? Zero^talk 04:28, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

@Zero0000: My point is that the abbreviations I'm talking about are in footnotes, which aren't widely read, and the seldom-used location parameter even less so. I get this idea that the people who check that are not the sort of people who would be confused by a two-letter US state abbreviation. I get the feeling this is more about being consistent within ourselves, and I can't help but think of what Emerson said about that.

Frankly, speaking of off-topic, this really should be at one of the MOS talk pages, not here. Daniel Case (talk) 21:54, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

And the MoS regulars would say "take it to WT:CITE", and the CITE people (to the extent they're different people on any of these pages these days) would say "we've been over this before", which is what we're already saying here. Anyway, "the people who check [citations] ... are not the sort of people who would be confused by a two-letter US state abbreviation" doesn't track. Why would an American be more likely to check citation details that someone from South Africa or Hong Kong? Why would a reader from .za or .hk who looked at citations be more familiar with postal codes in another country than one who did not (or vice versa)? What evidence is there of any correlation? It's difficult to imagine one being real. PS: Please see WP:EMERSON. His quotation about consistency is very rarely understood by those who cite it. Of course WP should be internally consistent in following its own style guide, or having a style guide would serve no purpose, like having a WP guideline on how to comport oneself while playing World of Warcraft or how to bake cookies.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  00:08, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Include "U.S.A." in a place name reference?

I came across an editor who has recently taken to sprinkling "U.S.A." after city/state designators in article bodies: "topic is in [[city, state]], U.S.A.". This doesn't chime with what I usually see in article bodies, and believe is normal WP convention, but I can't find specific guidance in the MOS or this project page (well, MOS:US seems to say use US if at all, which also seems wrong in this context). I can see non-US users may want to see the country specified, but it seems excessively fussy. Did I miss guidance somewhere? Should it be case-by-case: only when needed to provide clarity or address possible ambiguity? Would I be justified in reverting? — Preceding unsigned comment added by DavidBrooks (talk • contribs)

Good question. I'm not sure either. - BilCat (talk) 09:02, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

We got through this about every 6 months. We don't normally qualify states of the US as being in the US i.e. we say Pueblo, Colorado not Pueblo, Colorado, US/United States (we never say USA anyway). To conclude this you have to combine two provisions: one that says articles on US cities are normally titled City, State, and the other that says that in articles we generally refer to a place the same way its articles is titled. But it always takes me 10 minutes to find those two, so I'm leaving that to you. EEng 04:48, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

See this lively discussion: Wikipedia_talk:What_Wikipedia_is_not/Archive_49#Can_we_add_"Wikipedia_is_not_the_US_Almanac"?. (And that was before Trump was elected!) EEng 04:57, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

@EEng: this isn't the article titles, but rather the article bodies as noted by the original poster.

Now, the body of an article should include some indication of the country. There are many ways to do this. "Pueblo, in the US state of Colorado, ..." or "Pueblo, Colorado, United States, ...", unless the context of the article makes it clear in other ways that we're dealing with an American topic. The MOS, of course, says not to use "U.S.A." or even "USA" except in direct quote contexts. Imzadi 1979 → 06:35, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

That's simply not true. You need to read my post above again. (I've slightly clarified and bolded part of it.) EEng 06:39, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Imzadi1979; the presumption that everyone knows New Mexico or Iowa are US states is "charitable", especially given that plenty of our readers are school children with English as a second language. It should be there somewhere, in the form "United States", probably in the infobox, but in the lead if there is no infobox.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  20:49, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

I thought we were talking about what the guideline is, not what it should be. I've often tried to think of how to loosen the guideline a little, exactly for your postulated schoolchildren, but I predict it will be a tumultuous discussion. EEng 21:04, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

OK, I think we've found what the guideline is, but it does seem buried in a place designed so that someone looking for an answer can't find it. In general, I align with EEng's opinions in the lively discussion. In addition, from a viewpoint of writing style and readability, I find writing out the full "city, state, country" when used in an article's lede to be fussy and awkward.

That said, I've looked at the contributions by 174.0.13.84 (who seems to be in Calgary, Alberta, Canada) as a case study. 28 total contributions since May 2017, most of which are in this category. They are of the general form [[Name building]] is a building in [[Springfield, Nebrahoma]], U.S.A. (", U.S.A" added; in one case, without the periods). However, two of the edits add ", India", which does give me pause. It is somewhat useful to me (a US-based Brit) to specify India. I could probably have guessed from the (WL'ed) placename, but is this giving me a hint of what non-American English speakers experience? Another of that user's edits adds "Wales, U.K.", and yet another adds "California, U.S.A." to a very well-known city name, immediately following another name that mentions California, which are definitely over the top. So my bias would be to:

1. Explicitly call out a consensus of "use the article title, wikilinked, in definitional or descriptive phrases within other articles". Readers should use the wikilink if they are still confused about geographical location
2. Because this question often arises in ledes, add it to lede guidance (although adding it to the MOS may require more consensus)
3. If the editor has wikilinked the location and still strongly feels that clarification is important within the context, add a higher-level geographic designator (not wikilinked, I guess)
4. In this context only, use "U.S.A.", not "US".

Am I justified in reverting 174.0.13.84's contributions? Probably not, unless there are no other problems in Wikipedia that are more deserving of my time :-) (I found the most recent change on RCP). Should I drop a note on their talk page - I'll try, without seeming to bite the newbie. David Brooks (talk) 22:10, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

what's the equivalent WP: page for answering "what"?

