Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)/Archive 7

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 1 ← Archive 5 Archive 6 Archive 7 Archive 8 Archive 9 Archive 10

American cities inconsistent with every other country

The present [City, State] format makes major American cities inconsistent with the articles on major cities everywhere else. For example major European and Australian cities tend to have the namespace all to themselves, for example Sydney, Berlin etc.

Also in the case of important American cities, I've noticed that for example Chicago re-directs to Chicago, Illinois. I've also noticed the same with other major US cities such as San Francisco, Boston etc.

What exactly is the point to this?, surely either "Chicago, Illinois" should be moved to "Chicago" or "Chicago" should become a disambig, same applies to allt the other examples. I cant see any sense whatever to the present situation. G-Man 14:10, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[City, State] disambiguates, is the common name for, and provides historical context for cities and towns in the US. Additionally, the vast majority of US city articles were created by User:Rambot from census data, and that census data was in the [City, State] standardized format.
The need for such a structure should become immediately apparent when one considers the city names Portland, Springfield, and Washington, among others.
Finally, it is worth noting that Canadian city articles are structured in the same [City, Province] format, for the same reasons as US cities. So don't blame it all on us - blame Canada too. :) - jredmond 14:58, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • FYI: the Australian convention was [City, State], later [City, State Post-Code], and about twenty years ago Australia Post recommended using [City Post-Code] format for mail. Obviously in common speech any name is used by itself if it is clear what it refers to. Whom ever suggested [City, State] was not used in Australia was pulling your leg.--Daeron 13:56, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes, G-Man, you are saying what I was saying for about two weeks a month ago. There was much dispute, and then everyone responding. I completely concur. But even worse than US cities are Japanese - check out Kyoto redirecting to Kyoto, Kyoto - that's just entirely ridiculous. As I've said before, and will say again, of course [City, State] should be used to disambiguate. But it's ridiculous to use it when it's not necessary to disambiguate, at least for major cities where it's clear which one somebody is referring to. john k 16:01, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The way US and Canadian cities are named is inconsistent with the general Wikipedia conventions. The inconsistency sticks out like a sore thumb. The insistence by a small minority that the use of {city}{state} is to be treated as a rule (in conflict with the general wikipedia convention that conventions are conventions and not rules) isn't professionalism, it's stubborness. Basing titles on common usage is a good convention. Naming ALL articles on US and Canadian cities a certain way, whether it's common usage or not, is ridiculous. As far as the assertion that {city}{state} is a systematic classification, I say "poppycock!". It may be systematic but it's a lousy classification, which is one reason the US Postal Service uses zip codes, and the Census Bureau uses census designated places. {City}{state} doesn't always mean the same thing. Many places have alternate postal addresses and, in many cases, common usage is that {city}{state} refers to a much larger area than just a single city (in some cases, it refers to dozens of cities). Some of the article titles for US cities aren't anywhere near common usage and they make Wikipedia look downright silly. The reason it's so difficult to see any sense in the current situation is that there really is no sense to it. As a convention, the current convention is not too bad; as a rule, it stinks. Bluelion 22:46, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Err, actually the census does use city, state. It only uses CDPs for areas where there is not an appropriate civil government to describe a populated area. older≠wiser 23:16, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)
The point is {city}{state} does not unambiguously identify a place. The census bureau uses it one way (and not in all cases), the post office uses it another way and, in common usage, it is used in yet another way. Why Wikipedia appears to be using the census bureau's way which, in many cases, is not at all like common usage, is beyond me. Following common usage according to the general Wikipedia convention would make a lot more sense and be a lot more consistent. In many cases, {city}{state} IS common usage in the US. The argument is just about the cases where it isn't common usage. There already was a vote on whether cities should be disambiguated whether they need to be or not, and unnecessary disambiguation lost by a much bigger margin that the 4 to 2 vote in favor of US and Canadian cities being treated differently than all other articles on Wikipedia. (actually, it's not entirely clear that that was what the 4-2 vote was even about) No case has been made for even having a special convention for some cities and not for others (where is the consistency in that??) and, certainly, no case has been made for treating it as a rule. (BTW, there are several articles that call places cities when they are not cities at all, but census designated places, a somewhat technical designation that is fairly far removed from common usage in some cases. Calling a census designated place a city is both wrong and confusing; the census bureau is very careful to make the distinction but Wikipedia's small band of {city}{state} classification police apparently isn't so careful) Bluelion 07:06, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
But we have a plan for when [city, state] doesn't unambiguously identify places - we insert the county name. (Examples: Springfield, Dane County, Wisconsin, Springfield, Jackson County, Wisconsin, Springfield, Marquette County, Wisconsin, and Springfield, St. Croix County, Wisconsin.)
We're using the Census Bureau's way because Rambot created 30,000+ articles from the Census Bureau's data, and because we have not yet reached consensus on how else to name things.
And who on God's green Earth is arguing that [city, state] should be a rule? In all of the text above, the word "rule" only shows up in phrases like "disambiguation rules" or "rule of thumb". (Go on, search it yourself.) Perhaps if you had been following the discussion with a more open mind, you would have noticed this. - jredmond 12:00, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

"We're using the Census Bureau's way because Rambot created 30,000+ articles from the Census Bureau's data, and because we have not yet reached consensus on how else to name things." Exactly. There is no consusus supporting current policy. The fact that 30,000 articles already exist is the main argument that is presented to support the current policy (and about all there really is to support it, because it sucks.) "And who on God's green Earth is arguing that [city, state] should be a rule?" Are you paying any attention? There are a couple of {city}{state} police who insist that the convention be treated as a rule. In all honesty, if it were treated as a convention and not a rule, I doubt there would be much objection to it. Bluelion 12:44, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

