Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)/Archive 10

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Palestinian-Israeli conflict and names

In Israel and in Palestine, most city names are the English name followed by their Hebrew and Arabic counterparts. In some cities, the Hebrew comes before the Arabic, and in others, the Arabic before the Hebrew. I don't know if this is the right forum for this, but we need some kind of guideline on how to order the Arabic/Hebrew names because in few cases (Hebron, West Bank) there have been repeated reverts that keep switching the order of the two - some argue Hebrew should be first, others state that Arabic should remain first. There are two schools of thought (and I am presenting the arguments being made about Hebron as an example, regardless of accuracy):

1. XXXXX is known worldwide as a Palestinian city and is not part of Israel proper (not legally annexed). 99%-100% of its residents are Arabic-speaking Palestinians and know it by the Arabic name. In some cases, the city may be of high religious significance to Muslims or Christians.
2. Hebrew appeared in the region prior to Arabic, and therefore the Hebrew name should come first. The original name of XXXXX is in Hebrew, or can be traced to a Hebrew root, or once had a Hebrew name. It doesn't matter what the current inhabitants speak, because the area is disputed, and finally, the city may be of high religious significance to Jews.

Assuming this is the correct forum, could I please have opinions to help formulate a guideline for this issue? We need this guideline so that, before more edit wars start, we can refer POV warriors to the said guidelines. If this is not the correct forum, please advise. Thank you. Ramallite ^(talk) 14:42, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Not touching this one with a 3.05-meter pole. Kaldari 17:29, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

How do we find out the city name?

This might seem silly, but how do we determine a city's name? In the process of a discussion at Talk:Chatham Borough, New Jersey, an anonymous user as well as a respected editor dismissed Census bureau data as incorrect. Alansohn then suggested that references by the municipality to itself [would be relevant]; the anonymous user retorted with The name of the government is not the name of the town.

So...how do we resolve this? Thanks. —lensovet–talk – 03:30, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

The point that the name of the government is not the name of the town is well made. In fact, I believe we confuse city governments with cities in Wikipedia, and, actually, all kinds of governments with places. As to how to find out the real name of the town, it's common usage. Normally, they are the same as "official usage", so it's not much of a practical problem. --Serge 04:07, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

We've had much confusion with New Jersey municipalities. Just to clarify the situation, boroughs and townships are equivalent civil divisions in New Jersey; a borough does NOT exist as part of a township. Though boroughs are often contained within townships, they are indepent municipalities. In a typical scenario, The Borough of Foo was formed from portions of Foo Township. People refer to the Township as "Foo Township", but may often refer to the borough simply as "Foo". This may lead to confusion when someone links to "Foo, New Jersey"; are they referring to the Township, the borough or both (the combined Foo area)? Princeton, New Jersey is an interesting example of this phenomenon, where the borough article is named Borough of Princeton, New Jersey. However, most borough/township pairs have article names that are in the Foo/Foo Township form.

Possible solutions:

1) Keep "Foo Township, New Jersey" as is; leave the borough as "Foo, New Jersey" with appropriate cross reference in both articles.

2) Keep "Foo Township, New Jersey" as is; rename the borough as "Foo Borough, New Jersey" with appropriate cross reference in both articles. Change "Foo, New Jersey" to a disambiguation pointing to both "Foo Borough, New Jersey" and "Foo Township, New Jersey".

To be honest, this is my preferred alternative. The only problem with this is that it involves going to every article that links to Foo, NJ and trying to figure out what that link should really point to. Also, how do we resolve references to the "combined" area? For example, if some article says Foo, New Jersey is a suburban town with many areas of wild, undeveloped land, what does it actually mean? Is it referencing Foo borough or Foo township? What if it actually means "the combined area of the borough and township"? How do we link to both towns, or do we just link to the dab page (note that this is technically problematic and might be "fixed" by unaware users/bots)? This matter is not so much of a problem with more specific facts, such as birthplaces, etc, but it's still an issue to keep in mind. —lensovet–talk – 05:33, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

When unidentified references are made, link to Foo, New Jersey. This is particularly important in historical articles, since in most cases the communities are much older than than the donut-and-hole municipal governments, most of which come from the 1890's. New Brunswick, New Jersey is an exception, IIRC. Septentrionalis 20:23, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Whatever our collective preferneces are on this issue, I don't believe the Census Bureau's name for the municipality is useful. Far more relevant is local usage. Even a website that is named FooBorough.com or calls itself the "Borough of Foo" on the website is not necessarily "proof" in my experience. Local usage -- perhaps best demonstrated in newspaper articles -- would be far more dispositive. Any thoughts on the issue? Alansohn 04:25, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

NJ Municipal Data Book should be in most NJ public libraries, and should be reasonably accurate on names; and Snyder's The story of New Jersey’s civil boundaries will establish name and bounds as of its date. There have been some changes since then, but they will be obvious. (Aberdeen, New Jersey, for example.) Septentrionalis 20:23, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Other possible solutions:

1. Foo (borough); Foo (township) (when Foo has no ambiguity issues with other boroughs and townships)
2. Foo (borough in New Jersey); Foo (township in Jersey) (when Foo has ambiguity issues with boroughs and/or townships with the same name in other states)

--Serge 04:53, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Unidiomatic and unnecessary; Americans have been dealing with their multiple Springfields for years. We don't need to reinvent the wheel, just document how it has already been done. Septentrionalis 20:23, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

See this discussion for a similar problem. --Polaron | Talk 05:46, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I must disagree on the similarity: NY's townships are not incorporated; NJ Townships are municipalities like the others. Septentrionalis 20:23, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Washington? DC?

I'll bring this up here since it remains unanswered yonder: Is there actually a city called "Washington" in the District of Columbia? All current official entities use "District of Columbia." It seems that, at most, the City of Washington is defunct/inactive. If anyone has any information to the contrary, please post here or at Talk:Washington, D.C. —  AjaxSmack  02:34, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

There is indeed a city of Washington, which is co-extensive with the District of Columbia, as far as I understand it. Just as there is a Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, which is coextensive with the city of Philadelphia. john k 02:56, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

More Exception Hunting?

• Talk:Houston, Texas for Dallas and San Antonio as well.
• Talk:Seattle, Washington

The conversation dies here without the desired change and now we're taking this battle to all these different cities? It's just more creating band-aid exceptions instead of a solid constructive consensus. Agne 00:08, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Add Oklahoma City, Oklahoma --Bobblehead 01:44, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

How are we supposed to get a consensus when you and others who are likeminded oppose any change both here and there? john k 03:44, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I do not appreciate the use of the Requested Move process to build up new rationales and precedents for future similar moves, which, in the end, amount to a change in a naming convention. If the end goal is to change the naming convention, that broad change should be discussed in a single place (and advertised in relevant articles), not by proposing changes in individual articles. Each individual city has its supporters who may not be aware of the bigger picture. Tinlinkin 04:02, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes!! This latest swarm of page moves is a horrible chipping away of standards without reason. If there should be a change, then let's discuss it once and for all (right, right, once every three months) in a single location! Phiwum 00:29, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

OH NO!!! The common masses are making decisions against the will of the editing elite. How can they be protected from their own stupidity? josh (talk) 00:52, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was establishing that we have consensus to do something like this, but now just need a more detailed/formal proposal. --Serge 15:46, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

A modest proposal

Let's eat Irish babies in order to relieve the problem of what to call US cities!

er, I mean...