I found somewhere a page (about a movie) didn't describe "what" happened, one of the 5 Ws of journalism. Much like how this page explains wikipedia policies concerning "where", I was wondering what page explains policies for the "what".--Macks2008 (talk) 04:06, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

• {{What?}} --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:49, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Ah, that's what I was looking for. Thanks!--Macks2008 (talk) 17:00, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
    • although, I am still wondering why that wouldn't have come up when I searched the wiki for a page named "what"? The only way I think I could've refined my search is to narrow it down to the Template namespace...--Macks2008 (talk) 03:37, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Disambiguation and neighborhoods

Do neighborhoods need to be disambiguated with the city, state convention even if it is primary topic or not ambiguous? (i.e. South Knoxville, Knoxville, Tennessee). Apparently it was recently added to USPLACE to style it neighborhood, city to match city, state conventions, but that addition was not discussed and has been removed. It seems to be that we style neighborhoods without a city/state modifier unless it is ambiguous or not primary topic. This can be seen with the move of Anaheim Hills, Anaheim, California to simply, Anaheim Hills. What is the policy on this? Asking because it is relevant to a move discussion on the talk page of South Knoxville. Thanks. CookieMonster755✉ signature added on 31 Jan 2018

• Disambiguation is for when something is ambiguous. If there is no ambiguity, there should be no disambiguation. Besides, unlike the City, State exception where it can be argued that format is actually the WP:COMMONNAME, I don't see evidence that Neighborhood, City is a common way to refer to a neighborhood. -- Tavix ^(talk) 16:41, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

• I've got no interest in this, but just to note this change [20] was made about two months ago, apparently without discussion. I suggest you all pick up from there. EEng 22:57, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
  • I wish certain MoS (and other policy) pages were full-protected with a consensus-required rule, to avoid the "policy made by a change people missed" that seems to happen all-too-often. power~enwiki (π, ν) 23:18, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

• I find it bizarre that South Knoxville would be an acceptable page location, while Knoxville is required to redirect to Knoxville, Tennessee. Based on the discussion at that page, I'm not sure there's a better option. power~enwiki (π, ν) 23:18, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
• FWIW, I think the decision to use comma disambiguation for neighborhoods was terrible idea. One of the main justifications for using comma disambiguation for city, state is because that form is frequently used in natural language. Neighborhoods are not nearly so commonly not in that form. I think parenthetical disambiguation would have been a much better standard. older ≠ wiser 23:25, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

While the “City, State” format is the common for towns ... it isn’t common for neighborhoods within towns. I have no problem with using other disambiguation formats for neighborhoods ... something like Soho (Manhattan) or Beacon Hill (Boston) or Nob Hill (San Francisco) seems acceptable. Blueboar (talk) 23:44, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Neighborhood, State seems to work, at Lincroft, New Jersey, which is part of an organized municipality. We will want South Knoxville, Tennessee if only as a redirect. Is it a reasonable article name? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:32, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Moratorium

I suggest a moratorium on affected RMs until this is worked out and stable. See Talk:South Knoxville, Knoxville, Tennessee and Talk:Old North Knoxville, Knoxville for recent examples. Andrewa (talk) 16:55, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Would support that. This needs to be officially figured out. CookieMonster755✉ 17:13, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Good! It has the potential to affect an enormous number of articles, both directly and by flow-ons to other regions and other article types. Consensus can change and there's some evidence of a new consensus on this. It needs to be figured out, as you say.

Specific examples will help, and the two RMs I've quoted (which do need to be closed) can be used as evidence, provided the closers for the moment reject arguments that rely on a particular version of this naming convention. More examples would be good. Andrewa (talk) 20:41, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Where can we get more input on this? We need a discussion and consensus. CookieMonster755✉ 14:28, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Let's start a request for comment in another section below. CookieMonster755✉ 14:29, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

One at wt:AT would get more input. Have a heads-up here by all means. Or that could work the other way around of course, but one that is eventually archived at wt:AT would have more authority. A heads-up at the relevant Wikiproject also a good idea. Andrewa (talk) 03:44, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

I see no need for an RFC. Someone added an undiscussed and heretofore unnoticed sentence to the guideline last November, probably without intending to change the guideline, and it's now been reverted without any fuss. Doesn't seem like a problem to me. Station1 (talk) 20:57, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Agree that if the guideline has not changed materially and there is no intention to change it, no RfC is necessary. But disagree that it's been reverted without any fuss. I think we need to at the very least document this with diffs. Andrewa (talk) 01:00, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

RM resuits

Both RMs closed as move to the undisambiguated title, [21] [22] and the closer did not consider the guideline in assessing consensus to move. [23]

So, it appears that the consensus is still that neighborhoods do not automatically require disambiguation. Andrewa (talk) 18:52, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Kazakh place names RfC

RfC Should Kazakhstan article names follow current transliteration rules? largely relates to recent disputed moves of geographic articles to names using modern Cyrillic transliteration rules with slim regard to wp:COMMONNAME policy. Please add any comments at that talk page. Batternut (talk) 10:46, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Translating Place Names

An IP user has been translating place names into English: Special:Contributions/2A02:1203:ECB3:DFB0:9D24:97E3:E0DB:2D59. For example: "Campo (English: Field)". This page does not seem to have any guidance regarding this, but to me this seems wrong. Any suggestions? Danski454 (talk) 21:12, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Definitely not useful; see also MOS:PROPER, MOS:FOREIGN, MOS:LEAD. If there's an English name, use it; it should be the article title, and the first name in the lead; provide non-English version(s) as appropriate thereafter. If the term/name (name in this case, since it's places) doesn't have an English equivalent, then a gloss can go in the article somewhere, if it's actually pertinent (often in an "Etymology" section, sometimes in the lead if especially relevant – usually not, for a placename – or in the "History" section). A gloss that is not actually an attested English-language proper name for the place in reliable sources should not be presented as if it is one. That's original research.