To Bluelion, can you point to any specific instances where the rambot-generated article based on the census mistakenly uses city to describe a CDP? For the articles that I have come across (mostly in Michigan) rambot very consistently identified the CPD articles as "towns", which at least in Michigan has no official standing (as an aside, wherever I encounter it i Michigan articles, I change "town" to "unincorporated community"). I'm not sure what rambot did in states where town does have an official usage.
To Jredmond, although people may not use the term "rule", that is the practical reality. Any articles on U.S. cities that get moved from the city,state formulation get moved back fairly quickly. The current location of City of New York is an anomaly as the result of a protracted debate. older≠wiser 12:49, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
To Bkonrad: the bot seems to have consistently (and wrongly) referred to CDPs as towns. I've corrected some articles (mainly for places in Maryland) where I've found them, but obviously I do not have the time to go trough tens of thousands of listings. -- BRG 15:38, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)
Before you go changing things to CDP, make sure that you know for sure that the locals living in that area refer to the place as a CDP. Also, make absolute sure the the data the census bureau provides also refers to it as a CDP (I assume you did this). As I say below, these things can be changed automatically, but I highly doubt that anyone but the census bureau calls places CDP, so why do we want articles about real places saying that they are a "CDP"? A "town" is a more generic usage of a real place in lieu of having someone who lives there change it to what it really is, if it is something different. BTW, this discussion would be more appropriate at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities -- Ram-Man 16:24, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)
Ram-Man, please be aware that "town" has specific legal meanings in many states, and different ones in different States. Silver Spring, Maryland is by no means a town. In the article, I only used the term "census-designated place" once, but changed "town" to "area" or "community" everywhere else in the article. While you are absolutely correct in saying that it is unlikely that "anyone but the census bureau calls places CDP," it is also true that calling such places "town" is inaccurate. Perhaps you should have made it always "community" if you wanted "a more generic usage" and wanted to avoid the "technical" term CDP, but all the census data is specifically for the CDP. What local people call Silver Spring is probably not identical to the census bureau's Silver Spring CDP; and in particular the census bureau's Wheaton-Glenmont CDP exists only in census data; local people consider there to be two separate communities named Wheaton and Glenmont. -- BRG 18:35, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)
BRG, are you a fellow Montgomery County, Marylander? I grew up in the Census-designated place of "North Bethesda" I believe, although my post office has always been Kensington. Except that the town of Garrett Park is between the town of Kensington and our house. So, post office thing is deeply confusing. john k 02:56, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I mentioned this in one of the other posts I made in the naming convention discussion. Yes, currently I live in Montgomery County, though I grew up in New York City. I've been in the DC metro area since 1974 or so, and in Montgomery County since 1984, though, so by now I'm really quite familiar with the local geography. -- BRG 14:32, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)
I have made a note on the rambot's TODO list to update the CDP places with something even more generic, like community. When I get around to doing that we can think more about how it should be done. -- Ram-Man 02:42, Jun 19, 2004 (UTC)
Thanks. I've really been annoyed by the misuse of the term "town" on here, but don't have the time to fix thousands of articles. - BRG 14:32, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)
With regards to the rambot, before we get off on a tangent that does not need to be gone off on, since this is a complicated topic. Off hand I cannot remember whether or not I properly use CDP or converted it to another usage. In any case, this can be remedied by running the bot over the articles and replacing with the appropriate term. This is *not* hard to do, if it is indeed wrong. The place to raise such issues is on my talk page or to add a note to the TODO list. Also, the idea that the only reason we want the City, State usage is because of rambot articles is silly. I would love to keep the convention for that reason, but no one is arguing for that reason except as a positive side effect of that particular "policy". We have a bunch of namings: "City", "City, State", "City, County, State", "City (type), State", and "City (type), County, State". The census bureau, the postal service, local governments, and local citizens all use their own separate naming. That's at LEAST four potentially different meanings. That makes things VERY hard to disambiguate or name, so there is never a "rule", but only a "convention". The postal service is the most unique (and "inaccurate") but it greatly affects "common usage" and group perception. Also non-cities such as neighborhoods of large cities and legal townships are frequently seen by real people as being de-facto cities and towns. The fact is that there is hardly such a thing as "common usage" in the U.S. We may be able to take a poll that says that a certain city is more important to other cities or that a certain "City" usage is more common than "City, State", but it really depends 100% on who you ask. In the end, there are hardly any names that are unique to one place. Even places like Albuquerque, New Mexico have unique names but still go by the "City, State" usage in common usage. All of this is the reason that U.S. cities have this "City, State" convention. I do no advocate that non-U.S. cities follow this, although they may if appropriate. The fact is that there are so few cities that are clearly unique, and we should have a convention of "City, State" and allow for various exceptions to the "rule", even if those allow for Chicago or New York City in cases where there is overwhelming approval. I argue that there is no such thing as "common usage", except in a very small number of cases, and thus we should just pick an arbitrary convention. -- Ram-Man 16:19, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)
Except for your mis-usage of "town" in the bot-composed articles, I pretty much agree with all you've said in here. -- BRG 18:35, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)
I mentioned the bot because it's why things are the way they are now. Hidden among earlier comments on this page, I suggested a list of criteria for exceptions to the [city, state] convention; should we re-visit that discussion, or start from scratch again? - jredmond 19:58, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure...could you find it and re-post it? I recall finding it fairly reasonable, but I'm not sure. john k 02:56, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It got archived - let me dig it up, and I'll post it in a new section (so it's easier to find in the future). - jredmond 16:16, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The thing about it is that many Canadian and American cities have non-unique names, arguably more than any other countries. I think it's better to be consistent internally (ie. all Canadian cities should have the same naming format, all American cities should have the same naming format, etc.) than to be consistent with other countries. Even if it is the dominant meaning of the word, I don't like Ottawa not having a provincial name in it when every other city in Ontario has the province in the article title, and I like even less the idea of having Ontario cities be a jumble of City and City, Province. As far as I'm concerned, they need to all be in the same format, so if they can't all be City, then they must all be City, Province. No half measures on this. Bearcat 02:21, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Re-post of an earlier suggestion

I'm fine with large U.S. and Canadian cities breaking from the existing naming convention, provided that

  1. there's consensus that common worldwide usage for a particular city name refers to a particular city — Paris=city in France, even though there's a Paris, Texas, Paris, Kentucky, etc., and even though the locals in those towns don't include the state name in their own common usage
  2. smaller cities, towns, etc. stick to the existing [[Cityname, State]] convention
  3. where there is conflict between a state or nation's name and a city's name, the larger entity gets the main article but links to the city — Washington=state; has disambig link to Washington, D.C.
  4. when the city article is moved to [[Cityname]], links to [[Cityname, State]] redirect to the correct place — so Chicago, Illinois will always point to that city's article
  5. there is disambiguation where applicable

Is this workable? - jredmond 22:21, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

re-posted jredmond 16:37, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC), shortly before server maintenance.

I would find this to be a workable situation. john k 06:20, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Seems sensible, yes. James F. (talk) 12:31, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I would express some disagreement with the third section, though. I think larger entities which are named for the city, as, for instance, prefectures often are, should not be given the base name. john k 16:43, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Good point, though at the moment I can't think of a decent way to phrase that. Any suggestions? - jredmond 01:09, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'm not sure. john k 02:02, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Everything seems reasonable to me, although there has to be a general "rule" that allows for exceptions on a case by case basis if there is overwhelming approval. For instance, even though using New York City would clearly violate the "cityname, state" usage, but as no naming policy can forsee all cases, we should allow for the policy to be overridden in certain cases, that is, explicity state that it is a convention but by no means a rule. -- Ram-Man 20:04, Jun 20, 2004 (UTC)

How about if we add a sentence to the beginning, like "Articles on cities and towns in the US and Canada will be titled [Cityname, State] or [Cityname, Province], except when they meet the following criteria"? - jredmond 15:21, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The only thing that bothers me is that the last rule ("there is disambiguation where applicable") seems overly vague. There may also be an argument (like the one I had with Mintguy about Exeter) over whether there is "consensus that common worldwide usage for a particular city name refers to a particular city," so the rules ought to provide for a way to determine this. -- BRG 14:44, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)

We do need some way of determining just what worldwide usage is. As for the vagueness on the last item, though, do you have any suggestions on how to rephrase it? - jredmond 15:21, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
No suggestions, but the thing is that in my belief there needs to be more disambiguation than what some of the other people in this forum have thought appropriate. -- BRG 16:13, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)

In the case of major cities such as Chicago, los Angeles etc it seem to me to be an open and shut case that these places should have the namespace to themselves. I would imagine that perhaps 99% of people looking up "Chicago" or "Los Angeles" would be looking for the cities. In the case of Chicago, according to Chicago (disambiguation) there arent any other places called Chicago.

In regard to Exeter there was an argument, and the overwhelming consensus was that the English city was the largest and most well known place of that name, and should have the namespace to itself. As far as I could tell BRG you were the only person who thought otherwise G-Man 09:37, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Based on his comments here, I'm certain that if Ram-Man had been part of that discussion he would have agreed with me. In any case, the "overwhelming consensus" seemed to be composed mostly of you and Mintguy. Several others who did post seemed not to feel that strongly about it, and Tannin, who started on my side and moved to your side of the discussion, did so reluctantly and said he thought he ought to get back to posting in other areas; it is clear that he really thought the issues were beyond him. -- BRG 18:59, Jul 2, 2004 (UTC)

City names that change, and how to deal with this when discussing city history in city articles

Okay, see Talk:Vilnius for the background, but there's been discussion of how to deal with articles about cities where that city's name has changed. With most name changes, there seems to be some consensus to use the name in use at the time when discussing the history of the city in the article. But in cases where the name changes are essentially translations of the name into other languages, rather than genuine name changes, there has been disagreement. Most of the cities under discussion are in Central/Eastern Europe. Several editors(particularly User:Space Cadet and User:Yeti, and to some extent User:Halibutt, but also other Polish users, I think) have argued that the present-day name should be used throughout the article in such cases (e.g. Gdansk, Szczecin, Vilnius, Lviv). Others (including myself) have suggested some attempt be made to use the name used in English at the time (and frequently, in historical accounts of those time periods written in the present day) should be used when discussing earlier periods. Obviously, the question can become very complicated depending on the exact historical circumstances of different periods, but I think everyone has agreed that some discussion towards finding some sort of general principle as to how to deal with such issues would be beneficial. So, I open the floor to further discussion (I'm sure I'll express more specifically my own ideas as the discussion progresses, but I don't want to propose anything just yet). At any rate, all thoughts are welcome. (I hope I have expressed fairly the position of those I disagree with - if not, I hope you'll explain further your ideas, of course) john k 22:19, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

My proposition is for dealing with city names with _other_ articles,

eg about people born in city X.