The AP lists 30 US cities that do not need to have the state listed in datelines. These are:

1. Atlanta
2. Baltimore
3. Boston
4. Chicago
5. Cincinnati
6. Cleveland
7. Dallas
8. Denver
9. Detroit
10. Honolulu
11. Houston
12. Indianapolis
13. Las Vegas
14. Los Angeles - (ambiguous with the county name)
15. Miami
16. Milwaukee - (ambiguous with the county name)
17. Minneapolis
18. New Orleans
19. New York City - (ambiguous with a state name)
20. Oklahoma City
21. Philadelphia
22. Phoenix - (ambiguous)
23. Pittsburgh
24. St. Louis - (ambiguous)
25. Salt Lake City
26. San Antonio
27. San Diego
28. San Francisco - (city and county share the article)
29. Seattle
30. Washington - (ambiguous with a state name)

Of these, I think that only Phoenix, St. Louis, and Washington are ambiguous (with the mythical bird, the saint, and the state, respectively). I propose that a) the other 27 AP cities get the state removed from their article title; b) we agree that all other cities stay where they are; and c) we agree to never speak of this again. Can anybody get behind this? john k 03:44, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Kirjtc2 03:51, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll go with (a) the other 27 AP cities get the state removed. And that is it; no more "exceptions". (I too was exaggerating; striking so as not to be too drastic... I just don't like how this topic seems to come up every few weeks. -- tariqabjotu 20:01, 22 October 2006 (UTC)) Regardless of what happens, I must agree that even though I am in favor of getting the state names removed from several major cities, the repetitive move requests are rarely productive, sometimes annoying, and always divisive. So lets come to a conclusion once and for all. -- tariqabjotu 03:55, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Never mind; those aren't three different choices. I guess I'm going with (a), (b), and (c). -- tariqabjotu 03:57, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I like this idea. Where can that list be looked up? Also, if it covers other nation's cities as well, it should be applied there as well.
—Asatruer 04:10, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

It only lists US cities, at least at the page I could find. It's at here, with thanks to User:Ccwaters, who linked it in the move Philadelphia vote. As AP is a US organization, I don't think it makes sense to use it as a guide for cities outside the US. john k 13:03, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Also just noting that aside from the 3 that John mentioned, the 27 ones proposed already have the unqualified name redirect to the city article. --Polaron | Talk 15:34, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Here is my initial concern with the concept of using "dateline standards" for encyclopedia standards. The only purpose that a dateline exist is to list the location of the newspaper report. It doesn't necessarily have any bearing on the content or the subject of the newspaper article. An encyclopedia article's title DOES directly relate to the content and subject of the article. Hence, different standards should be applied for completely different concepts. Its like applying the traffic standard of "right of way" to football under the auspice of them both having something to do with things moving.
With the objective of producing a quality encyclopedia that "anyone can edit", consistency in presentation is going to be a constant uphill battle. This is the reasons why we have guidelines and naming conventions in the first place. There is no harm in the City, State format (especially with the practical application of redirects). There is harm with inconsistency because it helps to make Wikipedia's constant uphill battle a little steeper. Agne 04:11, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

The style of the dateline doesn't seem to create ambiguity. Why should a Wikipedia title if there is a statement that there is further disambiguation and the title suggests common usage? Furthermore, the U.S. convention regarding major cities is in itself an exception to other major cities in other countries. Tinlinkin 04:39, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

But again, a dateline and an article title are two completely separate items. A newspaper reader doesn't expect the dateline to have any dominant relation to the content or the subject in the article. While an article title does, indeed, have a dominant relation to what the article is even about. Further more, the reason why a dateline doesn't have any "ambiguity" is because the entire nature of a dateline is to report a location. An article title in an encyclopedia does not have such limited scope. Dallas in a dateline will only mean a location such as Dallas, Texas. Dallas in an encyclopedia article could mean Dallas or Dallas. Agne 05:40, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand why these differences make a big difference, except for the one about location vs. something else. That latter concern is why I excluded Phoenix and St. Louis. Things like Dallas strike me as clear instances where the city is the primary use. Yes, there are things named after cities - there are bands named Boston and Chicago, there was a TV show called Dallas, "Detroit "can be used to refer to the American Automotive industry, and so forth, but these are all clearly secondary meanings, with no serious possibility that people will be genuinely confused. Your disambiguation rationale would lead to any number of other articles

Also worth noting that, per Dakota Wesleyan, at least, the city stands alone in text, as well as in datelines. john k 13:05, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Support. It is a good first step to recognize common and stylistic usage. As for international recognition, this is acceptable, but the AP Stylebook is used only for the U.S. I would think that airline service from international airports to U.S. airports would be a good guideline for the future, since there are relatively few international gateways to the U.S. (I think), but let's stick to the present proposal. Tinlinkin 04:17, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

• In concept, this is a reasonable way to create an exception list. However it does not address the issue of what happens if a city gets added to the list or if one gets dropped. Not a problem, just a detail to work out. Also Los Angeles, California is ambiguous with Los Angeles County, California as is Las Vegas, Nevada with Las Vegas, New Mexico. I think you could justify Las Vegas, Nevada as a primary use for just using the city, if an exception list is created. However LA is not as simple. Is the source of the list available on an open web site? Is there any legal impediment to wikipedia using that list in it's MoS and associated guides? Is there support to create a limited exception list? Vegaswikian 05:31, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
  • I linked the source for the list above. I don't see how a usage recommendation can be copyrighted, and if you'll note, the thing is online at the site of Dakota Wesleyan University. On the other hand, if you look at the official site, you'll see that the stylebook is not available for free from AP (although it's pretty cheap). We could theoretically send a message to the editor, asking if it's okay for us to use the AP Stylebook as the basis for article naming. As to your critiques, Las Vegas, Nevada, is clearly the principle meaning of "Las Vegas." In terms of Los Angeles County, that is normally called "Los Angeles County." There's also the Los Angeles Metro Area, and the Los Angeles Urban Area, but those are clearly secondary derived meanings of the city. In terms of changes to the list, we could deal with that when it occurs. john k 13:03, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
• SupportLas Vegas, Nevada is a perfect example of why this proposal should go ahead. Las Vegas is already a redirect to LV, NV. The LV, NM article could then be included as a see also (at best), but is far too small and little known to justify any confusion. AP has far more experience on this issue than we bozos do, and has put in far more thought on potential conflicts with other places. We have conflicts on Wikipedia with non-places and those are addressed by removal from this list. We should probably add a see also to "Foo (disambiguation)" to all of these articales to ensure that any potential confusion is addressed. Note: The New York article refers to the state of NY, and should also be excluded. Alansohn 06:09, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose It is my opinion that ALL city articles (not just US/Canada) should be city, state/province format. I will support any change in policy to make this the standard. TJ Spyke 06:10, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