NCGEO doesn't have a specific rule-pile about this, because it applies generally to all names, and is implicit in the various policies and guidelines.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:31, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for clarification Danski454 (talk) 20:43, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Bosnia village name format

I've just today become aware of this edit where @No such user: added a sentence about Bosnian village names, which I don't actually believe was ever properly discussed. I also checked Talk:List of populated places in Bosnia and Herzegovina and WT:BiH archives but found nothing. I think it should be more standard in using commas instead of parentheses. I also don't quite see a problem in using canton names per generic convention rather than municipality names. It's been many years since cantons have been in existence, and they're pretty common in mainstream parlance these days, so I'm not sure why we would need to skip them (esp. if we don't skip the entities RS/FBiH). --Joy [shallot] (talk) 15:05, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

We've had a similar discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Serbia/Archive_8#WP:SRBPLACE – in a nutshell: it had not been discussed indeed and I only documented what was the de facto convention at the time. In the discussion above we sort-of agreed to switch to comma-convention but nobody volunteered to perform the moves or request a bot task to that effect so the situation remained inconsistent in the field. I suppose switching to comma convention for BiH would be fairly uncontroversial as well, as the Wikiproject is sadly inactive.
As for using canton names instead of municipalities, I'd be opposed for several reasons: 1) their names are unwieldy and therefore violate WP:CONCISE 2) I'm pretty certain we will encounter instances of multiple place names within the same canton, rendering the system inconsistent and 3) Republika Srpska does not have cantons or equivalent, so we'll be inconsistent on the country level (well, when has anything in Bosnia been consistent anyway?) and 4) why change the current practice when municipality names do the job, and their names are probably as well known as the canton names, if not more? No such user (talk) 15:18, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

I don't think English readers are necessarily better acquainted with municipality names compared to canton names. You and I might be better served by saying e.g. Čapljina, but for an English reader who might have some basic knowledge, mentioning Herzegovina-Neretva Canton might actually help them more immediately place such a village in the southern part of the country as opposed to necessarily having to look up where that strangely named place is at. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:46, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Since I don't see any firm consensus developing around this, I will remove it from the guideline. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 16:44, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

DAB schools with commas or brackets?

Should schools be disambiguated in the form "Name High School, Town" or "Name High School (Town)"? My preference is to use a single comma, but two editors have commented this style is improper (without pointing to anywhere in the guidelines). A school doesn't fit well into either WP:NCCORP or WP:NCPLACE. In my view, a single comma is the most natural way to disambiguate, and in any case using brackets is grammatically incorrect (strictly it should be "Name High School (high school in Town)"). jamacfarlane (talk) 09:46, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

It's really bad form to start a central RfC that affects only one project without notifying that project. Just sayin'. John from Idegon (talk) 19:19, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

• I can't see any question here that needs an administrator to deal with it. If there is one that I have overlooked then please point it out clearly. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 12:42, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

This RfC is faulty on its surface. This naming convention does not apply to schools, as schools are not places, they are institutions. I can't speak to Europe, but in the US, Canada and Australia, there is hardly a school that hasn't relocated at least once, if not several times. We do not start a new article for the new location, any more than we would if a business changed its location. And also, as I mentioned above, it is unconscionable that an RfC be started involving a topic that is the primary concern of two projects (WP:UNIV and WP:WPSCH) without notifying them. Frankly, I feel this whole thing is a bit WP:POINT. John from Idegon (talk) 20:37, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

That's interesting, I'd never thought of it like that, the only school that I'm aware of that has been moved is Old Buckenham Hall School, I'd usually think that the article on the "school" refers to the building its self but if it is supposed to be the institution then I can see why brackets may make more sense. Crouch, Swale (talk) 08:56, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Consider the peripatetic histories of Florida Memorial University, or Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University. - Donald Albury 18:27, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

As the one who created the RfC, I apologise. I was not aware of those projects. However, my thinking is that there should be consistency across Wikipedia - i.e. we should not use brackets for one country and commas for another - and that comma disambiguation is far more natural. I appreciate this may be seen as pedantic, and am aware schools are institutions, not places, but I agree with the views expressed below that brackets are generally for when the topic is a type of thing, not located in something. jamacfarlane (talk) 09:30, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

1) WP:ENGVAR? 2)The latest trend in education is the "virtual" school, which has no published location at all. In short, this is a solution looking for a problem. John from Idegon (talk) 12:46, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

User:Crouch, Swale's post below has brought Kelso High School to my attention. There are two articles with this name: Kelso High School, Scotland and Kelso High School (Washington). The fact that one uses a comma and the other uses brackets just looks wrong to me. I don't see why there should be one convention for the UK and another for the U.S. Then again, I realise these are in place already, and it would be burdensome (to say the least) to move all relevant pages. jamacfarlane (talk) 18:14, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

I'd say the problem is with the US using different forms of disambiguation for places that aren't settlements, but I'm not going to push for them to change if that's their convention, however the use of a less specific disambiguation term for the school than the town its in is a bit odd, however there's not going to be a lot of high schools that are ambiguous within Scotland, compared to settlements at least (which Scotland has far less duplicate names than the US anyway). Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:19, 29 August 2018 (UTC) I would also point out that this is the case with River Avon and Eaton Hall. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:11, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Survey

