Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)/Archive 18

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An international convention is very possible - case in point.

I read above that an international convention is "impossible", but the world-gazetteer website is a complete contradiction to this theory. They disambiguate with "Name (Country, locale)", and it works just fine for everything. Here's a link to their "Mar" list section, but you can find the root of the list here. It's great as a base, but I think it's possible to even do better. Cheers. - THEPROMENADER 07:28, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

This World Gazetteer is seemingly somewhat illogical and seems to think that a country like England for instance is the equivalent of a US state. It has for instance Whitfield, United States of America, Florida) but Whitfield (United Kingdom, England). According to Wikipedia there are five Whitfields in England! It has nothing like the coverage of Wikipedia, and doesn't even include White Lake Township. Dahliarose 11:12, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure why Promenader is holding World Gazetteer up as an example worthy of emulation. It is a poor comparison on several bases. First, and most significantly, they have no need to disambiguate the titles of the articles since they use a database schema in which each object in the database is referenced by a unique id. In such a schema the title does not need to be unique. There could be hundreds of articles with the exact same title. With Wikipedia, the title of necessity must be unique. Second, the actual pages are nearly unintelligible with regards to deciphering where the location is. Consider this entry. It took me a few moments to realize that the location information was contained in the blue shaded box (although why the term "Quiblah" separates it from "Marysville" is a mystery. Sorry, but I don't think the World Gazetteer is something Wikipedia should try to emulate in any manner at all. older ≠ wiser 11:17, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
I didn't explain myself there. I considered the column to the right to be disambiguation - this combined with the placename would make a unique title. If we are obliged to disambiguate here, this is an example of what we could do. Note that the placename with disambiguation indeed make a unique and clearly indicated title. Note also that every entry is disambiguated in exactly the same way: "Placename (Country (, region (, smaller region)))", across the board, for every country. THEPROMENADER 12:46, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
There's still the fundamental question of why an international convention is better. The argument keeps being made that it is possible and that is all fine and good, but as I have stated before, just because something can be done does not mean that it should be done. I have given my reasons why I feel the scheme currently in place for US city articles is the best, and I have yet to hear a compelling argument as to why that should be changed. Again, my experience in dealing with foreign city articles is limited and I do not pretend to know what is best for those articles. That is why I cannot in good faith support imposing the same standard on them if there is any argument to the contrary. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 15:15, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for your honesty and honest opinion. Perhaps I am a bit of an exception here, as my birthplace is London, Ontario, yet I've been living in Paris, France for over half my life - this most likely why the difference in "country treatment" is so marked to me. Here, I cannot speak of my hometown in local lingo, as many do not know where Ontario is (and the French seem to be persuaded that Quebec covers more than half of Canada : ), so I am obliged to say "London in Canada" - perhaps adding "near Toronto" as foreigners know the location of major cities in other countries better than they do Provinces. This is also why I think that the some of Wiki's placename naming conventions must seem very backwards from a foreign point of view. THEPROMENADER 16:44, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Thank you very much for explaining your PoV; that's a great help.
  • This encyclopedia is not written for the French; we expect them to use the fr: WP (which, by the way, uses fr:London (Ontario), so some francophones must manage.)
    • And of course Quebec is more than half the civilization of Canada (and that's what counts, n'est ce pas?) </satire>
  • Ontario is probably enough, usually, to tell them whether they have the right London or not; in the exception, they can either click on it, or look up Ontario directly. English speakers should be in a better position.
  • If you look up London directly, it will take you a click on the dab header to get away from London, England; I think that's an unavoidable cost, given which London most readers will want.
  • We require dab pages to use the actual article titles, to minimize chance of misdabbing. I think it's a good idea; and this is not the place to change.
    • If our non-North American is looking for London, Ontario, there's only one city we have an article on. "Ontario" may reassure him he's going the right place.
    • If he actually wants London, Texas, the state name may remind him that he heard it was in some state beginning with T, and get him to start his search there; in any case, can it hurt? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:12, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
(Grin) Consider it an education more than a POV. Your post sounds like it should mean something, but it doesn't: "May do" and "are probably enough" are but hypothoses that do nothing to help this (at least until now) constructive search for concrete wiki-wide solutions, nor does is do anything to validate your very apparent point of view. I never even hinted at eliminating dab pages. Please save the sardonic tone next time you post - there's nothing "wrong" going on here - au contraire. Cheers. THEPROMENADER 17:31, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
I used to be engaged in this debate (on the anti-city, state side) but gave up long time ago, for having more productive things to do; still, I do have this page on my watchlist. I thought I could chime in with a different (fresh?) view on the matter (triggered by Bkonrad "database" remark); just something to think about...
Part of the problem (which is fairly entrenched in our wikipedian minds) is that the article title serves two purposes on Wikipedia: it is a title (in the usual sense of the word) and a locator (in the URL sense of the word) -- it is the page where search facility or an internal link will take you when the string contents are matched. This is something that wikipedia editors take for granted: it is convenient to type [[London]] and inconvenient to type [[AER434FCBDNJ|London]] where "AER434FCBDNJ" is the article's ID in an imaginary database.
An amicable solution to this perennial debate could be perhaps to separate those two things, or possibly separate them optionally. But it would have to be done in MediaWiki software, along the lines of {{DISPLAYTITLE}}, (see Signpost technology report). The feature is now half-baked (and had been broken for a time), as it doesn't affect the text in categories and other "reader" namespaces. As result, the page located on San Francisco, California could have page title "San Francisco" (which would, hopefully, be acceptable even for "city, state" proponents), while physically located in the same place. That would also arguably solve other perennial disambiguation problems, such as whether "The Fall (band)" or "The Fall (novel)" is the "primary use"; they can be located wherever they like (e.g. whatlinkshere link count could be the primary factor), both having the correct title "The Fall". The page locator could be displayed somewhere on the top of the page but on a less prominent location, to ease the use for editors; some other software changes could be done to facilitate navigation and linking for both readers and editors; but the former's convenience is the one which we should strive for.
A further feature could be e.g. the default stripping of bracketed or comma-tized disambiguator (e.g. title of the article John Smith (Welsh politician) would automaticaly be "John Smith", unless explicitly overriden)
Granted, that would also be an opportunity for "page-title vandalism" (because changing the title would not require page moving privileges, which are earned after 4 days of registration anyway).
This was just a sort of (wishful) (incomplete) (brain-storming) thinking; perhaps some push to developers in that direction could be achieved granted a critical mass of editors. Or maybe not. Just my 2c. Duja► 15:34, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
You are of course correct - a large part of the problem does stem from the fact that our article titles serve a dual purpose. I'm not sure who but I do recall someone stating that comparisons to a paper encyclopedia are difficult because a paper encyclopedia is free to use whatever title for an article they like, whereas we are forced to select a unique title for each article. Perhaps, if some of the changes to the software you mentioned were implemented, we would have a little more leeway in terms of article titles, but for the time being - that's not an option :( ɑʀкʏɑɴ 15:59, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
...but, the usual mantra: had we spent half the kilobytes and time discussing a technical solution's features, pros, and cons, as well as persuading the developers to implement it compared to the current eternal debate, we'd likely have it implemented by now. :-). Duja► 16:07, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) .. and thanks for the fresh input, Duja : )
I think it is the technical aspects of discussing an international convention are the most interesting and conclusive. I am still undecided about the "pre-disambiguation question", but for the method of disambiguation, I am already convinced that parentheses are the only way to treat placenames equally across the board - and that we should totally forget about the "local convention" method that will of course differ from country to country (comma, country, state, parenthesis) with room for miscomprehension between them.
Leaving that oft-mentioned lacking behind, I've also given thought to the "search" aspects of finding articles on Wiki. Being a webmaster, it has always been in my experience that articles that have the search terms in the title always show up on top of the result list. If I was looking for an article for Dieppe in France (and I was not from that country), what do you think my search terms would be? More than likely, exactly those. Speaking from habit, I'd first try just Dieppe, and try both terms if the first search turned up too many results.
(Note: someone moved the above article from its former Dieppe, France to Dieppe, Seine-Maritime: the comma convention is never used like this in France, and there is only one Dieppe in the whole country... there are decidedly more than a few gung-ho "city, staters" out there : )
Interestingly, the person who performed that move appears to be someone quite involved with editing and creating French location articles. Not to insinuate they "know better than you", but one can infer that this person is knowledgable about French locales and nevertheless prefers the comma delimited disambiguation form. This is almost an argument for the City, State method (or a close cousin), as it appears editors not familiar with this discussion and yet familiar with foreign locations nevertheless prefers that method. Again, I would argue that the comma-delimited disambiguation method is not only well understood among Wikipedia users, but expected. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 17:14, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
But a majory part of the argument for the "comma convention" was that is is "common usage" within the U.S.. It is nothing of the kind in France! THEPROMENADER 17:31, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
That may well be - and as stated before, I have no desire to impose a "comma convention" on France, or anywhere else for that matter, if it is nonstandard for the location. My point was to say that from a wiki-wide perspective, the "comma convention" appears to be well understood and sometimes even expected. This helps to defuse the argument that, from a wiki-wide perspective, comma delimited disambiguation is potentially confusing. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 17:39, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict, edited following for the above) No big deal, I'm not a "militant" in any of this. You're right about Olivier: he is one of English Wiki's major French-article contributors (as I am) - I'll ask him about it. THEPROMENADER 17:42, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
It's not the method of disambiguation itself that is confusing, it's the different methods of disambiguation in use within the same category (settlements especially). If all of Wiki used just one method there would be almost no confusion at all, no matter what that method was. My question about the comma is slight and nothing concerning this discussion, so let's not get into that here. Cheers. THEPROMENADER 17:48, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Both "name-based database" comments above are interesting. Most database entries are assigned "auto-increment" id numbers, and the name is just a spot in the DB array like any other - but we on the "GUI side" can't really do much to work with this - all we have to work with is the article name and content.
I would like to see names remain un-disambiguated if possible, but I am not yet sure if this is possible in this media - or how it will look/be understood in the media as a whole - and in any case, which cities are and aren't disambiguated will of course be a source of constant change, if not confilct. The best solution I have seen thus far was a proposition to have every city occupy a unique "full disambiguation" slot (country included), and have this redirect to a shorter name if later decided. This at least would leave room for later change and later city additions - it would also be an answer to the search criteria I mentioned earlier. THEPROMENADER 16:44, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Many databases also have a unique index built across one or more user-visible columns that prevents rows with duplicate keys to be entered. The article title is a unique index in Wikipedia. I don't think a technical solution is required here. The solution is already available and used in every other precise class of articles in Wikipedia: only dab when necessary. Why should U.S. cities be any different? --Serge 17:35, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
(scratching head) I'm a web-designer, Serge, but I don't quite see what you mean ("user-visible" - you mean "a selection of data from each entry"?) - nor what that has to do with "only dab when neccessary". We're not talking about details or U.S. cities here, we're talking about an international method. THEPROMENADER 17:55, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
By "user visible" I mean data values that are meaningful and visible to the user, as opposed to a hidden internal sequence number, for example. I know we're talking about an international convention, but the main stumbling block to that is the position that U.S. cities should be treated differently. I'm asking why? --Serge 18:06, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Understood then, but please stop asking your "why is the U.S. different" question in this thread - it is misplaced. We're trying the technical possibilities of one method for all here. THEPROMENADER 18:33, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Okay. Well, the Gazeeter example illustrates that one international convention is possible. Whether it's a desirable approach is another matter. Personally, I think how one dabs should depend on the other uses of the name in question, so there is no one particular one-size-fits-all dabbed format for any or all of city names. When you see a dabbed article title in Wikipedia, how it's dabbed should give you a hint about why it's dabbed. Cork (city), for example, tells you that the conflicting uses of Cork are not cities. --Serge 18:49, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
But the reason that dab was chosen is discussed on the talk page. It is in part that Cork, much like Luton, has no larger county of which it is part. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:14, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Is it an "effective" choice would be a proper question - desire is largely a question of taste. Even your isolated Cork example would work if Country was used as a placename locator/disambiguator - as clearly shown in the Gazetteer website. THEPROMENADER 06:50, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Close to consensus

Just a suggestion, for now can we ignore the arguments to completely get rid of this convention or not? It appears that we are close to reaching a consensus on which cities in the US convention may/should reside at [[City]] and rehashing whether or not this convention should be chucked is getting in the way of that consensus. With that in mind, the only issues that I see remaining are whether or not the wording should say "may" or "should" and whether or not using the AP Stylebook is too US centric.--Bobblehead (rants) 15:54, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't see the point, as long as Serge says he will continue to request, lobby for, and personally move cities to their unqualified name, regardless of what these guidelines say. I'm still against the convention unless the guideline makes it clear that this is an exception to the general rule, and the general rule still applies unless this or some other specific exception applies. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 16:13, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Bobblehead - okay. Arthur - that's not what I said. --Serge 16:31, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
For what it is worth, I am all for using the AP list, I find Arthur's caveat acceptable, and I find Serge's use of the word "should" as acceptable. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 16:36, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Why would it matter if the AP list is too U.S.-centric for a U.S. convention? Skeezix1000 17:51, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Because we want a convention that makes things easy for all users of this Wiki, including non-Americans? What seems obvious and useful to us Americans may not be so obvious if you're a Minangkabau schoolchild or a Mongolian bureaucrat; but this Wiki is for them too, if they read English.--Orange Mike 18:47, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Of course, that's obvious. That's not what I was getting at. If the potentially emerging consensus is to have significant U.S. cities at [[City]], then of course any third party list (such as AP) of significant U.S. cities would likely be U.S.-centric. Just as any determination of significant Mongolian cities would likely be Mongolian-centric.Skeezix1000 12:37, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
There is a Tagalog Wikipedia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:37, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

More use of dab page

One of the common issues on settlements being located at the primary topic name is, do they belong there? This is especially true if there are other settlements that also share that name. This comes up rather often on move requests.

The common objections to moving include:

  1. the existing settlement is already at the name so why move it
  2. the existing settlement is the oldest
  3. the existing settlement is the one that all of the others derive their names from
  4. the editors of the existing article don't believe it should be moved
  5. the links to the existing article are mostly for the article currently at this name

What does not get much play is, which article is the primary use. Frequently there may not be one, especially if the primary name has uses other then settlements. Item 4 in the list is the built in bias from the way the requested rename process works. Item 5 is simply an artifact from editors have to clean up links for the other articles that readers and editors expected to find at this name. Item 1 may or may not justify no change. As for items 2 and 3, they may or may not indicate support for a primary topic.

I'd like to see the guideline address this in more detail and give support for using a dab page at the primary name when there are reasonable alternatives for the primary name. I guess I'm thinking that when there are valid points made for moving the current article, locating a dab at the primary name space should be encouraged in the guideline. The US naming convention avoids many of these naming conflicts, but it does not prevent readers from being linked to the wrong article. Vegaswikian 19:04, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I would support any wording that clarified the primacy of primary use in determining which if any of several different uses of a given name should be at the name. Note that this issue is not specific to settlements. --Serge 19:29, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Serge's point that this issue is in no way limited to settlements is a valid one. At least from my point of view, the reason why I proposed including a link to WP:DAB#Primary topic is because determining the primary use for any given topic is a subject that goes beyond the scope of this specific naming convention. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 20:27, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Neighborhood/Community distinction?

Sorry if I missed it, but there seems to be an assumption by some that neighborhoods and communities can be clearly distinguished and treated differently. How so? I mean, is La Jolla, a community/neighborhood of San Diego, a neighborhood, or a community? And what about La Jolla Shores, which is a community/neighborhood of La Jolla? I think the distinction is artificial at best. Once again I have to ask: why not use the same tried and true rules for naming neighborhoods and communities that are used to name every other article in Wikipedia? If there are no dab issues, just use the name. If there are, then dab with parenthesis, depending on the situation. --Serge 21:34, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

As you know, not everyone shares your conviction that "Placename, Statename" is a case of disambiguation. So please don't act as if it's generally agreed that it is. AJD 21:55, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, but even among the comma convention supporters, most seem to realize that "Placename, Statename" is disambiguation and they openly support this "predisambiguation" for a variety of reasons. Scott Davis is perhaps the most eloquent among them. That there is some minority that stubbornly insists that it is not disambiguation is hardly relevant. Besides, whether Chicago, Illinois, for example, is an alternative name for Chicago is moot - since clearly the most common name used to refer to that city is simply Chicago. --Serge 00:25, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't know how you can say that "most" agree that "city, state" is pre-disambiguation. I don't think you should be accusing other editors of stubbornness either. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 00:42, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Ok, let me explain this again. For the sake of understanding, we are using the term "neighborhood" to describe the parts of a city that have a special identity (examples: Upper West Side in New York City, West End in London, Universal City in Los Angeles, Dilworth in Charlotte, Financial District in Boston). There is no doubt these places are a part of the city they are found within. Neighborhoods are usually merged into the city articles, but sometimes there is so much info that seperate articles are created. This is different from communities (a word that has many definitions, but for sake of argument is defined as places seperate or partially seperate from another municipality), which are seperate other places entirely. A community can be any spot on the map that is seperate from any other, meaning they can be unincorporated areas, CDPs, boroughs, villages, towns, cities, consolidated-city counties, whatever it may be (examples: Cullowhee, Welcome, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, or even Chicago, Illinois). Since there is a clear distintion between the two, a seperate convention is needed for neighborhoods. Communities are NOT being argued in the lower sections of this talk page with "neigborhood" in the name. The convention for those currently is "City, State" in the US. Hopefully this clears it up for everyone. --Triadian 01:21, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

New proposal

Based on recent discussion, I would propose that the line beginning Cities that have deviated ... in the United States subsection of WP:NC:CITY be replaced by the following:

  • A city listed in the AP Stylebook as not requiring the state modifier (provide a list or link to a list) and is otherwise the primary meaning of its name according to WP:DAB#Primary topic is not required to follow the comma convention and may be titled simply [[City]].

I believe this comes fairly close to addressing the concerns brought up, at the very least for cities in the US. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 21:32, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I would support that, but would also urge consideration of slightly stronger wording. What many of the comma-convention proponents seem to want to avoid is ambiguity. As such, I suspect they would favor wording that was more clear about whether a given city should be at CityName or Cityname, Statename. Here is wording that addresses that (just changing "may" to "should"):
  • A city listed in the AP Stylebook as not requiring the state modifier (provide a list or link to a list) and is otherwise the primary meaning of its name according to WP:DAB#Primary topic is not required to follow the comma convention and should be titled simply [[City]].
--Serge 21:38, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmm.. I like the use of "may" myself as "should" makes it seem like it is a requirement and not a guideline. I also like the idea of providing examples. How about:

Cities listed in the AP Stylebook as not requiring the state modifier (see this list) may be listed at [[City]] if they are the primary topic for that name (for example Chicago, not Chicago, Illinois, but Phoenix, Arizona not Phoenix).