  That is never going to happen. never ever ever ever ever. john k 13:03, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose. There have been at least three attempt to move Los Angeles, California to Los Angeles, with all of them failing to achieve consensus. Los Angeles is a good example where the name is highly ambiguous, and where when people refer (and wiki-linking) to 'Los Angeles' then are often refering to the Greater Los Angeles area, rather than the City of Los Angeles. It make more sense to make the Los Angeles page either a redirect to Los Angeles (disambiguation) or Greater Los Angeles area than it does to make it a redirect to the City of Los Angeles, California. ^BlankVerse 13:30, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
  • The redirect from Los Angeles to Los Angeles (disambiguation) is really not a good idea. And as I said there, it's not as if Los Angeles is unique in this regard:

    Nearly every major city suffers from this same issue (if you would even call it that) in that the whole metropolitan area (and often airports) are often referred by just the name of the majority city nearby. Case in point: if you were to ask every person on the planet what the most populous city in the world is, you'd get Tokyo from the vast majority of them (or perhaps I don't knows). In fact, the Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world; the most populous city proper is Mumbai, with Tokyo ranking a relatively distant tenth. Washington Dulles International Airport contains the name of Washington, D.C. even though it is quite distant from the city. The same goes for Washington Reagan National Airport (not in Washington), Baltimore-Washington International Airport (neither in Baltimore nor Washington, D.C.), Singapore Changi Airport (not in Singapore), and the list goes on. I honestly don't think making a disambiguation page is a good idea; I'm sure most of the articles (even as demonstrated by ishu's investigation) are supposed to link to this city article. Nearly all of the rest are close enough and would be far more useful going to this article (even via redirect) than to a disambiguation page.

  People often refer to the entire metropolitan area of Los Angeles, as just Los Angeles. But the same goes for London, Tokyo, Mumbai, Paris, Moscow... basically any major city just because it's simpler to do that. With all those cities, the country or province is omitted, for good reason. -- tariqabjotu 13:45, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Agree completely with Tariqabjotu. The blurring of city proper with metro area is true for any major city. Look at the List of metropolitan areas by population and note that the city article titles are generally at [[Cityname]]. The only exceptions are most of the US cities and 3 or 4 others that require disambiguation. For the specific case of Los Angeles, as has been demonstrated in the proposed move there, at least 2/3 of the 10000+ links to unqualified Los Angeles refer to the city itself. That's already a strong argument that the city is the primary topic. Plus, I don't think one is supposed to link to a dab page intentionally so if we do turn that into a dab page, those 10000 links would have to be changed. --Polaron | Talk 15:34, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

The first part of the argument is really circular: you point out the failed moves, which failed because they contravened this convention. Now that the convention is attempted to be changed, you point out the failed moves. Others have commented on the false disambiguation dilemmas. Duja 08:25, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

• Support I like having common names title articles on the name's common usage. AP standard seems as good as any to use as reference for US cities. But I don't believe we should tie our standards strongly to theirs this is more "Taking into account AP standards, the community has decided . . ." Also regarding "So lets come to a conclusion once and for all" and "never speak of this again"; I hope you all aren't really serious. I mean this is wiki, everything is always up for re-evaluation.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 15:26, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

  The only reason I just proposed accepting the AP standards en masse is because one of the main complaints when changes are requested has always been "But where does it stop?!?" If we want to word it differently, that's fine, but I think the key thing is that it be a relatively set list, and that it all be done at once. In terms of never speaking of this again, I was partially kidding, but I'm also really, really sick of this issue. It would be nice if we could come up with some kind of convention that everyone could live with, and not have to have the same argument over and over again. john k 17:18, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

• Support. Per the general purpose of the guideline: "The general rule is to name an article about a city or town with a name that does not conflict with any other town or concept as city name. The rest of this naming convention contains guidelines about naming the articles where disambiguation is required." Where disambiguation is not required, there is no need to append the name of the state in the article title. To the argument that it should be required for "consistency", I say that applying consistent disambiguation, even where it is not needed, is exactly the hobgoblin to which Emerson refers in "Self-Reliance". --Dystopos 15:41, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. "c) we agree to never speak of this again" violates Wikipedia:No binding decisions. Letting eternal policy be defined by some guy who works at the AP is pretty rediculous. Personally, I support the spirit of this proposal, but I don't see why a city like Nashville (which is well known and unambiguous) should be excluded from the list, among others, especially if the decision is binding 4ever. Remove item (c) and I'll support it. Kaldari 17:24, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Correct, correct; you're right. I interpreted (c) as figurative (it is okay to talk about it, but lets not make this a monthly debate; there are more important tasks available) whereas you interpreted it quite literally. Regardless, I do agree Nashville (and Albuquerque, among others) should have the state names removed as well. Perhaps we can discussion additional cities right now, or leave it for another time. -- tariqabjotu 20:01, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Tariq has interpreted (c) in the light in which I intended it. I would add that I would personally think that Nashville and Albuquerque and possibly a few others cities could easily be moved as well. But one of the main concerns of opponents has always been "Where will it stop?" The AP list is extensive enough to satisfy me that all the genuinely important unambiguous cities have been included, and limited enough that, I hope, at least a few people who have opposed moves on the "Where will it stop" basis would be persuaded to support. Although my top preference would be for rather more cities to be moved, the AP list is large enough that I would feel pretty close to satisfied if that was all that ended up moving. It would satisfy me as a relatively permanent solution to the current impasse. That was all I meant by point (c) - that we could all stop constantly arguing about this and get back to more productive activities. john k 22:06, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
    • Fair enough. I'll Support it so long as we are not interpreting (c) literally. Kaldari 06:45, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

hello all. Should we make this into a formal survey, or is it best to keep it at the level of (technically) informal discussion for the time being? Are we going to need to have a survey at some point? john k 17:18, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

• Support moving the 27 cities. I make no promises about b) or c).--DaveOinSF 17:22, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose page moves. What's wrong with the current use of redirects? Of these city articles, 24 of the 27 already use redirects. Only #4, #19 and #21 do not use City, State (or D.C.) in the article name. For example,

'Los Angeles' redirects to 'Los Angeles, California', say. That skirts the problem of moving all the existing links from Los Angeles, California to 'Los Angeles'. Then the twenty-seven candidates with potential redirects could be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, using disambiguation pages, for candidate links such as Washington or Las Vegas. --Ancheta Wis 20:30, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Redirects are good. So what's wrong with redirecting Los Angeles, California to Los Angeles? --Yath 20:40, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

The issue of where that redrect should go is open to discussion. The more common target could very well be Los Angeles County. Vegaswikian 20:51, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

The fact that a simpler, more common name already redirects to a less common name is an argument to use the simpler name as the title. And as Yath says, the existence of redirects could be used to argue for or against a move in either direction. --Polaron | Talk 20:46, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

In order to interchange A and B you need a C. Thus for 23 cases, an intermediate page name would need to be created. Then all links in the encyclopedia, referencing A (Los Angeles, California) would need to be copied to reference C (temporary Los Angeles), as the page B already exists, and you would break the encyclopedia with each page move directly over B. Only after all temp pages existed could a C be moved to B (Los Angeles). On the other hand, if the situation were reversed, no temporary name would be needed, as the redirect from B (Los Angeles) to A (Los Angeles, California) already exists in 24 of the 27 cases. Washington is a non-starter, as the state already uses that name.