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

• Comma jamacfarlane (talk) 09:46, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
• Should be commas (at least for the UK) brackets are generally for when the topic is a type of thing, not located in something. Schools aren't any different to other places, such as settlements, other than we often use more specific location for DAB, like the town/village rather than the state, see Category:Secondary schools in Suffolk and Category:Boarding schools in Suffolk. Importantly it is only for disambiguation, not common name, so should only be done when needed. Maybe if further disambiguation is needed then "School (town, state)" might be used though, that is to say if there are multiple in both town and state that double disambiguation is needed. Crouch, Swale (talk) 09:50, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
• This really only affects schools in the US... the question is whether to write (for example): Jefferson High School, Cedar Rapids, Iowa or Jefferson High School (Cedar Rapids, Iowa). Personally, I think the parenthetical looks better (and that is the way most US school articles are formatted)... however in terms of policy - Both forms are allowed. Editors should discuss (not fight about) the various options, and reach a consensus on a case by case basis. Blueboar (talk) 10:20, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
• Parentheticals are better at least at the level of higher education, where some schools have the geographic name as part of their formal name (see, e.g., University of California, Berkeley, University of Maryland, Baltimore), and using comma disambiguation may confuse readers into thinking either that the disambiguator is actually part of the formal name, or that the geographic portion of included in a formal name is merely a disambiguator. It would also be confusing to have comma disambiguation for a title like University of Georgia (Tbilisi). bd2412 T 13:46, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
  • Why would that be in the slightest bit confusing? -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:49, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
    • The comma would make it clear that "Tbilisi" isn't part of the name just like the brackets do. The brackets might even imply that its an instance of Tbilisi, not in Tbilisi. Crouch, Swale (talk) 13:52, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
      • How would the comma make it clear that "Tbilisi" isn't part of the name when some school names use a comma specifically to indicate that the city is part of the name? bd2412 T 15:19, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
        • Do some not have brackets as part of the name as well? Crouch, Swale (talk) 11:06, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
  • I also don't think it would be confusing. At the moment it looks like the University of Georgia is "a Tbilisi". I have never heard that word, so would assume it's a specialist type of university (like a hochschule). Also, the article title isn't for the formal WP:OFFICIAL name, it's for the WP:COMMONNAME. jamacfarlane (talk) 15:37, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Also, University of California, Berkeley has the full name in the first line of the article. jamacfarlane (talk) 15:39, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

• For Commonwealth topics (except Canada), comma disambiguation is usual. For North American topics, parenthetical disambiguation is usual. Elsewhere, there's no hard and fast rule. This is standard for all location articles, not just schools. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:48, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
  • I gave school as an example, but think there should be a standard format for all location articles that don't fit the current WP:NCPLACE. jamacfarlane (talk) 15:37, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
• I strongly recommend using parentheses for the disambiguation of schools because it is far less confusing when trying to parse the name of the school. Parentheses are better to use because it is easier to tell whether or not it is actually part of the school name or simply a disambiguation, as bd2412 described above. Also consider that it is common outside of Wikipedia to disambiguate the Miami Universities using parentheses (eg: Miami (FL) and Miami (OH)). -- Tavix ^(talk) 14:42, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
  • I don't know whether this is an ENGVAR issue or not, but I don't find parentheses any easier to parse than commas. I actually find commas a lot more natural. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:57, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
    • I don't think the UK commas are an ENGVAR issue, we use them solely for disambiguation, while the US appears to use them as the common name. Crouch, Swale (talk) 09:19, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
• I find the parenthetical form to be much clearer than the comma form, but I very much doubt there will be consensus for the guidelines to dictate use of one form over the other. older ≠ wiser 16:00, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
• Use the commas. It's more concise, more consistently, and no one will fail to understand it. Whether some element of our title is or isn't part of the proper name of the institution is something to make clear in the lead sentence by how we present the name.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:04, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
• Don't standardize. I prefer parentheses, and that is how U.S. schools are mostly done, but why can't we do either/or - either commas or parens, according to the preference for that country? I think it would be absolutely crazy to change half the school articles from comma to paren, or alternatively half the articles from paren to comma, when they are stable and easily recognized as they are. This is a solution in search of a problem. Think of it as a form of local use of English, like the spelling color or colour. We follow local customs for other place names, such as rivers (Mississippi River in the U.S., River Thames in the U.K.). --MelanieN (talk) 02:36, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
• Generally, anything that is used in reliable sources as the common name or as natural disambiguation should be as it appears in those sources, without brackets. When we at WP have no choice but to artificially disambiguate, the artificial addition should be within brackets. But I agree that we don't need more rules; there doesn't seem to be a big problem here. Station1 (talk) 17:13, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

  Generally any name that the subject is actually called can be natural disambiguation, for example "High Peak District" or "Borough of High Peak" while if it isn't part of the name High Peak, Derbyshire, High Peak (borough) or High Peak (district) is used. Crouch, Swale (talk) 09:19, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

  I think High Peak, Derbyshire is a good example of natural disambiguation where a comma is appropriate, while High Peak (UK Parliament constituency) is a good example of artificial disambiguation where brackets are more appropriate. Station1 (talk) 07:43, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

  High Peak, Derbyshire is artificial like (UK Parliament constituency), its just that one is where is it and the other is what. The comma makes it clear that "Derbyshire" is an independent qualification. Crouch, Swale (talk) 12:40, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

  If someone googles "High Peak, Derbyshire", they will find quite a few examples. That's all I mean by 'natural'. If Derbyshire were put in 'artificial' brackets instead, I would think of a peak rather than a populated place, like High Peak (Greene County, New York). - Station1 (talk) 07:09, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

  That's because "High Peak" is located in "Derbyshire" not that the latter is part of the name. Sources are still specifying its location. If "Derbyshire" was part of the name it would be titled "High Peak Derbyshire" similar to if "planet" was part of the name we would have "Mercury planet" instead. Also compare the links to "Cleveland Ohio" (40) to "Norwich Norfolk" (none) and "Boston Massachusetts" (60) and "Plymouth Devon" (1). This also shows the the US, unlike England uses the state a lot more. Crouch, Swale (talk) 07:28, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

  There's no disagreement about that. Natural disambiguation is still disambiguation. High Peak would be titled "High Peak" if that weren't ambiguous. Station1 (talk) 09:14, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

• Parentheses The naming convention from Wikidata is useful to apply here. Use the correct name and put any necessary additional information in parentheses. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:53, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Hmmm... Well, if Wikidata likes parentheses, that just makes me lean more towards commas. 😉 Blueboar (talk) 16:28, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Blueboar makes a cogent and persuasive point . Narky Blert (talk) 02:43, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

• How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Conventions differ between countries.