The rationale: the experinece show that there are many rever wars started over consistent

naming of the city names in that _other_ artciles (e.g. John Hevelius or Georg Forster or Schluter). It's not that the compromise is not welcome, it's becuase newcomers usually just don't care about it or don't know about it. My proposition aims at avoinding such revert wars

The proposition: Use most controversial names in the beginning

(usually it would be just two) in manner A (B) or A/B and then behave according to compromise (that is, use name historical in that period). In addition, some of the following:

  1. add msg saying about such controversy
  2. or add such comment in article (as hidden comment)
  3. add link to article covering controversy in see also
Article covering the controversy: saying about status of the city

or region, arguments for using or not using both names and where to find wikipedia conventions about the names and WHY such conventions were created Szopen 14:55, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I agree that there should be a message in the begining of the article saying Throughout the article city X is called Y as it was common English name until DDDD year or something like that. And also, the first time any former name is used, current name (article name) should be included in parentheses, like "in this year Y (X) was occupied by alien forces". That will make article less confusing and a message at the beggining may lessen probability of newcommer reverts. Knutux 05:35, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC)

I agree with use of parentheses, but only in other articles. That is to say, in the Gdansk article, it makes no sense to use Danzig (Gdansk)... but it makes sense in, say, the Arthur Schopenhauer article or the Günter Grass article. john k 08:25, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

FAQ for users who think Wikipedia is biased against their country

I'm writing a FAQ for users who feel that Wikipedia is biased against their country/nation at User:Zocky/Country bias. It's partly tangential to this discussion and highlights some of the things that this policy should clarify. Zocky 21:41, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Naming convention for Australia (take 2)

This was previously discussed at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names)/Archive_6#Standard for Australia? but wasn't really resolved. I notice User:Ambi has made some changes and User talk:Ambi and User talk:Tannin have had some comments regarding this, so I thought I would bring it up here.

I like Ambi's page moves, it is definitely easier for the suburbs, and some localities are borderline suburbs/cities in their own right. It does make it a lot easier to link when you know that the page will be called Geelong, Victoria as opposed to guessing if it is Geelong, Geelong, Victoria, Geelong, Australia or Geelong, Victoria, Australia.

What will happen to the capital cities? Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart and Canberra are named as such. Darwin is Darwin, Australia, and Perth is Perth, Australia (despite there being a Perth, Tasmania as well).

But I can also see Tannin's POV. Is there really going to be another Coonabarabran, Kalgoorlie or Alice Springs? Will it be a pain to link to articles with names like Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia and Alice Springs, Northern Territory? -- Chuq 23:33, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

That is one of the uses of redirects. Make Coonabarabran a redirect to Coonabarabran, New South Wales and you have something that is easy to link to and has a consistent naming convention. Or you could do it the other way around as well. older≠wiser 23:53, Oct 10, 2004 (UTC)
There's not likely to be another Coonabarabran, Kalgoorlie or Alice Springs, but it makes it painful whenever anyone is trying to link to them to know where the article is. Until yesterday, we had articles at Town, Town, State, and Town, Country, which is silly, and they clearly needed standardising. IMO, it's more annoying to have to try and hunt down what title an article is at than it would be to type the extra few words of a piped link. Furthermore, when our suburbs are all at Suburb, State, it would seem to make sense to do this for the towns as well, for the sake of standardisation. I don't care about the capital cities so much - they could be exceptions. Ambi 23:58, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I must say I agree with Ambi, I just wanted to bring the discussion out here into the open! One problem is that there seems to be a view on WP that linking to redirects is a bad thing - but I don't think it is, the redirects make it easier to link to an article. I would tend to go for City, State being the article and City & City, Australia being the redirects. If disambig is required, then one should be a redirect to the other. If the name is shared between Australian and international cities, City, Australia should redirect to City (a disambig), but I'm probably getting too detailed here. -- Chuq 00:26, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I like consistency myself (not that I have any stake in how places on articles in Aussieland get named). Whether you use a comma-separated model as in the U.S. or not, there should certainly be a redirect at the other end (or a disambig if ambiguous). People tend to link to the unqualified names, simply because it is easier--and if the redirects are in place and work, then everyone is happy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with linking through redirects (provided they are not "surprise" redirects). There are some people with nothing better to do with there time, who take it upon themselves to change such links to avoid the redirect, but there is no real harm done--just not much point to it as far as I can see. older≠wiser 01:16, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)


Check links before you make them. Whenever I create articles, I have another window open that I can use to just check if things I think are correct links actually link to what I wnat them too. Article titles should be as short as possible while getting across the meaning, and as this is wikipedia policy, people searching should be aware of this. You search for "Geelong" which will either take you to the Geelong article you want, or a disambig which will direct you to it (if not you fix it so it does). By putting it as "Geelong, Victoria" you confuse everybody who automatically expects it to be under Geelong. If you want to create a redirect from "Geelong, Victoria" to "Geelong". But really who searches for "Geelong, Victoria"?--ZayZayEM 02:16, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The whole guiding philosophy of our naming conventions is that article titles should always be the simplest and most common title possible, and that they should be the most natural title to use in a free link. [[Ballarat]] is vastly more natural than [[Ballarat, Victoria]] or [[Ballarat, Australia]] or [[Ballarat (Victoria)]], or any of the multitude of other possibilities. We already have a policy that covers this: that we link to the most commion and most natural term. Tannin 08:08, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm, that's interesting. So are you saying that all of the U.S. names are wrong where there is no ambiguity? It seems that convention was modified for U.S. cities (and from what I can see has been extended somewhat inconsistently to some other countries). Are you saying it is impossible to similarly modify the convention for other countries? I think there is something to be said for consistency in naming. It is ODD to sometimes find a city titled one way and sometimes another way. It makes linking more difficult (and ZayZayEM, we can't realistically expect casual editors to know or desire to open two windows to check links first). older≠wiser 12:43, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)
From what I've been reading, I've gathered the entire mis-convention of US naming was down to a ingenious bot that automatically retrieved census data and wiki'd it up - and then everybody was too lazy to fix it up (darn Americans). Somebody (not me) should be fixing it up. Seeing as we are creating these Aussie articles manually, we can avoid this blunder--ZayZayEM 14:46, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
And on the matter of not using two windows. It's precisely the reason why standard naming conventions should be used. Just as when searching, editors (casual or pro) should assume these are followed and use the simplest most common title, at the very worst this will lead to a disambig page which can be fixed by a piped link at a later date. ZZ should see notice notes to self next time
My $0.02: KISS. The preview button is your friend - I check (and often follow to check for disambig pages) all my links and formatting before I commit my edits. - Alphax 03:10, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

Wiser writes: "so are you saying that all of the U.S. names are wrong where there is no ambiguity? No. Of course not. That is quite clearly not what I am saying. There was a deliberate decision, made by discussion and concensus, to make a specific exception for the American cities, and only for the American cities. Partially, this was because of the thousands of automated Rambot entries, and partly because (unlike the rest of the world) the Americans really do talk that way: it is common for Americans to say "I'm from City, State" where you or I would say "I'm from City", or maybe something like "I'm from City, in southern Victoria".

It is also obvious that I am not saying convetions can't be modified — the American example illustrates this. If we do modify the convebtion, however, it must be through discussion and agreement before the change is put into effect, not through a unilaterial one-man page-move war. The correct thing to do is move the pages back to their standard titles where they have been for several years, discuss a new convention, and then, if and only if there is general agreement, move the pages to whatever new titles are considered approriate.

But most people would say "I'm from Chelsea in Melbourne" rather than "Chelsea in Victoria".. should suburb names go Suburb, City? (For the record.. no, I don't want to rename all those Melbourne suburbs again!)
I think if it comes down whether to use Suburb, State or Suburb, City then Suburb, State is probably the way to go, as that way you don't get into the hassle of whether a major suburb is a district in its own right or merely part of a larger city. Its also how you'd label a postal letter. If there is a further conflict of nomenclature then Suburb, State (City) should be used.--ZayZayEM 01:01, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I was about to suggest an option to vote for: "City, State for all Australian cities towns and suburbs. Exception for capital cities". But then I thought, Hobart would be titled as such, but Geelong, Victoria and Wollongong, New South Wales wouldn't be. There are other Hobarts (and Melbournes, and Perths) although they are a lot smaller than the Australian cities and going by WP's generic disambiguation policy, deserve primary disambiguation. Perhaps we could make it cities get the primary name if needed, but towns and suburbs get Town, State or Suburb, State?
Just a question - do all states make a firm distinction between city/town? In Tasmania, a built up area over 20,000 is a city. Is this different in each state?