This conversation was had two years ago with the resolution that City, State was to be the convention. --Ancheta Wis 21:06, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

No I don't think moving to the simpler name entails such complications. No such thing was done when Chicago and Philadelphia were moved. The only thing one needs to fix are the double redirects (about 47 for Los Angeles). And links to redirect pages that aren't broken should not be fixed anyway. --Polaron | Talk 21:25, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Don't tell me you oppose the change due to a technical issue with the wiki? --Yath 21:35, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Do you have any idea what you're talking about? And there has certainly never been any conversation two years ago that had any kind of resolution. There was a conversation four years ago, maybe, in which a tiny number of people agreed on "City, State," and then there has since been further, inconclusive discussion. No technical issue has ever been brought up to oppose a move. john k 00:38, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

• I have noted the ambiguous entries on the list rather then simply including then here in the discssion. Vegaswikian 20:56, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support. josh (talk) 21:48, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. How is St Louis ambiguous. The only St Louis I know is the city in the US. The same goes for the cities that are supposedly ambiguous with the counties their in. josh (talk) 21:48, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree on counties - a county is pretty much always going to be a secondary use to a major city. Counties are always referred to as "X County." If you mean Los Angeles County, you say "Los Angeles County." If you mean the city, you can just say "Los Angeles." We talk about the Mayor of Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Any time the county is meant, the word "county" will be used. If Vegaswikian means the metropolitan area, which is, I think, what he actually means, this is a concern which applies to every major city in the world. This is a bogus concern, and Vegaswikian has provided no evidence whatever that the county is likely to be the primary usage. In terms of St. Louis, it is not ambiguous with any other place called St. Louis. It is ambiguous with, er, St. Louis. john k 22:00, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
    • With reguards to St. Louis, the opening comment listed the saint as why it is ambiguious. As to LA, One could argue that the most common meaning is the county or the metro area. Personally I say it is a combination of the three. In the case of Milwaukee I suspect that the city would be considered the most common use. For Las Vegas it is likely to be either the Las Vegas Valley or Las Vegas metropolitan area and not the city (most visitors to Vegas never go to the city). Vegaswikian 22:48, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
      • Vegas is a particularly weird case. In terms of LA, like other cities, the term is used in a broad sense to refer to other things than just the city. But how does the term Los Angeles, California clarify that the city, and not the county or metro area, is being referred to. City of Los Angeles would be the clear way to make clear that you are referring to, er, the City of Los Angeles. Los Angeles, California is exactly as ambiguous on that front as Los Angeles would be. john k 00:38, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
      • Non of those issues are effected by this proposal. The saint would still be at Louis IX of France and LA county would still be Los Angeles County, California. If you think they should be changed then it should be handled on a case by case basis. The St. Louis page is currenly exposing a serious flaw in the current system. Someone has unilateraly moved the disambiguation page there and because no-one ever edits a redirect it has gone unnoticed for 11 days and counting. If the city of St. Louis was allowed to use the page then this would immediately come to light be reverted and proper debate entered into. Instead of solving disambiguation issues as is claimed proper debate is simply being stiffled. josh (talk) 00:52, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
        • Your comments about the St. Louis page actually may provide some very usefull information. Apparently you only found this after I explained why I added my comment above which was based on the origonal posters information. As you pointed out, the change was done over 10 days ago. In that time no one reported this or compained. No one who was pointed to the dab appears to have been bothered. So, some number of readers were pointed to the dab page and not the city article and this was not a major problem. Don't know what this means exactly, but it may mean that not using the city name without the dab is not as important as we may think it is. Vegaswikian 01:54, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose I don't see why a rule saying "All cities thus — except for these 27 cities!" is preferable to a rule stating "All cities thus." What is the advantage of the former? What is to be gained? Phiwum 00:32, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

  Note almost all the listed naming conventions at WP:NC (settlements) use [[Cityname]] as the default then use some form of disambiguation (usually the comma convention) if there are naming conflicts. The only ones where the default is "pre-disambiguated" are Australia and Canada. Australia allows capital cities as exceptions. Canada allows cities that have unique names or are the primary usage of the unqualified name as exceptions. The advantage is that US cities will become more consistent on a global basis. --Polaron | Talk 00:43, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

  Note that given Australia's population as compared to the US (the US is more than 12 times the size of Australia), 27 cities is not really that many compared to the 6 Australian cities that get excepted (Canberra plus all of the state capitals save Perth). Canada (at 1/10 the population of the US), has 9 cities (I think) getting non-disambiguated treatment (Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver). The US should presumably have something like 75 cities that aren't disambiguated if we wanted it to be equivalent, on a per capita basis, to the other countries in which the defeault is disambiguation. john k 01:10, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

  I appreciate the comments, but my vote remains the same. Whatever possessed the Canadian and Australian rules, the situation seems simple enough to me. There are lots of ambiguous city names in the US and a simple, consistent rule is better than a complicated rule. City + State is simple, consistent and has no particular disadvantage. Phiwum 03:20, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose. I disagree with this proposal; there's no need to make things more complicated than necessary. A consistent rule is better than an inconsistent one, and to be honest, I can't even see any possible benefit to these moves. Where things are clearly unambiguous, a simple redirect should suffice. Lankiveil 03:43, 23 October 2006 (UTC).
• Oppose. Given an arbitrary US city or town name, the default way of referring to it is City, State. This isn't about disambiguation; it's about the ordinary way of referring to locations. The fact that a few cities are prominent enough that they can be referred in a nonstandard manner doesn't obviate the standard (which exists beyond Wikipedia); using Boston as an article title instead of Boston, Massachusetts is comparable to using Red Sox instead of Boston Red Sox. Serge keeps making the argument that using the form "City, State" is a convenience for editors but a disadvantage to readers; this is nonsense. It is in the interest of readers for all US cities to have the same naming convention, both for the sake of knowing where to look for a given article and for the sake of avoiding confusion. Having seen Naperville, Illinois, Joliet, Illinois, and Evanston, Illinois, a reader is going to expect to find the next article they're looking for at Chicago, Illinois, not just Chicago. AJD 03:48, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

  Then perhaps you can tell us why it's good for readers when the rest of Wikipedia follows one convention, but U.S. city names follow a different one. --Yath 05:46, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

  Eh? The default way of referring to a U.S. city is "City, State". The general convention that Wikipedia article titles follow, as far as I can tell, is that when possible, the title of the article is the basic formal term that one would use, in the absence of context, to refer to the topic. That's "City, State" for the generic U.S. city. AJD 07:58, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