In UK, St Peter's School, York is invariably called, so as to distinguish it from other schools of that name (wait for it, wait for it...) – St Peter's School, York. Always a comma, never a parenthesis.

I could give many examples from my experience of schools in (for example) USA which are invariably called X School locally but which need to be qualified in Wikipedia as X School (ObscureVille, GuessTheCounty, SomeStateOrOther) – because, locally, their WP:COMMONNAME is X School. They turn up in the User:DPL bot log every day, and can be tricky (sometimes impossible) to track down.

Discussions like this tend to overlook who this encyclopedia is intended for. Hint: it is not intended for editors who know enough to find and participate in this sort of discussion.

Honestly: so long as readers can easily find what they're looking for, who cares?. Get a grip. Narky Blert (talk) 02:30, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Scotland

I have started a draft at User:Crouch, Swale/NC Scotland, though I'm not sure if we will need a separate NC page. There are 2 points, aside from those like Harthill, Scotland (like Bures, England) that are in multiple council areas, it appears that the only settlement that uses "Scotland" to disambiguate is Perth, Scotland, similar to Lincoln, England. It doesn't appear "Scotland" is otherwise at all used for settlements, see List of towns and cities in Scotland by population Paisley, Renfrewshire isn't at Paisley, Scotland, so it appears Perth is the only one so it shouldn't be listed "The number of larger settlements or islands that are likely to be well-known outside of the region, that also require disambiguation such as Perth, Scotland, and Jura, Scotland". There was some debate brought up at Talk:Isle of Lewis#Requested move 18 July 2018 by Mutt Lunker (talk · contribs) about this. Also there is Kelso High School, Scotland which Necrothesp (talk · contribs) correctly formatted but still used "Scotland" even though the town is at Kelso, Scottish Borders. I personally think "Scotland" is a more natural qualification than Scottish Borders as I said here. Crouch, Swale (talk) 10:54, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Personally, I'd prefer Kelso to be disambiguated with Roxburghshire or Roxburgh. "Scottish Borders" is a term nobody uses. "Borders", yes, but the old county/district is far more common. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:08, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

I disagree that "Roxburghshire" is more common than "Scottish Borders". In any case, I think we should use modern council areas instead of pre-1975 counties. jamacfarlane (talk) 19:44, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Even if nobody commonly uses them? -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:26, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

But isn't this also the case with many metropolitan counties, of which even the OS doesn't appear to use, while it does use the Scottish council areas, I agree neither are great but if sources refer to the council areas then we probably should use them. Crouch, Swale (talk) 13:38, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Remember that the English metropolitan counties have been around much longer than most of the current Scottish and Welsh unitary authorities and have had much longer to bed in in common usage. We don't use the modern English unitary authorities for disambiguation (e.g. we have Bath, Somerset, not Bath, Bath and North East Somerset, or even Bath, Avon). In other words, we're using the ceremonial county, in which Bath hasn't technically been located administratively since 1974. Why? Because it makes more sense, because it's more recognisable and because most people sensibly still consider Bath to be in Somerset, whatever its current administrative status. In Scotland, the equivalent would be the lieutenancy area, which would in fact give us Kelso, Roxburgh, Ettrick and Lauderdale, which is a bit of a mouthful and would be confusing with the three commas, so Kelso, Roxburgh would seem to be a good compromise, covering both the modern lieutenancy area and the historic county. It's far more recognisable than the modern council area. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:04, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

• Usually, geographic disambiguation is at the highest level possible, which in this case, as there is only one Kelso in Scotland, would be either "Kelso, Scotland" or the less inviting "Kelso, United Kingdom". --Bejnar (talk) 21:53, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
• Questions are:

1. Are islands given "Placename, Scotland" if unique in Scotland (regardless of size), or are they disambiguated by council area/group, if small, even if unique in Scotland. This would mean that the tiny island Commons:Category:Green Island, Highland should be disambiguated by Scotland instead.
2. Are settlements allowed to go at "Placename, Scotland" if unique in Scotland? (Perth is already an exception similar to Lincoln anyway)
3. What about other geographical features, should they use "Placename, Scotland" or "Placename, council area" (or something else). Is it OK that the article on the town uses Kelso, Scottish Borders but its high school is at Kelso High School, Scotland (CFDS discussion), consider that few (if any) high schools will be ambiguous in Scotland.
4. What about the points of the lieutenancy/district mentioned by Necrothesp (talk · contribs)? Crouch, Swale (talk) 14:37, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

So is that support for Use "Placename, Scotland" for all places (including settlements) if the name in unique in Scotland", even if the place is small?

I'll notify Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scotland and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scottish Islands to get input. Feel free to use User:Crouch, Swale/NC Scotland to draft theses ideas. Crouch, Swale (talk) 14:37, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

We should disambig at the highest sensible level, so "town, Scotland" rather than "town, county" unless there are two places in Scotland with the same name. "Town, United Kingdom" is not sensible, nearly as bad as "MyTown, USA" in terms of generic and deliberate meaninglessness. County only as a last resort. [For many years, there was a battle over placenames in England where some POV pusher was trying singlehandedly to assert the traditional counties. Don't go there if you can avoid it.]

So IMO, 1: yes [Island, Scotland]; 2 yes, if worldwide disambig is needed; 3) don't use county unless ambiguous in Scotland; 4) last resort.