Just an idea. --Bobblehead (rants) 21:58, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Again, I'm simply trying to address the concern expressed by others for cut and dried guidelines as opposed to ambivalent ones. Also, FYI, there is plenty of precedent for using "should" in guidelines. This, for example, is from the current U.S. city guideline:
A United States city's article, however, should never be titled simply "city, country" (e.g "Detroit, United States").
Anyway, I would support either the "may" or "should" version. --Serge 22:22, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm okay with this wording, as well. I thought of putting in an example but just wasn't sure if it would cause clutter or not. :) ɑʀкʏɑɴ 22:35, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
I could accept this "should" if it were made clear that cities not listed in the AP Stylebook "should not" be listed without the state name, and that the responsibility for verifying (current) links is that of the person moving it to the unqualified name. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 22:53, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Invocation of the AP stylebook seems to reinforce the idea that the English-language Wikipedia is a US-centric project. --Orange Mike 23:40, 14 August 2007 (UTC) (son of a US newsman and a US journalist himself)

Hmmm. Good point, although AP is somewhat international. Does The Times have a stylebook mentioning US cities? — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:50, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
There's also the point that this proposal deals only with the naming conventions for US cities and really has no bearing on other worldwide cities. I'm not sure we're going to find a better baseline to use for US cities than the AP list, but if another can be found I'm more than happy to consider it. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 00:21, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
But we Yanks are by no means the only ones interested in US cities; our viewpoint should not rule. I don't think that argument is very strong.
Fair enough. But is using a US-based publication as a baseline source overly US-centric? I guess that's the question at hand. If people feel like doing so puts too much of a US bent on the guideline then we'll reject the proposal. I really would like to see some kind of resolution here, though, so if the AP guideline is unacceptable I really hope someone can find something better. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 00:35, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Sorry for being the broken record, but if I keep repeating it maybe it will finally sink in. The best baseline to use for US cities is to eliminate this entire project page and simply use the same generic naming conventions for all cities and settlements in the world that are used for all articles in Wikipedia. Second best would be to limit this project page to specify what to do only when dabbing is required (for U.S. cities it would simply say, "When disambiguating is reuired, use Cityname, Statename). Simple. Clean. What's the problem? --Serge 00:40, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Plenty of reasons that have been brought up before. That proposal is not going to get consensus, so bringing it up is a waste of time. I'm telling you this as someone with mostly the same goals as you have in regards to this page. Λυδαcιτγ 01:13, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I'd support Arkyan's proposal if it would stop the broken record of proposals to change the naming convention. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 00:46, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I will stop proposing to change the naming convention if Arkyan's proposal passes (either the "may" or "should" versions, either list). I will not stop if Arthur's caveat (cities not on the list cannot be at Cityname) is included, for I will continue proposing that that caveat be removed for the rest of my life, and will recruit as many other as I can to do the same. --Serge 01:00, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I will support the proposal with or without Arthur's caveat, and I will live with and support the resulting guideline. This guideline should cover all settlement articles, so I think Arthur's caveat is going to have to be included unless we wish to go further towards not predisambiguating. Λυδαcιτγ 01:19, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Why would anyone not want to go further towards not predisambiguating? Seriously, what's the downside (the upside is consistency within Wikipedia, peace and tranquility, etc.). --Serge 01:43, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Downsides include:
    1. as I noticed in Milwaukee, an increase in links pointing to the wrong article
    2. arguments about which city should have the predominant position (my take is that if there is any argument, none should have the predominant position)
    3. move wars,
    4. an increase in the number of moves, as new cities are created, creating new ambiguities
  • If the linking manual of style would suggest that cities be given a fully disambiguated name with a pipe closure in the first reference in an article, such as [[Chicago, Illinois|]], even if the editor believes the city is unique, the first point would be somewhat moot. But I think Serge would oppose that, as well. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:53, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
  • None of these "downsides" are unique to city articles. --Serge 04:06, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I think we might finally be getting somewhere! I prefer "may" to "should", and consider the AP Styleguide to be a reasonable source of significant US cities, which is what is being discussed. I have no problem with the "Arthur caveat" either. --Scott Davis Talk 05:28, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I consider Serge's question of "what's the downside" to be disingenuous, and note that while he is right that Arthur's abbreviated list of downsides is not unique to settlements, that does not reduce their validity as downsides. The first two in particular tend to be more significant for settlements than for many other sorts of articles. --Scott Davis Talk 05:28, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
The first two are no more significant for settlements than they are for people. Yet there is no drive to always predab people (with the exception of royalty where the most common name is often unclear, certainly not as clear as Firstname Lastname for most other people), because there is no need for it. For example, the author of Hotel is currently at Arthur Hailey, but if someone else with that name becomes famous, then the appropriate moves and link updates will be done. It's not that big a deal, for crying out loud. Speaking of Hotel (novel), books by default are at [[Book Title]]. But when there is a conflict, they are dabbed. Yet there is no drive to predab all novels at [[Book Title (novel)]]. Why? Because there is no need. Just as there is no need to predab the 22% of U.S. cities that don't require disambiguation. --Serge 05:41, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
You accept that 78% of U.S. cities require disambiguation. Anywhere on this wiki, 78% would be taken as consensus for an action. So, if that large a number of articles required disambiguation then consensus from actual use would say disambiguate them all. Vegaswikian 05:49, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Are you serious? You are conflating the significance of a given percentage of articles within a given class of articles that require dabbing with the significance of a given percentage of editors sharing an opinion that is sufficient to establish a consensus. This is typical nonsensical "reasoning" used to defend the comma predab convention. I mean, come one. The current consensus is to dab far less than 1% (only 3 cities). One percentage has nothing to do with the other, certainly not in terms of establishing consensus. The current proposal is to move a small number, still probably not even 1%, from Cityname, Statename to Cityname. Yet if that's done, it will be done by consensus. Conflating these percentages is ridiculous. I hope you're joking, except it is not funny. --Serge 06:50, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

There is a clear consensus that some standard be established to allow major world city articles not to predisambiguate. The AP Stylebook has been criticized for being US-centric; however, no better guide has been proposed. I have thus implemented this proposal by replacing "Cities that have deviated from canonical form include New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia." with the following:

A city in the following list (of cities not required by the AP Stylebook to be suffixed by a state modifier) is not required to follow the comma convention and, when otherwise the primary meaning of its name according to Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary topic, may be titled simply [[City]]. The cities are: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York City, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington.

I also removed the link to this discussion page, as further changes will probably be minor. I used "may" instead of "should" because the first is a lesser change. Perhaps we should wait to see how the change is received by the editors of the various city articles before considering mandating a change to city alone. Λυδαcιτγ 05:27, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

We should probably do a massive move request for the 27 articles with "City" as a redirect. Just so no one gets accused of making a controversial move without discussion. --Bobblehead (rants) 06:14, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Note that I've gone ahead and removed the example from the guideline. It really serves little purpose if we're already removing cities from the list that do not qualify due to ambiguity issues. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 15:44, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
I also agree that a move request would be prudent. Unilaterally moving these articles could prove contentious. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 15:46, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
If we go this way, should the guideline be written to encourage that all US cites be linked as [[city, state]], even if they are on the list, to avoid surprises for readers? Vegaswikian 18:44, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
I think the logic behind the change was that readers will know the cities without being told the state names, and perhaps be surprised to see the state names included as part of the link. Λυδαcιτγ 00:37, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Arthur added "No other city should be listed at City."[1]. I don't think there was consensus for that. But if there was, then by the same loose standard there was also consensus to say should instead of may here:

Cities listed in the AP Stylebook as not requiring the state modifier may be listed ...

--Serge 22:25, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

That would change the nature of the guideline. If we want to re-open the proposal to review that variation then I'd suggest we'd need a survey to decide what consensus there is for it. I think we should see how the revision works before weakening it. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:34, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
What would change the nature of and/or weaken the guideline? Removing the "No other city should be listed..." line that Arthur just added[2], for which there is no clear consensus, or changing the "may" to "should" for which the clarity for consensus is just as unclear? Both were suggested earlier and there seem to be some agreement with both, though some disagreement (at least from me) regarding the first. --Serge 22:59, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
If it's not clear what the consensus included then we should go back to where we started and hold a survey to clarify it. However since there were subtantial compromises involved the end consensus may not be what we have now. I don't see anyone else complaining, so I think that indicates there's a practical consensus for the currect version. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 00:14, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Let's do the move request and see whether the moves are all successful. If so, should will be appropriate; otherwise may should remain.
Arthur's change is just a clarification. Without it, the sentence "The canonical form for cities in the United States is City, State (the "comma convention")" and the presence of one defined exemption imply that No other city should be listed at City anyway. Λυδαcιτγ 00:33, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Prep work for the move request

I put this together for when we're ready to create the move request per the above discussions. This assumes the actual request will be posted on this page under the heading of "Move request".

--Serge 00:02, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

The moves should be decided on city by city, on the city talk pages. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 00:09, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Actually, if there is formal consensus here and the guideline is changed, then these would be listed as uncontested at WP:RM and they can be moved. If someone wants to contest them they can do so by moving to contested or starting a discussion on the article talk page after moving from uncontested to a full move discussion. Vegaswikian 00:17, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm with Vegaswikian, Bobblehead, Arkyan, etc. What you're suggesting, Will, sounds like a big mess. --Serge 00:19, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, at the very least of the proposed moves should be posted to each city talk page. Naming convenions are just guidelines, as Serge has reminded us so often. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 00:34, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Absolutely. There is a template for that. I'll help putting them out there. --Serge 02:43, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

No, these should not be uncontested. To say nothing of the regular editors of the articles, who should not be surprised, this discussion is less than a dozen people. There were forty in the last big poll, some of them vehemently opposed to "disambiguate most". If there's consensus for it now, fine; but we have to demonstrate that. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:16, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

The proposed moves above will be listed at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions#Requested moves. A notice directing editors to that centralized discussion will be placed on the talk pages of each of the articles, as well as at Wikipedia:Requested_moves#Other_proposals. Sound OK? Λυδαcιτγ 04:21, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

May I remind everyone there is already some consensus on forming a guideline to go along with these moves. We should not return to discussing the move of these articles without the guideline to go along with it. It already failed many, many times and I am willing to bet it will fail again. Okiefromokla•talk 20:03, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Neighborhoods in the US

Is there a specific convention in place for these? I did not see it in the guideline. Vegaswikian 23:22, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we have a convention in the project page, nor is it clear what consensus is. Neighborhood, City, State and Neighborhood (City, State) seem to predominate with occasional Neighborhood (State) and Neighborhood (City) (if City really does redirect to City, State). There seems to be a mild consensus that Neighborhood, State is unacceptable. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:28, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Not to mention those of us who believe [[Neighborhood]] is mandated by Wikipedia conventions when there are no known conflicts. --Serge 23:30, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I wasn't going to mention that because it's clearly not mandated, although some believe it in good faith. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:46, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
So current usage would support Neighborhood, City, State or Neighborhood (City, State) with no identified preference. Vegaswikian 23:59, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I believe so. It may depend on the state, or whether the neighborhood is a census-recognized community. I don't have a bot to gather the information, though, so I could be wrong. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 00:04, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
A random sampling through Category:Neighborhoods_in_the_United_States seems to indicate that Neighborhood, City, State is almost the exclusive location for neighborhoods. --Bobblehead (rants) 00:11, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
{edit conflict} And another issue. What happens if this is not in a city? Or if only a portion is in a city? Summerlin, Nevada based on this discussion appears to need moving. Part is in the City of Las Vegas and another part is in a CDP. Is this one of those cases with the common name of Summerlin should be used for clarity (I can see Serge shaking his head). Vegaswikian 00:13, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Are neighborhoods used by the postal service? How does mail to someone who lives in Summerlin get addressed? In my mind, neighborhoods in the US roughly correspond to suburbs in Australia. Articles about them are named suburbname, state, the same way mail is addressed (but mail uses two lines instead of a comma). The principle of least surprise would suggest using a similar form to postal addressing, if possible. --Scott Davis Talk 11:41, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
In the U.S., as far as I know, a neighborhood that is a subdivision of an incorporated city never has a separate postal place name. In other words, such neighborhoods are not commonly known as "neighborhood, state". --Polaron | Talk 14:30, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Never? Not true. See 92037, 92038 which is La Jolla, a neighborhood of San Diego. The USPS won't even deliver mail to PO Boxes in 92038 that are addressed San Diego, CA instead of La Jolla, CA. --Serge 19:46, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
It's not even common to use neighborhoods for mail for unincorporated areas. From what I've seen, neighborhoods in unincorporated areas just use the name of the nearest city. By and large, the common name for neighborhoods is just the name of the neighborhood and using the comma convention would be a neologism. The only exception to this is when the US Census sets up a CDP, like Skokomish, Washington.--Bobblehead (rants) 14:52, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
"A neighborhood that is a subdivision of an incorporated city never has a separate postal place name"?? My impression was that this actually happens very often. Consider: Long Island City NY 11101; Jamaica NY 11405; Allston MA 02134; Hyde Park MA 02136; Prides Crossing MA 01965; Hyannis MA 02601. These are all neighborhoods within incorporated cities where the preferred postal name is the neighborhood name, not the city name. AJD 16:38, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I was proven wrong just minutes after I made the comment when someone proposed merging Mead, Washington into a neighborhood article I monitor. Go me. ;)--Bobblehead (rants) 16:51, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Not withstanding former towns/villages that were added into larger municipalities :) My point is these situations are more the exception rather than the rule. I'm sure I can find at least one counter example for every example of such a situation. --Polaron | Talk 16:58, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Mail is routed through the Summerlin post office which use Las Vegas as the location but the zip codes cover the Summerlin area. Many of the delivery routes are rural routes which I believe means that they are contracted out. Spring Valley is an unincorporated town that gets service from the Rainbow postal facility which also uses Las Vegas as the location. This supports the point someone else made about the postal service using the name of the nearby city. In Clark County, Nevada the assessor tax role shows you the community (neighborhood} name. Vegaswikian 17:50, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

(outdent)Well, even if we acknowledge that some neighborhoods are known as "Neighborhood, State", I think it is safe to say that no neighborhood is commonly referred to as "Neighborhood, City, State". Perhaps we could make it really complicated and go with the USPS convention. If the neighborhood returns as an acceptable option here [3], then "Neighborhood, State" is okay, but if you get nothing or "[Neighborhood] is not acceptable, use [City]" then "Neighborhood (City, State)" or "Neighborhood (City)" is the article name?--Bobblehead (rants) 17:20, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

If anyone wants to see how confusing this can be, look at Sun City a dab page. This is a mix of cities and communities. I believe that most are dabbed as if they are US cities, and I have no idea why Frisco Lakes and Hill Country Retreat are listed. Vegaswikian 19:46, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
I have a feeling you meant Sun City :) ɑʀкʏɑɴ 19:51, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Bobblehead's suggestion is probably a good way to go about this issue. That at least gets rid of the double-comma convention :) --Polaron | Talk 19:59, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Sounds fine to me so long as it is understood this only applies to neighborhoods within an incorporated city - there are a number of unincorporated towns that return "unacceptable" on the USPS site as mail is routed through a post office in a nearby town. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 20:22, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
And there are parts of the US where every municipality is incorporated. Last I followed these matters, the post office preferred municipalities as post office names, but used their own boundaries for them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:50, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
As far as I know, the term "municipality" is synonymous with "incorporated city/town". I was more referring to cases where one rural town might have its mail routed through a neighboring rural town, but remains a seperate town and not a neighborhood. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 21:12, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Then make that "Every square foot of land belongs to an incorporated town."Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:20, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Ahh, like in New England! That's quite true then. I suppose in cases like that it becomes nigh impossible to lay out the guideline and have to leave it up to the discretion of the editors involved to determine whether the place they're writing about is to be considered a neighborhood of the incorporated town or otherwise .. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 21:26, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
The guidelines really vary by state. Maybe the simple answer is if the state has defined the type of community, be it township, village, incorporated, unincorporated or it is a CDP the article gets named as a city. Don't know how this would affect a military base. I think most of them are CDPs and may even have a unique post office address.

Ok, I think we've gone off on a tangent here. I believe the intent of this discussion was for neighborhoods of cities, not for communities incorporated or unincorporated or CDPs... all of those I believe use the Postal comma disambig if needed at all. Now, given, if there's no need to disambiguate, I don't think we should. But when we need to, it seems we have four main ways to disambig across the United States. The most popular is the double comma method (i.e. "Neighborhood, City, State" ). This can lead to long titles, but it pinpoints the location of the neighborhood in the title, heavily disgtinguishes from another neighborhood of the same name, and the Pipe Trick works with it. The second most popular method seems to be the city state in parentheses method (i.e. "Neighborhood (City, State)" ) where the city and state are in parentheses, seperated by a comma. This is basically the same as the last method, only using parentheses instead of another comma. Another method is just having the city name in parentheses, which I'll call the city in parentheses method (i.e. "Neighborhood (City)" ). This uses less disambiguation, but honestly, what are the odds of two neighborhoods of the same name found in two cities (of any consequence to even have neighborhood articles) of the same name to prevent this method from working? It's shorter and easier to type, but is not as widely used right now. The fourth method just disambiguates by what the type of place: the the word neighborhood in parentheses method (i.e. "Westside (neighborhood)" ). If there's ever a conflict with two neighborhoods of the same name, the city name is added in the parentheses with no comma: (i.e. "Westside (Boston neighborhood)" ). The pipe trick works for them all. These seem to be our choices. Shall we work on a concensus here for uniformity and organization sake? --Triadian 06:33, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

The problem is phrasing. We are using city in the Californian sense of "incorporated municipality"; therefore, if we say "neighborhood in a city" we include neighborhoods within small rural towns in Connecticut or townships in New Jersey. I don't think this is what Triadan means; I presume he is thinking of large cities like New York and Newark, New Jersey, both of which have West Sides, differently disambiguated. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:27, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
In such states, we in fact use "Neighborhood, State", like Lincroft, New Jersey; because Lincroft is a CDP; so this is a fifth possibility. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:30, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I think phrasing is apparently a problem here. When I say neighborhood, I'm referring to a section of a city (or town if the case may be). If it's outside of a city, or partially outside of a city, then it is in my terms a community (and in North Carolina, an unicorporated community) and thus uses the "Community, State" method (or has in any case in my state). For example, Steele Creek, North Carolina, was partially annexed by the city of Charlotte, so since it is not entirely a "neighborhood" yet, we at WP:CLT decided to treat it as another unincorporated community (or town or city or village or township for that matter). Where I think we need a concensus is with neighborhoods like Elizabeth (neighborhood) and Little Italy, Baltimore and Monta Vista, Cupertino, California and Gateway (neighborhood), Washington, D.C.. --Triadian 19:54, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Lincroft is a (reasonably well defined) section of suburbia within a largely suburban incorporated municipality. It is called a neighborhood; what else does one call it? (It also happens to be a CDP, which is why we have an article on it). Let's have a proposal on neighborhoods in urban areas. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:20, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Communities are named as cities

I think that the consensus seems to be saying that communities are not to be considered neighborhoods for naming purposes and that they will be named as if they were a city. Communities are loosely defined as areas that have a commonly used name and are not located solely within a city or a CDP. City is defined to include formal definitions for municipalities as defined by each state or a CDP. We may need to refine this definition. Vegaswikian 00:35, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

  • It does need a little refinement anyway - there are some very large CDPs in some states that are geographically capable of containing what the locals may well consider separate, unincorporated towns and not a neighborhood of the containing CDP. I don't have any examples on me, so I may be making a mountain out of a molehill - but that was the reason I stated previously that what is considered a "neighborhood" should probably be wholly contained within an incorporated city to be considered "neighborhood" and not "town". ɑʀкʏɑɴ 00:47, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm in 100% agreement with Vegaswikian on that. As for communities within CDP's... if such a thing exists, they should be rare and if they have their own identity, then the Census Bureau has failed them. Such places should be included in the CDP article unless its big enough for them to declare independence and form their own "Community, State" article. An example of a CDP that may have neighborhoods within could be Arlington, Virginia, with the Pentagon City, Virginia neighborhood. This is an odd case though and should be dealt with as such. --Triadian 01:38, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
This is a bit of a misunderstanding of CDPs -- they are, almost by definition, artificial entities created to present a statistical data summary for an area that would otherwise not have any summary. Most CDPs are individual communities. However, there are quite a lot of exceptions. Some CDPs are an amalgamation of two or more nearby communities. Sometimes a CDP represents the rump or remainder of a community left behind after a portion has either incorporated or been annexed. Sometimes a CDP corresponds to an entire minor civil division (which in the Census Bureau's way of looking at things are not incorporated municipalities, even though the may actually be so according to state law). So, basically, I wouldn't try to formulate a naming convention for communities based around CDPs -- they pretty much need to be handled on a case by case basis.
But that aside, back to the original topic of this section, I'd much prefer to see neighborhoods within cities use a parenthetical disambiguation -- whether that includes the city only or city and state doesn't matter too much to me. Communities that have an identity apart from any larger administrative subdivision can have a place, state name. older ≠ wiser 02:21, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Ok, that's good, so that would throw out the double comma method, which I'm not too fond of myself. Other thoughts? --Triadian 04:29, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

What are people from other countries going to make of your rather localised method? THEPROMENADER 06:02, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

I expect they might read the article and come to learn something, which is more the actual point of an encyclopedia (as opposed to arguing about naming every article with an artificial consistency). older ≠ wiser 11:20, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
They have to find the article before they read it - the above is problematic in that respect. "Articficial consistency" is a phrase that sounds negative but doesn't really mean a thing. References should be consistant - as a matter of course. THEPROMENADER 14:21, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
I am profoundly unconvinced by any argument that minor variations in the title pose any serious impediment to anyone finding an article. Yes, I intended "artificial consistency" to sound negative. Arguing about hypothetical impediments posed by what some perceive to be inconsistencies in the names of articles does not, in my opinion, contribute significantly to improving the quality of the encyclopedia. Variations in article titles can and should be covered by redirects to assist people with finding articles. older ≠ wiser 17:46, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
But there is nothing negative about consistency. Although the term "artificial consistency" paints consistency in a negative light, it neglects to clearly define what that negative aspect is... "artificial"? "Natural" is only natural to those already used to the method - yourselves. Adding redirects is an unneccessary step that would not be needed were the article title clear. What many of you are doing here is imposing the comfort of your own local linguistic habits as a standard for the places you yourselves live in, but this is both narrow-minded and backwards. The fact that you need to "correct" your method's deviation from the rest of the wikipedia standard (parenthesis) through extra "corrections", and trying to justify the same through "interpretations" of normally non-sequitur Wiki policies, does not denote a line of reasoning with Wikipedia in mind - you are placing the method first, Wikipedia second. THEPROMENADER 18:14, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
But having articles at titles that are not common names, simply for the sake of some simplistic desire for consistency is bad. Redirects are not an unnecessary step, but rather are precisely how such matters should be handled. What you might see as a "clear" article title, might be confusing to others. Despite your repeated and false proclamations to the contrary, there is nothing whatsoever deviant about the comma convention nor is the parentheses the only accepted standard method of disambiguation. I'm not sure what the rest of your point was -- I don't see any such thing as what you describe. What I see is people (the ones who contribute to and edit Wikipedia articles) using conventions familiar to them as appropriate for the article subject. That is Wikipedia first -- not arguing about the perceived lack of an consistency in names. older ≠ wiser 18:27, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
You see, this is exactly what I mean. (This interpretation of) "Common name" (little to do with the "city, state" common method that we speak of here) is only "common" to the person either from that area or familiar with that jargon. Wikipedians contributing using conventions familiar to themselves is not what one can call putting the reader first. THEPROMENADER 19:30, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
And please do tell what "others" would find "confusing" about City (Country, stateifneeded). THEPROMENADER 22:23, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
First, why do you distinguish between reader and editor? On Wikipedia, anyone can be either. Second, if a reader who is unfamiliar with a local convention happens to learn something about the local convention, is that such a bad thing? I'm serious -- a huge part of what makes Wikipedia so popular is the element of discovery. I'm constantly surprised by the extraordinary variety of knowledge available here. older ≠ wiser 20:56, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Was that a serious question? Contributors write for readers - not for themselves - and one writing an article knows exactly where it is. Is Wikipedia not a reference - for readers?
So you want to "educate" those visitors to your local customs? What you're doing rather is obliging readers to adopt them as a tool for finding/understanding Wikipida placename articles - but not all of them - after of course they go through the extra steps (combing search results for (cityname) because they don't know/didn't use "state"; reading disambig pages) to find what they are looking for.
Little, if not nothing, in your replies really answered any of my points; substanceless expressions of doubt and misgivings can in no way disqualify these. Also, searching for "positive" reasons to justify an already-chosen method (whose existence has more to do with comfort than utility) is not an answer to the same! THEPROMENADER 22:23, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
I seem to recall Promenader also declaring that his chosen method would be "educational". I agree, as it happens, that we should not surprise our readers to educate them; but that's why we should use Lincroft, New Jersey: the local dialect of English does (and when we must choose between dialects, we do and should choose the local one). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:21, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
More misinterpretation of "common name", and I never meant "educational" in the sense of anything in the exchange above - "clear", "complete", "recognisable" and "findable" are all I'm aiming for with the the method that so far passes the most tests. A bit of objectivity, please. THEPROMENADER 23:35, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
To ThePromenader, yes that was a serious question. What hypothetical readers do you write for? Of course contributors should write for readers. Your proposition would in effect force everyone to use an artificial unconventional convention. To me, that is counter-productive in the extreme. Your hypothetical reader that is unable to find an article is nothing more than a chimera of your rhetoric. The reason nothing in my replies answer any of your points is that in my opinion you have no valid points. older ≠ wiser 01:40, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
International readers - those unfamiliar with the provinces/states/regions of other countries. Again, the only readers who would find a low-level-geography-with-comma disambiguation "conventional" are those already familiar with the local geography of the country they are searching in, and using a local manner of speech for an article naming method asks that the reader also be familiar with the same - there is nothing at all "invalid" in this very simple point. It is in fact the contributors imposing this "local method" they are most comfortable with who are "forcing" others unfamiliar with it to learn and adapt to it. If I (living in France) were to look for the U.S. Lake Placid without knowing what state it is in, my keywords would not be "city" and "state": in what way is this point "hypothetical" or "invalid"? THEPROMENADER 07:23, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, and the supposed impediment to finding articles that you see is precisely the function of redirects. There should be no necessity for a reader to know local conventions to be able find an article and to my knowledge, there has not been any credible evidence that there is any actual impediment. Why should we force everyone to use an unconventional convention? Well, if your hypothetically clueless reader looking for "Lake Placid" happened to type exactly that into the search box and clicks Go -- they would get to a disambiguation page. If they are so clueless as to be unable to parse a disambiguation page -- then I don't think any naming schema alone would be sufficient to help them find their way. older ≠ wiser 11:50, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

There is nothing hypothetical in anything I wrote. Especially where reference works are concerned, one cannot assume a reader's foreknowledge of the subject he is looking for (which in itself is an idea that is a contradiction in itself) - that, if anything, is hypothetical. Assuming that the same reader will use "go" instead of searching adds yet another variable and a layer of hypothesis and ignores even the option (and argument thereof above) that one will use the search function. Again, "city, state" is only conventional to those who know what/where "state" is and already accustomed to that method.

