Talk:Bryn Mawr

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US Centric Viewpoint Contested[edit]

I understand that universities nurture a great many Wikipedians, and they have a good deal of school spirit; however, the primary definition of Bryn Mawr is not Bryn Mawr College. It is very difficult for us to not take a self-centric point of view. Bryn Mawr is a farm near the Welsh town of Dolgellau; a census-designated place in Pennsylvania; a city in CA; a neighborhood in Minneapolis, MN; a census-designated place in WA; a Historic District in Chicago, IL; and a rapid transit station on the Chicago.

A search for Bryn Mawr should not redirect to Bryn Mawr College. I take exception to this undo by JHunterJ. I will remove the redirect to this page unless there is reason to believe that this college definition trumps places across the US and abroad. Nicholas SL Smith 00:24, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please check the wikilinks to Bryn Mawr. Most of these links are intended for the college, which is the indication of the primary topic. If you insist on making the base name the dab, please consider updating all the incoming links to point to the correct page. -- JHunterJ 13:56, 26 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'll go through these links - there are far more links to Bryn Mawr College, which indicates that most who intend to link to the College do it properly. Despite a primary topic, it is not good practice to represent a College over the other meanings of Bryn Meyer within Wikipedia. Laziness on the part of those who intend to link to Bryn Meyer College is not indication that it is the primary use of that name globally; such logic promotes US Centric views. Nicholas SL Smith 20:36, 26 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not disparage the other editors who used a common briefer name as "lazy". I've seen too many of these discussions already. Sometimes a U.S. meaning is the primary one -- and sometimes the UK meaning is the primary one. Individual examples of these are not either -centric propaganda. -- JHunterJ 21:17, 26 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not linking to the page intended and relying on redirects is bad practice - there are no two ways about that. I apologize about the "lazy" comment. You are correct that sometimes a particular region has a primary use of a term, or even that a term honestly is used in one way primarily throughout the world, but this doesn't seem to be the case here. There are many prominent uses of this name. Many thousands of people have made their homes in Bryn Mawr, PA, MN, IL, or in the U.K. for hundreds of years. A couple of years ago I would have whole heartedly agreed with you; I thought that because Wikipedia was started in the United States, it was natural to have a US point of view; however, it it against the Systematic Bias Policy and ought to be avoided. Nicholas SL Smith 23:30, 26 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Linking to redirects is perfectly acceptable and in some cases preferable; it's not a bad practice. I find that the bias policies are aimed primarily at article content. Non-article disambiguation pages and determining their primary topics are not their focus. Given the internal wikilinks, it appears that there is a primary topic, one that happens to be in the U.S. But that is just an appearance, and I don't mind the base name being the dab. -- JHunterJ 01:16, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]