-- Chuq 12:45, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No consensus to make a change to Australian city names has emerged: in fact no-one even seems to be discussing it anymore - not a single post in several days. The unilaterial page moves of the other day need to be tidied up. Anyone care to give me a hand? Tannin 22:38, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I would, but since I tend to prefer including the state name, we wouldn't really be helping each other! I think Ambi has disappeared to study, so I don't expect she will be around much the next few weeks -- Chuq 23:39, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I'm not sure on this either - It seems kinda neat having City/Town as the only article of the name, but then you get things like Renmark and Renmark, South Australia. We don't want someone else grabbing the name first, do we? -- Alphax (talk) 06:36, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)
I apologise for my absence from this page - for some reason, it didn't make it to my watchlist, so I didn't know anyone had replied. It *is* important that there is either a redirect or a disambiguation link at Name. But provided that that is so, it's much more convenient, for both us and readers, to know that the articles are all following a standard format. If they're searching, they'll find the article either way. If they're not searching, it's going to be easier for them to find articles at Name, State, rather than guessing at the combination of Name, Name, State, Name, Country, or any one of the other combinations that existed before I standardised them. Things like the Renmark mess only happen because we don't have standards.
And one more thing - no one objected when we made the suburbs Suburb, State. Tannin didn't bother participating in those discussions, and he seems to be the only one to then turn around and complain now. Ambi 06:52, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I'm still a bit puzzled to find what you mean by a "lack of standards". The standards are to follow Wikipedia conventions (simplest name possible). Also I am curious as to how significant suburbs have to be to be allowed into the suburb projects. Are really tiny suburbs really encyclopaedic information?--ZayZayEM 05:29, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
And you've already been told that this is absolutely not set in stone, so please stop repeating it as your mantra. The standards are what we decide as the standards. Which is why we're here. If you dispute the inclusion of any particular suburb, feel free to take it up on VFD. Expect it to be near-unanimously kept, however. Ambi 06:26, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Palm Island, is an article which I have been forced to create a Redirect, because it was made under the unnecessarily long title Palm Island, Queensland. The problem will just continue to happen no matter what policy we have. Why create a new policy that will not solve the problem (and require typing more characters when creating links? and increasing piped link numbers?)--ZayZayEM 13:13, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
a) The author's mistake - it's not very hard to drop a note on their talk page. b) No, it won't. This eliminates the need to hunt through five different potential article titles to look for any possible articles, and will help to eliminate duplicate articles, as all red links can be easily standardised. It will make things easier for us, and it will help stop duplicates. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with piped links. This does have advantages, and the only argument against seems to be enforcing a policy that doesn't exist. Ambi 00:08, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I'm hardly going to drop a note on a users talk page about an undecided policy, especially one I don't agree with. What do you mean by B) it won't?. It won't create more piped links and extra typing, or the probably won't continue to occur. Naming conventions have always been broken, whether out of naivity or ignorance — by creating extraneous conventions you create a larger gap for naivity and ignorance to occur in. I wouldn't mind so much if Wikipedia was a closed project, and the rules could be sure to reach everyone, as its an open project that everyone can join - conventions should be KISS as possible.--ZayZayEM 01:56, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Voting

Ok, here are some options - feel free to add other alternatives, then we'll have a vote? (Note in each of these, City can mean City, Town or Suburb.) -- Chuq 22:40, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Option 1 - How it is now. Suburb names get City, State, Unique city/town names get City. Non-unique city/town names get City, State
  • Option 2 - All suburb, town and city names get City, State
  • Option 3 - All suburb, town and city names get City, State, except for capitals which get just City if non-ambiguous, otherwise (Option 3a) City, Australia or (Option 3b) City, State.
    • Comment: Perth and Darwin are the only ambiguous names. Some of the others have primary disambiguation.
  • Option 4 - All suburb, town and city names get City, State, except for capitals and major cities which get City if non-ambiguous, otherwise (Option 4a) City, Australia or (Option 4b) City, State.
    • Comment: "Major cities" is a POV term - I would suggest any city bigger than our smallest capital (Darwin) - IOW, Newcastle, Gold Coast, Wollongong, Sunshine Coast, Geelong, Townsville, Cairns and Launceston. (see List of cities in Australia)

Either Option 4 or Option 2 sounds the most sensible to me. I'd be a bit inclined, however, to apply the exemption in Option 4 to only capital cities. Ambi 23:39, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The "Option 4, except only for capitals" is actually option 3. I just noticed I included "City, Australia" in option 3. This is probably because Perth and Darwin are at Perth, Australia and Darwin, Australia already - as captials, they probably deserve a less vague name (people from other countries wouldn't know where Darwin, Northern Territory was). Note there is also a Perth, Tasmania. I've changed the options to specify. So if I have translated your thoughts properly, you mean Option 2 or 3b? -- Chuq 00:42, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
3b. Ambi 00:45, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

issue there seems to be no option for allowing Wikipedia policy of all non-ambigious wikis to be left as merely City (whether capital, city, town or suburb). ption one comes close. The problem I have is will we have arguments over whether major suburbs are "suburbs" or localities in their own right?--ZayZayEM 12:26, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The main title, if there's nothing for it to be disambiguated with, will still point to the Town, State article, regardless. But it makes it vastly more convenient, for both editors and users, if they know exactly where the article is going to be, rather than having to take several guesses at whether it might be at Town, Town, State, Town, Country, or something else. I've had to do that before, and it annoyed the hell out of me. The searcher still gets to the article either way, but this makes things considerably easier for numerous tasks. Ambi 13:23, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Several guesses?? I don't undesrtand what you mean. If the article is set up correctly, and you search with the simplest name (as per expected policy), you will either A)go straight there or B)be redirected to the article via a disambig page. You should not have to "guess" a second search. If you get C)Wikipedia doesn't know what your on about; you fix it so it does. By having a breach of Wikipedia naming policy (using less-than-minimal names) you increase the risk of C occuring for naive searchers.--ZayZayEM 15:10, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
You're B) is not a redirect but requires either A) the end-user to make an extrat click because the link is not properly disambiguated or B) some editor to go back and take the extra step of properly disambiguating the link. There is no breach of Wikipedia naming policy by using a consistent naming system if there is consensus for using such a system. older≠wiser 17:41, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
Oh no. I have to click an extra button. Or, wow, I have to actually modify wikipedia to make it better (isn't that what Wikipedia is all about?). We shouldn't warp a policy to suit our own laziness, at teh expense of making Wikipedia less accessible to people who aren't in the loop. If the simplest name doesn't have the article (i.e. its only under City, State) a lot more people are going to lost or not find the page than if it follows normal policy--ZayZayEM 02:30, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
ZayZayEM, the point is that you seem to think the naming policy for places is inviolable and set in stone, when it most certainly is not. If there is a rough consensus to modify the convention for Australia, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. older≠wiser 12:54, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)
No-one can get lost when the redirects are set up properly. If I search for "Glen Iris", (expecting the Victorian one), I get redirected to "Glen Iris, Victoria". No problem. If I search for Glen Iris, Victoria, straight off, even less of a problem. If I search for "Carlton", (expecting the one in Victoria), I get a disambig page which lets me get to "Carlton, Victoria" in an extra step. Not a problem. If the article exists, no-one will not find it simply because it has ", Victoria" or whatever else on the end. It does make it easier for us to be able to insert "Glen Iris, Victoria" into an article without having to investigate whether it is really there. It makes it easier for editors, yes, but no harder for readers to find what they're looking for. T.P.K. 08:28, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
No-one will not find it if its under Glen Iris either. Will this policy, if it is agreed on by other editors, be inserted somewhere so that benign editors have prior knowledge to this? If I had not found this page, I would have just assumed it would be under Glen Iris (as is Yeppoon, Emu Park, and Rockhampton). Its a redirect either way. If its not broke, don't fix it. There really needs to be a concrete reason for a sudden deviation from the widespread policy. I'd accept bot's technical limitation, but not "it suits me better"--ZayZayEM 10:28, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
It is broke, and that's why we're here. Having to test five different potential naming conventions to see whether an article might be there is bad form. If this was enforced, you wouldn't have to assume that it'd be at Glen Iris, because Rockhampton and Emu Park would also be in the same form. We do need to make sure there are links from Name to Name, State though - I'll have to keep an eye out for that in future. Ambi 00:08, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
No it is not broke. It is being broken. Some people aren't going to follow naming conventions, official, or consensus, regardless. There is absolutely no point in complicating this further by creating an increased risk of naive mistakes by introducing a new policy to replce an old policy that will work just as well. If something is broke, don't replace it with a piece with teh exact same hole. What we do need is a policy for ambigious articles (i.e. City, State; City, Australia or City (Australia)) – not one for articles which do not need disambiguation. Perhaps we can hold a truce and at least get this sorted out, and then work on whether we will disambiguate all pages, or only those that require it.--ZayZayEM 01:46, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Some people aren't going to follow naming conventions, but at least if they're standardised, then the red links which they will likely follow to create the article, will be at the right place. If they create one at another title anyway, we're perfectly capable of fixing it up, and encouraging them to improve their ways, as we've already proven quite effective at doing since we Aussies started coordinating things. Ambi 06:35, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think as far as ambigious article nomenclature, City, State (b) should be preferrable to City, Australia. The latter being Americentric bias (Australia can't have more than one Perth?). Option One for me as long as important non-ambigious suburbs are allowed unique articles as first preference. Unimportant suburbs shouldn't get articles, or be included in the city article.--ZayZayEM 15:15, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I agree with ZZM. 3a, please (1 is close enough if not). Alphax (talk) 14:54, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)
Don't you mean 3b?--ZayZayEM 02:40, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Um, I guess so. 3b then. Alphax (talk) 05:41, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)
i agree with ZayZayEM, although i wouldn't go so far as to say that unimportant suburbs shouldn't have articles. if disambiguation is necessary, the city, state format is best. so option one comes closest to this. clarkk 13:14, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
By unimportant suburbs, I mean really unimportant ones. Yeppoon where I live, is actually a conglomeration of several localities, I would not expect Wikipedia to have articles on Cooee Bay, Farnborough, Roslynn, Malara, Bangalee etc. especially while so many genuine town-entities are article-less.--ZayZayEM 01:46, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I don't see this as a problem. Ambi 06:35, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Take Three