  General wikipedia convention: name of the subject. U.S. cities convention: name + location. That's pretty different. By the way, in my experience, the default way of referring to a U.S. city is "City", unless it needs further disambiguation. --Yath 08:12, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Support as a start. There is no advantage to having the longer name. The only time I ever hear Atlanta referred to as "Atlanta, Georgia" is on an envelope. Should we include the zip code in the titles too? Comparing Evanston, Illinois to Chicago is like trying to compare Boulogne-Billancourt to Paris: one is a place few people have heard of - the other is a place everyone has heard of. (Note the population ratios are similar). —Wknight94 (talk) 04:01, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

  However, note that Boulogne-Billancourt and Paris follow the same naming convention. Generally, my argument is that the naming convention for cities should be irrespective of how well-known the city is. Do you hear "The Boston Red Sox" more often than you hear "Atlanta, Georgia"? AJD 04:07, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

  Honestly? Yes. And I support going further and using the same naming convention for smaller cities as well - but this is a good start. —Wknight94 (talk) 11:24, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Support. This convention directly contravenes WP:NC(CN), and it was "established" several years ago by a small group of people (and a bot-managed process, as I heard?). At least, let's move the most common cities to the simple names and burry the axes. Duja 08:28, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
• Comment re: the "Where will it stop?" counterargument: My reading of WP:NC is that it would stop as soon as disambiguation is needed. Disambiguation is the primary concern of naming conventions. Consistency is the personal editorial preference of some mindsets and should be treated like any other POV. --Dystopos 13:32, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support with the exception of the St. Louis, Phoenix, and DC, I don't see a reason why the convention couldn't be changed to following the AP list. --Bobblehead 17:34, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
• Strongly Oppose this action. This is an international encyclopedia and as such will have people that are unfamiliar with United States geography. Removing state names from these cities will only create a larger burden on international users. Sitava 18:06, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

  The proposal is not seeking to remove the state name from all US cities, just these ones that are arguably well-known. Also, you should note that most cities outside the US do not typically have the containing administrative subdivision in the article title. --Polaron | Talk 18:19, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

  It's also worth noting that foreigners are much likely to have heard of a city like Detroit or Seattle than to know what state it is in. I don't see how including the state name helps international readers the slightest bit. john k 18:23, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

  Yeah, and I can walk up to any map and point out L'Haÿ-les-Roses and Dalanzadgad. —Wknight94 (talk) 18:57, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

• Support (a); Oppose (b) and (c). This is but a first step. Disambiguating article titles that do not require disambiguation is inconsistent with the Wikipedia naming convention followed by the vast majority of Wikipedia articles, more than any other naming convention, including city articles in most other countries. It is also inconsistent with most professional published encyclopedias, and article names like Los Angeles, California and Boston, Massachusetts (not to mention Hollywood, Los Angeles, California) makes Wikipedia look like it's edited by amateur hacks. --Serge 18:35, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

  Well, wikipedia is edited by amateur hacks, among others, but I'm not sure how the issues are related. john k 21:22, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose still. (It should be pointed out that the AP datelines do not protect against ambiguity with other countries, which is something we need to worry about.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 19:59, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
  • And what foreign cities are these 27 cities ambiguous with? Boston, Lincolnshire is clearly a secondary usage, given the enormous size differential involved. Cleveland, England was a short-lived county, and, so far as I'm aware, the name is not terribly commonly used for the area. Furthermore, said county had only about 1/5 the population of the Cleveland, Ohio metro area. I don't think any of the others are even slightly ambiguous. john k 20:11, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
• Strong oppose, why can't we just keep all the names consistent? Also, creating a random cut off point like that will not work and will create even more problems. --musicpvm 20:42, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

  All the names are not consistent at the moment. New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia already don't comply with the much beloved, and much hated, "City, State" naming convention. Not only that, but because of ambiguities surrounding the name New York, New York (which, in postal addresses, refers only to Manhattan), it would be a very bad idea to attempt to make every city consistent. Furthermore, the way US city articles are named is completely inconsistent with the way cities in pretty much every other country in the world are named. At the very least, the most important non-ambiguous cities in every other country in the world.

• Oppose I more or less already did but this time it's official and "bold face" :p Agne 21:06, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

To everyone who objects on the grounds of "ambiguity," I would advise you to please review Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary_topic. Additionally, given that the Cleveland, Boston, Los Angeles, etc. articles are already pointing to the cities, then there's no ambiguity issue in moving the articles to those locations. john k 21:22, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose How many times does this have to be argued? (And defeated?) Please leave well enough alone and get back to improving articles instead of making non-value-added changes. WVhybrid 21:26, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

  It has never been "defeated". There is no consensus, and has never been consensus, which is why we have to keep arguing about it. Just because the status quo is on your side does not mean that you have "won." john k 21:32, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

• Conditional Support -- Although I completely agree in principle with John K's proposal, I'm hesitant to support it. So long as EVERYONE voting to support agrees to accept and abide by "b) we agree that all other cities stay where they are; and c) we agree to never speak of this again", then I fully support this. My hesitation is that some of the anti-comma crowd seem to continue to be arguing for a complete abolition of the U.S. city naming convention, and that this proposal is will merely be a "Peace in our time" appeasement, leading to the next stage of further eroding the convention. older ≠ wiser 00:43, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

  So if you're afraid of being Neville Chamberlain, am I Mussolini? That's be pretty sweet. john k 17:47, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose. The AP has its rules, we have ours. The consistency and predictability of the U.S. naming convention would be harmed by this proposal. Both readers and editors are helped by having consistent, predictable article names for settlements in the U.S. Surveys have just been held in the talk pages of some of these articles which did not approve of name changes that this proposal would require. I strongly oppose weakening this sensible naming convention. -Will Beback 01:12, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support. I completely agree with John. Proteus (Talk) 14:46, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support - furthermore, any city which already has a unchallenged redirect at City → City, State should be eligible for the "exception" (let's call it a clarification). This is causing unnecessary confusion and contravening the common name guideline. -- nae'blis 17:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose - While I like the idea that there would be some sort of standard for the article names, I don't like depending on another group for the basis of the list. While I do prefer the City, State convention, I do think this was a more reasonable proposal than relying on exceptions. --- The Bethling^(Talk) 22:13, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