I can't see how one can imagine that I am "imposing" anything on anyone - the guidelines are there for contributors, and these change only through reason (in most cases) and consensus. If I read the history of the "city, state" convention correctly, it would seem that it was a decision made by a narrow consensus of only a few and applied to thousands of articles through the help of a bot - this is "imposing" if anything. Reading (settlement) convention page, I can't but note the vehemence in the line "A United States city's article, however, should never be titled simply "city, country"": if this practice were not an already often used method for this publication, there would be no need to adopt this sort of tone.

What you have done here is create a convention comfortable for contributors themselves - yourselves - not readers. You have taken your own way of talking familiar to those familiar to you and imposed it here, in spite of the fact that this goes against every Wikipedia policy concerning article names and disambiguation created before it (nary a mention of "comma" in the WP:NAME policy page - parenthesis only). We are not talking about a method of disambiguation that is different from anything existing - we are talking about one that has been in use locally in the U.S. since decades already, and this fact speaks loads for itself - and this fact, in fact, is the method's only solid defence in argument. Unfortunately, that same line of reasoning shows a disregard for readers from other English-speaking countries; you don't have to think about these readers, but denying that it is even possible to do so, or refusing to even consider the question, is quite another matter.

What exactly is wrong with the parenthetical disambiguation in use for the rest of Wikipedia? What is there not to understand in "City (Country, stateifneeded)"? None are even willing to consider a practice that would not only make a placename instantly identifiable for all, but would be a method already in use for all other Wiki subjects? On that note: Wikipedia was more consistent before the "city, state" method was introduced here. THEPROMENADER 13:07, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Honestly, just about everything that I've seen you write here has been purely hypothetical. Further, at this point I'm unable to follow your convoluted reasoning to even understand what points you might be trying to make. From what I can tell, your proposition will exchange a completely artificial convention that is common to no one for a convention that corresponds (to a large degree at least) to actual usage. I do not see any benefit whatsoever. older ≠ wiser 14:18, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you are referring to with regards to "Wikipedia was more consistent before the "city, state" method was introduced here." Either you are being disingenuous or you are simply uninformed -- the comma convention has been in use in Wikipedia since the earliest days. It may not have been articulated as a formally stated convention, but there is abundant evidence that articles were named city, state from very early on. older ≠ wiser 14:35, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Convoluted? Not understanding would be convenient in this sort of situation, I suppose, but if you're confused, just read each sentence individually; each is a point in itself. Searchability, international recognition, consistency - these are not opinions or bias (as you would seem to suggest): they are points indispensable for any serious online reference. THEPROMENADER 15:22, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
You seem to be laboring under the illusion that the comma convention actually poses a significant problem for users finding articles -- I disagree and have yet to see anything other than the hypothetical chimeras of your rhetoric as evidence to the contrary. Lacking an actual problem, your solution is impractical and fundamentally misguided. older ≠ wiser 15:30, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Your declaring something to be something does not make it so. Especially when you refuse categorically to even consider that something. Searchability, recognition (locale) and consistency are anything but "hypothetical chimeras" as far as references are concerned, so hold the defamatory adjectives please. You have yet to show how City (Country, stateifneeded) would be "confusing" or "misguided". THEPROMENADER 15:45, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
By the very same token, your declaring that that something is something does not make it so. Your repeated declarations regarding searchability, recognition, and consistency, without presenting any evidence other than your hypothetical chimeras does not mean that your declarations are valid. You have yet to show how a massive change to naming conventions would produce any tangible benefits. older ≠ wiser 15:54, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
To try to turn my critique of your (lack of) argument back on my own is a rather non sequitur thing to do - the fact that "city, state" exists as a local custom is the very reason for its existence here needs no 'declaration' for it to be true - it is a simple fact that speaks for itself. Since you declare them to be "hypothetical chimeras" (and that repeated only seemingly intelligent but baseless name-calling is getting quite annoying, by the way), you would say that searchability, topic recognition and consistency are not useful to a reference? THEPROMENADER 16:04, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
While it might seem to you that your statements are self-evident, I assure you that that is not in fact the case. My understanding of your argument, such as it is, is that you are fundamentally mistaken. older ≠ wiser 16:44, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
LOL - you repeatedly insist that I am "mistaken", but to date have never been able to begin to suggest how. In what way are consistency, indentifiability and searchability bad things, and how is "City (Country, Stateifneeded)" "confusing"? THEPROMENADER 19:02, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I have never claimed that consistency, indentifiability and searchability are bad things -- only that you have not clearly shown that your proposition would produce any demonstrable benefits in these regards. older ≠ wiser 19:17, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, those three things are embodied in my proposition, and if even you cannot show that they "bad" things, and I can clearly demostrate how they can be implemented, and for a real and practicable end to boot, then they are a demonstrable improvement over the existing local "me the contributor" system. If you don't want to think outside of your little box, then be pleased that those of your ilk are most militant in present discussion and will most likely always be the majority there. Cheers. THEPROMENADER 21:47, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, see, that's just it -- you have already convinced yourself of the supposed self-evident merits of your proposal. I don't see any merit in substituting your brand new artificially constructed "little box" for the expansive, flexible, and adaptive existing system that at least comes closer to approximating actual usage. I mean, I don't even understand why you are talking about the goodness or badness of "consistency, indentifiability and searchability" -- as far as I'm concerned you have not clearly demonstrated that your proposition is superior to the existing system with regards to these items. older ≠ wiser 21:57, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
You haven't even considered the question. Insofar all you've done is question the credibility of he who is presenting a proposition without even touching on the issue of the presentation itself - vague unfounded negative assertations aside. "Actual usage" - for who, yourself? You've built your own little box, not mine. THEPROMENADER 22:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
What makes you so sure that I haven't considered the question and rejected it? Who's actual usage? How about the actual usage in countless English language documents? And yes, I do prefer the expansiveness, flexibility and adaptability of the current system to the artificiality your brand new little box. older ≠ wiser 22:11, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I've asked the same question several times over, to no answer: In what way are consistency, indentifiability and searchability bad things, and how is "City (Country, Stateifneeded)" "confusing"? A few of you have imposed your own method of comfort on your own little corner of Wikipedia: in defense of this method, please save the disservice of pretending to reason for its service to all, because reason is not at all the reason for its presence here. Cheers. THEPROMENADER 22:32, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

It has been proposed that this argument be moved to User talk:ThePromenader and User talk:Bkonrad, because there is no productive discussion on the topic at hand.
When any useful opinions have been formulated, return to this section for evaluation by other editors. --Triadian 22:17, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

<----Side discussions aside, I think there is a consensus that communities, however defined, are to follow the same naming convention as cities. If this is correct, then this point is clarified. That leaves the naming convention for neighborhoods still under discussion. Vegaswikian 20:35, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal on Neighborhoods

Again, I think we've gotten off the subject and I think it's time I stated my opinion. I was waiting on others to chime in, but the discussion needs to be directed. Keep in mind the purpose for all of this is to establish a guideline, not a mandatory prison sentence for articles. For neighborhoods (defined as areas within a city with a seperate identity) I propose we use the convention "Neighborhoodname" if no disambiguation is needed. This would make the Plaza-Midwood article stay at its current name, as would Harlem. This is using the 'common name' guideline. If disambigutaion is needed, I propose we use the convention "Neighborhoodname (Cityname)", and only if further dab is needed the convention "Neighborhoodname (Cityname, Statename)", where Statename can be subsituted for Countryname if needed. For areas that have partial identity outside the city's jurisdictional boundaries, those articles should be treated as if they were seperate communities and the details can be discussed in the article proper. As such, articles like that shall use the common "Communityname, StateOrCountryname" convention. I believe this proposal encompasses the gist of what's been argued here and I believe offers a worldwide approach to the situation. Agree? Disagree? Comments? --Triadian 21:24, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm OK with this. I've never liked the three-level comma format ("Neighborhood, City, State"). Unlike "Community, State", such a three-level format is not common. I wouldn't object to leaving some discretion for preemptively naming relatively unnotable neighborhoods in minor cities as "Neighborhood (City)" -- at the least, the guideline could suggest making redirects from the disambiguated forms. older ≠ wiser 21:45, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree with that. If in doubt, dab it anyway. As for redirects, it's almost a given that make them for colloquial terms (if possible) so I'm in agreement with that as well. --Triadian 21:51, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Agree that state should not be required unless needed to disambiguate. I agree in leaving some discretion rather than imposing an absolute format for all neighborhoods-- where a common name is sufficent with no confusion, that should be prefered to some Wikipedia created construct not in common use. I lean against the parenthesis as probably unnecessary in many cases, especially where there is existing use of the construct "Neighborhood, City" rather than requiring "Neighborhood (City)" --again, what people actually write should be prefered to an artificial form with no significant history outside of Wikipedia. -- Infrogmation 00:56, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
But how common a form is "Neighborhood, City"? It strikes me as being an odd formulation. I mean, it is not like that is even a postal code as it is with Place, State. And it seems to me that in writing, if context was needed, it would be more natural to spell it out along the lines of "Placename" is a neighborhood in the city of "Cityname". Or John Doe lives in the "Placename" area of "Cityname". older ≠ wiser 02:00, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I find it odd as well. It seems to be a neologism to me, taking a play out of the playbook of "City, State", a method that was based on the postal system. I know of no extraInternet source where "Neighborhood, City" is used. Given, it is a method already in place for some cities, but as are the others. FYI, I've placed some rename suggestion tags on many US city neighborhood talk pages to hopefully get a broader range fo views. --Triadian 02:12, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that if we need to change the prevailing "two comma" system [neighborhood, city, state] that we go with [neighborhood, state] except where the placename needs further disambiguation, in which case we could either fall back on [neighborhood, city, state] or use [neighborhood (city, state)]. Using [neighborhood] alone would contradict the city naming convention that we just agreed upon. [Neighborhood, city] is unconventional and may not be adequate. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 02:49, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

The problem with "neighborhood, state" is that it is not a common name unless it is a valid postal location (which is the more the exception rather than the rule). --Polaron | Talk 03:00, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I would support using "Neighborhood, State" only for the cases where the neighborhood is a CDP or a postal location (like Allston, Massachusetts or Hyannis, Massachusetts), and either "Neighborhood" or "Neighborhood (City)" depending on whether disambiguation is necessary. My main aim here is breaking out of the (as I see it) tyranny of Census-Bureau terminology that was imposed just because the city-and-town data we have was based on Census-Bureau data. There's no reason for Allston and Hyannis to be treated differently just because one's a CDP and the other isn't. AJD 03:11, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
This convention seems to have comma'd itself into a corner here. I remember the "great debate" over La Jolla, San Diego, California and the move from La Jolla, California that finally closed the debate: much of the issue there was maintaining the reasoning that "city, State" was "common English" (although only in that neck of the world), and La Jolla, California would seem to be "common usage" to an even smaller population - those living in or very near the community of La Jolla itself (I am aware that the U.S. post office lists the same community under La Jolla, California, but this in my opinion is just a source selected to justify giving the community the same treatment as a city). I'm not really sure what use Postal bureau methods are here, as Wikepedia has not at all the same use, method, organisation nor function. I think the reasoning behind the final decision to adopt a three-level comma convention for communities (that one in particular, anyhow) was to provide a distinct method showing that the community was, in fact, not a city, but part of one, all in maintaining clarity for the "city" identity of "city, state" articles. THEPROMENADER 13:59, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
But by that token, there's no reason for us to give CDPs privileges that we don't give postal addresses; the Census Bureau's methods don't necessarily match our goals, and they are in some cases actively misleading. Should Hyannis, Massachusetts then be moved to Hyannis, Barnstable, Massachusetts (or something)? Personally, I'm in favor of the maximal expansion of the comma convention: using Placename, State for anyplace that there's strong evidence that that format is regularly used (for instance, by the Postal Service); but I'm not totally committed to that if we can come up with another more-or-less consistent system. I just don't think a system that treats Hyannis and Allston so differently, on the basis of the Census Bureau's arbitrary classifications, is anything like consistent enough. AJD 15:03, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
If the comma method has still consensus here, I'd go for the "full disambiguation" route as well: if it doesn't consider foreign readers, at least it's consistent. I've tried my hand at devising another method: I've found that, for placenames, the "full disambiguation) parenthesis method (Place (Country, stateifneeded) is much clearer, for readers from all countries, across the board (English Wikipedia readers do not only come from the U.S). If you're interested, please find it here. Cheers. THEPROMENADER 16:38, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
The reason I support the comma convention is because I don't believe it is "disambiguation" per se but rather just correct naming. The article Amesbury, Massachusetts is so named not to disambiguate it from any other towns or entities that might be called Amesbury, but merely because "City, State" is the correct standard way to refer to a U.S. city. You may call this a "local convention", but that's just the same as to say that people not from the U.S. don't know the correct way to refer to U.S. locations.
Anyhow, I've gotten sidetracked. My point here isn't to defend the comma convention—it's just to say that we shouldn't treat two neighborhoods differently in terms of article naming just because one happens to be a CDP and the other isn't. CDPs are artificial. AJD 16:55, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I didn't at all mean that - "City, State" is perfectly adapted to U.S. use, although only through inventive definition can one really call it a "name", and even then, only there. The thing is, Wikipedia readers are not all familiar with U.S. customs and geography, so I don't think the method very adapted to here. My own country of origin uses the comma disambiguation method, and I still think the same. THEPROMENADER 17:24, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Agreed; USPS designations, however, tend to influence usage, because Americans do in fact know their own address. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:11, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Indeed. It is worth noting, however, that Wikipedia largely ignores USPS designations. My parents for instance, live, according to the USPS, in Kensington, Maryland. According to Wikipedia (and the Census Bureau), however, they live in North Bethesda, Maryland, while Kensington, Maryland merely refers to the incorporated town, not the much larger postal area. Just because wikipedia city articles look like USPS designations does not mean they are the same as them. john k 13:45, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Regardless, I believe the city name in which the neighborhood is found must be included in the title. Otherwise, we are defeating the entire purpose of creating these articles, which are essentially offshoots of the city article. If this is done with "Neighborhoodname (Cityname)", "Neighborhoodname (Cityname, Statename)", "Neighborhoodname, Cityname", "Neighborhoodname, Cityname, Statename" doesn't matter all that much to me. I just prefer parentheses because the comma method can hardly be found anywhere else but Wikipedia as far as neighborhoods go. --Triadian 01:37, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I was not aware CDP's could be within entire cities. Most of them that I have seen are seperate areas. If there are these special cases though, I think the area's position as a neighborhood of a municipality trumps its CDP status, as that is only for statistical purposes. As such, it should probably go with the neighborhood disambig style and not community. It really just depends on how the CDP is set up. --Triadian 01:30, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
CDPs are not "within entire cities". I'm not sure what prompted that. The situation in New England states and a few others are a little unusual in that the Census Bureau regards a New England Town as a minor civil division, while by state law they are incorporated municipalities. Some of these towns have dispersed settlement patterns with urbanized areas separated by less populated regions. In such cases these urbanized areas might be treated as CDPs by the Census Bureau (which works with local authorities to define such places so as to produce meaningful statistical data). In some cases, the entire New England Town might be a densely populated urban area. In these cases, the entire town may be treated as a CDP so as to be included in the same listing as incorporated places. In no cases that I am aware of is a CDP defined within a city (or, to be more precise, within what the Census considers as an incorporated place). Of course all of this irks New Englanders to no end and poses challenges for classifying settlements there. older ≠ wiser 02:07, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Being a New Englander, I'm irked to no end, of course. But it's telling that you say "a city (or, to be more precise, within what the Census considers as an incorporated place)"; these obviously aren't equivalent, and the latter isn't "more precise" than the former. They're just two different things. What I'm most familiar with is Massachusetts, so I'll use examples from that. I hope we can agree that the Census Bureau's decision to regard MA communities that call themselves "cities" as incorporated places and communities that call themselves "towns" as minor civil divisions is totally arbitrary? Consider the cities of Beverly, Massachusetts and Barnstable, Massachusetts. Both are cities by state law. Both "have dispersed settlement patterns with urbanized areas separated by less populated regions," as you put it. But because Beverly calls itself a "city" and Barnstable calls itself a town, Barnstable is an "MCD" and Beverly is an "incorporated place". And so, for instance, West Barnstable, Massachusetts is a CDP but Beverly Farms isn't—and we reflect that arbitrary distinction, based on nothing but the Census Bureau's misclassification, in the titles of the articles, one of which uses the comma convention while the other doesn't. So, Barnstable is indeed a city that contains CDPs, and I don't see why we should treat West Barnstable on the one hand and Beverly Farms and Allston on the other hand as different types of entities. AJD 14:41, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Those are rare special cases, and that's why we're setting up a guideline here, not a mandatory decree. So basically we're not "treat"ing Beverly Farms or West Barnstable like anything. For the sake of argument, let's leave strange Massachusetts circumstances out of this. --Triadian 19:16, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, everyone is in agreement that Census classification of New England places is problematic -- even the Census Bureau. But I might note that West Barnstable, Massachusetts is not a CDP. I've yet to see a CDP defined within a place that is incorporated as a city -- even in New England. older ≠ wiser 23:35, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Back to the US cities

New section because nothing's been discussed on this for two days.

I strongly oppose removing the state name for one simple reason: in the United States, all cities are parts of the states wherein they are located. Forgive me if this has already been stated, but to me it seems like the defining issue. This is the result of being in the United States: because the states are more than administrative subdivisions, location by state is important. Would we say "Chicago is a city in Cook County, United States"? This is different from where the location is given as disambiguation, such as Oakwood, Ohio, since Oakwood can be a municipality in Cuyahoga, Montgomery, or Paulding Counties.