Good things come in threes?

Wikipedia:Australian_wikipedians'_notice_board#Again_on_Disambiguation

French communes disambiguation

I started a discussion with olivier concerning French communes disambiguation. The question is: should articles be titled Commune (departement) or Commune, departement?

  • Arguments for the former:
    • Looks best
    • Follows general naming conventions
    • Follows fr: usage.
  • Arguments for the latter:
    • Looks best
    • Follows general usage for place names
    • Follows current usage for French communes on Wikipedia.

Any thoughts ? _R_ 15:48, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure abou that "follows general naming conventions". On the English Wikipedia at least, cities in many countries are given in the form "City, {larger-administrative-unit}", not "City (LAU)". So I think "Commune, departement" is actually closer to current practise. Noel (talk) 16:44, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

How to handle names with diacritics.

Currently there is an on-going dispute over the name Talk:Zürich. Pleas see also:

I think that for as standard in place names Wiki should adopt the simple rule "strip the diacritics on foreign name unless they are very well known on that word in English." The articles can then start with an Anglosized version followed by the local version eg:

This is not a new rule, but something that has been done in English for generations, certainly since the advent of the typewriter and probably since before the printing press. --Philip Baird Shearer 19:08, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That would work well in some languages, specifically German, and less well in many other, specifically Finnish and Scandinavian (on the other hand, you may say that these languages doesn't have diacritics but extended character sets). It would also introduce an unnecessary foundation for lots of disputes, and alienate foreigners. There was a reason to do so in printed works when there were no foreign types available. But that reason is obsoleted in the computerized world.
--Ruhrjung 19:15, 2004 Nov 12 (UTC)

But it is not for several good reasons:

  • Most English keyboards do not have more than 26 letters and forming any other letter is a pain.
  • Unless a foreigner has an inferiority complex why should he or she care how the English spell a foreign name. Speaking as an English speaker I would not be alienate no matter how someone spelt or pronounced the city I live in. Why would a reasonable foreigner wish to impose an an English speaking person with an English keyboard the extra steps to put in characters which they do not have easy access too. I have just asked my wife is she considers it an offence when people do not know the Gaelic or use fatha in name for her home town. She replied using Anglo-Saxon words that she does not.
  • Because of this English speaking people do not use search engines which automatically convert searches into other keys. If I use German and Zurich as an example. The search using Zürich is full of German pages, so then I need to filter them with an English only filter as well as working out how to get an umlaut. Why go through these two additional hoops when I can search quickly and easily using Zurich which automatically tends to filter out German pages.
  • What are the Scandinavian characters which are not in the Latin alphabet and how are they traditionaly converted into Latin characters? Philip Baird Shearer 00:06, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)


When there are traditional English names for places, as is the case for large cities (Munich, Cologne etc.), these should be used when writing in English. By definition, these lack diacritics.
Most smaller places, however, don't have such traditional names, as they are not often referred to in other languages. In such cases, as with personal names, the proper diacritics should be used, when there is no technical problem with that. That some English-speakers have problems writing foreign diacritics is not an argument for placing these subjects under the wrong heading, but for creating redirects or disambiguation pages when necessary. Writing as a Swede, I regard stripping diacritics from Swedish names and other words as a sign of sloppiness. Perhaps disrespect as well, especially in the case of personal names, but mostly just sloppiness. / u p p l a n d 14:05, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Do many English speakers even know what diacritics are? Or how to use them (or how to use them — I only just learned how to do æ & Æ) While cultural sensitivity is nice, this is an English encyclopedia so English/Anglo versions shoudl be used. Obscure names might be worthy of diacritics, but Zurich should be left as Zurich. --ZayZayEM 14:22, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As I wrote above, I agree that English versions should be used when such exist (as with Zurich, for instance). In most cases, none do. If most English speakers know what diacritics are or not is irrelevant. Swedes usually make an effort to use Ü or Ç when writing German or French names, at least in texts intended for publication. I think English-speakers are capable of doing this with regard to other languages as well. It is not (primarily) a matter of cultural sensitivity, but of correctness. As I already pointed out, not making that minimal effort just looks uneducated and sloppy. Is that the impression you think Wikipedia should make? / u p p l a n d 14:52, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There is no correct way! The customary way is to strip them in English. You think it looks uneducated and sloppy but you are not a native English speaker and althought there are English speakers who would agree with you, to me it seems fine to strip all funny foreign squiggles and lines. To strip them off is a simple and practical rule. An English speaker, or someone using English as the lingua franca of the modern age, does not have to try to guess what the correct squiggle is in a specific foreign grammar; Or how to make that character with a keyboard that does not have one; or what to use in a text search. two examples from the Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Transliteration]:

Nice and simple! --Philip Baird Shearer 23:05, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I could just as easily claim that there is no "customary way" to do this in English, and could easily find a whole lot of published English texts which do use diacritics in foreign names or other words. I don't know if you are a monolingual English-speaker, but the fact that you may not realize is that by not using the correct spelling for these names you would be introducing a completely unnecessary ambiguity and uncertainty and creating false homonyms which could easily have been avoided. Whether you like it or not, these "funny foreign squiggles and lines" have meaning. / u p p l a n d 01:58, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes I only speak one English language, I did not know there was more than one. Perhapse you can LEAD me to the others. As most English readers have no idea what funny forign squiggles over and under words mean (Some might know one forign language, but very few would know more than two), so how does it introduce an "unnecessary ambiguity and uncertainty" to have a simple rule which says strip them? Philip Baird Shearer 12:29, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