  I'm not wedded to the AP list. Would there be an alternative way to determine what cities to move that you would accept? john k 22:19, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose. More should have this information, including many outside the United States, not less. Others opposing this have stated many points well above. And there are a number of factors that rarely get enough consideration. For example, what is included in the "page name" will be weighted more heavily by most search engines, and will increase the chances of an appropriate, on-target hit or non-hit, as appropriate, when Boolean operators are included in those searches. Another thing is that when an article appears in a category, only the article name appears. Unlike wikilinks, that can't be changed by piping—the piping in categories is only used for a sort key. That's where all the other lesser used places of the same name, the ones which would never get the "primary disambiguation", really come into play. Gene Nygaard 22:31, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• Are you sure about that search engine fact? The Wikipedia article for Chicago shows up first in a Google search for Chicago AND Illinois, despite lower items containing Illinois. It's number two on Yahoo! (and number one doesn't say Illinois either). It's number two on MSN as well (with number one not saying Illinois again). -- tariqabjotu 22:51, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• It is the more complex searches where it is going to matter most. It is things such as a search for "Houston" and the exact phrase "gun show", which isn't going to have any Wikipedia hits anywhere near the top even with "Texas" added that it will matter more. It will also sometimes be the difference between being displayed in the default results, or only if you click on "More results from en.wiki.x.io" or on the display similar results when you get to the end of the default display. Gene Nygaard 14:58, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• I am not aware of anything in wikipedia which states that I should have to know what a "boolean operator" is in order to determine how articles should be named. I don't understand what the problem is. If one does a google search for "London," the wikipedia article is the second hit. It's the second or third hit for "Paris," depending on how you count. It's only the fourth hit on Los Angeles. Beyond even that, since when is it wikipedia's priority to score high on search engines? As to the category issue, I don't understand why this matters. . john k 23:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• Support - it still mystifies me why folks will fight so hard to clutter up page titles. Clean, clear simplicity is so much nicer. --Yath 00:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support - I'm in supporting scrapping the City, State thingy. If it is ambiguous, the City (State) or County (State) will suffice. Other encyclopedias don't use the City, State convention. --Howard the Duck 08:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• ADAMANT OPPOSE- I stand in adamant opposition to this proposal. I have already outlined my thesis on why a rule like this will never work. First off, there are other cities that would fall into this category, simply because there is no danger of ambiguity (i.e., Little Rock, Tulsa, St. Paul). I assume that these cities were nominated because they are important. First let's sit down and determine what it means to be important. Does population matter? Does location matter? Does whether or not the city is dominated by Republicans matter? Do you see where I'm going? This is not going to solve anything. I propose we have the following rule to apply to all U.S. cities: "All cities located within the United States of America, regarless of size, location, economic importance, etc., will be titled in the style, "CITYNAME, STATENAME." After all, the states that cities are located in is a very important thing in the United States (the United States would not exist without "states"). This problem is not going to go away with this rule. We need a firm, concrete rule WITH NO EXCEPTIONS in order to put this behind us. Roygene 00:53, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

  A guideline that allows for absolutely no exceptions is completely against Wikipedia policies. Plus, doing that won't end the periodic stream of new editors that would be asking why is this article named this way when it is more commonly called that way. Any naming convention that results in names that are not the most commonly used will inevitably have editors asking why. --Polaron | Talk 01:30, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Questions for proposal opposition

Instead of doing a tit for tat response to every support and oppose vote (as we're doing above), let's try and keep the discussion as organized as possible. A tad similar to an RfA, I invite the supporters of this proposal to ask specific questions to those who oppose and allow the opposition to answer. In the section below, the opposition voice will ask their questions to the supporters. If this is a silly idea, feel free to ignore it and continue with what we have above.

• Now that we have some exceptions to the City, State convention (New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia), where is the harm? What problems have these exceptions caused for readers? Any turmoil or even disagreements for editors? If not, why are you opposed to more exceptions? --Serge 22:12, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

What criteria was used to make these exceptions "exceptions"? What is exceptional about them? Also keep in mind that Wikipedia is for the readers, not the editors. The editors of those city pages do not own those articles, nor their titles. Agne 22:36, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

The non-existence of a guideline as to what can be exempted just means that new editors will always be wondering and will keep trying to move articles. These never-ending move requests will likely never stop until we define clearly why seom cities are exempted and others not. --Polaron | Talk 23:49, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that some clear definitions should be made. I also echo the few that exceptions should be something exceptional. It should be something that despite the best good faith efforts, just can't quite fit into the norm and such an exception should be made. Out of the 3 current "exceptions" and the proposed new exceptions, the only ones that truly seem "exceptional" are New York City and Oklahoma City in that the name of the state is incorporated into the city name which creates "stylistic damage". But even THAT is a stretch to the "exceptional" part. Agne 00:08, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Agne, this section is for asking questions of opposers of this proposal. I asked four specific questions, and you just replied with two questions. Those belong below... Your two comments do not answer any of my questions either. --Serge 00:48, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Then I'll clarify in my reply. The harm is that the exceptions are not "exceptional", with no case for their "Exceptionalism" in conflict with the rest of the convention being made. They are simply "exceptions" because the editors of those pages wanted to make them so. That is a problem with the current convention in that we allow editors to own a page and seemingly "own" the title as well. If you look at the reasons for most of the oppose votes on the last dozen or so page moves, the vast, vast majority of them are from editors that want the City, State convention discussed to consensus here precisely because the editors of those cities pages do not own the page (and thus the title) and hence the reason why the vast, vast majority of those page moves fails. An exception should not be something that is up to the whim of a vote from a relatively small sample of editors. To that extent, I applaud the effort of John K. While I disagree with the reasoning in using a foreign standard for datelines as a standard for an encyclopedia entry title, I applaud the effort in trying to develop an objective standard for "exceptions". Agne 01:15, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

So you contend that the harm of Philadelphia is that it is not an exception (to the comma convention), but it is being treated as one? How about San Francisco, California? It is not an exception (to the use the common name convention, but it is being treated as one. Why are you not bothered by the "harm" of that? As far as the ownership issue goes, no one owns anything in Wikipedia. However, any one can change anything they want, as long as they establish consensus. That's the problem with the guideline that you support: it depends on a non-existent mechanism to enforce strict adherence. But no such mechanism exists in Wikipedia. Therefore, there will always be "exceptions" (whether you feel they are justified or not), and turmoil, all caused by the attempt to enforce strict adherence to the comma convention. It is time to let go, and adopt the peaceful Canadian convention. --Serge 16:47, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• Now that the Canadians have had the sense to diverge from the U.S and drop the City, Province convention, what problems has this caused for readers? Have they been confused? What about the peace and tranquility that has resulted on the Canadian city Talk pages, replacing the U.S.-like turmoil they used to have? Why don't you want this for us? --Serge 22:12, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

So prior to the proposed move, there was turmoil? Or is it the proposed move, the exception huntings and the band aid convention solutions that is causing the turmoil? Agne 22:36, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Prior to the split of the Canadian convention, there was turmoil, similar to what we have here. Here is but one example. Somebody would move City to City, Province to "be consistent" with "the U.S/Canada convention", and others would disagree. Or someone would move City, Province to City, and somebody would complain that that violated "the convention". Sound familiar? Finally, enough of them had sense to change the convention to allow for City only when there was no ambiguity issue, and peace and tranquility ensued. Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City, Edmonton, Vancouver, etc., etc. I ask again... Where is the problem? Also, not that they did not have one vote like this to move a bunch of cities at once. They just changed the convention, and cities have been moved, one at a time. No problem. --Serge 00:48, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