A new 5: what about neighbourhoods? Surely we should say "Morningside, Edinburgh" in any case, not "Morningside, Scotland"? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:24, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

I think for 5 this is somewhat covered by the 2nd sentence of WP:UKPLACE although specifies being in the local government district and larger settlement, it appears that only the latter has been needed, see Category:Areas of Cumbernauld for example which are in North Lanarkshire, though maybe this was intended for cases like Pinewood, Suffolk which is part of the town, but not the district of the same name, it appears it is mainly to prevent those that are part of the district but not town such as Olney, Buckinghamshire. I would recommend clarifying that if the settlement and district have different names then it can still be disambiguated by the larger settlement, rather than county/district. Crouch, Swale (talk) 16:25, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

And the third sentence says "disambiguation should not normally be to England, Scotland, Wales, NI". Which seems to clash with all this section! [I still think this discussion is correct and that rule is wrong because it contravenes the principle of disambig at the highest reasonable level per WP:WORLDVIEW: Olney, England is more obvious to the man on the Poona Omnibus than Olney, Bucks. Good luck with changing it though!]

But other countries such as the United States, Australia, France and Canada use the state rather than the country and the US (and to a lesser extent Australia and Canada) seem to say that the state is somewhat regarded as part of the name. For England, UKPLACE mainly disambiguates from other places in England. I don't think many could be disambiguated with England anyway but Scotland has far less duplicate names. Also in respect to WORLDVIEW, this is the English language edition. For the majority of our readers, I'd expect the state is more likely to be useful than the country. Crouch, Swale (talk) 16:48, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Just some random thoughts from a US Wikipedian. One reason many of us hold dearly to the 'place, state' standard for places in the US is that the standard format for postal addresses has been for a very long time to use 'city, state'. The US Postal Service insured that was sufficient by refusing to designate more than one post office in a state with the same name, sometimes forcing a community to change its name to get a post office. Reinforcing this is the fact that a bot that was run early in the history of Wikipedia (well before I started editing) created articles for every place that was named in the US census database from 2000, and all of the articles were created with 'place, state' as the title (except New York City, which had been created before the bot ran). We do have to contend with some cases of more than one (usually small) community in a state with the same name, so we have some articles such as St. Joseph, Gulf County, Florida. So, the US naming convention is not necessarily a good model for anywhere else. I am not normally a fan of American exceptionalism, but this does seem to be a case of such. - Donald Albury 00:54, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

My reference to WP:WORLDVIEW was really an admonishment not to be so parochial as tends to happen in UK subjects. Too many write for a local audience, forgetting that it is unhelpful to a worldwide audience. Comma Scotland or comma England is far more useful than comma Strathclyde (unless unavoidable). I continue to support the proposal. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:47, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Well said. In more and more cases the argument keeps being made for disambiguating by a subnational division when disambiguating by couuntry would be enough. The US and Canada are exceptions, because the states and provinces are widely known internationally, and because disambiguation by state/province is universally used within the country - to the extent that the state/province is used when there is no ambiguity and is in effect part of the name. That just does not apply to Roxburghshire or West Lothian. So I would go with the proposal too.

Incidentally, Perth, Scotland has been so named since before 2004. Proposals to move it have failed largely because there was no agreement where to move it to. Lincoln, England was at Lincoln, Lincolnshire until the rule in England was changed for eponymous counties. It is fine to expect the rest of the world to know where Scotland and England are, but why should the world know where Perth and Kinross is (is it in Australia?) or where Lincolnshire is (is it in Nebraska?)?--Mhockey (talk) 22:55, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

• I think a holistic approach is required. If it is decided to default to ',Scotland' for place name disambiguation, then I think that English place names must be dealt with in the same manner. There is no reason to have separate approaches in different parts of Britain. Within Scotland itself, the old counties (now 'registration counties') are very often used for location purposes, perhaps more-so than the modern council areas, which are somewhat esoteric in their nature. In any case, I see no justification for treating Scotland differently from England. If it is determined that country-level disambiguation is preferable as the default, it must surely be preferable across Britain. RGloucester — ☎ 17:34, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

  Yes I agree, maybe just keeping as is, is best as we don't want Scotland inconsistent with the rest of GB. Then what should we do with the other features, should they use "Placename, Council" area instead (eg Jura). Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:29, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Proposal to eliminate comma-state from unambiguous U.S. state capitals.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

American grade school children are commonly taught the names of state capitals, which are therefore elevated to higher importance than city names generally. I propose an addition to the roster of U.S. cities which do not require the comma and state name appended to the city name, for all cities that are U.S. state capitals, and are the primary topic for that title. This would affect the following seventeen city names, each of which is currently a redirect to the "City, State" title for that city:

• Annapolis, Maryland
• Austin, Texas
• Baton Rouge, Louisiana
• Boise, Idaho
• Carson City, Nevada
• Des Moines, Iowa
• Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
• Hartford, Connecticut
• Jefferson City, Missouri
• Juneau, Alaska
• Lansing, Michigan
• Little Rock, Arkansas
• Nashville, Tennessee
• Raleigh, North Carolina
• Sacramento, California
• Tallahassee, Florida
• Topeka, Kansas

The following seven state capitals are already at the undisambiguated primary topic title.