For instance, there is at present an article on Amal, the Lebanese Muslim militia, and a different article on Åmål, a town in Sweden. There is already a disambiguation on top of the Amal article to lead anyone right who may be looking for the Swedish town. In Swedish A and Å are two different vowels, one pronounced more or less like the English A in "large", the other like the A in "fall" (or the oa in "board", or whatever). Stripping the rings from on top of the A in this case would be like exchanging the large P and B in "Philip Baird Shearer" for an R with the argument that "Rhilip Raird Shearer" still looks more or less the same. By "stripping diacritics" you are actually exchanging one letter for another.
Another example: Angstrom is a perfectly good English word spelled without diacritics and unambiguous in any context where it would be used. But it originates with a Swedish surname Ångström, as in the 19th century physicist and Uppsala professor Anders Jonas Ångström. In this case stripping diacritics would create ambiguity, as Angström or Ängström are also possible Swedish surnames, and the latter actually a quite common one, although more often spelled Engström. (And the ending "-strom" is also possible, had the name been of German origin.) An alternative might be using oe and ae to represent ö and ä, but this creates ambiguity of a different kind, at least with personal names which may in many cases intentionally be spelled in a way differing from standardized Swedish spelling (Wärn, Waern, Wærn or Wern – this is a real Swedish surname – are all pronounced the same, but for a particular person or family the distinction may be significant).
In either case, stripping "funny forign squiggles" creates an unnecessary loss of information. Anyone who doesn't care about this information can just happily ignore it. Personally, I don't speak Spanish, but I know that there is a difference in pronunciation between a Spanish n and a Spanish ñ. I don't see any reason why it would be advantageous to me to see "El Niño" spelled as "El Nino" and I don't see how my lack of knowledge of Spanish grammar would be a problem or why the tilde would disturb me if I didn't know the difference. Even in cases where I may not know or appreciate the difference, I don't see any reason why any "squiggles" should be stripped in writing, unless there is a real technical problem, not just a matter of keyboard-related inconvenience. I don't see my own ignorance or the fact that I may need to fire up the character map to find a certain foreign letter as a reason it shouldn't be there when I look up the word in an Encyclopædia. / u p p l a n d 13:26, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If a language did not have "P" and a "B" in their alphabet then I see no problem with "Rhilip Raird Shearer" (particularly as PH is a funny combination anyway which I would not expect people not familiar with the English alphabet or similar to know how to pronounce). Thank you for highlighting El Niño as is a very good example of what I mean. If you search on El Nino then the El Niño page only occurs because fortuitously one of the external links http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/el-nino-story.htm has el-nino in it otherwise that page would not show up. This page should be under the name without diacritics with a link to the name in the native language:

It is a simple rule that is easy to follow with no need to understand "funny foreign squiggles" or grammar rule, no keyboard-related inconvenience and it shows up in text searchs. If you have not been convinced by now then you will not be. So I will not say any more. Philip Baird Shearer 14:30, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Since this has ceased to be about just Cities. I think that it is best if it is discussed in one place.

GOTO: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Transliteration] --Philip Baird Shearer 14:49, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Name of this page

As city has a specific meaning in certain nations (for instance in the UK a city is traditionaly a town with a cathedral, and currently has to be created by parliament IIRC) should this page not be called something like 'Naming conventions (place names)', or is the intention that it should only apply to the largest towns? --Neo 15:01, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

By city, we mean any inhabited place. Nohat 20:01, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  1. Where is that stated?
  2. Should it maybe be expressed at some more prominent location?
  3. Is it good to use such a broad definition of city?
--Ruhrjung 04:27, 2005 Jan 4 (UTC)
It's not really stated anywhere that I know of, it's just that the policy arose out of disputes concerning the names of cities, but the divisions that people make between cities and non-cities don't really make any sense from the standpoint of naming conventions. It would add needless complication of policy and potentially endless debate about what is and isn't a "city" when applying the policy. When talking about all named inhabited places, the word city is often used because it is simple even if under certain definitions the word is more restrictive. The essential character of a "city" is that it is a place where people live. Size of the city is only relevant when contrasted with towns or villages, etc., which it is not here. I don't see any harm in continuing to use the name word city: it is a common word that everyone understands. Please feel free to clarify the policy if you think people are liable to get confused. Nohat 05:18, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
It should be clear that this is the case when considering the example "cities" noted in the policy: Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina has a population of only 809. Such a place would only be a city in the broadest definition of the word. I suppose it could be changed to "Naming conventions (municipality names)" but that seems like a needless invocation of a fancy word that is more likely to confuse than to clarify. Nohat 05:22, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Nohat - I don't think anybody disagrees that these conventions should apply to populated locations that are not defined as cities. The problem, then, is that the current title suggests that it might only apply to cities. Municipality isn't really any better - Bethesda, Maryland, for instance, is neither a municipality nor a city. "Place," on the other hand, seems far too broad. Not sure how to deal with this. Probably it would be best, as Ruhrjung says, to note that city in this instance means any populated locality. john k 05:55, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps we could have "Wikipedia: Naming conventions (metropolis, city, suburbia, town, village, and hamlet names)"? ;-)
More seriously, I think "Wikipedia: Naming conventions (places)" or, somewhat more uglily, "Wikipedia: Naming conventions (population centres)" would be fine enough.
James F. (talk) 06:53, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Eh, I have to admit that I don't really care all that much, and whoever is bold in changing it won't likely get a fight from me. However, I think that "city" is sufficient, in analogy to e-commerce sites and such that ask for your address: street address, city, state, zip (or province, postal code, etc.) People understand what is meant by "city" even if where they live isn't technically a city. Nohat 07:50, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Yah, I think the name of the page is OK, but I wouldn't object if someone renamed it. Although, if we're going for a generic term, I think "town" may be somewhat less associated with a particular size or municipal status than city, although both are commonly used in a generic sense. older≠wiser 13:09, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

I don't think town is any better. At least most people know that city can either mean "incorporated municipality calling itself a city" or "any locality where people live". Too many people seem to feel that town only means the latter, and not "incorporated municipality calling itself a town". john k 21:48, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Um, well, sure. But I thought the problem with the term "city" was precisely that to many people is has strong associations with a particular municipal status or with a large population center, whereas this policy is intended to apply to a wide range of populated places. Either way makes little difference to me, but I thought town might be better because it was less restrictive than city. older≠wiser 22:45, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)
I know this is beating a dead horse now, but I really think it's the other way around because forms and the like invariably ask for "city, state, zip". I have never seen a form ask for "town, state zip". Or when you call 411, it says "what city please?" or "what city and state please?"Nohat 05:23, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Yes, there are those uses; however, if you live in a mostly rural area without a proper "city" nearby, but where there is a smaller population center like a village, hamlet, etc., it would be rather unusual to say "I'm going into the city". But it would not be unusual to say "I'm going into town" in reference to such places. And the town phrasing would not be unusual even when refering to a city either. older≠wiser 12:56, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)
Er, they do in the United States of America, but as I'm sure you're aware, the US is not the entire world. In fact, most forms where you give your address in Britain have a field for 'town', not 'city'. Owain 12:47, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Show me a form where they just ask for 'town'. I've seen "town/city" and "city/town" but never just plain "town". Australian forms ask for "city/suburb". The common theme is the word "city". Nohat 20:23, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I'm not saying the postal usage doesn't exist. But I am saying that the postal usage does not correspond to how people speak. I think the generic nature of "town" can be seen in how it can be used without an article in espressions like "I'm going into town". However, "I'm going into city" or "I'm going into village" sound decidedly odd without the article. Using town in the expression with an article also shifts the meaning subtly to be more restrictive. And in small population centers, refering to the place as a "city" is sometimes done with a note of derision or irony, as in "How's life in the big city?" where the place in question is decidedly neither big nor a city--though the same place could be referred to as a town without irony. I'll admit "big" exaggerates the intent here, but the point is that outside of postal forms, it would be unusual to refer to such places as a city. Although the stakes are inconsequential and the expired horse has been thoroughly beaten, I still think "town" is a more generic and less restrictive term than "city" (though as for what the page name should be, I'm still OK with either). older≠wiser 20:53, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

I think neither is particularly ideal as a generic term. I basically agree with what Bkonrad is saying, but I'm not sure the relevance - both "city" and "town" have both specific and generic meanings. It should also be noted that, to add to the confusion, many small towns in the US are, in fact, incorporated as cities. Taneytown, Maryland, for instance, population 5,128. So, while someone going into Taneytown would likely not say "I'm going into the city," the place is officially known as the "City of Taneytown." The whole thing is a mess. I would suggest not moving the page, but indicating at the top that it refers to any populated locality, and not just those which are officially cities. john k 21:40, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Municipal status often has little correlation with common usage. For an extreme example, consider Clarkston, Michigan (which is the postal designation) with a population of 962 and is officially named City of the Village of Clarkston. Locals typically refer to it as simply "the village", though it is incorporated as a city. There are many cities in Michigan with populations of less than 1,500 and several less than 1,000. And then there are the places like Mackinaw City, Michigan, which are actually a village. older≠wiser 22:13, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

UK placenames

Proposal: Where possible, articles on places in the UK should go under placename. Where disambiguation is needed, they should go under:

If the placename and administrative county are identical, in which case they should be at placename (city) or placename (town).