Moreover, it helps to have consistency: it really seems unusual to have just a few big cities in one format, while 99.99% of municipalities nationwide are on a different format. Nyttend 22:26, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree entirely. However there are some editors who have strong feelings about this and so we're trying to accommodate both views. so that we can stop wasting time discussing this. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:40, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Exactly. This is part of a reasonable compromise, in the hopes that most people can be mostly satisfied on this issue :) ɑʀкʏɑɴ 22:48, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Move requests

I've gone ahead and filed a move request for US cities based on the discussions had previously. If you haven't already please voice your opinion of the matter over at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions#Requested moves. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 22:48, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

UK counties

I've made some amendments to the UK section of this page. It reflects consensus, naturally, but it makes clearer some of the finer aspects of the Counties of the United Kingdom which are much more complex and contentious than was previously covered in the naming convention... Jza84 00:16, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Mexico

Ok, since they reverted my changes, I'll open this discussion, there is really nothing much to say besides that Mexico (like most countries) uses the "City, State" format, but for some reason whoever wrote the Mexico paragraph didn't put it that way, so I tried to fix it but it seems like they wanted me to propose it here first, I could find so many sources stating how that format is the standart in Mexico but I'll wait what they say. Supaman89 23:14, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I reverted your change because prior to your mass moving the Mexico city pages to the pre-disambiguated "city,state" format, all the city articles did follow the convention as written prior to your edit. It would be beneficial if you proposed your change to the naming style of Mexican cities first before you massed move them and then claim that because most city articles now use the "city,state" style, the guideline should be changed. Is there a wide spread name duplication issue within Mexico that would require pre-disambiguation? --Polaron | Talk 23:23, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I understand you, I didn't even know that this page existed until I was advised so I thought I'd be logical to add the state if it didn't have it, because that's the way it's used in Mexico, that's why I did it, so are we alright with the correction made to the Mexico section? Supaman89 00:10, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with using the "City, State" format for Mexico. It has the same federal system as the U.S., and every city or town is located in one and only one state. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 00:34, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
I've no strong opinion either way. I like the principle of least surprise at finding Acapulco at Acapulco, which accords with the instruction to "use common names" (how many of those drunk foreing tourists even know what state they're in?), but it is incongruous to look at Category:Cities in Coahuila (or any of the others) and see that half the towns have the comma and state and half don't. And it does seem logical to place "Pachuca" at "Pachuca, Hidalgo", if you've just looked up (for example) Denver and found it at Denver, Colorado: for a perfect illustration of this, check the first edit summary on the history of Irapuato, Guanajuato. I've seen the several Mexican town articles created at "city, state" by casual editors, even when "city" alone is a red link: I suppose it's just what comes naturally. I don't care either way, but if it's going to happen I would ask: (a) make sure all the redirects are place (variant names, with and without accents, etc); (b) use the state names with accents (I reverted a string of towns moved to "name, Nuevo Leon" the other day); (c) Mexico City should not be moved. Aille 01:58, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree that consistency is beneficial. Regarding your last point, isn't Mexico City a federal district, the rough equivalent of a state? Kind of like Washington D.C., not contained within any state. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 02:20, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the Distrito Federal (DF) is like a small state but is not, it contains Mexico City within but at the same time it could be a synonym to refer to the city itself, like when you say “I’m going to D.C.” it is like the Mexican version of Washington D.C. actually in Spanish it is "México D.F." Supaman89 02:42, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd prefer to keep the cities at City, when unambiguous or when there's an obvious choice, in accordance with WP:NC(CN). Spacepotato 07:56, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

That's not the way is it used in Mexico, it always follows the "City, State" format whether they need it or not (like in the USA), and like they said it is always nice to have some consistency. Supaman89 19:09, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Cities are not always referred to as City, State, even in the USA. They are sometimes referred to in this way (the comma convention), and this has been used as a disambiguating convention here on Wikipedia. The problem is that its universal use in any region is in conflict with naming principles for other parts of the world, as well as general naming principles—it's comparable to moving Turin to Turin, TO, Lille to Lille, Nord, etc. Spacepotato 21:24, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
The convention addresses individual countries individually. There's no requirement that the standard be the same for Mexico as for France. Having consistent naming within Mexico would be beneficial for both readers and writers. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 21:48, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Spacepotato, I see that you reverted my edit, It seems like you're the only who wants to leave it as simply [[City]] (I don't know why) even though as I mentioned it is the way it is used in Mexico, and other users have agreed with me that it is better to have consistency, it doesn't look good when some cities follow the [[City, State]] format and some don't. Supaman89 18:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

It conflicts with what's done in other regions, and with the general principle of placing subjects at their names. In a case like Acapulco, for example, the state name is clearly superfluous. Spacepotato 19:08, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

If they type the word Acapulco, they'll learn that it is located in the State of Guerrero, what is wrong with that? it's just like when people type Los Angeles and then they see that the city is located in the State of California. Supaman89 19:56, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Article names are not to inform the reader, but to identify the article. Many of our article names are wholly opaque to the uninitiated (e.g., Ab initio multiple spawning, NGC 2915.) Although there are other Acapulcos, the one in the Mexican state of Guerrero is by far the best known, so that it can be identified to the reader simply as Acapulco. Spacepotato 23:17, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
"Acapulco" is not the name of the city. Its name is "Acapulco de Juárez", yet we choose to put it somewhere else. The practice in the large region closes to Mexico, the United States, is to put places at "City, State". That's worked out well and only a few exceptions have been needed. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:57, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Acapulco is the common name of Acapulco de Juárez, and so the article is placed there, in accordance with the principle to use common names. In the case of the U.S., the universal use of the comma has been a source of arguments for years (as a glance up top will show you), and I'm eager to avoid the same problem for Mexico. Spacepotato 23:17, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your unpretentious concern, but as I said before it is the way it is used in Mexico whether they need it or not (just like in Italy they follow the "City (XX State)" format) whoever wrote the paragraph in the first place obviously didn't know that, therefore I'm just trying to fix it.

BTW, what about the L.A. example, should we name the article simply "Los Angeles" instead of "Los Angeles, California" because it is by far the most famous one? Or should we follow the "City" format for all the U.S. cities unless they need disambiguation? Supaman89 00:37, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I do think that Los Angeles, California should be moved to Los Angeles. It seems clear that Los Angeles, California is the primary topic for Los Angeles, which redirects there now. In general, if a city has a unique name or is the primary meaning of its name, and it is sufficiently notable to be known outside its region, I would prefer to avoid the comma. As for the U.S. guideline, I would prefer wording similar to the Canadian guidelines (i.e., if a city has a unique name or is unquestionably the most significant place with its name, it is permissible to place it at City, if desired; otherwise, it should go at City, State.) Spacepotato 02:25, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
It's the U.S. that's the exception to the WP:NC(CN) ("What word would the average user of the Wikipedia put into the search engine?"), right? For instance, looking at the Canada guidelines, it appears that Toronto, Winnipeg, et al. are at those locations. Asking that "What word..." question, Mazatlán would beat Mazatlán, Sinaloa, hands down, and probably be given a good run for it's money by (grimace) Mazatlan, Mexico. I can see the rationale for both sides of this argument, and I don't think there have been enough voices heard yet to embark on a massive comma-stating of the Mexican articles. Aille 01:39, 13 November 2007 (UTC) (but if you are going to, Supaman, take the time to fix the odd double redirect here and there, please?)

Just noting again that prior to this discussion, all Mexican city articles were primarily at "city" except for ones needing disambiguation. Supaman89 then started mass moving these articles to the forced comma convention without discussion. Then, he changed the listed naming guideline for Mexico to his style claiming that since this is how the Mexican city articles are titled, the convention should follow that. All these changes should be undone pending the outcome of this discussion. If there is consensus to change to the forced comma convention, then we can proceed with renaming. If there is no consensus, status quo prevails as per the standard at Wikipedia. --Polaron | Talk 01:51, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok, it seems like we are not understanding each other, according to the example above "Los Angeles" would easily beat down "Los Angeles, California" as well as "New York City” would beat "New York, New York" still every single City-Article in the U.S. has the State despites of its necessity or not, simply because that's the way it is used in the United States and that's the way it is used in Mexico as well, so why would the U.S. cities make reference to the State but the Mexican ones don't? Even though both countries follow the same format? as simple as that, the only argument until now is "If they don't need it, don't put it" so using that same principal if the U.S. (or any other country that uses that format) don't need disambiguation then don't put the state, how contradictory is that? Supaman89 02:28, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Oy, don't go there. If you really want to know, there are several hundred kilobytes of discussion on this. Bottom line is, pre-disambiguation is not the usual Wikipedia naming style but it has been claimed that the U.S. is a special case that deserves to be exempt. --Polaron | Talk 02:36, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, that's the problem—our guidelines for different places don't match each other, nor do they match general principles, and this makes editors unhappy. But it's not true that all U.S. city articles are at [[City, State]]. New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia aren't, and the guidelines presently allow for 24 other U.S. cities to drop their commas, should the moves be proposed and accepted. Spacepotato 02:40, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
(EC) That's not quite right. Numerous fields have special naming conventions, even for places. The U.S. convention works well, and if it would work well for articles on places in Mexico it should be made the standard there too. We can debate the proposal on its merits, for how it would work in this topic. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 02:42, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Do Mexican city names warrant pre-disambiguation? Is the repeat use of names so widespread that pre-disambiguation makes sense? --Polaron | Talk 02:47, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't mean to be rude about this but, what makes the U.S. so special that all their cities are allowed to have the State even if they don't need it?, but the Mexican cities that do use the same format can not? for example Mentor-on-the-Lake I'm sure there is not another city in the whole world that has that name so there's no problem with people choosing the wrong one, still it mentions the state Mentor-on-the-Lake, Ohio that's just one of PLENTY examples, so again that's a bit of hypocrisy right there.

BTW, what about Argentina, Brazil, Canada, etc. that also use the “City, State/Province” format and no one says anything? Supaman89 03:56, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Reply to Supaman: as I read the guidelines on this project page, Argentina, Brasil and Canada only use "city, state" when disambiguation is needed: see Manaus, Belém, Salta and Toronto. That, as Polaron points out, is the general rule. The US (and Australia) is the excpetion: we might want to become part of that exception, but let's try first and reach a consensus.
Reply to Polaron: Is the use of names repeated? Yes and no is the easy answer to that. "Yes" because if you look at Municipalities of Oaxaca, you'll see 15 or 20 municipalities and their head-towns called "San Francisco". "No" because each one of them is "San Francisco Something": San Francisco del Mar, San Francisco Ixhuatán, San Francisco Solá, etc. San Francisco, Oaxaca, would have to be a disambig page. Most of the country's San Franciscos (and San Juans and San Josés and Santa Marías) come with a 'surname' for disambiguation purposes; however, the gazeeter of my Guía Roji road atlas lists at least 30 as plain San Francisco. And I bet every state has its Emiliano Zapata and its Benito Juárez. Couple of places called Minatitlán, four or five Tuxpans, sprinklings of Tenangos and Tenancingos. So "yes". Having said that, I don't know how many of those are no more than two streets, a cantina and a stop sign. Wikipedia aims to be comprehensive: does that include villages of 200 people in the Sierra Gorda? Do we need to pre-disambiguate to cover that level of detail? (The question's not retorical.)
Back to Supaman: On a related point, there are two municipalities called San Andrés in Veracruz (although one doesn't have an article yet), which is why I reverted the move of San Andrés Tuxtla to San Andrés, Veracruz. And I see San Francisco Coacalco has been moved to San Francisco, State of Mexico, ditto San Francisco Tetlanohcan to San Francisco, Tlaxcala. Besides being a breach of 'use common names' (in this case, San Andrés Tuxtla or, if you insist, San Andrés Tuxtla, Veracruz), that will create a nightmarish when someone gets round to writing about San Andrés Tenejapan, the "other" San Andrés in Veracruz. I don't know if there are other San Franciscos in EdoMex or Tlaxcala, or other San Josés in Ags. besides San José de Gracia, but moving them to the comma-state format without taking the 'surname' with them is asking for trouble. Please reconsider; as I've said, I'm not convinced that city, state, isn't the right choice for Mexico, but do it properly if you're going to do it. Aille 04:50, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I understand and as you mentioned A LOT of cities have repetitive names, so for precision they need to include the state (even if they didn't, again that's the standard form in Mexico just like the U.S.) and as Will Beback and yourself said, it is always nice to have some consistency it just looks wrong when half the cities have the state and half don't, and finally I don't even know how this became such a big deal, people are going to keep typing "Acapulco" but the title name will be "Acapulco, Guerrero" just like people type "Miami" (another popular name) and it sends them to "Miami, Florida". Supaman89 05:19, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Include the state if you will, but why move Santa María del Tule to Santa María, Oaxaca, and not to Santa María del Tule, Oaxaca? Take a look at just how many Santa Marias there are in Municipalities of Oaxaca. And that's a problem you already came across in the EdoMex, isn't it, when you moved Santiago Teyahualco to Santiago, State of Mexico, and then came across Santiago Tianguistenco and had to move it to Tianguistenco, State of Mexico, because the "Santiago" location was taken. San Juan de los Lagos is San Juan de los Lagos, or San Juan de los Lagos, Jalisco, if you insist, but not San Juan, Jalisco; ditto, San Cristóbal de las Casas, and long etc. Aille 05:42, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh yes, I remember, I think I did it because the names were too long but I kept the oficial form bolded right in the introduction, anyways thank you for your understanding but I'm affraid I can't edit the paragraph myself because someone may revert it (by the third time). Supaman89 15:42, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

As Aille mentioned, Mexico already has its own system of disambiguation by adding a "surname" to city names. Wouldn't that system work for most cases? Please don't confuse postal addresses with city names. The state name is not part of the city name. Don't justify changing the convention using the US system as the use of that system is also contested. --Polaron | Talk 16:26, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Those "surnames" are not "Mexico's own system of disambiguation" as I said plenty of times before in Mexico they always have to follow the "City, State" format whether they need it or not, and the United States should not be a special case, when the U.S. finally change (if they do) their naming criteria then we'll talk about this issue again, until then I don't really see how someone could argue not to do something, when they're doing it themselves. Supaman89 01:17, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean "they always have to follow the city,state format whether they need it or not"? Who is it that is dictating this? I'll say it again: The state name is not part of the city name. Don't justify changing the convention using the US system as the use of that system is also contested. Most of the rest of the world don't follow the US city naming style. --Polaron | Talk 02:05, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if the whole world follows the same naming system as the USA or not, but Mexico does use the same system, therefore if all the U.S. cities have the ",state" (Denver, Colorado) it's just logical that the Mexican ones do it too (Hermosillo, Sonora), until the U.S. changes its articles to simply "City" (Little Rock, Arkansas → Little Rock) I just don't see how people could argue someone else not to do it.

Your basis for proposing this change is "this is how US cities are named so this is how Mexican cities should be named too"? You won't convince too many people of the need to change the existing guideline if that is your main argument. I don't think there was ever any debates as to what to name Mexican city articles so the status quo (prior to your mass moves) did not pose any problems whatsoever. --Polaron | Talk 03:28, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
The towns' names were too long -- so he gave them new names. Compare: 39 hits on Google for san-juan-jalisco vs. 234,000 for san-juan-de-los-lagos. Of course, this is same editor who made up his own set of state abbreviations because the ones used by the government, post office and 110 million Mexicans were too long. Words fail me; I think I'll unwatch this page. Aille 19:57, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Postscript. Anyway, is the location of the article so important? Linking to Hermosillo, Sonora, in a paragraph of another article will take you to the same utltimate destination. (And yes, a lot of times the structure and flow of an article requires that you do include the state.) The matter hardly warrants the amount of bytes we've already spent on it. Aille —Preceding comment was added at 20:14, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Polaron seriously, I've got pretty much any argument to why it should be changed, and I think I’ve repeated them plenty of times already, the U.S. was just an example not my basis, but if you keep bringing the same things that I’ve already answered then we'll never going end this thing, you know I'm right just accept it, there is not one logical reason why if both countries that use the same format one of them is allowed to use it but the other one don’t as simple as that, would it bother you so much that it’s changed to “City, State” (which is how it should’ve been in the first place), I would just find it pretty difficult to tell someone not to do something, when I’m doing it myself. Supaman89 20:08, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I gave it a week to see if anyone else responded, I'll proceed to fix the paragraph. Supaman89 (talk) 19:28, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
A lack of continued argument does not give you license to enact the changes you see fit. There clearly exists no consensus for doing this and I will revert the change. Until you can achieve consensus for a change to the guideline, the status quo (as flawed as it may be) remains the guideline. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 19:54, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

While I prefer to use the default Wikipedia-wide guideline of using common names, using the comma convention as a default is acceptable if it is not applied too rigidly. Before you change the convention, let's work on a proposed wording that specifically allows for major cities to to stand alone (see Australia and Canada for examples of how to define which can be exceptions). At a minimum, a proposed move request should be able to go through if it can be shown that the city name by itself is sufficiently known globally. My worry is people will start opposing such move requests by saying it is against the naming style, which itself was imposed artificially. --Polaron | Talk 23:01, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok, let me create a proposal section to put the paragraph that's being reverted, so adjustments can be made. Supaman89 (talk) 01:17, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposal

Mexican geographical articles go under the [[City, State]] format, ex. Nogales, Sonora always separated by the "comma convention". The same format applies to cities that share names with the state, ex. Oaxaca, Oaxaca leaving the single name Oaxaca as reference to the state.

International known places might be left as [[Placename]] only, ex. Mexico City, Acapulco and Cancun.

Adjustments and corrections are welcome. Supaman89 (talk) 01:17, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

You may wish to leave a note on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions to make people more aware of this proposal and try to get some broader input. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 15:24, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose. All in all, the "City, State" notation suggests that the name is not unique; i.e., if we have an article on, for example, Empalme, Sonora, it automatically suggests that there is a place in Mexico called "Empalme" elsewhere outside Sonora and that Empalme proper is a disambiguation page. As far as I know, only the naming convention for the U.S. settlements uses this scheme, and it is constantly disputed anyway. On a different note, what are "international(ly) known places"? By what criteria are they selected? How would you decide if any given place in Mexico is "internationally known"? Why should that even affect the naming conventions? You say that they "might" be left under an undisambiguated title. What affects the decision whether they "might" or "might not" be renamed/left alone? What is the benefit of this approach to readers and to Wikipedia as a whole? What is the ultimate benefit of mass-renaming the city articles? Are there flaws with the existing naming scheme that can only be fixed by mass-renaming? If so, have you considered a different solution?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:09, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Suport. Logical and consistent. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 20:33, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
  • unpersuaded. The United States convention rests on three grounds: Most American placenames need disambiguation; American English normally does this as City, State; and even places which are unambiguous are idiomatically so called (Lincroft, New Jersey, for example). Are any of these true of Mexico? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:49, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
    There is like 30 paragraphs above explaining and debating the use of the "city, state" format for Mexico, if anyone has any questions you may check it, this proposal is merely to make any modifications, corrections, etc. before changing it, suggestions about the paragraph are welcome. Supaman89 (talk) 03:17, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
    That largely says: WP:IWANTIT; the most obvious supporting reasoning (that City, State is some sort of privilege for the United States) is invalid. If there is evidence in that long discussion which addresses any of the three points I asked about, please cut and paste it nere. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:04, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
Ok let's see:
  • Most American placenames need disambiguation - Not really but ok let's leave that as a may, anyhow Mexican cities need desambiguation probably more than the American ones.
  • American English normally does this as City, State - Yes, you're right, Mexico also uses that same format (as I've repeated plenty of times) just need to look at any Mexican publication to verify that.
  • even places which are unambiguous are idiomatically so called - Yes that would be pretty much the same case for Mexico, adios. Supaman89 (talk) 03:41, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Again this is not an approval or not section, it is merely to modify or adjust the paragraph presented, the discussion is above this section, and after repeating plenty of times why the paragraph should be change no one presented a logical reason to refuse the arguments above, thank you. Supaman89 (talk) 01:46, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

No one has replied those points above, but yet some people just won't let me fix the paragraph, I strongly ask you to answer those points or just let me fix the paragraph, cuz right now I can't do anything. Supaman89 (talk) 04:09, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

The name of an article should, if possible, be the most common name used to refer to the subject of the article. In the case of an article about a city, the name of the article should be the name of the city, if possible. Adding the state is fine, if required for the purpose of disambiguating. If it's the only city in the world with that name, adding the state does not enhance precision. Same thing if it is not the only city in the world with that name, but clearly the best known one. The fact that some countries do not follow this fundamental Wikipedia naming convention is unfortunate, but not an excuse to perpetuate the error. If there are any points left unaddressed by this, please let us know what they are. --Serge (talk) 05:27, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
It would be incorrect to call the U.S. naming convention an "error". It's a legitimate decision agreed to by a majority of involved users. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 05:40, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Might makes right, Will? Is that what you really want to argue? The majority is just as able to make an error as is any minority. Even if a decision is agreed to by a majority of involved users does not mean it's not an error. The result is that hundreds of U.S. city articles have names that do not reflect the most common name used to refer to the subject of that article, even though there is no other significant usage of that name that warrants using clarifying information (the state) for disambiguation or precision. IMHO, that is a huge error. --Serge (talk) 17:07, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't want to argue over this same matter further. I just was pointing out that it's just an opinion that the U.S. naming convention is an error, and that the consensus of users agree that it's a good, working convention. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 17:20, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

New York City, United States

I have seen people add United States behind New York City in articles, where there is unlikely to be any confusion. Is this policy? Or even needed? Don't we assume our reader have a base level of geographic knowledge? I'm sure that this has been discussed before... --Knulclunk (talk) 02:57, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Given that New York City is one of those world cities that we don't require a state or province on, we surely don't need a country. --Orange Mike 03:03, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
Some folks add "USA" or the equivalent to the text of many settlement articles, on the presumption that this is a global encyclopedia and we shouldn't assume that reader will know which country "California" is in. That's reasonable. We've never made it a practice to add country names to settlements names, unless absolutely required. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 04:47, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean by "settlement" here, Will. --Orange Mike 04:59, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
"Settlement" is the broad term encompassing cities, towns, villages, settlements, CDPs, etc. For an example of what I'm talking about, see Maywood, California or Compton, California. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 05:23, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
What about lists of cities, then ? Say you have a list like :
Paris, France
Berlin, Germany
etc.
what is the preferred style for a US city ? My opinion is that the list should aim at being consistent, hence a Chicago, USA in the list, but what if the city is Springfield instead of Chicago ? Anne Aunîme (talk) 20:15, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
This convention concerns how articles are titled, not how the place names are used in articles. That said, if the list is put together like that then write "New York City, USA", or "Springfield, Illinois, USA". ·:· Will Beback ·:· 20:32, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Southampton#Naming_of_articles_about_city_suburbs

There's a discussion at the above location suggesting that this convention should be ignored in the case of Southampton, for no reason I can ascertain! Additional input there would be appreciated. Waggers (talk) 10:43, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