You showed an example of a page move being the caused of turmoil. As a user whose entire userpage is seemingly dedicated to changing the City, State convention...I have to say your reply is a bit odd. So if everyone agrees with your view, then peace will ensue for the project? I think your examples points more to the fact that it is the inconsistency in the guideline, in these "exceptions" and in the different standards for other countries that is the cause of the turmoil rather then the turmoil being precisely the fault of the City, State convention alone. There is a difference. Can you confidently say that if your desire abolishment of the City, State convention goes forward that there won't be turmoil when some future user wonders why the title of Chicago assumes that it is the only Chicago (disambiguation) in existence and so forth? Unfortunately, I don't think there will ever be complete peace and absence of turmoil but clearing up the "exceptions" and some of the inconsistency in the guideline will certainly help. Agne

Again with the straw man arguments? No, I don't believe adopting the Canadian guideline for U.S. cities will eliminate all U.S. city name turmoil, but I do believe it will greatly reduce it, just as it has for Canadian cities. What do you mean by "clearing up the 'exceptions' and some of the inconsistency in the guideline"? A few months ago the only exception was New York City, and it was that way for a long time. Yet, there was plenty of turmoil, and it was going on for a long time (years) before I got here, so don't blame me (or my user page)! The main difference before was that the turmoil used to be about Canadian cities too, but that has disappeared since they loosened up their guideline, stating explicitly that city alone is allowed when there is no ambiguity issue, or when the city is the main usage. That's all it took. Why do you think it wouldn't work for U.S. cities as well? Can you please answer this, and/or Josh's question below? --Serge 17:01, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• Why do you believe that abandoning the City, State convention will cause chaos?. No other part of the world follows this convention and yet the US is the only place where there are problems. The vast majority of UK geo articles, for example, have a stable article name. The only distruptions are at Newcastle, which ironicly redirected to Newcastle upon Tyne until a recent vote. And the odd american author being mythed as to why major UK towns/cities get to use Plymouth, Sheffield, London etc while they all have to use long winded names. Meanwhile, every major city in the US has undergone, sometimes repeatedly, move requests. Why this bizzare fear of the no so unknown? josh (talk) 16:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Questions for the proposal supporters

• What harm is being done to the project with the current City, State convention? Agne 21:35, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
  • The harm in question is not to this project but to Wikipedia as a whole and is the same as that which comes from any inconsistent and unprofessional treatment. The treatment is inconsistent with the treatment we give to other world class cities. Article names like Los Angeles, California, and (even worse) Hollywood, Los Angeles, California), not to mention the inconsistency with the the naming convention that the vast majority of Wikipedia articles follow, makes Wikipedia look like it's written by a bunch of amateur hacks. That was certainly my impression when I first came here. The irony is that we have brilliant mechanism in place that allow differing conventions to converge naturally in article space, but a group of City, State convention-for-the-sake-of-convention adherents prevents that from happening here (with a few notable exceptions like New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia).

The other harm that is caused by the City, State convention is expressed on the Talk pages. For years now, and with no end in sight, well meaning editors look at a given city article title (it could be any city), and wonder why the heck the state is part of the name. They check for the City name alone and discover that it redirects to that article page anyway, so why the redirect? Why not use the name alone, they wonder? Most just wonder and don't do anything about (but it still affects their low impression of Wikipedia per the previous paragraph). But others inevitably post move requests, of course. What will cause this to stop? One one of two things. Either the elimination of the City, State convention, or the elimination of the common names convention. Despite lame claims to the contrary, they are fundamentally in contradiction, and editor after editor making move requests, years after year, should prove this to all but those who have buried their heads in the sand entirely. Except that it would be a blatant violation of WP:POINT, I would propose to elimate WP:NC(CN) based on the existence of the City, State convention. --Serge 22:07, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Despite the presentation with your linking of WP:NC(CN) as if it was the sum and whole of "the naming convention", the "Common Names" convention is on the lower end of the naming totem pole. In fact, your particular usage of of it also contradicts "the other naming conventions". However, I do agree that inconsistency does make Wikipedia look less professional and that is harmful to our mutual goal of creating a quality encyclopedia.Which leads to another question. Agne 22:31, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

While we are talking about the naming totem pole, I would like to point out that WP:NAME, a Policy, specifies that there is no special naming convention for cities. Being a Policy, and not a guideline, this is probably higher on this totem pole of yours. WP:PRECISION is also not as usefull for your argument as you make it out to be. This guideline clearly indicates that if a consensus is impossible to reach on precision use the more popular phrase, and that the best way to resolve conflicts over precision should be through authoritative dictionaries. Look up Chicago or Seattle in one of these authoritative dictionaries and you will find that they are Chicago and Seattle, and not Chicago, Illinois and Seattle, Washington. When it gets down to the it, for the sake of improving articles, we can WP:IGNORE these policies and guidelines.
—Asatruer 23:55, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the lack of a clear, define naming convention for cities is an ill that should be worked on. However, I don't see where patch work, band-aid solutions can aid that. Sure you can bring up WP:IAR but you need to show precisely where there is a benefit to the project and a particular benefit to the articles they affect. Agne 00:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I suggest you look north (to Canada) for an example that works with much less turmoil and much more professionalism. And what do they do? Exactly the "patch work, band-aid" solutions that you fear. See my answer above for a bit more detail on that. I don't know about any totem poles of priority, but the fact is that WP:NC(CN) is the single most followed convention in Wikipedia, bar none. Click on Random article 10, 20, 50 or 100 times in a row and see how few, if any, exceptions to WP:NC(CN) you find, especially if you exclude the parts of the title with disambiguity information in parentheses. That's my point, and that's why when people see Oklahoma City, Oklahoma they think, WTF? And that's never going to change, because WP:NC(CN) will always remain the most dominant naming convention by far. No other naming convention will ever come even close in actual dominance in article space. --Serge 01:03, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• Well, something must be wrong with it since most of the recent move requests were by editors who have not participated in this debate before. Any naming guideline in direct opposition to common names will inevitably be challenged. The primary naming principle on Wikipedia is to use the simplest name that is obvious and unambiguous. For some well-known cities, adding the state name is just an unnecessary complication. --Polaron | Talk 23:46, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

• How does 3 arbitrarily made exceptions (fished out of several attempts on several cities) or even 27-30 exception created by using a completely foreign standard (A newspaper dateline vs. encyclopedia title) make Wikipedia look any more consistent? Agne 22:31, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

  The state name is not used in the titles of most encyclopedia articles about these well-known cities. Note also that in Wikipedia articles in other languages an overwhelming majority do not include the state name as well. --Polaron | Talk 23:46, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

What is the purpose of an encyclopedia entry title? It is denote what the article is about. Any city article is about a location and the state that any city is located in, has a very profound effect on that city. I know first hand that Kansas City, Missouri is quite different from Kansas City, Kansas despite being neighbors. It is the state citizenship/taxes/laws and general make up that adds to that different. More pointedly is the difference in Portland, Oregon and Portland, Maine. The current City, State recognizes this difference and recognizes that the state location is intrinsically tied into the identity and nature of the state. It's also curious to note that this identity is maintained in official documentations and even postal addresses. Agne 00:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• I am going to say that I would not actually word the city policy in the way that I worded it in my proposal here on the talk page. I would say something along the lines of:

  The canonical form for cities in the United States is City, State. Major cities for which no disambiguation is needed may be at the simple form City.