This proposal can be refined in future, but a basic consensus on the status quo would be a useful start. Warofdreams 17:00, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure using administrative counties in England (which includes borough-sized unitary authorities) is a terribly good idea. Similarly using UAs in Scotland and Wales is not much good when the UAs are small or confusingly named, eg. Falkirk, Caerphilly, &c. Also what happens when these areas change name or area? Obviously me vote would be to use the traditional county name for disambiguation. Owain 10:47, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I think we should use the traditional counties of Scotland (as using the subdivisions of Scotland would result in oddness (like X, East Renfrewshire) and using the Lieutenancy areas of Scotland would result in even more oddness (like X, Roxburgh, Ettrick and Lauderdale)) and the ceremonial counties of England. I'm unsure about Welsh places, though. My instinct would be to use the preserved counties of Wales, as the principal areas of Wales have lots of small and not very helpful divisions, but I don't know how much the traditional counties of Wales are used. Proteus (Talk) 11:32, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
IMO, if we're going to use the traditional counties of Scotland (Which I agree with, BTW) then we should use the traditional counties everywhere. The current lieutenancies are a mess and are subject to revisions to the LA 1997. I am against using the preserved counties of Wales as this will just cause more confusion. Owain 12:32, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I think using anything other than what the place is currently in ie - the current administrative area - is going to lead to more confusion for the reader than anything else. We already battle over debates such as (just an example) Bletchley is in the traditional county of Buckinghamshire and in the unitary authority of Milton Keynes. Moving the article that is currently at Bletchley, Milton Keynes to Bletchley, Buckinghamshire is going to muddy the waters of this debate and lead to more confusion, not less. The administrative boundaries don't change so often as to make page moves impossible should they change again. I think the current administrative area is the best approach, which is the approach employed at Streetmap among others. -- Francs2000 | Talk [[]] 15:14, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Just to be pedantic (which I guess is the whole point of this debate), the administrative area does not define 'what the place is currently in', it defines an area for the delivery of certain local government services. The whole 'where do I live?' debate has arisen because since 1889 people have used local government areas to define where they live. To use the Bletchley example, no-one would argue that it's part of the built-up area of Milton Keynes despite where it is administratively. Why do we need such a rigid structure anyway? Why can't we use our common sense? Owain 14:13, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Which is why I say it is completely subjective: I live near Milton Keynes and have need to go their fairly regularly. I know as many people who live in the surrounding area (i.e. the villages) who are of the opinion that they live in Milton Keynes as those who still believe they live in Buckinghamshire, and the general split does tend to be based on their age and the amount of time they have lived in the area. I know that we already use the ceremonial county for things such as [[Category:Towns in...]] and am perfectly happy to go with the flow should that be the consensus of wikipedia users however I can predict it causing conflict in the future with such people who identify with a geographical area or political division over a ceremonial county. Also as towns such as Bletchley, Fenny Stratford, Stony Stratford, Wolverton and Newport Pagnell are now contiguous with the sprawl of Milton Keynes it is commonly assumed by many that they are now part of the greater "city" rather than towns in their own right. -- Francs2000 | Talk [[]] 22:10, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
But disambiguation should put places where normal people would describe them as being (as is suggested by the "most common name" policy), rather than where the government would describe them as being. No one, when asked "Where do you live?", is going to reply "I live in the Unitary Authority of Milton Keynes" or "I live in Roxburgh, Ettrick and Lauderdale". Obviously, a place's exact administrative location (or whatever you want to call it) is important, but it's not the natural way British people distinguish two places with the same name, as they almost always use the county instead. (As an aside, I've never looked at the Bletchley article, so I don't know what the debate there is about, but if you'd asked me ten minutes ago where Bletchley was I'd definitely have said "Buckinghamshire".) Proteus (Talk) 15:41, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Deciding where normal people would place locations around the country is very subjective and may differ depending on point of view: for example younger people may say "I live in Bletchley, Milton Keynes" whereas older people may stick with "Bletchley, Buckinghamshire". Incidentally I only used Bletchley as an example because I didn't want to single out particular users. I do remember a very heated debate over the location of Eton, Berkshire, a user whoshallremainnameless insisted that it was still Eton, Buckinghamshire. -- Francs2000 | Talk [[]] 15:55, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Well, I'm hardly old. :-) Anyway, I'm not suggesting we use the traditional counties (I'm sure most people would say Solihull was in the West Midlands rather than Warwickshire, for instance, and I really don't want to get into "Which county is X in?" arguments), but I think that using the administrative ones would be counter-intuitive and cumbersome (North East Lincolnshire and Bath and North East Somerset are hardly convenient disambiguation suffixes). Proteus (Talk) 18:40, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
What about situations where there are two places with the same name in the same county? For example, it Buckinghamshire there is Burcott, Bierton, Buckinghamshire and Burcott, Wing, Buckinghamshire. Are these article names too long or are those respective names the most appropriate location for those articles? -- Francs2000 | Talk [[]] 15:35, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I'd say Burcott, Bierton and Burcott, Wing would probably suffice. We definitely don't want a US-style "disambiguate even when it's not needed" policy, with Buckingham, Buckinghamshire and the like. Proteus (Talk) 15:45, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
No I agree. I was the one who actually disambiguated a lot of Buckingham links. I also had quite an argument with someone over the location of Aylesbury rather than Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire: he only ceded to my point of view after trying to fix the multitudinal links from A to A, B and giving up half way through. -- Francs2000 | Talk [[]] 15:55, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
We should definitely insert a "default is no disambiguation" clause when we write the guidelines. Proteus (Talk) 18:40, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

We've already got a policy on the counties business at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places)#Counties of Britain.

PS. Bletchley, Milton Keynes et al are still in the Ceremonial county of Buckinghamshire. It may well be sensible to use ceremonial counties for geographic reference in the cases of unitary authorities. G-Man 18:29, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Except that in the case of Scotland, Wales and a fair bit of England they are useless. I've never seen any justification for such a concrete policy anyway - why can't we use common sense? Owain 19:32, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Whose common sense exactly? I'm sure my common sense is different to yours. G-Man 23:17, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No need to be so belligerent - Here's an example of common sense: If we stick to a rigid policy of using administrative areas or 'ceremonial counties' then where is Bristol? Where is Glasgow? Where is Belfast? I think even you can see that using administrative areas or lieutenancies in those cases would be utterly pointless. I have no problem with listing such information on the page along with the much more useful traditional county information. Similarly, such articles can quite happily be in multiple categories. After all, the purpose of a encyclopaedia is to facilitate people finding articles where they expect them to be; not deliberately restricting the ease of location because of some arbitrary 'policy'. Owain 10:31, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"Where disambiguation is needed....": Bristol and Glasgow and Belfast do not need disambiguation so none of those examples are of much use. Can someone supply an example where disambiguation is needed. Philip Baird Shearer 16:09, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Those are just examples where, if we were to use administrative areas or lieutenancies, it would add no information. Obviously in the context of the UK those cities don't need disambiguation, but Wikipedia is supposed to be country-agnostic. Just for the record there are 17 Bristols, 7 Glasgows and 4 Belfasts in the US alone. The articles themselves can (and should) contain any relevant disambiguation - administrative, traditional, &c. Going with administrative areas is likely to be controversial where the area is named after a town but is significantly larger - e.g. Caerphilly, Stirling, &c. So we have a choice of geographical areas - traditional counties or lieutenancies. In Scotland, Wales and large parts of England these aren't very helpful either... Owain 19:21, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Some thoughts: there is at least one case where such a disambiguation as Owain mentions is needed: Newport in South East Wales. That's where my suggestion of [[placename (city}]] came from - I agree Newport, Newport is confusing, but Newport, Monmouthshire is inaccurate - it does not lie in the current administrative Monmouthshire. (this is now at Newport)

I've not got a strong opinion on whether disambiguation should be by administrative or ceremonial county in England. However, the preserved counties of Wales and especially the lieutenancy areas of Scotland are little used and differ greatly from both administrative and traditional counties, so I have a strong preference for administrative areas there. Using traditional counties would go against the agreed policy at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places)#Counties of Britain.