As I made clear on the Southampton talk page, I fail to understand why areas in the city are now being described as Location, Hampshire ahead of Location, Southampton. Why is real world use being overwritten in favour of a Wiki convention? These places are known parts of the city ahead of the county, so why the change? This change means the level of geography by which most of these places are referred to is being ignored. Surely how people refer them in reality carries more weight than internet conventions? Dan K (talk) 22:25, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
The truth is that most of the areas are referred to as both Southampton and Hampshire. West End, for example, is outside of the Southampton administrative area but often referred to as being part of Southampton - yet it is separated from the city both administratively and physically. Many areas within the city boundary have a strong local identity, separate to that of the city as a whole. But the most important thing is that we are consistent across the project, and therefore it's important that we have a convention and that we follow it. If you're proposing a change, exactly what are you proposing? Would the change apply to areas within unitary authorities, or suburbs of any larger settlement regardless of administration, or what? If it's the latter, how do you distinguish between a suburb and a settlement in its own right? Unless you're willing and able to answer questions like these and justify your answers, there really is no point in continuously moaning. Please try to be constructive. Waggers (talk) 09:26, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

You asked me to move the discussion here, so I don't really see why you are now complaining about me doing so. Areas across the city do have their own identity, but that identity is more affiliated to the city than it is the county. The most obvious level is surely that of administration. Taking West End for example (one I know quite well seeing as I live there) despite it usually being referred to as Southampton I see no problem with it being Hampshire (ignoring the fact there is a West End in Fareham) as it is not within the city authority's boundaries. Areas of the city should be referred to as such - to further the point North End, Portsmouth should be described as such - not North End, Hampshire. For commonplace names using a large brush simply confuses matters. There are two West Ends in Hants, so they can't be two West End, Hampshire articles. So further disambiguation is needed, leading to a piecemeal arrangement which shows up the flaws of trying to shoe horn in too broad a rule. It should be far more flexible to accurately reflect real life, because geography (especially in the UK) is not a uniform subject, so trying to pretend that it is will throw all kinds of problems. Most importantly, the level of description I'm proposing be reinstated is more accurate. Hampshire is a far bigger geographical area than the unitary authorities of Southampton or Portsmouth. By describing the areas of these cities as such, you are providing a far more accurate description of where they are. And to play devil's advocate, if a convention is not uniformly implemented across the project can it really be called a convention? Dan K (talk) 13:27, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

So what exactly are you proposing? Should suburbs of Winchester (not a unitary authority) be disambiguated to Place, Winchester instead of Place, Hampshire? After all, they may well identify more with the city than the county, just as you claim areas of Southampton do. If that's the case, how do we distinguish between a suburb of the city and any other settlement within the City of Winchester district? If you're suggesting a change in the convention, we need to know what it is you're proposing and how to implement it across the project, not just in Southampton. Waggers (talk) 13:41, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

At the moment, we have a clear, simple convention, which can be easily applied and is appropriate for virtually all articles on places in England (as Dan K points out, in the rare cases where there are two places with the same name in the same county, we have to do something slightly different). I can't see an alternative proposal based around suburbs matching this. The question of what constitutes a suburb is complex; often residents of areas around a city do not regard themselves as living in suburbs of it, but rather as being in distinct towns or villages. Those who live further out may often regard all the outer areas of the conurbation as being suburbs. We're not in a position to easily adjudicate on this, and any policy which tries to set the definition of a suburb will inevitably lead to many, many arguments on its application. It is likely to lead to confusion as to the most appropriate title for an article, leading to broken links or multiple articles on the same place. If you have a concrete proposal which addresses these concerns, please put it forward; otherwise, while I understand the reasons for opening a discussion on this, I can't see it leading to an improved convention. Warofdreams talk 00:56, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

The Winchester example is a red herring, as Hampshire is still the authority - the joys of a two tier system - which doesn't apply to unitary authorities hence their name. You keep going on about suburbs and distinguishing them, but as I have said, why not use the authority? Boundaries are te obvious cut off line. Once you get into metropolitan counties where there is only a single tier of government the convention is the same as it is now. The change here only applies to places such as Hampshire, Dorset, East Sussex and a handful of others where part of the county is two tier government (as is the case for Winchester and Hampshire) and part is single tier (Southampton, Portsmouth, Brighton & Hove etc). You are now using all county level descriptions (Metropolitan, Shire and UA), rather than just two. You'd simply giving more credence to the notability of unitary authorities, and giving more accurate geographic descriptions of where places are. Dan K (talk) 17:36, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
OK, that's a decent, solid proposal. The current policy is to use ceremonial counties, and you would like to change it to use administrative counties and unitary authorities. Have I got that right? I'm not opposed to this idea in principle, but I'm not too keen on some of the long disambiguators which would result - Bath, Bath and North East Somerset, and also note that some disambiguators would repeat the place name, giving little useful information (apparently only Reading, Reading at the moment, but the trend seems to be towards more large towns in Britain being at disambiguated titles). Finally, I think that the county/UA split may easily be misunderstood, and that we will see many more articles created in [place, shire district] or [suburb, town] format than are at present. Warofdreams talk 02:06, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Well as I said earlier, I don't really believe that there is any one-size-fits-all solution, so there would have to be flexibility in any system used. BANES is a worst case scenario, but at the same time is only one word longer than say East Riding of Yorkshire, but I agree it is unwieldy. If further disambiguation is needed, the ceremonial county could be used (if not already covered) or a further subdivision such as metropolitan district or district council. As for the final point, I think that's hard to gauge really, but would say that Wiki must be fast approaching some sort of plateau for the number of articles being created in relation to English geography, surely? Dan K (talk) 08:23, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

There are quite a few villages that don't have articles yet, so I think there's some more to do. Whilst I appreciate that you've now come up with a more defined proposal, I still don't think it meets your criteria of reflecting real-world usage. The Winchester example is not a red herring - there are areas that are suburbs of Winchester, just as there are areas that are suburbs of Southampton; those areas of Winchester may well identify more with the city than the county of Hampshire. If the justification for a change is to better reflect real-world usage, surely we should make sure any proposal does exactly that? Otherwise, it's a change for the sake of change. Waggers (talk) 10:54, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
The only way to get universal real-world usage is to do everything ad-hoc. While this is not something I have a problem with, I have a strong feeling I'd be in the minority. I'm not saying my proposal is perfect, but it does address problems of areas of cities like Southampton, Portsmouth etc, which the current convention does not. As I've said before, there is no way any one-size-fits-all rule will address all the problems of all the articles, so I think the best thing to do is to get one that addresses as many issues as possible. For places like Winchester's areas and the Metropolitan counties, everything in is nigh on identical to the status quo, if the Winchester issue is something that is against my proposal, it must be against the current convention too. Dan K (talk) 12:02, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
It just seems a little odd that an area with strong ties to a city without unitary authority status would be disambiguated to the county, while an area that happens to be within a unitary authority area but has a strong, independent identity (or more ties to the county than the city) would be disambiguated to a nearby city. But I'm happy to live with that, it's not a dealbreaker. Waggers (talk) 12:30, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

So where do we go from here? Dan K 23:42, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

It looks like you've got (slightly reluctant) agreement, so I'd suggest drafting your change to the convention here and, providing there are no objections, we can go ahead and make the change, renaming the appropriate articles. Warofdreams talk 23:14, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
I should make clear that I still disagree with Dan K's proposal, as the time and effort required to rename all the articles and clean up all the backlinks, together with the confusion and inconsistency that would be caused, are in no way justified by the almost negligible benefit of making the change. Waggers (talk) 10:46, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Apologies, I misunderstood your last comment. In terms of dealing with backlinks, that shouldn't be a deciding issue; there probably won't be too many, and we are likely to be able to get someone to write a bot to do it efficiently if the task seems overwhelming. In that case, while there wouldn't be any harm in drafting the proposed change, the objections Waggers raises are those which need to be discussed. Warofdreams talk 12:18, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposed addition to "United States" section

I propose the following addition to the "United States" section, in order to better reflect current practice and consensus. Though I'm sure it's not too controversial, I figured I'd start a discussion on talk just in case there are any objections. Note that this is not a proposed policy change, nor is it an argument for or against the "comma convention". This would go after the AP Stylebook passage.

Currently, only three article about U.S. cities do not use the "comma convention"—Chicago, New York City and Philadelphia. If you think any of the other articles listed above should be moved to [[City]] instead of [[City, State]], please start a discussion on the article's talk page. Note that such moves have been proposed before, and have not gained consensus in the past.

Thoughts? szyslak 23:53, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

That seems to accurately reflect current practice. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 00:02, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
As of January 2008, please. Otherwise we have to keep fixing it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:06, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps instead of directing users to simply "start a discussion on the article's talk page", we could direct them to WP:RQM. Thus, the new passage would read as follows (with a couple of minor changes/fixes):

As of January 2008, only three articles about U.S. cities do not use the "comma convention"—Chicago, New York City and Philadelphia. If you think any of the other articles listed above should be moved to [[City]] instead of [[City, State]], please start a discussion via Wikipedia:Requested moves. Note that such moves have been proposed before, and generally have not gained consensus in the past.

szyslak 02:23, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Though I'm not sure what problem this would be solving, I'm okay with the proposed addition/change, as long as the last sentence, "Note that such moves have been proposed before, and have not gained consensus in the past.", is not included. It's generally true, but biased and irrelevant. I'm okay with the suggested "as of January 2008" part:

As of January 2008, only three articles about U.S. cities do not use the "comma convention"—Chicago, New York City and Philadelphia. If you think any of the other articles listed above should be moved to [[City]] instead of [[City, State]], please start a discussion via Wikipedia:Requested moves.

--Serge (talk) 05:40, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't say there's a "problem" to solve, but I think the statement about permissible [[City]]-format names needs some qualification, especially regarding the fact that consensus needs to be determined before such a move is made.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and add the proposed passage without the "such moves ... have not gained consensus" part, which isn't particularly necessary. szyslak 02:04, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Scotland guidelines

More than a month ago User:Jza84 unilaterally added this guidelines for Scotland pages. I don't think anyone was aware this had happened, until he brought his own edit there up as an argument on the Talk:Perth, Scotland. As usual new guidelines only come to wipespread attention when a guideline hobbyist tries to impose something absurd with only the guidelines as an argument.

AS you can see from the page Talk:Perth, Scotland (there has been an attempted move here), it is a complete nonsense to pretend as User:Warofdreams did that its had consensus for several years. Guideline pages are not places to subvert de facto wikipedia standards and undermine wikipedia's health by inventing "consensus" for ideas that virtually no-one supports. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 11:07, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

No consensus? See Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(settlements)/Archive_6#Standard_for_United_Kingdom.3F and Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(settlements)/Archive_7#UK_placenames. Pretty clear, and while there has been discussion on whether to disambiguate by ceremonial county, historic county, administrative county or other similar divisions for various nations, there has been no dissent here as to the general policy of disambiguating at a sub-national level. The location, discussion and page history of the vast majority of places requiring disambiguators supports this. Of course, consensus can change, and it may do as a result of this discussion, but please do not claim that consensus never existed simply because you did not participate in the discussion.

Incidentally, as this discussion is now ongoing, I will happily leave the pages you have moved, but for future reference, you may like to look at the Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle. Warofdreams talk 20:38, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Actually, all the pages I moved were actually just moved back. Those convos you cited are ancient and contain nothing relevant; there is virtually nothing mentioned about Scottish placenames, and there's no indication any decision was reached. The guy who added the guidelines, Jza, didn't even participate in those discussions anyways. The "Consensus" (really!) does not exist, and there is nothing on this talk page to support the additions made a month and a half ago. Subverting community dialogue by inventing consensus for ideas that haven't been discussed is really, really bad play. Rather than behaving like this, wouldn't you prefer instead to join in the discussion here? That'd be really good, as you must have some thoughts on the issue. Regards, Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 21:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
That is a non-existent "consensus" you deliver. One Discussion from 4.5 years ago (involving 4 editors) that is not consistent with the guideline you claim we had consensus on (where coincidentally your comment there states exactly the opposite of what you are now doing) and a discussion from 3 years ago that is a textbook example of no consensus if I ever saw one. Thanks for the tip on the cycle, but I have been about here for three years and am very well aware of it. What is crystal clear is that no consensus exists (either now or in the past) for the guideline as was. SFC9394 (talk) 21:21, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Guidelines Deacon added - descending disambiugation

Where possible, articles on places in Scotland should go under [[placename]]. Thus Glasgow, not Glasgow, Scotland. Where disambiguation is needed, articles should go under [[placename, Scotland]]. Thus Perth, Scotland, not Perth, Perth and Kinross. Where disambiguation is still needed, articles should go under [[placename, Council Area x]]. Thus Abernethy, Highland and Abernethy, Perth and Kinross. If even then it is still needed, then another form of natural and recognisable disambiguation should be sought, such as traditional regions, committee areas, etc, as in Kinnaird, Gowrie and Kinnaird, Atholl, both in Scotland and in Perth and Kinross.

  • Support. Entirely common sense proposal, very succinctly constructed and should be adopted word for word. Bill Reid | Talk 19:40, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support (assuming this is really necessary at all), and with the added suggestion of using X, Island as an alternative as suggested below. There are also island disambiguation issues to contend with e.g. Sanday, Orkney but let's not waste more time on that. Ben MacDuiTalk/Walk 20:08, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose The previous "council area" disambigation was more than adequate. Plus this leaves open debate with UK vs. Scotland. -- Jza84 · (talk) 22:46, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Given that I've never seen anyone create an article on a Scottish settlement with the name "Placename, UK", I think this is not a debate we are likely to see. Of course, there could be people seeking to prove a point, but I doubt there are many people who think that "Placename, UK" would be a natural name for a settlement. Lurker (said · done) 14:47, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Support Not that I pay much attention to these kind of guideline pages anymore, since the stealth policymaking where one or a few editors alter the guidelines then expect everyone to follow suit really irritates me. But, an attempt at a common sense guideline is worth a try. The above proposal is the most common sense and, contrary to the section below entitled "existing practice" is pretty much the way most of us who prefer actual editing to endless policy debates have been doing things before now. Lurker (said · done) 12:51, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Lurker, please Assume good faith. At the time I wrote the "existing practice" paragraph, I inspected about half a dozen categories (perhaps a few more), and saw exactly one "placename, Scotland" article, and about 2 dozen "placename, <something smaller than Scotland>" articles. I checked the history of some of those, to ensure there hadn't just been a mass rename, but didn't check them closely. None of the ones I checked had been moved as their last edit, only one that I recall had moves in recent history. If I was wrong, it's OK to point that out with a broader set of statistics, not with sarcasm and an assumption I was pushing my own barrow. --Scott Davis Talk 22:25, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Support A vote for common sense - using widely-known terms to uniquely identify. There are likely to be exceptions to any "rule" Finavon (talk) 19:57, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Commenting I would like to point out that several major atlases, including those by the OS and AA, disambiguate to council area for places in Scotland. I think this is worth noting. -- Jza84 · (talk) 01:00, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Those are internal to the UK - wikipedia is a worldwide document. When Pan Am 103 happened it was referred to around the world as "Lockerbie, Scotland" - not "Lockerbie, Dumfires and Galloway" - frankly it was reported as "Lockerbie Scotland" for the 6pm UK news because internal to the UK the vast majority of people in England wouldn't have a clue about Scottish council areas. Are we trying to help or hinder the reader? There is only one solution here - and all the other voices say the same thing. SFC9394 (talk) 01:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
That's a totally fair point, but I felt that it was a bite of info worth noting here. Of course there have been suggestions to further disambiguate to former counties, or worse, "traditional" regions (like the non-statutory Highlands). I would hope that should this new system be adopted, we are supporting that the second tier of disambiguation is to council area??? -- Jza84 · (talk) 01:27, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Oh, and the Gazetteer of Scotland uses council areas as the subdivisions of Scotland. Also worth noting for my point against other forms of subdivision for Scotland. -- Jza84 · (talk) 01:31, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Support Sensible solution to a problem that simply need not have ever exsisted. Hierarchical naming makes sense - pointing a reader to some obscure council name is only going to confuse. SFC9394 (talk) 01:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Support - see my comments on "Highland" on this page, which talk about how misleading it is. Only in cases where there are several places with the same name in Scotland, e.g. Kincardine, Letham, Newburgh etc is it worth differentiating. --MacRusgail (talk) 18:07, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Support - I have changed my mind on this one, after reading the Perth Talk and here. I was actually the prat that moved a lot of these articles to the daft "council area" dabs in the first place (I stopped doing it quite a long time ago now). I repent. --Mais oui! (talk) 04:36, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Guidelines User:Jza84 added - council always formula

In Scotland, disambiguated place names should go under [[placename, council area]]. Thus Fort William, Highland, and Clarkston, East Renfrewshire not Fort William, Scotland (which is a redirect page) or Clarkston, Renfrewshire.

(from discussion at Talk:Perth, Scotland):

The reason for providing a second part to a name is to clearly differentiate the place from other(s) with the same name. The second part of the name should be better known than the first. Beyond this, to me, it matters little what is used, "county" (old or new), region, unitary authority, or nation, so long as it makes it clear where the article is about and differentiates it from other places with the same name. For old "county towns" adding the county or region does little for clarity (as Lincoln, Lincolnshire). Perth, Perth and Kinross repeats infomation, whereas Perth, Scotland adds clarity (provided there is no other Perth, Scotland of similar prominence). Finavon (talk) 13:31, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
Absolutely no guideline is needed for UK articles. On occasions where there are multiple instances of the name the best workaround can be found amongst the editors of those articles to find a suitable solution. To suggest that all placenames of settlements have to go under "placename, council" is ridiculous. I have commented on this before, and this seems to be a worryingly increasing trend of content decisions affecting thousands of articles being decided unilaterally by a small group of editors who want everything to fit in neat and tidy boxes and come up with "guidelines" which everyone should follow. I will link to the essay Wikipedia:Avoid instruction creep - I think this needs to be clearly accepted in the context of UK place/settlement articles - I am fed up being hemmed in by an unnecessary and useless bureaucracy decided on by a tiny number of editors. SFC9394 (talk) 14:17, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

This is wrong anyway, it should be "Fort William, Highland Region" - the Highlands are a completely different entity to Highland region, and the current idea misleads some people into thinking that some areas are in the Highlands, which are not, and some which are in the Highlands are not. I still think this is Americanisation of wikipedia. --MacRusgail (talk) 16:55, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Some examples

  • Fort William - Highlands, & Highland region
  • Campbelltown - Highlands, but not Highland region - Argyll
  • Pitlochry - Highlands, but not Highland region - Perthshire (Perth and Kinross?)
  • Thurso - Not in Highlands (Lowland Caithness), but in Highland region
  • Edinburgh - Clearly neither in Highlands nor Highland Region
  • Orkney - Not in the Highlands (nor arguably truly Scottish), but lumped with them for certain purposes)
  • Western Isles - Highlands, but not Highland region. Properly this term refers to ALL of the Hebrides, not just the outer ones!

This is why this is a particularly horrible and misleading usage. Banff is a traditional county town, and none of its people consider themselves "Aberdeenshire" - it's anathema to them, but since there's only one Banff of any note in Scotland, "Banff, Scotland" makes perfect sense. Apart from the fact that London based penpushers have made a dog's dinner of Scottish geography, there have been several changes during the 20th century, which will lead to great confusion. --MacRusgail (talk) 17:03, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

The comments by SFC and MacRusgail are very well put. Not an iota of thought was put into Jza84's attempted guidelines. SFC's suggestion for no guidelines is probably the nearest we can get to the best possible situation, ironic as that seems. Per comments of SFC, the more I find out about the guidelines process the more disturbed I become. Many such guidelines are written by a tiny number of people on obscure pages who push their little coups through with usually no discussion and thereafter attempt to subvert community dialogue by forwarding them as a fait accompli. Thats how we've got most of those monarch names we have, and why so many Scottish places were moved. Little attempted coups like that. Jza84 even had the temerity to cite the text he himself had written a month before as an excuse to move the long established Perth, Scotland to the absurb Perth, Perth and Kinross, writing It is convention to use the style "PLACENAME, COUNCIL AREA" for Scottish places, but the guidelines do permit the excercise of commonsense and rare exceptions., while User:Warofdreams wrote when moving the page in line with guidelines. If you disagree with the guidelines, please discuss them; do not change them unilaterally ... irony, eh? Did we all become idiots overnight that we're expected to buy that kind of thing? I apologize, I'm now sounding rather abrasive, and I must WP:AGF. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 17:16, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
Have to say I didn't realise the extent of what was going on here. The current vast amount of moves by User:Warofdreams is completely OTT. No discussion, no consensus - just "moves per...." - this is a guideline (with virtually no discussion and inserted into the page 2 months ago) not a policy - you really can't be doing that. Don't bother doing the mass moves on any of the articles I work on or they will get moved straight back. Totally ridiculous. SFC9394 (talk) 20:00, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
And he just reinstated it too. Quite unbelievable. I don't think actual consensus matters. Why bother forming it when you can just pretend it exists? Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 20:11, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
Right. Please do not remove guidelines which have had consensus simply because you disagree with them. There is a discussion under way; there are no grounds to cover up the existing consensus. A link to the ongoing discussion is the ideal compromise. Please assume good faith and avoid personal attacks. Warofdreams talk 20:41, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
Warofdreams ... this is nonsense. What evidence do you have that this is an "existing consensus"? Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 20:46, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
"the existing consensus". There is no discussion on this page - this has received *NO* discussion amongst a wide body of editors (and unless tucked away on someone's private talk page I can't even find *any* discussion at all). What is going on here is, quite frankly, breathtaking. SFC9394 (talk) 20:50, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
Indeedie. Warofdreams ... you can presume that no-one here is psychic nor has access to the relevant IRC logs ... so given that absolutely no-one has even bothered defending that ... lol ... "consensus" ... or otherwise provided any evidence of its existence, you might actually be obliged to provide some. It'd certainly help. Regards, Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 20:57, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
I am sorry to see that you are continuing to make accusations of bad faith with no evidence. I am interested in a discussion aimed at building consensus. Truth be told, I am unconcerned as to the merits of this proposal, but I have been shocked at the way you have attempted to bulldozer your ideas through, by pretending that there has never been any consensus, trying to cover up evidence of it, and making personal attacks. Why not simply put forward your proposal, with the arguments in favour, and invite discussion? Warofdreams talk 21:24, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
Chatise me for bad faith, fair enough. But don't do that and then say you have attempted to bulldozer your ideas through, by pretending that there has never been any consensus, trying to cover up evidence of it, and making personal attacks, as that is much worse faith, and is simply untrue in any case. I don't need to pretend it doesn't exist. It doesn't, as you should know. And I am not the one "bulldozing" ... my edits to the main page settled at "Under discussion", whereas yours are an attempt at imposing a guideline that has yet to be defended, and is opposed by many people. And "personal attacks"? Where? Utter nonsense. Please participate in the discussion rather than continuing with this stuff. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 21:30, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
I am not interested in replying to your baseless accusations. I will participate in the discussion below. Warofdreams talk 00:02, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
"by pretending that there has never been any consensus". There hasn't - as I have demonstratively shown above (including the fact that your comments in one of those pieces of "consensus" is the diametrical opposite of the page moves you have been making!). AGF claims work both ways - as your comments above prove - since "attempted to bulldozer your ideas through", "by pretending", "trying to cover up evidence", are all complete failures of AGF. SFC9394 (talk) 21:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to just say (during a period where I'm struggling for editting time) that I didn't add new guidelines as such, I merely elaborated on them. The guidelines stated they were for the United Kingdom but only tackled England. I made this clear in the edit summary and based this on the disambiguation I've seen already established for Scottish settlements inline with WP:BOLD. I don't have a problem with them being revisted and scruntenised, but do have a problem with nasty targetted messages implying I acted in bad faith. I had the articles best interests at heart and don't believe my elaboration was at all bad faith. I stand-by it. It would have been nice to have been invited here to explain my edits. -- Jza84 · (talk) 22:45, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Existing practice

I have had a look at the titles of articles in some of the subcategories of Category:Towns in Scotland and Category:Villages in Scotland. It looks like the existing practice (which is likely to represent the current consensus) has been to name articles with the simple town/village name where possible, and to add ", <council area>" where disambiguation is needed. The three choices are therefore:

  1. do nothing (and risk this situation arising again)
  2. codify the existing practice (and probably fix the few current exceptions)
  3. establish a new guideline and move articles that don't conform.