• Denver, Colorado
• Atlanta, Georgia
• Honolulu, Hawaii
• Indianapolis, Indiana
• Boston, Massachusetts
• Salt Lake City, Utah
• Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

The remaining twenty-six state capitals are either ambiguous or not the primary topic of their title, and would be unaffected by this proposal. These are:

• Albany, New York
• Augusta, Maine
• Bismark, North Dakota (redirects to Bismarck, a disambiguation page)
• Cheyenne, Wyoming (an Indian tribe)
• Columbia, South Carolina
• Columbus, Ohio
• Concord, New Hampshire
• Dover, Delaware (a city in England)
• Frankfort, Kentucky
• Helena, Montana
• Jackson, Mississippi
• Lincoln, Nebraska
• Madison, Wisconsin
• Montgomery, Alabama
• Montpelier, Vermont
• Olympia, Washington
• Phoenix, Arizona
• Pierre, South Dakota (a given name)
• Providence, Rhode Island
• Richmond, Virginia
• Saint Paul, Minnesota (redirects to Paul the Apostle)
• Salem, Oregon
• Santa Fe, New Mexico
• Springfield, Illinois
• Trenton, New Jersey
• Wheeling, West Virginia

bd2412 T 21:13, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

What about all our readers who have not been educated in American grade schools? - Donald Albury 22:20, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

In case there is any doubt, that was an oppose !vote. - Donald Albury 13:32, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Even a lot of Americans forget most of the capitals once they're out of grade school, particularly ones that are far from their home state and aren't that big. And I'm not a big fan of proposals to drop the state from more subsets of US place names in general, especially ones that aren't rooted in an outside guideline like the current rule is. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 23:50, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

I wouldn't add this as another class of city article to be stripped of the state name. Imzadi 1979 → 03:08, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

I oppose as well, agreeing with both of the above editors.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:07, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Raleigh shouldn't be a primary redirect anyway. To Americans it might be. To British people, it's more likely to refer to Walter Raleigh or Raleigh Bicycle Company. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:22, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

• What about Colorado Springs, Colorado and Virginia Beach, Virginia. Colorado Springs appears to be unique and Virginia Beach only has things related to that place at Virginia Beach (disambiguation), though there are others which we don't cover. Crouch, Swale (talk) 13:08, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. What American grade children are taught is not the sort of thing that counts as source use. It is completely US centric. “City, State” most clearly established that the topic is a city. Few US cities are genuinely worldwide primarytopics. The AP list is an excellent line to separate to level famous cities from other mere cities. Oppose per WP:TITLECHANGES, this proposal would only lead to disruption and instability, for no good reason. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:09, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
• Comment. I appreciate where the nom is coming from. It's silly to allow Honolulu but require Nashville, Tennessee, especially when we also allow Flin Flon (a Canadian city of 5,000), but require International Falls, Minnesota (a U.S. city of 6,000). The only permanent solution to the perennial USPLACE discussions and RMs would be to allow all current U.S. city PRIMARYREDIRECTS to become PRIMARYTOPICS. Adding state capitals to the AP list is fine, but doesn't seem to materially advance the cause of final resolution. Maintaining a list of exceptions, whether it's the AP list or anything else, still leaves the argument open for all other primaryredirect cities (Beverly Hills, etc.). So while I get the impulse, I'd prefer going all the way (in either direction - stripping the AP cities of their special exemption could work, too). Dohn joe (talk) 14:04, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
  • At Talk:Flin_Flon#Requested_move User:Wtshymanski made the most sense. The “no brainer” !voters remind me of religious nutters, appealing to some made up back room rule and without reference to what makes things easier to readers. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:34, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
  • Dohn joe, agreed, of course. Just a nit: PRIMARYREDIRECTS can't become PRIMARYTOPICS. I think what you meant is to allow all U.S. city articles with PRIMARYREDIRECTS to be moved to the PRIMARYTOPIC basename (the city already is a PRIMARYTOPIC, by definition, since a PRIMARYREDIRECT redirects to it). --В²C ☎ 16:58, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. City, State is a strong convention in the U.S. and Wikipedia should have fewer exceptions to that, not more. Jonathunder (talk) 14:20, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
• Support per detailed nomination. An intuitive proposal a long time coming. I would furthermore support the above proposal by Dohn joe "to allow all current U.S. city PRIMARYREDIRECTS to become PRIMARYTOPICS".    Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 03:39, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose – the only reasonable revision of WP:USPLACE for better consistency would be to always include the state, instead of bickering over which city names are precise enough to the AP or otherwise. Whether we do similarly for Canadian cities is another matter, but Flin Flon is not a good example case since it's not in one province. Dicklyon (talk) 04:35, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
• Question. What problem will this solve? Herostratus (talk) 05:14, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
  • It is absurd to have to type out all of Sacramento, California or Tallahassee, Florida to make a direct link to these well-known clearly primary-topic names. bd2412 T 13:49, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
    • Not absurd if you are mentioning Sacramento, California in an article on a topic closely associated with Sacramento (Lisbon). Then it is not only helpful, it is necessary. Blueboar (talk) 15:03, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
      • The same could be said of mentioning Boston, Massachusetts in an article on a topic closely associated with Boston, Lincolnshire, or mentioning Abraham Lincoln in the proximity of Abraham Lincoln (captain). If you don't think the Sacramento in California is the primary topic of the name, then say so. This proposal is only directed to city names that are the primary topic of the name. bd2412 T 15:17, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
        • Editor convenience is a very poor reason to have ambiguous titles that are bad for readers. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:27, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
          • Right, editor convenience ranks far below reader covenience (particularly the convenience of immediately perceiving what the article is about). As for reader convenience, redirects can handle making it unnecessary to type extra characters.

As for the difference between Boston, Massachusetts and Tallahassee, Florida... to non-Americans (and about 1/3 of the anglosphere is not Americans, plus you have all those schoolboys in Delhi and ESL readers in Berlin and so forth), and to them, well, Boston is large and very famous world-class port with a huge metro area and world-level health, tech, and university sectors and also the home of various fairly famous people and events and institutions and so on. Tallahasee is... not. It's the 128th most populous city in the United States (right after Overland Park, Kansas and Grand Prairie, Texas) -- by metro population its 139th) and they're just not comparable, in terms of how likely people will be able to place them by city name alone. Herostratus (talk) 01:05, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

I strongly support the current convention - using City, State for all U.S. cities except those designated as standalone names by the AP Stylebook. That’s a Reliable Source and gives us a good bright-line criterion so we don’t have to have repeated discussions about exceptions or tweaks to this longstanding practice. I can also provide detailed arguments for the current practice, but will withhold them for now in hopes they won’t be necessary. IMO there’s really no reason to treat state capitals differently from any other city.