I believe a policy is needed. That doesn't mean that there can never be case-by-case exceptions, but it will mean that articles won't be lost under confusing titles, and red links can all point to the same place. Like G-Man says, not everybody's "common sense" tells them the same thing.

Where there are two or more places of the same name in one county, they have usually been disambiguated as placename, nearby place, county. Perhaps placename (nearby place), county would be more accurate - the place being disambiguated is not within the reference place. Warofdreams 12:33, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I tend to agree with everything you say except for Newport, Monmouthshire being inaccurate. It is inaccurate if one is talking in terms of local government areas, but not if one is talking in terms of general geographical disambiguation. :) Owain 16:25, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Another point - Newport has never lay in an administrative area called Monmouthshire. Prior to 1889 there wasn't one, and between 1889 and 1974 it was administratively independent county borough. Despite this I've never heard anyone say that Newport is not *in* Monmouthshire, because they aren't talking about (and probably don't care about) the local government situation. Owain 16:40, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I suggest that Northern Ireland placenames follow the disambiguation convention used for other Irish placenames, i.e. town, county, where county is one of County Antrim, Down, Armagh, Fermanagh, Tyrone or Londonderry (we use Londonderry for the county, Derry for the city). zoney ♣ talk 00:22, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

One question. What about Washington? A small village (quite badly converted into a town by planners who decided that a town centre wasnt important and that cars were fundamental) near Newcastle, the origin of the surname in George Washington, where he was from. CheeseDreams 23:45, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

See Washington, Tyne and Wear. Washington is the best known place of that name, not the first to be called that - for instance, see Boston and Boston, Lincolnshire from the example on the project page. Warofdreams 11:44, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I Object to any inconsistent policy that uses traditional counties for Northern Ireland but not for anywhere else. A far better solution would be to use traditional counties for all names, except those in London. Anything else would result in lunacy like Leicester, Leicester (but not Leicestershire!). Having, as we do, a city called Leicester, and a (traditional) county called Leicestershire, it takes some level of bureaucratic intransigence to assert that the former must be 'named' as 'Leicester,Leicester' whereas the latter must be asserted not to contain the town it was named after! Ask the average person in Leicester what county they are in; I should be willing to bet a great deal of money on the overwhelming response obtained... Furthermore, by such exmples, the very point of having a qualifying area name attached to a name --that is, to clarify it location-- is wholly lost. Conversely, the use of traditional counties would be universally understood, useful, precise and not liable to change. If you're happy to use traditional counties for Northern Ireland, why not mainland Britain? I point out that the 'naming conventions' policy supposedly applies to the whole country - the United Kingdon of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK). And, furthermore, doesn't the use of NI non-administrative counties, for whatever reason, neatly overturn all objection raised to their use on the mainland? 80.255 08:19, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

General usage of county names needs to be discussed at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places)#Counties of Britain, where there is a consensus not to use traditional counties. The convention applies specifically to Britain, not to Northern Ireland. The traditional counties of both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are widely used, universally understood (unlike those of Britain), and the current method allows one scheme to apply to the entire island of Ireland. Warofdreams 12:45, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Fictional cities

I've added a section for handling fictional cities. I think it recognizes and captures the current practice (see Category:Fictional towns and cities), but it's best to get it down in writing. -- Netoholic @ 18:05, 2005 Jan 12 (UTC)

Cities disambiguation question

I had a question posted here that may also be appropriate for this talk page. When there are many cities around the world with the name "Cleveland", shouldn't the page for Cleveland be the disambiguation page, with a link to Cleveland, Ohio among other places? Even if Cleveland, Ohio is the most well known "Cleveland" to most Americans? -- Planders 20:14, 25 Jan 2005

Reposting from the How to rename a page page: It's not assuming an American audience. The best known and largest city named Cleveland in the world is the one in Ohio. Using UK Google, the first several pages of results seem to entirely consist of references to the one in Ohio. Same deal with Australian google. Similarly, Melbourne is the article on the Australian city, with links to the American cities of that name at Melbourne (disambiguation). York is a page on the city in England, despite the fact of their being numerous Yorks elsewhere. This has nothing to do with US-centrism. It has to do with the fact that Cleveland, Ohio, is by far the best known place in the world which is called Cleveland. The change seems perfectly appropriate to me. I would suggest moving the current Cleveland to Cleveland (disambiguation), and then making Cleveland redirect to Cleveland, Ohio. john k 20:32, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

==Vote on Talk:Gdansk/Vote==

Hi. I would invite you to vote on Talk:Gdansk/Vote to settle the multi-year dozens-of-pages dispute about the naming of Gdansk/Danzig and other locations. The vote has two parts, one with questions when to use Gdansk/Danzig, and a second part affecting articles related to locations with Polish/German history in general. An enforcement is also voted on. The vote has a total of 10 questions to vote on, and ends in two weeks on Friday, March 4 0:00. Thank you -- Chris 73 Talk 07:13, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Should disambiguation be so public?

What I mean is this: Corinth is a disambiguation page, and so is Palmyra. I feel that the first almost always refers to Corinth, Greece, and the second to Palmyra, Syria (although there is a secondary problem that its less well-known modern name is Tadmor). However, the main pages are disambiguation pages. They, thankfully, list the obvious meaning first and then go through mostly unimportant US towns. I'm not a deletionist, I'd love to visit Corinth, Jones County, Texas. Can we move these disambiguation pages to 'NAME (disambiguation)', and put the obvious target on the main page (as Corinth or Palmyra) with a link at the top to the disambiguation page for those who are looking for these small towns? Gareth Hughes 21:02, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think both of these are pretty straightforward candidates for the "most common meaning" guideline. zoney ♣ talk 21:23, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I concur - the Greek and Syrian cities should be first - in the case of Corinth, Corinth should be the article on that city. Palmyra ought to redirect to Tadmor (I think...) john k 23:09, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Can we do a bit of a straw poll here? I've found that there are two articles for the same place: Tadmor and Tadmor, Syria. I'll merge them at Tadmor as that seems the sensible thing to do. It is likely that the Aramaic name for the place has always been Tadmor, or Tamar, meaning palms. The Greeks named it Palmyra, and that is the traditional name: so much so, that there is a long list of US and other places named Palmyra. The small town that exists in the Syrian Desert beside the ruins of the ancient city is called Tadmor in Arabic. Should the main article be at Tadmor or Palmyra? Gareth Hughes 19:24, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

One might have an article on the ancient city at Palmyra and one on the modern city at Tadmor. john k 05:51, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

internal/native topics vs international topics

I post this after changing the table of host cities in Olympic Games article. There the state/province was mentioned near all American/Canadian cities, which made corresponding entries of the table to take 2 lines (at least in my 640x480 resolution) while entries for other cities took one line. I changed it, because I think, that the internal (e.g.American) conventions for city names are appropriate and can be used without any doubts in the articles, which deal mainly with internal or native topics to that country (e.g. for US - in biographies of US people etc.). But in the articles where the cities from other countries are mentioned, the use of different internal conventions always makes the cities in one countries over the cities in other countries in various (sometimes unexpected) senses. Cmapm 12:42, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think you were right to make the change (you could try a bit of cellpadding too). I'm sure the US convention of place, state is due to so many places being named in a fairly short space of time. Other countries do have the occassional instance of two places with the same name, but there is no need to make every placename distinctive. Concerning the Olympics, the world spoke about the Atlanta Olymics, and Georgia is not a necessary addition. I even wonder if someone living a few miles outside of Atlanta would say "I'm going into Atlanta, Georgia, to do some shopping". Usage note: the comma in these names is a bracketing comma, and so, if this name is placed in the middle of the sentence, a second bracketing comma is needed after the state name. Gareth Hughes 13:00, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Piped link

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(settlements)/Archive_7&oldid=1089115153"