Any new conventions would likely involve either changing the word(s) after the comma, changing from comma to parentheses, and/or mandating that all article titles should have a qualifying word(s) (usually called pre-disambiguation by detractors). Any of these changes would have lively debate in this forum, based on prior experiences here. --Scott Davis Talk 05:44, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

The majority of placenames in Scotland have no dab. I'm off on wikibreak now. I hope no-one tries to reinstate those guidelines again, it's really bad to do that. All I can add to the debate just now is to say that use of the Council X looks more absurd the more famous the place is. I hope neutrals read the concerns posted here and on Talk:Perth, Scotland. I think they need to be taken seriously. 5 different people have expressed the same opinion regarding use of these, and we're not all nutters. Regards, Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 08:51, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
X, Scotland seems quite sensible bearing in mind the smaller number of settlements viz-a-viz England. However, we need to consider what to do with the Isles as often they are more logically attached to the island names as opposed to Scotland. How about this in sequence:
  1. X,Scotland / Isle Name
  2. X,Council Area where there is more than one in Scotland
And add in a appropriate disambiguation page where option 2 is required. Regan123 (talk) 19:24, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Excellent, a constructive discussion. Either approach has some advantages:
  1. Using "Scotland" as the first choice disambiguator: it is a better known location than the council areas, it means that Perth doesn't have a disambiguator which repeats the placename, and it in no way precludes using council areas where there is more than one place of the same name in Scotland.
  2. Using the council areas as the first choice disambiguator: results in fewer cases where a second choice disambiguator is required, is the existing practice (and yes, there has been a consensus for disambiguating below national level), is more similar to the practice in Wales, England and Ireland, and allows for three major island groups to be first choice disambiguators without having to create exceptions.
I'm not really too bothered either way, although I can see the merits of changing to using Scotland. The isle proposal is entirely new, and again has some appeal - perhaps we should get some more input from WP:WPSI? Warofdreams talk 00:25, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I've commented above and will add a note on the WPSI talk page. Having been involved in a few MOS-related discussions of late it seems to me incredible that important guidelines like 'Naming conventions' can simply be altered without any necessity either to request input from or inform those affected. The whole system is in need of a complete overhaul in my view. Ben MacDuiTalk/Walk 20:08, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

The title of this section is misleading. Many places in Scotland have the form "Placename, Scotland". This is the practice in the most commonly-edited articles. Articles with the form "Placename, Region" are often little-edited articles which were moved unilaterally without discussion. Where a commonly-edited article, like Perth, Scotland, is moved, there are usually objections. Lurker (said · done) 14:44, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Memphis, Tennessee redirect question

Hi there, I have read the naming conventions for U.S. cities and I still need expert assistance in their interpretation. I have tried to check out the AP Stylebook that is referred to, but it is subscription based. So I thought I'd ask my question here for free.

The page Memphis formerly contained the disambiguation information, I moved the disambiguation content to Memphis (disambiguation), and disambiguated all existent links to Memphis, except some userpages and archives. The article about the City of Memphis is on the page Memphis, Tennessee, where it belongs according to the [[City, State]] convention. So far I am sure that is according to the naming conventions.

What I am not sure about is, if the redirect Memphis --> Memphis, Tennessee is desired or if Memphis --> Memphis (disambiguation) is the proper way to point for the redirect. The Memphis, Tennessee article starts with a link to Memphis, Egypt (the ancient capital of Egypt) and to Memphis (disambiguation), so no information is lost for the reader, either way.

The disambiguated links as mentioned above were about 250 or so, with 90% for Memphis, Tennessee, about 9% for Memphis, Egypt and about 1% others. These percentages are links, of course, and they might not perfectly predict what most readers expect to find when they type in Memphis but they give a hint. If you look at the sum of clicks, formerly 100% of readers had to click twice to read what they wanted. Now 90% have to click once, 9% twice and 1% three times.

So far I got with common sense. If the redirect is not according to conventions and can not be subject to an exception it can easily be changed, of course.

Thanks for your time, doxTxob \ talk 01:18, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Personally I would like to see the dab page at Memphis. There was no real reason to move it. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:33, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, there was a real and good reason. Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary_topic suggests just that in case of a topic more commonly searched for than other ambiguous topics of the same name, like Memphis in this case. Only if there is doubt about the primary topic (or extended discussion about which is the primary topic), the dab page should stand alone as [[Topic]], not as [[Topic (disambiguation)]]. doxTxob \ talk 05:05, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Memphis, Egypt is a commonly searched for topic, and outside of the U.S. might be the more commonly searched for of the two. Making Memphis a redirect to Memphis, Tennessee could be seen as too U.S.-centric. -- Donald Albury 10:49, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Just as a rough idea, if you look at the readership stats Memphis, Tennessee saw 54k hits in January, Memphis 12k and Memphis, Egypt 10k. Not the whole story of course, and as a Brit I'm personally pretty hot on WP:CSB but in this case I'm happy to let US cultural imperialism win this one. Put it this way, the typical English speaker looking for the Egypt one wouldn't be surprised to find the modern city at the primary location. FlagSteward (talk) 13:52, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Funny, I am German, living in the U.S. and see myself more as a cosmopolitan, usually tring to avoid U.S. centric bias and other cultural centricism as well. My actions point rather to a high level of user-friedlyness and making topics as easy to find as possible. doxTxob \ talk 21:57, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
I concur with the positions expressed above by Donald Albury and Vegaswikian. Memphis, Egypt is better known outside of the U.S. Country music isn't really that popular or well-known outside of the U.S. We need to balance the interests of U.S. readers against those of the rest of the world. --Coolcaesar (talk) 22:44, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
You have noticed that the two supporters of the redirect Memphis-->Memphis, Tennessee both are not even Americans, haven't you? As a German, I can tell you that when "Memphis" is mentioned there, there is no question even, which Memphis is meant, just "Memphis" means Memphis, Tennessee, even those who do not favour the U.S. too much would agree on that. Whatever consensus is reached, I will respect of course. I usually just prefer user-friendlyness.
By the way, to my knowledge Memphis is not very well known for country music, which indeed is not very popular outside the United States. To most, Memphis is known as the birthplace of Blues, the birthplace of Rock'n'Roll and as the home of Elvis Presley, King of Rock'n'Roll. And for these profane reasons Memphis is known all over the globe. ;-) doxTxob \ talk 23:25, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Given the historical significance of the Egyption city I would rather the link went to the dab page. --Barryob (Contribs) (Talk) 05:04, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Historical significance is one side and current day significance is another. Isn't significance in part determined on what is to say about the topic? Apart from the above, there are far more articles about current day Memphis, TN than there are about ancient Memphis, Egypt. doxTxob \ talk 05:17, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
However can we show that one of these is the primary use? I have long advocated that if there is any question about the primary use, that it be resolved by having the dab page in the main name space. Since in this case that was were it started, it should remain. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The user stats as mentioned above show that Memphis, Tennessee gets more than 5 times the hits on the English wikipedia compared to Memphis, Egypt. For me that is convincing enough to see a primary use here.

A second thing I want to mantion is that I do not consider it a very fair move of Vegaswikian to move the dab page while this discussion is still ongoing and consensus in neither direction has reached. doxTxob \ talk 19:19, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually all I did was restore the status before a user did the move shortly before this discussion began. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:32, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
The change of the redirect was discussed prior to the move on the discussion page and the change was made according to the outcome of that discussion in favour of redirecting to Memphis, Tennessee. doxTxob \ talk 22:03, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that this was handled properly at Talk:Memphis. A suggestion was made back in August 2007 to which no one objected. About 6 months later all the links were fixed and the change was made, back in January. Others made changes. I see no record of objections, then, suddenly, during discussions above and without establishing consensus, apparently Vegaswikian unilaterally moved it back on Feb 26 to the way it was? What I don't see here is consensus to change it back like this, yet apparently it was. On what basis? Aren't Wikipedia changes like this made by consensus? It seems to me that the dab page should be at Memphis (disambiguation) and the redirect to the city at Memphis, unless consensus can be established to change it. No? --Unflappable (talk) 00:26, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there was a discussion. However it had minimal participation which is not surprising since I suspect that most editors do not watch dab pages or redirect pages. If you believe that what I did is really incorrect, then you can change it back. Or if you would like to get a proper discussion it can be nominated at WP:RM. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:13, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Los Angeles

I requested that the article Los Angeles, California be moved to Los Angeles. You're welcome to voice your opinion at Talk:Los Angeles, California#Requested move #5. Charles Stewart (talk) 18:17, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Userboxes

I have created three userboxes for users to express a position in the endless debate over U.S. city article titles:

Enjoy! szyslak 07:04, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

British cities

I'm not sure if this is where to direct this, but I've increasingly noticed, and perhaps it is from my cultural bias, that searching for common names like Sheffield, Northampton, Worcester, or Wakefield automatically yields the British city, bypassing perhaps a 20 item disambiguation page of names that could also be derived from that search term. Perhaps your reasoning is that there is no other way to disambiguate British cities, so therefore it should be in the number one spot, but I assure you, I would certainly put Gary Sheffield before the city in England any day.

I would really like to know some cogent reason as to why this is the way it is, because this has always bothered me, and today, it's making me especially irked. Just the idea that Birmingham yields not one of the most important cities in United States history, but some random British city, certainly seems to be an issue. Jared (t)  14:06, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Google doesn't agree with you on Sheffield - Gary is some way down. There have been discussions about Birmingham in cfd - the category is Category:Birmingham, England. -- roundhouse0 (talk) 14:21, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
The simple answer is that the British naming convention puts them there by default. Then in discussions to move them, the editors of those articles dominate the move discussions and as a result the dab page has no chance to be moved to the proper place. No primary usage seems to get lost along the way. Yes, that is my view, but if you look at several talk pages for move discussions you can read for yourself and draw your own conclusions. Talk:Worcester#Requested move would make excellent reading as a discussion that is still open. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:37, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
It is indeed excellent reading - thank you. I'm sure ones for Birmingham or Manchester would be equally illuminating, particularly if one were changed and the other not (supporters of the 2 vie for the Second city of the United Kingdom crown). (I am in the UK. I'd go for 'Worcester, England' if pressed. 'Worcester, Worcestershire' does look and sound silly.) -- roundhouse0 (talk) 20:12, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
If you want to find out about Gary Sheffield then you would search for Gary Sheffield - expecting a disambig page for any settlement that is also used as a surname is unlikely, unless there is a clear disparity in the notability (a baseball player is not notable worldwide - just as almost all domestic sportspeople aren't). Your argument on Gary Sheffield is leftfield - it is the equivalent of expecting Houston to be a disambig so people can find Whitney - when in fact the (sensible) reality is a redirect to the city.
Also it is probably worthy of a point that your comments suggest a pretty strong cultural bias - dismissing Birmingham, England as a "random British city" is a pretty narrow-minded way of looking at things. You give your view that Birmingham, U.S.A is one of the "most important cities in United States history", fair enough, that may very well be the case - but an equal argument can be made that Birmingham, England, as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, is highly notable (certainly on a national, if not even on an international scale). SFC9394 (talk) 20:45, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
But notability is not the same as being the primary use. Cities with the same name all have some level of notability. The real question is which one, if any, is clearly the primary use for decisions about applying the naming conventions. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:23, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
The idea of moving Sheffield or Birmingham is absurd. The hit counts are the best measure of primary use we have. Birmingham had almost twice the number of hits as its alabama counterpart. Unless theres another significant usage I'm overlooking it means the majority of people looking for a Birmingham are looking for the Birmingham. The case for Sheffield is even more clear cut. While Sheffield gets 37,000 hits no other article gets over 1,000. The only exception is Gary Sheffield who gets 12,000. Ignoring the fact that most people would expect him to be at Gary Sheffield this is still a third of the Sheffield hit count during the Baseball season. josh (talk) 23:16, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Hit counts do not determine primary usage. They can be raised during a discussion but are not the ultimate determining factor. In the case you cite for Birmingham that data makes it clear that there is no primary use. In fact if you could exclude the hits for Alabama from the Birmingham count it would further the case that there is no primary topic. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:43, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

To sort of respond to everything that has been said thus far, I was certainly exaggerating my claim to prove that UK cities are all too often found in the primary spot. By no means would I advocate "Sheffield" to redirect to "Gary Sheffield" because that would be absurd. And also, I'm not sure how the whole "hit count" thing works, but if it works the way I'm thinking, obviously the page in the primary spot (e.g. Birmingham) would be the first page hit in a search before the reader realizes that they must disambig to Birmingham, Alabama, thus inflating the first count by nearly two times. Regardless of count, though, there really shouldn't be just one of a bunch of things in the number one spot, unless by sheer importance that one thing trumps all the others. That said, I would probably advocate having a disambiguation page over linking directly to the British city, which, I'm sure is often not the final destination of the searching user. Jared (t)  00:04, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Applicability to article titles vs contents

Hello! Does this policy apply only to article titles or also to city names when mentioned in article bodies, such as birthplaces? My question relates specifically to use of "City Name, State" versus "City Name, United States." I'm kind of new and thought naming convention policies, as a whole, applied to entire articles. I'm sure this issue has been hotly discussed, so any guidance would be appreciated. :) hamu♥hamu (talk) 17:25, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

The guideline is intended for article titles, but it's probably good practice to more or less follow them for use in articles. A good guideline to use is, when in an article, refer to the city by "City Name, State" first, and then simply "City" for subsequent entries. For example:
George Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts ... while living in Milton, the Bush family ...
Hope that makes sense! Shereth 23:02, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
Makes good sense. I know this has come up many, many times before, but has a consensus been reached on how to handle situations where an editor feels strongly that references to "Milton, Massachusetts" should be changed to "Milton, United States" within an article? Some editors make this change in every article they encounter, in total good faith. As a US resident, I can confidently say that the state name is imperative for clarity and non-ambiguity (especially if the city has no article to Wikilink to), but many editors feel that the practice is US-biased. Short of having ongoing discussions, sometimes involving high emotions, on every single article for which this becomes a point of contention, is there a precedent, policy, or comprehensive discussion that can be referenced to help all editors understand the hows and whys of using City, State format for US cities? Thanks so much. --hamu♥hamu (talk) 00:37, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately there is nothing (at least that I can find) in the Manual of Style regarding how to handle geographical locations within articles. It may be the sort of thing worth bringing up for discussion, as far as whether or not we should include a section for place names. Shereth 15:36, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Can't say I'm surprised, as this is not an issue that's easy to build consensus on! :) In the meantime, I'll just handle each situation as it comes along. Thanks for your guidance! --hamu♥hamu (talk) 20:44, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Many editors prefer to add "U.S." to city, state designations, at least in the first mention. We can't expect every kid in India to know that "Arkansas" is a U.S. state. But we should never write "Omaha, U.S.A." I thought that was covered in some guideline. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 21:10, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
If you could find that guideline that'd be great - I searched high and low for it and came up empty. Shereth 21:14, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
This guideline, which only deals with article titles, says:
  • A United States city's article should never be titled "city, country" (e.g. "Detroit, United States") or "city, state, country" (e.g. "Boston, Massachusetts, USA").
Perhaps similar language should be added to the MOS. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 21:23, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
I think it's reasonable to extend the title guideline as such, and wouldn't mind seeing it integrated directly into the MoS. Shereth 21:28, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
I think we should follow global city conventions. For example, there's no need articles on NYC or LA to be titled "New York City, U.S.A", "Los Angeles, U.S.A" or perhaps even "Los Angeles, California", since they are alpha-cities and are well recognizable. For cities that are less well known, I would favor using City, Country. Although this goes against US convention, it does provide context to international readers who probably wouldn't be able to determine what country a particular city is located in by just looking at a City, State formatted title. AreJay (talk) 01:02, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
The problem with LA as an example is, are you talking about the city, county or valley? While a major city, using it without qualifiers is ambiguous. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:50, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Israel

There is no established naming convention on Israeli settlements and localities. A new guideline is being discussed at WikiProject Israel. You are invited to participate. Skeezix1000 (talk) 16:04, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Australia - ridiculous mandatory disambiguation

The Australia section here mandates that all Australian settlements should be disambiguated, whether there's a need for it or not. I find this utterly stupid. __meco (talk) 13:05, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Oklahoma City

I've revived the age old discussion over Oklahoma City here. - A Link to the Past (talk) 01:46, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

And there's a similar discussion Indianapolis' talk page. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:17, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Did you miss New York? Vegaswikian (talk) 23:46, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

India

The following proposal was included within the naming convention. Since it is still under discussion, I have moved it here to the talk page. Skeezix1000 (talk) 15:57, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

This is a proposed addition to the naming convention, for which there has not been any clear consensus established.

Articles on places in India go under [[placename]]. When disambiguation is needed, articles go under [[Cityname, State]] (e.g., Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh). For cities that shares its name with other countries (e.g., Hyderabad) the disambiguation style preferred is Hyderabad (India).

This is another proposed addition to the naming convention, for which there has not been any clear consensus established.

Articles on settlements in India follow the dab-layout rules used by all other settlements around the world, i.e. use comma not brackets. When disambiguation is needed, articles go under [[Cityname, Specifier]] where Specifier can be "India", a state name or a district name.

Divisions and districts

I have seen a few redirects from "... District" to "... district" (and/or Division > division) but seen no clear resolution supporting such a policy. I'm in favour of it, despite having a lot to do with United States county names, which seem to be uniformly "... County, ...". If there's a policy statement or discussion, I would like a link to it. Robin Patterson (talk) 13:13, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Here is the link: WikiProject Indian districts/Naming. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 21:49, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

San Luis Obispo, Anaheim

A user has just moved San Luis Obispo, California to San Luis Obispo after a 12 hour discussion period. The same person aslo put a WP:SPEEDY tag on the redirect at Anaheim with the apparent intent of moving Anaheim, California too, although he hasn't asked for comment there yet. Rklear (talk) 14:52, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Clearly San Luis Obispo, California's move is not supported by the naming convention and should be reversed. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:20, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
Please explain. "San Luis Obispo" need no disambiguation. It is a unique city name. As such, according to this policy, it should be named San Luis Obispo. If "San Luis Obispo" warranted disambiguation then this document would have it correctly as San Luis Obispo, California. —  X  S  G  01:12, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
The U.S. city naming guideline has been a contentious issue for years now. There are two extreme view points. One is to have a uniform "city, state" name for any and all U.S. places. The other is to use "city" and disambiguate only as needed. The current guideline to allow for the possiblity of about 20 or so exceptions is a compromise position that resulted after a series of long and heated discussions. The two cities you refer to are not on the list of possible exceptions. --Polaron | Talk 01:16, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Consensus to move Seattle?

I'm not seeing any here or at Talk:Seattle but it was moved anyways. AgneCheese/Wine 04:41, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Nevermind. The situation was corrected. AgneCheese/Wine 04:43, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
There has been a move request started at Talk:Seattle,_Washington#Requested_move. --Bobblehead (rants) 05:21, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, if you read said discussion, there was absolutely zero consensus reached. So the move was done improperly and without valid reason. The article needs to be moved back immediately. Dr. Cash (talk) 19:01, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I strongly concur with Dr. Cash's position and I also would support an immediate ban on the user who proposed the move (User:Remember the dot). I also believe that there was insufficient consensus to begin with for adding an exception to the traditional city, state guideline and the users who forced through that exception should also be banned for acting in bad faith. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:43, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
One would hope you are saying this in jest... anyway, there was consensus for the move. It is also under review at Talk:Seattle. --Ckatzchatspy 09:37, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Just a note, please watch the vandalism accusations and check who actually removed something. :) rootology (C)(T) 15:29, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Boston, MA

Yet another attempted exception to the City, State convention. Phiwum (talk) 15:58, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not an exemption: "Cities listed in the AP Stylebook as not requiring the state modifier may be listed at City if they are the primary topic for that name. Cities that meet these criteria are: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York City, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle.[1] No other American city should be listed at City." rootology (C)(T) 16:00, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Linking to places whose name has changed

Hi again,

Just thought of another question. When referring to somebody's place of birth, is it ok to use the name of the city at the time, provided that it is piped link to the modern name? For example:

"Sunil Gavaskar (born 10 July 1949 in [[Mumbai|Bombay]], India)..."

rather than

"Sunil Gavaskar (born 10 July 1949 in [[Mumbai]], India)..."