For reference, here are recent discussions on this subject:

• An extensive November 2012 discussion involving 55 people was closed as "maintain status quo (option B)". Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archives/2012/December#RfC: US city names.

• A discussion in January 2013 later was never officially made into an RfC or officially closed; discussion died out with 18 editors opposed to a change and 12 in favor. Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archives/2013/February#Request for comment .

• Discussion started in June 2013: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archives/2013/June#Naming convention; speedy-closed per WP:SNOW.

• December 2013-February 2014: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archives/2014/February#Should the article be at Bothell or Bothell, Washington? . Closed as "no consensus to change existing practice (that is, USPLACE)." --MelanieN (talk) 00:48, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - per Smokey Joe In ictu oculi (talk) 16:24, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
• Support - as Roman Spinner: "per detailed nomination. An intuitive proposal a long time coming. I would furthermore support the above proposal by Dohn joe 'to allow all current U.S. city PRIMARYREDIRECTS to become PRIMARYTOPICS'." In addition: the current convention for US cities creates a terribly disruptive precedent for WP title decision-making in that it effectively sanctions unnecessary disambiguation (adding description to unique and primary topic names in titles solely for the sake of making them more descriptive/recognizable), which underlies endless pointless bickering over titles all over the English WP. Believe me, I know. --В²C ☎ 16:52, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. City and state is standard nomenclature for US population centers. It is easy enough to use a piped link to just the city name in instances in which this is desired but article titles of US population centers should uniformly use the standard nomenclature of city and state. Bus stop (talk) 17:18, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. This would just be an arbitrary first step towards primary redirects for all podunckplaces. Per WP:PRECISION: Bothell is already precise enough to be unambiguous, but we instead use Bothell, Washington (see Geographic names), seeking a more natural and recognizable title. wbm1058 (talk) 14:14, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose The current system gives a reader specific important information in an upfront manner. I also agree with Herostratus, "What problem would this proposal fix?" If it is just consistency, that is not really a problem. --Bejnar (talk) 04:31, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
• Comment: while this proposal is not getting any traction here, it's worth noting that the exalted guideline often does not get consensus support when tested in individual RMs, like recently at Talk:Colorado_Springs,_Colorado where half of those participating supported the proposal to remove the state from the title, contrary to the explicit guidance of this guideline. Years after being put in effect, the US city guideline remains one of the most controversial on WP, and will remain so until it is revised to be more in line with the general WP:CRITERIA and overall title decision-making on WP. --В²C ☎ 17:32, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per MelanieN et al, and for a variety of good reasons which hardly need restating. The only one I'll note for now is that the proposal offers no good explanation for how changing these stable titles would benefit our readers, whose interests come first. ╠╣uw [talk] 20:42, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
• Opppose, instruction creep and spawning of endless discussions. The rule for American cities is a city, state naming format. There are a limited numbers of exceptions, which are set out in the AP Stylebook, a respected authority in style for newspapers and other publications (that use American English). Our current guidance at WP:USPLACE comes straight from the AP Stylebook. It's a lot simpler for all concerned to stick with the AP's list and not have to go through this discussion for who knows how many smaller cities. —C.Fred (talk) 21:19, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

US Building disambiguator RFC

I've started an RFC at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Style guide to try to resolve the dispute on how to name articles such as Washington County Courthouse (Ohio). It may be of interest to editors of this page; however there doesn't seem to be any content on the naming of buildings (or of geographic disambiguators) on this page. power~enwiki (π, ν) 01:43, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Discussion regarding guidelines on Australian place names (WP:NCAUST)

There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board#Place names regarding the guideline on this page regarding Australian geographic names. Interested editors may wish to contribute. MegaSloth (talk) 10:09, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Note: for the "vote" on change, scroll down to Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board#Suggestion. MegaSloth (talk) 10:17, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Indigenous / Native Names for Geographic Places

I had trouble finding a policy on this. One issue in the Indigenous/Native American community in the US is the concept of "erasure". I think Wikipedia can play a small but meaningful role in helping correct that. In particular, regarding names of mountains or habitats, there are often pre-existing Indigenous names that many in the public are not aware of. The most striking example is Denali (aka Mt. McKinley), however others abound. I could not find a policy about this, other than in passing reference, so wanted to ask.

Is it acceptable to add indigenous names to mountains or other places in a parenthesis after the name of the article in the first sentence? Would it also be acceptable to add such names to the name of the article itself, or better just have it in the lead in paragraph and perhaps add a section on name to the article to discuss indigenous name? Thanks for your time, looking forward to hearing best way to approach this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Enviropearson (talk • contribs) 23:09, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Assuming there's a reliable source for the indigenous name, it's definitely valuable to inform readers of its existence. Exactly where it goes in the article will differ on a case by case basis. I would not simply add it in parentheses in most cases, because it would not be obvious to every reader why it's there. I would be more explicit, e.g. "The indigenous name of Mt. Jones is Xyz in the Algonquin language". Whether that goes in the lead or later in a naming section depends on how much weight we need to give it. Is the name still in use, or mostly obscure? Did the common name derive from it, or are they unrelated? Has there been controversy about it? The only place it would not go is in parentheses in the article title itself, since that would be contrary to policy at WP:AT. - Station1 (talk) 23:33, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, that answered my question exactly and was very helpful. Enviropearson (talk) 03:49, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

This is something I've been thinking about as well. Is it beneficial to add the Indigenous place name to the attached Wikidata entry? Erniee jo (talk) 18:39, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Administrative divisions of China

You may be interested in the following discussion: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/China and Chinese-related articles#Naming administrative divisions of China within articles. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:10, 24 March 2019 (UTC)