–MDCollins (talk) 00:06, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

As I edit an article where the country, rather than the city, is in question, the answer would seem to be [[Bombay]] if it redirects to Mumbai or has a sensible article of its own. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:02, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Bombay is actually a disambig page, so providing that the link points to the correct article, which says Mumbai formerly known as Bombay (or similar), I can link to [[Mumbai|Bombay]]?–MDCollins (talk) 01:08, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
OK, in that case, I'd use the piped link. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:10, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Or Bombay, India. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:56, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Review of convention for US cities

I wasn't around during the crafting of the convention. Could someone explain to me why the policy is to treat about twenty-five cities differently than all others? Because of their size? What makes sense to me is to either all go with "City, State", or to go with "City" unless disambiguation is needed, which would essentially open up the can of worms for many, many other communities. At the moment, I'm not asking to change things, I just want to know if someone can either explain (or point me to an explanation of) why things are as they are right now. —  X  S  G  16:23, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

It's because of the AP style guides we based most of this on, and because it's kind of silly to make exemptions for nearly all non-American world class cities, but not for American ones of similar caliber and notability. This would just get the whole thing in line and synchronous and eliminate tons of constant and pointless drama and fighting. rootology (C)(T) 16:25, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
That makes sense, but then why do some other, larger U.S. cities which need no disambiguation not get exempted, like, say, Austin, Texas? Would it perhaps have made more sense in crafting the rule to set some threshold over which a city can consider changing its name? For example (just throwing it out there) cities with population > 500,000 in the most recent official U.S. census? This is still not an official proposal, just trying to see if these things were considered. —  X  S  G  16:30, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Rather than making up and debating our own rules regarding which cities are exempted and which are not, the proposal is to simply take the list from the AP Stylebook (AP = Associated Press), which is a published source available widely, and follow the same guidelines that they use for newspapers following AP guidelines. The AP Stylebook is a widely used document for formatting of many things, not just city names, but is definitive, and commonly accepted. If we leave this up to our own debating over these rules for exceptions, we could easily have to go through like 20 more votes on each city in the next year or so. Dr. Cash (talk) 16:36, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
(ec) The "Cliffs Notes" version : There was a long, drawn out, contentious debate regarding whether or not to allow certain cities - New York City for example - to be at "City", or whether to force all of them to be at "City, State". Numerous ideas were floated as far as which cities to allow to use the "City" convention, including size, but they were all rejected as being insufficiently objective and too arbitrary. In the end, the use of the AP Style Guide's naming convention concerning cities and states was selected as a reasonable and objective compromise. Note that the AP provides for 30 exemptions, while we only allow for 25. This is due to the fact that Phoenix, Arizona meets the AP exemption, for example, but shares its name with the mythological bird and is not sufficiently "primary" in terms of the use of the word. Shereth 16:28, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Thank you. I think my questions have now been sufficiently answered. It sounds like the AP Style Guide is somewhat arbitrary at specifying only 30 exemptions. —  X  S  G  16:32, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
The AP is probably a bit arbitrary in their selection, yes, but I think it was selected as an acceptable compromise due to the fact that it is a published, accessible list and at the very least, we aren't the ones responsible for its arbitrary nature. Kind of passing the buck :P But it did have the effect of settling what was a rancorous debate. Shereth 16:35, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the cities on the AP list are of course arbitrary, because any such list must be arbitrary. That is, there is no one clear and obvious characteristic that distinguishes which cities are definitely best known by City alone, and those that aren't. Even if you did it by population, the choice of what population number you would select would be arbitrary. But the point is that our choice to follow the AP list was not arbitrary - we're simply acknowledging that whatever the list is, it will be arbitrary, and we might as well follow what the pros are doing, to the extent that it makes sense within Wikipedia. By the way, the fact that any such list is arbitrary is one of the reasons that I'm in the "don't disambiguate except when required" camp. --Serge (talk) 17:26, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Serge understates his role. He is the "don't disambiguate except when required" camp; if it were not for his persistent and single-purpose disruption, we would have settled, probably on something resembling the present compromise, much faster and with less rancor. I note that he has already attempted his usual tactic of responding to almost everyone who disagrees with him; if this continues, I suggest dispute resolution. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:47, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Note that this page suggests that he is User:Born2cycle, for example. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:27, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
What!? I'm surprised he hasn't been banned already for sockpuppetry. But then, considering his consistent pattern of trolling behavior, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he has a second account.
As for the rest of Septentrionalis's analysis above, I agree. Serge is the sole editor who keeps beating this dead horse every year. He needs to get a life and focus on making valuable contributions to Wikipedia like the rest of us, rather than wasting other editors' time trying to build a consensus in favor of his crazy position. In contrast, practically every American editor who writes code or prose for a living supports the city, state convention because they recognize how logical and simple it is (as well as reflecting normal conventions in formal written English). Otherwise we will have hundreds of nasty edit wars as every local partisan asserts that his little city should be the default for a particular city name (Portland, Los Altos, Toledo, Claremont, Menlo Park, Levittown, Pleasantville, Compton, and Eureka are among the more obvious battlegrounds). For example, as an American, I've always felt that Brisbane, California should be at Brisbane (since Brisbane is one of the most prominent commercial centers in Northern California and is home to several prominent American companies with nationwide name recognition like Monster Cable, bebe stores, IGN Entertainment, and Wal-Mart.com), but obviously, such a page move would anger a lot of Australians.
In short, the city, state convention avoids such issues. --Coolcaesar (talk) 08:18, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
The above analysis would look a little less bizarre if the proposal weren't drawing clear majority support (or are all of the people voting in favour alleged to be Serge puppets?) We have already rejected New York, New York; why not reject other city, state combinations that are almost equally odd-looking? It's not just a matter of aesthetics; there are good reasons (in terms of not confusing readers) why we have our primary-topic naming conventions, and they apply equally well to American cities as cities anywhere else.--Kotniski (talk) 08:32, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
  • The standard used to be for all U.S. cities to follow the convention. The AP list was adopted as a compromise with those who didn't want states included except on a case by case basis. Adhering to the convention has resulted in a remarkable lack of debate. Opening up this issue to be decided individually for every one of the thousands of places in the U.S. is a recipe for endless debate and wasted time. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 19:08, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Actually for clarification the AP list isn't entirely arbitrary. Here is what is written in the Stylebook itself about the selection of the cities: "The norms that influenced the selection were the population of the city, the population of the metropolitan region, the frequency of the city's appearance in the news, the uniqueness of its name and experience that has shown the name to be almost synonymous with the state or nation where it is located." That comes from the 2004 version of the AP Stylebook available through some searching on Google books. Vertigo700 (talk) 21:50, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
I don't think anyone has argued that the AP list is entirely arbitrary. The point is that where exactly they draw the line is necessarily arbitrary. Whether it's population, frequency of appearance in the news, its uniqueness, etc., the particular threshold selected is necessarily arbitrary. Not that there is anything wrong with that... But more to the point, where we (Wikipedia editors) draw the line is what is relevant here, and if we draw that line at the well-defined AP list, there is nothing arbitrary about that (no matter how much arbitrariness is a factor in how they determine whether a given city is on the list). --Serge (talk) 18:21, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

City Name Proposal

I have actually wondered for a while why the standard is not something more international; like country/state/city - which would eliminate ambiguous link issues and cities that have duplicate names. I hesitate to point out, living in Idaho, with 'Moscow', 'Atlanta', 'Ontario' (OR)...Which certainly are not "metropolitan" areas, but certainly would eventually deserve a reference in an encyclopedia.
Single word pages like 'Denver' would have so many disambiguations as to be silly. (See Omlette, etc)
Mjquin_id (talk) 06:21, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Because that's not English. We are not here to rewrite the English language, which uses both Atlanta and Atlanta, Georgia, but not Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Perhaps it should; but this is not the place for that reform. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:10, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
All due respect, what does it have to do with English. It should be for encyclopedic reasons. I was also hoping it would be more international; I.e. NOT related to the English language, but related to world geography (but using English names). Would it be easier to translate?
Think of a heirarchy:World -> {CountryName} -> {StateName} -> {province/County} -> City -> neighborhood?(i.e. Bronx, etc)
If I understand, we are discussing "physical" structure of pages. The physical page would be located at United States:Georgia:Atlanta, but you could point to it from whatever disambiguation pages you wanted. The key point being that it would work for all countries in all languages...Mjquin_id (talk) 01:56, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Sometimes what some see as obvious is far from obvious for other editors. I think a common naming convention would be a good thing. But I'm afraid that is a minority opinion. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:16, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Do not use an article name that suggests a hierarchy of articles would probably be relevant here. -- Jao (talk) 11:26, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Are Individual City Move proposals Appropriate now?

I see that User:Born2cycle seems to be managing discussions/votes for a good number of cities to move them from <city,state> to <city>, even as this discussion about a systematic policy change is in progress. It that appropriate? Should this editor be asked to hold off for a while? The cities he is working can be seen at his User page, which seems to be devoted to this effort. Pzavon (talk) 01:20, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

The only individual move discussion that is active right now is for Boston. The Los Angeles discussion is not about a move, but trying to establish whether there is anything close to a consensus about Los Angeles not being primary usage for the city. --User:Born2cycle (talk) 01:24, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Which, of course, only matters in determining whether or not to move it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:19, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Actually, it matters in determining whether Los Angeles belongs on the list of cities to be moved as part of the large move. --Serge (talk) 04:23, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
As for the question at hand: individual move proposals (for the twenty major cities listed on the guideline page) have always been appropriate, in either direction. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:17, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Boston

It appears that there is pretty clear consensus at Talk:Boston, Massachusetts#Requested move to move the article to "Boston" per a move request that began before the above mass move request began, and the survey has had no new opinions or discussion in two days. Building on the above, would it be acceptable to move this page now, before the hypothetical mass move takes place (which could take awhile, given the disagreement about which cities should be exceptions), or would it just be better to wait? Cheers, Rai•me 15:53, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Granted I'm biased, but I think the objective thing to do is just do it. Consensus for Boston was achieved independent of this big move proposal, and should happen regardless of whether the big move happens. And if the big move happens too, it's one less move to deal with then. --Serge (talk) 18:11, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
This single-purpose account wouldn't know the objective thing to do if he fell over it. Please learn to shut up when you've made your case, such as it is. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:16, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Please, no personal attacks. --Serge (talk) 20:01, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Ah, I see: this reasoning is so lame ... is not a personal attack. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:32, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
Excusing your personal attack on another editor by highlighting other examples of this sin? Just bite your tongue. 58Crash (talk) 05:35, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
No, pleading provocation, compounded by hypocrisy. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:11, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
There is a difference between a personal attack and a critical comment about the content of what someone posts. From WP:NPA: "comments should not be personalized and should be directed at content and actions rather than people". My comment, which you linked above, was referring to the reasoning (content) presented by some in their comments to be "lame". It was not a comment about any person. Your comment above, "wouldn't know the objective thing to do if he fell over it" was clearly personal. Besides, if one person slips and makes a personal attack, that does not justify doing the same in response (this is also from WP:NPA) I have tried very hard to avoid personally attacking you, for example, and I sincerely hope I have succeeded and you agree. If you feel you've been provoked, or I'm hypocritical, please explain how, for I try very hard to avoid doing both. Thanks. --Serge (talk) 15:26, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
If Serge does not make this into another of the dozen or more pages spent on his interminable crusade on this matter, I shall attempt to forget the previous ones. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:47, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Next step: what US cities should NOT be on the US city exemption list and why?

Please create a subsection and give evidence of why, so we can sort that out easily. I'll start with Los Angeles, for Arthur.

Cities listed in the AP Stylebook as not requiring the state modifier may be listed at City if they are the primary topic for that name. Cities that meet these criteria are: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York City, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle.[1] No other American city should be listed at City.

Give facts, for this, of why a US city shouldn't be in the AP exemption listed. The full list is above. It would be nice for people to leave links to the appropriate subsection on the talk page of whatever city article. :) rootology (C)(T) 18:08, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Some questions:
  • If there are facts of why a US city shouldn't be in the AP exemption list above, then should those facts also support the argument that [[Cityname]] should not redirect to [[Cityname]], [[Statename]], but be a dab page?
  • Should the issue of whether [[Cityname]] should redirect to [[Cityname]], [[Statename]] for a given city be discussed not here but on the respective city's talk page?
  • If consensus is achieved on the talk page of a given city that [[Cityname]] should not redirect to [[Cityname]], [[Statename]] but to a dab page, would that fact be sufficient to eliminate the respective city from the AP exemption list above, without any discussion here?
  • If the answers to the above questions are all in the affirmative, should this entire discussion in this section be closed on the grounds of being out of scope for this page?
--Serge (talk) 07:16, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Should Wikipedia have naming conventions for consistency between similar articles, or should every article title be based purtely on current Ghits? We have naming conventions that cover many fields. Sometimes they result in article titles that may not be the top result on Google. For example, we don't have articles at Princess Diana, Prius, or Spruce Goose, because of naming conventions on roylaty, cars, and planes. Naming conventions make sense. Consistency is a desirable quality in a reference book. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 02:43, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Sure, naming conventions are good to have and follow - but not the blind "city, state" convention. This isn't the post office. —Wknight94 (talk) 02:56, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Of course naming conventions for consistency between articles are good to have, which is why it's good to be consistent with following the most widely adhered naming convention in Wikipedia: use the name most commonly used for the subject of the article, unless disambiguation is required. There are some categories of similar articles that are special cases and adhere to special naming conventions even when disambiguation is not required (royalty, cars, aircraft), but these are special cases and there are good reasons to have naming conventions for those categories. If nothing else, the naming convention selected in each case most often coincides with the most commonly used names in the respective categories anyway (or if it doesn't, the most commonly used name isn't important enough for anyone to care). Perhaps this is best illustrated by the fact that while there are specific naming conventions for royalty, there are not for other famous people, which are each named according to the name by which they are most commonly referred (unless disambiguation is required) so the article about President Carter is at Jimmy Carter, not James Earl Carter, and the article about Madonna is at Madonna (entertainer), not at Madonna Louise Ciccone Ritchie. So the issue here is whether the category of names of U.S. cities is a special case like royalty or aircraft, or is it a normal case likes names of people. The consensus now established is that the U.S. cities on the AP list are famous enough to be treated like the normal case (disambiguate only if necessary), while all other cities are more of a special case in which predisambiguation is called for. Now that I've answered your question, are you going to answer mine? --Serge (talk) 17:13, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Los Angeles

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The strawpoll held here shows that the consensus is that the primary usage for Los Angeles is the city --Serge (talk) 17:01, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment "Los Angeles" already redirects to the city article, implying it is the primary topic. Unless there is agreement to move Los Angeles (disambiguation) to Los Angeles, I don't see what the issue is. If you're going to argue that the unqualified name refers to the metro areas or a higher containing region, the same is true for a lot of cities, e.g. Madrid, Osaka, Rio de Janeiro, Lagos. Note that the articles at those locations refer to the administrative city and not the metro areas or containing administrative division. Why would the situation in the U.S. be different? --Polaron | Talk 18:14, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
    • Comment. As noted above (and it the previous discussion removing Las Vegas from the list), the redirect from Los Angeles to Los Angeles, California is clearly faulty. We had previously Los Angeles as a subdisambiguation page, which I believe was summarily changed to a redirect. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:28, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
      • Why not have it as a full disambiguation page then? --Polaron | Talk 18:30, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
        • That would be, for some, the cleanest solution since it addresses the ambiguity of the current use. It would take a lot of work to clean up the incoming links, but on the flip side, this is about the only way we will be able to correct the links that should be pointed to something other then then city. The amount of work needed is not an issue for or against moving. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:24, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
          • I don't agree that a redirect to the city is faulty. For Los Angeles, it seems very apparent that readers are seeking the city when typing in "Los Angeles"; creating a disambiguation page would only cause more confusion for readers. The county is "Los Angeles County", and there is no evidence to suggest that the primary usage for L.A. is the metro area and not the city. Cheers, Rai•me 21:10, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment Los Angeles currently redirects to Los Angeles, California. There is a redirect link at the top of the article to alternative uses. Dr. Cash (talk) 18:32, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Los Angeles is complicated because of the important county of the same name. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 19:04, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
The article about Los Angeles County is and should remain at Los Angeles County, California. When people refer to "Los Angeles", they are referring to the city. Dr. Cash (talk) 20:27, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm hearing the words of Jack Webb at the beginning of each episode of Dragnet: "This is the city - Los Angeles, California..." Wikipedians, of course, are much wiser than successful television show producers. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 20:41, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
This has been raised several times at talk: Los Angeles, California and always rejected. A few folks debating here shouldn't override the existing consensus. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 21:03, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
If this were 1951, when Dragnet first aired, I think your point would have been valid. Back then, Los Angeles wasn't nearly the city it is today. I'm very glad that Wikipedians at least question traditions, especially half-century-old ones that no longer serve their original purpose. —  X  S  G  00:43, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Everyone knew what Los Angeles was. It was a matter of pride to add the state, like Texans who add ", Texas" when they talk about whatever city there. There's no good reason to be selectively stripping away the states from city names. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 03:39, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
I'll try this without any snark.
  1. Thank you for pointing out how things were back in 1951. Some things have changed since then, and we should properly evaluate this. Historical context is useful but not directly relevant.
  2. If I draw your argument that Texans like to add ", Texas" to city names as a matter of pride to a logical conclusion, I would expect to hear about "UT Austin, Texas" and the "Dallas, Texas Cowboys". These are things that Texans certainly have a great deal of pride in: a fine educational institution and a football team. And yet, they don't go out of their way to add ", Texas" to these things in which they have a great deal of pride. This exception does not disprove your argument, however it might point out that not everything is as you would lead us to believe it is.
  3. Naming Wikipedia articles in a particular manner because it is a show of pride bespeaks of peacocking and POV. Such an argument has no place in Wikipedia.—  X  S  G  04:09, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm thinking that LA should one of the exemptions to the exemptions, as it was, agreeing with Will & Arthur's points. rootology (C)(T) 22:40, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

  • Comment Perhaps I am missing something, but here is my take on this issue: there are a few major things that editors have expressed as possible notable meanings of "Los Angeles", including the postal address, the county, the metro area, and the city itself. So, the consensus seemed to lean toward a disambiguation page to sort out this issue. However, this brings up a very important issue that was raised at Talk:New York when several editors (myself included) advocated for a disambiguation page due to the ambiguity surrounding New York. However, some editors brought an argument which I found to be very valid: if only a few items are being questioned (here, likely the city, metro area, and county, as no article on the postal address exists to the best of my knowledge), is it really appropriate to redirect all readers to the wrong article (a dab page) as opposed to a portion of the readers, who can then reach intended articles via hatnotes? I still firmly believe that the city is the primary topic; I highly doubt that most readers will define their definition of Los Angeles based on a postal zip code. As for the metro area, all major cities have this issue, but what evidence indicates that the metro area is just as notable a topic as the city? When most readers think of Los Angeles, I have a feeling most will think of LAX, Hollywood and entertainment, Downtown, Venice Beach, etc., all of which are located within city limits and are covered in the Los Angeles, California article. Perhaps an even more ambiguous case is London, which also involves the articles City of London and Greater London. All of these are major topics for "London", but the city as a whole, not the small region within it or the metro area, is the primary meaning. Thus, just as the whole city of London is located at London, I see no reason why the city of Los Angeles, California cannot be located at Los Angeles. Keep in mind also that per some above comments, "Los Angeles, California" is just as ambiguous as "Los Angeles", so a disambiguation is just as unhelpful in that regard. In the end, having the city at "Los Angeles" with prominent hatnotes seems like a much better solution than a dab page. But anyway, I suppose the best way to solve this issue is to open up yet another discussion at Talk:Los Angeles, California regarding the nature of the redirect Los Angeles. I do apologize that this is so long-winded :-) Cheers, Rai•me 00:50, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
    • Comment. As I said before, locals use most of the definitions I mentioned before, and sometimes use "Los Angeles" for downtown Los Angeles. I would say, in order of size:
      1. Downtown Los Angeles
      2. communities in the city of Los Angeles which aren't primarily known by their neighborhood designations (approximately Los Angeles at Curlie)
      3. the United States Post Office recognized area
      4. Los Angeles, California
      5. Los Angeles County, California
      6. Los Angeles Metro Area (approximately Los Angeles and Orange counties)
      7. The Greater Los Angeles Area
    • As to which one is meant, it obviously depends on context, too much so that I could say that one predominates. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:22, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
      • But for the vast majority of readers who do not live locally in or near Los Angeles, the city is the primary topic. The downtown region and neighborhoods are all covered in the Los Angeles, California article, so they aren't really issues. In short, Los Angeles is no more ambiguous than the name of any major city city in the world, which can apply to downtown regions, city propers, metro areas, etc. I don't see how a disambiguation page would be any more useful to readers than a hatnote, especially considering that of the 7 items listed above, 2 are described in detail in Los Angeles, California and 2 do not have articles. That would easily allow for the city to be located at "Los Angeles", with two prominent hatnotes for Greater Los Angeles and Los Angeles County. Cheers, Rai•me 01:30, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
        • No. The vast majority of readers who do not live locally do not know nor care which is meant. I can't see how you'd say they'd mean the city; I mean, everyone knows Encino Man was from Encino, not Los Angeles. (Look at the links to see that what everyone knows ain't so.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:39, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
          • I don't really understand how that reference proves that the primary meaning of "Los Angeles" isn't the city. The same argument could be made about any subdistrict of a city, but that doesn't affect the primary usage of the city name as a whole - the second largest city in the U.S. and the center of the world entertainment industry is most people's image of "Los Angeles", and the Los Angeles, California articles covers this. It seems very likely that most non-locals would have this impression. The image of "New York City" for most people is Manhattan, but that doesn't mean that it would be beneficial for readers to make New York City a dab page clarifying between articles about Manhattan and the 5 Boroughs as a whole. Cheers, Rai•me 01:51, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment: We've established that there's more than one use for the term "Los Angeles". However, that alone does not merit a disambiguated title for the article about the city. It's clear to me there's only one primary topic for the title "Los Angeles". Why is it that the concept of the primary topic applies everywhere but on U.S. city articles? szyslak (t) 07:30, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Exactly. And the opposing arguments are rendered even more absurd by the fact that all these other "entities" are in California as well, so the dab tag they are so keen to retain, ", California", doesn't even do its job of providing the desired dismabiguation. Even if a tag were needed (which it isn't), a dab tag that fails to dab is even more pointless and misleading than no tag at all.--Kotniski (talk) 08:35, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
To the extent there is a primary topic, it's probably the metro area (which doesn't actually have an article), rather than the city. The "princple of least surprise" suggests that, if the city is considered primary, that at least downtown, the Post Office definiton, the general area, and the metro area should have separate hat notes. If that were done, I would have little objection to the move. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:13, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
But again, topics which may be considered to mean "Los Angeles" by locals (most notably the Post Office definition and downtown) would likely not be considered "Los Angeles" by the vast majority of readers, so a link to a dab page for those topics would be fine. I don't agree that the metro area is the primary topic here for most readers, but of course a hatnote would be warranted. Cheers, Rai•me 20:50, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure any hatnotes besides Los Angeles (disambiguation) and L.A. (disambiguation) would be necessary. I'd imagine far fewer users would want to look up Greater Los Angeles Area than the article about the city. And if they do, I think they're smart enough to either click on the Los Angeles dab page or the link to the Greater L.A. article in the lead. szyslak (t) 21:17, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, you're probably right. A hatnote would be warranted if consensus determines that the metro area is also a very significant meaning of "Los Angeles" for a great number of English Wikipedia readers and not just L.A. locals. However, I find this situation unlikely and agree with your sentiments. Cheers, Rai•me 21:51, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

New strawpoll at Talk:Los Angeles to determine this

***NOTE: *** I believe the issue of whether Los Angeles should be on the above subset of the AP list should be determined by whether there is consensus to make it a dab page, which should be decided at Talk:Los Angeles. To that end, I have created a strawpoll there for the purpose of determining whether consensus exists on this issue. Your participation is appreciated. --Serge (talk) 17:14, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

The strawpoll results indicate that there is consensus that the city of Los Angeles is the primary topic for Los Angeles. --Serge (talk) 18:51, 19 October 2008 (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.
Note. The strawpoll was actually closed as no consensus. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:10, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the strawpoll as a whole was closed as no consensus, but Serge is correct in stating that "the consensus is that the primary usage for Los Angeles is the city". There just was not clear consensus for one option over the three others, but as Shereth said in closing the poll, the majority prefer a/b (redirect or article move to "Los Angeles") to b/d (dab page). Cheers, Rai•me 19:19, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
No, Serge is wrong, as usual. There is not a clear consensus for the false statement that the city is the primary meaning. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:30, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
And how exactly is Serge wrong? There is a consensus; while this isn't a vote, it is fair to point out that you and Vegaswikian were the only editors arguing that Los Angeles should be a dab, as opposed to 8 arguing that it should be a redirect or the name of the city article and 1 who is uncertain. You may disagree with consensus, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Cheers, Rai•me 20:42, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
The flaw with the strawpoll is that it was not worded in a way to directly assess the question of "primacy of use" of the term "Los Angeles". It can be inferred (and indeed, I believe it to be the case) that the way votes were cast indicates a majority believes "Los Angeles" primarily refers to the city, but this was not the question being asked. The fact that there is some interpretation involved means that invariably someone will object that there was not, in fact, any consensus achieved. In my opinion it is little more than wikilawyering, but really the strawpoll should have been clearer on that issue. Shereth 20:46, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Good point. I think the best option now is to start a move request at Talk:Los Angeles, California to move Los Angeles, California → Los Angeles separately from this mass move. After all, that is really what this proposal is concerned with. Cheers, Rai•me 21:08, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Shereth is right, such an objection would be little more (I would say nothing more) than wikilawyering. In the section directly above the strawpoll the intent was clearly stated:
It is not at all clear that there is anything close to having a consensus about Los Angeles needing to be a disambiguation page (or a redirect to a disambiguation page). But the strawpoll below should establish this one way or another. So far you're the only one who seems to feel this way, and if Vegaswikian participates I'm sure he'll agree as well. But I'm really curious whether there is even one more editor who agrees with you two, much less enough to establish something close to consensus.
Indeed, the strawpoll confirmed that Arthur Rubin and Vegaswikian were the only ones who supported the choices consistent with believing that the city was not the primary topic. More importantly, every one one of the Support votes for the mass move supported the move of every city on the list, including Los Angeles. Now, if there were a significant number of Support votes who said they supported the mass move except for Los Angeles, there would arguably be a reason to not move that city. But that is not the case. Not including Los Angeles in the mass move at this point would be going against the consensus clearly establashed by all those who voted Support for moving the entire list, without exception. --Serge (talk) 22:04, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Cleveland

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
I withdraw my objection to the inclusion on the list. The following discussion indicates my concerns were unwarranted :) Shereth 22:02, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

If any of the above should not be on the exemption list, it is this one. Cleveland is a common and notable last name, particularly in the case of US President Grover Cleveland. The name is also used by fictional characters. I would have to challenge the notion that the primary use of the word "Cleveland" outside of the United States is for the city. Shereth 18:16, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

In that case, shouldn't we be proposing moving Cleveland (disambiguation) to Cleveland? --Polaron | Talk 18:19, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Probably, and I would support such a move. Right now I'm just focused on the current proposal at hand :) Shereth 18:21, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
"I would have to challenge the notion that the primary use of the word "Cleveland" outside of the United States is for the city." (emphasis mine) So stipulated, but the point of the naming conventions isn't what slice of the en-Wikipedia readership isn't American. It's whether a particular name is the overwhelming default of the whole readership. That there are historical and fictional characters with the name just mean one of those "This article is about the city in Ohio. For other uses, please see Cleveland (disambiguation)" tags. Oh, look, there already IS such a page.  RGTraynor  18:29, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
I understand that - my rationale is that the name is only primary in the US, and even then a bit on the shaky side. Just because the disambiguation page exists as such currently does not mean it is the ideal solution. Shereth 18:33, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree with RGTraynor on this issue. Consensus has already determined that the primary usage of "Cleveland" is the city in Ohio, as evidenced by the redirect. The only other Cleveland that could really be compared is Cleveland, England (I doubt that readers would expect to find Grover Cleveland when typing in "Cleveland", just as they would doubt to find George Washington when typing in "Washington", but that is my opinion), a now-abolished county in England, but article traffic statistics indicate that the Ohio city is the clear primary usage of "Cleveland". This situation is probably similar to that of Salisbury. Cheers, Rai•me 21:21, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Or Wellington, etc. I fully agree, "Cleveland" means the city. -- Jao (talk) 21:34, 14 October 2008 (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.

St. Louis

Not sure about this one as one would have expected that St. Louis should redirect to the non-abbreviated form Saint Louis. I don't know how common the city usage versus the saint usage is but I'm throwing this out here for a fuller discussion. --Polaron | Talk 18:33, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

It appears that currently, the St. Louis, Missouri article uses the "St." (abbreviated) form, while Saint Louis is a disambiguation page which refers to all possible variations. I would think that the status quo here would imply moving St. Louis, Missouri to St. Louis, which wouldn't have any effect on the disambiguation page at Saint Louis. Dr. Cash (talk) 18:38, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
The city's own web site is titled "City of St. Louis Community Information Network". If they don't bother spelling out "Saint Louis" themselves, I wonder if Wikipedia should. Rklear (talk) 18:49, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
  • I hope no one is suggesting moving the article to St. Louis. That would be truly confusing. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 19:04, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
    • Yep, that is the focus of the discussion above. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:09, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
      • "St. Louis" already redirects to the city, and as long a hatnote clearly indicates that "This article is about the U.S. city. For other uses, see Saint Louis", I don't see what the problem would be. Cheers, Rai•me 21:24, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
      • What would be confusing about having the article about St. Louis be at St. Louis? --Serge (talk) 00:40, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
  • St. Louis, Missouri article name should not be changed and this city should be removed from the exception list. This 'city,state' name is clear and unambiguous for the editor and reader of WP. When writing another article that links to this one, only one link needs to be made; when reading the link, there is no question what is being talked about. Remember WP is for a world-wide audience with varying levels of knowledge; giving readers help they may need is better than not doing so. Hmains (talk) 21:31, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

San Diego

Looking at San Diego (disambiguation), the city is not the primary use, but the name is. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:16, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

This argument is patently false. Dr. Cash (talk) 19:22, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
The argument is patently true. It may still be incorrect, but we need to reach a consensus at the disambiguation page first. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:02, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
This issue is so not controversial, that there is not even a talk page at Talk:San Diego (disambiguation) and no comments at Talk:San Diego since 2006. The undisputed (for years) redirect from San Diego to San Diego, California is in and of itself evidence that consensus has been reached on this point. That does not mean that the issue cannot be raised, but it needs to be raised there, not here. --Serge (talk) 23:59, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
As this is English Wikipedia, and not the Spanish version, it seems to me that Saint James is the name that the overwhelming majority of users would seek if referring to the Catholic saint. No native English-speaker would think San Diego = Santiago = Saint James, indeed, "San Diego" in English usage clearly references the city in California. Same thing could be said for San Francisco; if an English-speaker was thinking of Saint Francis of Assisi, they would use that name, not the Spanish language equivalent. --Friejose (talk) 14:57, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Not to mention the fact that Santiago is the primary usage in Spanish, and even Spanish speakers wouldn't be looking for the saint at San Diego. I find it hard to accept the argument that any other use of San Diego approaches that of the city in terms of primacy. Shereth 15:10, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
  • San Diego, California article name should not be changed and this city should be removed from the exception list. This 'city,state' name is clear and unambiguous for the editor and reader of WP. When writing another article that links to this one, only one link needs to be made; when seeing the link, there is no question what is being talked about. Remember WP is for a world-wide audience with varying levels of knowledge; giving readers help they may need is better than not doing so. Hmains (talk) 21:40, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

San Antonio

Looking at San Antonio (disambiguation), the assertion is that the US city is the most commonly used. That is different then the primary use. Looking at the list, it would appear that establishing the city as the primary use may not be justified. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:19, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

This argument is patently false. Dr. Cash (talk) 19:22, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
The argument is patently true. It may still be incorrect, but we need to reach a consensus at the disambiguation page first. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:03, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
Just as for San Diego, evidence that consensus has been reached on the point that this city of San Antonio in Texas is primary and most common use of San Antonio is the long undisputed redirect from San Antonio to San Antonio, Texas. Again, if anyone feels that consensus needs to be challenged, then they need to propose changing that redirect. --Serge (talk) 00:04, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

The San Antonio (disambiguation) page says, "San Antonio most commonly means the city of San Antonio, Texas." I don't see how anything could be more direct than that. Dr. Cash (talk) 00:44, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

  • San Antonio, Texas article name should not be changed and this city should be removed from the exception list. This 'city,state' name is clear and unambiguous for the editor and reader of WP. When writing another article that links to this one, only one link needs to be made; when reading the link, there is no question what is being talked about. Remember WP is for a world-wide audience with varying levels of knowledge; giving readers help they may need is better than not doing so. Hmains (talk) 21:50, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Miami

I am aware that Miami is currently a redirect to Miami, Florida, but there are several other prominent subjects which Miami denotes: for example, the Great Miami River and the Miami tribe. I make the patently true argument that the disambiguation page improperly asserts that "Miami" usually refers to the large city in southeastern Florida. Nyttend (talk) 03:35, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

See if you can achieve consensus on this point at Talk:Miami in order to change Miami to redirect to the dab page rather than to Miami, Florida. --Serge (talk) 06:18, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
An excellent reason why supporting #Review of convention for US cities is not a sound move. If things need to be reviewed, then they should not be batch nominated. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:28, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
They don't need to be reviewed. There is no serious doubt at all that the city Miami, Florida is the primary meaning for Miami by normal Wikipedia standards. The same with all the other cities on the list. There would not be the slightest argument about it if it weren't for the existence of a zealous band grasping at any arguments they can think of to protect their beloved "always city, state" convention (which is pointless now anyway since several exceptions have already been adopted).--Kotniski (talk) 08:30, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Indeed. If no one has even tried to change the [[Cityname]] to [[Cityname, Statename]] redirect for a given city to be a dab page, much less achieved consensus to do so, it's reasonable to assume that the consensus is that the primary usage for the name in question is to refer to that city, and that no review is necessary. --Serge (talk) 17:17, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
Only in Serge's perfervid imagination. It is far more reasonable to suppose that few have noticed the redirect and no one has bothered to object. This is fundamentally a tempest in a teacup; although that is no reason to throw out the perfectly good cup of tea we now possess. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:17, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
If no one has noticed that [[name1]] redirects to [[name2]] (and thus doesn't redirect to name3, name4 or anything else), or they noticed but weren't bothered by it enough to object, then that constitutes consensus by default. In any case, for the 2 or 3 of who believe that [[Name]] should not redirect to a city because usually if not always the city per se is not the primary usage of that Name, nothing prevents you from trying to achieve consensus on that point. The argument that a given city should not be on the exemption (exempted from the comma convention) because the city is not the primary usage of the name of the city is absurd when the name in question has been a redirect to the article about the city for years, which is the case for every city on the exemption list. --Serge (talk) 19:58, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
The fact that [[A]] has been a redirect to [[B]] for any length of time is not conclusive "evidence" for the statement that "B must therefore be the primary use of A". Just because something has been a certain way for a certain time does not make it correct. Shereth 20:39, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree that when [[A]] has been a redirect to [[B]] for even a long period of time that that is not conclusive evidence that "B must therefore be the primary use of A", and I never said anything to the contrary. But it is strong evidence that there is consensus on that issue, and any claim that the subject of B is not the primary usage of A must overcome that burden. Less than even a handful of people simply declaring that the city is not the primary usage for a given name falls far, far short of meeting that burden, especially when even most of those who oppose moving that city article to [[Cityname]] agree [[Cityname]] should continue to redirect to the city article, which is the case for every city listed in the guideline, so far as I know. --Serge (talk) 19:43, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
If there is a consensus that the primary usage of the term "Miami" is for the city in Florida (on which point I would, incidentally, agree with you) then it will emerge in this discussion. "Silent consensus" achieved by a lack of opposition is a valid point in many arguments, but it does not stand up in this context. At best you can argue that, in the past, there was a consensus regarding the primary usage of a term based on its existence as a redirect, but consensus can (and does) change. Current consensus on the matter is determined based upon current discussions, not a status quo. Shereth 19:52, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
Again, we agree. I'm just saying that, for example, Vegaswikian and PMAnderson, and perhaps one or two others, simply declaring that the city is not the primary usage of Los Angeles does not constitute a change in the apparent historical consensus (again, based on the long-lived redirect) to the contrary. Similarly, a handful (if that) of people posting that they feel Miami (or Boston) has no primary use does not overcome apparent consensus to the contrary, which is manifested by the existence of a redirect of Miami (or Boston) to an article on a particular subject. It should and must take more than a handful of posts to change that. That is, status quo (which is evidence of consensus achieved in the past and must be assumed to reflect current consensus by default) is not decisive or conclusive, but it matters. Status quo must be overcome by a new clearly established consensus. What do I mean by clearly established? Well, for example, the status quo with respect to the list of cities in the guideline is that each be at [[Cityname, Statename]]. But with the proposal/discussion/poll above, it seems to me that consensus has clearly overcome that - the new consensus (soon to become status quo, as is already the case for New York City, Chicago, etc.) is that each be at [[Cityname]]. Good discussion, by the way. Thank you. --Serge (talk) 21:59, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
Just because a redirect is in place, does not mean that is the primary usage. So if you are going to argue that it is, then you need to make the case. Quite often, main space articles or redirects remain where they are since there is no consensus to change. No consensus to change is not the same as being the primary use. Worcester clearly is an example of this. I suspect that for many Plymouth is also ambiguous given the existence of the car brand. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:17, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
←  ←  ←  ←  ←  ←  ←  ←  ←  ←  ←  ← ←  ←  ←  ←  ← (reset indent)

Again, agreed, just because a redirect is in place does not mean that is necessarily the primary usage. But, it is strong (not conclusive) evidence that consensus is that it is primary usage, and, thus, anyone who challenges that must overcome that. Plymouth is an excellent example. I, for one, never heard of the city in England with less than a quarter of a million people. How that can be primary usage over the car brand or any of the 20 or so places named Plymouth, I have no idea. But I respect that that is the status quo, and, should I decide to challenge, I would expect to have to propose a change and achieve true clear consensus that agrees with me before the change occurs. This reminds me of the city in Ireland, that used to be at Cork. It took several polls and many long discussions before consensus was finally achieved to moved it to Cork (city) and to put the Cork dab page at Cork. But even for Plymouth at least there is evidence that there has been considerable support in the past for that city to not be at Plymouth. There is nothing close to that, so far as I know, in the history of the discussions about Los Angeles, Miami, St. Louis, Boston or any of the cities listed in the guidelines, these recent discussions included. --Serge (talk) 22:46, 22 October 2008 (UTC)


  • Miami, Florida article name should not be changed and this city should be removed from the exception list. This 'city, state' name is clear and unambiguous for the editor and reader of WP. When writing another article that links to this one, only one link needs to be made; when reading the link, there is no question what Miami is being talked about. Remember WP is for a world-wide audience with varying levels of knowledge; giving readers help they may need is better than not doing so. Hmains (talk) 21:59, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
    • Yes, Wikipedia is for a worldwide audience, but the "city, state" standard isn't going to help worldwide readers when it comes to defining global cities like Miami. If a reader is unfamiliar with Miami, then are they any more likely to be familiar with Florida? When it comes to extremely well-known cities comprising the above list of exceptions, using the "city, state" convention is more confusing for readers, as the format is inconsistent with almost all other major cities of the world which use the simple "city" naming format. Cheers, Rai•me 15:46, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
      • There may be something to this statement. Granted, my experience is hardly authoritative on the subject but when I spent time in South America, there were numerous people who believed Miami to be one of the 50 states, and not merely a city .. and in fact used Miami to refer to the Florida area as a whole. It may well be that these particularly well-known cities are in fact more well known than their parent state. Shereth 15:18, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
        • Indeed, quite clearly some cities are more well-known than their states. I actually don't think Miami is one of them (although I wouldn't oppose the move anyway, based on the AP list), but I think extremely few people (at least here in Europe) would fare better on a blindfold map test for Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada and Washington than for Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Las Vegas and Seattle. Coming to think of it, it would be very interesting to see actual results of such tests. -- Jao (talk) 20:09, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Boston

The city in Massachusetts is far larger than any of the places on that list. (There are also numerous places named London, Paris, and Berlin, looking at those disambiguation pages.) The 'original' argument has never really worked for me either. Our primary focus should be ease of use for the reader. 95% of our readers, when they search for 'Boston', are looking for the city at the center of a metropolitan area of several million people, not the city that happened to be founded first. AlexiusHoratius 05:55, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
You're not thinking fourth-dimensionally. Boston not only refers to the town, but to an extremely successfull band. I would say maybe 60% are looking for the city, and a good 20-25% are looking for the band. Does this qualify the city as needing the direct link? 25or6to4 (talk) 18:43, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
Keep in mind that there was already a discussion at Talk:Boston, Massachusetts to move the city that started before this mass move proposal began, and there seems to be pretty clear consensus there that Boston, MA should be moved to Boston. Since consensus has already been individually reached, this probably shouldn't even be listed here. Perhaps a hatnote is warranted for the band, but a dab page is certainly not a good solution here. Cheers, Rai•me 01:19, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
I concur with 25or6to4. A lot of people when they think of Boston will think of the rock band as well as the city. It's kind of like how many people think of Chicago the band or the Chicago Transit Authority when the city of Chicago is mentioned. So that's why I've always thought that Boston and Chicago should be disambiguation pages. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:39, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
But again, the current requested move at Talk:Boston, Massachusetts shows clear majority support for moving "Boston, Massachusetts" to "Boston", indicating that there is clear consensus among editors that Boston, MA is the primary usage of "Boston". Of all of those proposed exceptions listed above, this is clearly the one that should be moved above all, as there is already consensus for it to be individually moved on the talk page. But on another note, Boston is no more ambiguous than London, Paris, and Berlin and is much less ambiguous than Worcester, Salisbury, and Plymouth. Unless we plan to turn all of these topics into dab pages, it makes no sense to have much stricter standards for determining primary usage for American cities. Cheers, Rai•me 15:40, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Also, when I hear Boston or Chicago (well, maybe not Chicago) and think of the band, I think, "yeah, the band named after the city". What's next, a dab page for Vida Blue because there is a Vida Blue (band)? —Wknight94 (talk) 15:49, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
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