  And then we would simply move those 27 cities to exemplify the new policy. It doesn't have to be that particular list, I just find that list to be particularly logical, in that most clearly ambiguous names have been weeded out already, and few of the most obvious choices have been left out. We could alternatively look at, say, the central cities of the top 50 metropolitan areas. Once we weed out ambiguous names that would leave us with (more or less) New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Miami, Houston, Atlanta, Detroit, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis, San Diego, Baltimore, Tampa, Pittsburgh, Denver, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Sacramento, San Antonio, Las Vegas, Virginia Beach, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Nashville, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, and Salt Lake City - i.e., nearly exactly the same list the AP gives us, with the additions of Virginia Beach, Nashville, Sacramento, and Tampa. The reason I chose the AP list is because it seemed like a sensible list that included most of the city names I would naturally think would not need to be disambiguated by state.

  Let me add that the current convention does not even slightly say that articles have to be in "City, State" format. It notes that this is the "canonical" form, but also notes three exceptions. The problem is that there is no consensus for a clearer policy - no consensus either to say "We have to have it at City, State" (which is, again, emphatically not what the guideline says at present), nor to specifically say "large cities that don't need to be disambiguated can be just at "City". Instead we have the current useless formulation that is just going to encourage your so-called "exception hunting." john k

An important component to your proposal is the lack of ambiguousness for a city. Ambiguity with what? Another city location? To which case, nearly every city has similar name city. Then you open up the can of worms "major/world city" which has demonstrated more of a US-bias then most because nearly every relatively large American city seems to think it's a major or world class city. But then we have the larger issue of the fact that Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia of locations. If we were, then the AP Dateline guideline would be golden. But on Wikipedia we also have non-location entries on such things as Atlanta, Boston and Boston, Chicago and Chicago and Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, Philadelphia and so forth. If there was ambiguity there would be no disambig pages for any of these cities. Sure we can talk about notability but those are discussions that relevant to which one gets the redirect or top billing on the disambig page. What we are talking here is to turn the focus naming to a location-oriented one that disregards Wikipedia's coverage of other non-location related things and any ambiguity they might have with those-either now or in the future. Agne 00:51, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Agne, this is a non-issue. If city redirects to city, state then it is considered established that there is no significant ambiguity issue. If city is a disambiguation page, like Portland or Windsor, no one is proposing it be used for the city article. Simple. --Serge 01:12, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Incorrect. Primary use of a redirect or top billing on disambig pages is because one item is more notable then the other, not because there is an absence of ambiguity. The redirect and top billing does not assume that there is no other use of the title. Agne 01:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Please, don't waste our time and Wiki space with straw man arguments. No one said anything about an "absence of ambiguity" or "there is no other use of the title". I wrote (and meant) "significant ambiguity issue". I Italicized the significant the first time, but you still missed it. For minor ambiguity issues the article with the primary usage gets the name for its title, and there is usually a link to the associated (disambiguation) page. See Boston for an example. In such a case, when it's a city article, currently the city page redirects to city, state. Moving city, state to city (and thus creating city, state -> city) is simple and causes no problems. See Philadelphia. --Serge 03:33, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Please review Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary topic. Could everybody please review Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary topic? Please? This is not a complicated idea. john k 01:35, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, note Paris, London, Rome, and so forth. john k 01:36, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Excellent examples and I would support moves to Paris, France, London, United Kingdom, and Rome, Italy because of it. If those countries had more of a "state focus" then the United States, then I would support a City, State convention for them instead of a City, Country convention. Agne 01:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

You cannot even begin to imagine the number of infuriated English people an attempt to move London to London, United Kingdom would cause. Or London, England. Or anything else other than London. There aren't as many French or Italians, but I imagine you'd get a lot of pissed off people for those articles as well. Not going to fucking happen. Could you please, please, please read Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary topic, and try to actually think about what it means? Could you also try to take a look around at the way wikipedia articles on nearly every subject other than US cities are named? BTW, is it your view that London, Paris, Los Angeles, Chicago, et al. should be disambiguation pages? john k 01:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Please reconsider the choice of language you are utilizing here. Obscenities have no place or purpose and are rarely constructive. And no, I don't think the redirect should go to the disambig page. I do think the redirect should go to the most notable usage with a prominent link at the top to the disambig page. Chicago is not the only Chicago which is what a solitary title conveys. It may very be the most dominant usage which is why it is appropriate for the redirect to go there. However, Chicago is the only Chicago, Illinois and that is the most appropriate title for the article. Agne 03:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, please. If obscenities have no place or purpose, and are rarely constructive (which is perhaps true), schoolmarmish tut-tutting of people for using obscenities has even less place, and purpose, and is even less constructive. Beyond that, I don't understand your argument here. So, on the one hand, because "Chicago" is ambiguous, Chicago, Illinois can't go there. But, on the other hand, because "Chicago" is the primary topic, it should redirect to Chicago, Illinois? This doesn't make any sense at all. If "Chicago" is going to "Chicago, Illinois," anyway, then what does the supposed ambiguity matter? Chicago can, yes, refer to a band, a musical, and a city (the fact that the band and musical being named for the city, and not having surpassed them in importance, and thus clearly being secondary derived usages will be ignored for the moment). But if Chicago takes you to Chicago, Illinois, you are still left with a disambiguation notice at the top. Personally, I'd much rather have the article on the city at Chicago and a disambiguation notice saying "For other uses, see Chicago (disambiguation), than to have the article at Chicago, Illinois with a redirect from Chicago and a disambiguation notice saying Chicago]] redirects here. For other uses, see Chicago (disambiguation). Why on earth would anyone prefer a more awkward disambiguation notice, which seems to be the only substantive difference between the two situations in terms of disambiguation? john k 03:19, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Let's turn the thermostat down... I think you have to do something with the right trigger. -- tariqabjotu 03:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

But Ange, Football isn't the only football (see American football), Set isn't the only set (see Set (computer science), Set (mythology), among many others), Black isn't the only black (see Black (video game), among many others), Poseidon isn't the only Poseidon (see Poseidon (film)), and Yard is not the only yard (see Yard (land), among others). The singular title does not, as you state, convey that it is the only subject with that title that exists. Instead, as stated in the disambiguation guideline to which john k has linked several times, it merely conveys that it is the most prominent of those with that name. That is certainly true for London, Paris, Tokyo, Flin Flon, Yekaterinburg, Mashhad, and Recife, even though many could not locate those last few on a map. Likewise, the same also applies to Chicago, Philadelphia, and the rest of the twenty-seven cities mentioned in this proposal. Unfortunately, I do not see your prospective at all here. -- tariqabjotu 03:49, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• What are the specific benefits that having an article titled CITY-only have that the City, State convention and the practical use of redirects do not (or can not) give? Agne 00:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Having simpler, more natural page locations for American city pages, and having the way pages on American cities are named come closer to the standard for cities of comparable size in other parts of the world. john k 00:27, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

What is more simple and natural in a title? Do you mean less letters to type in a a search engine or wiki link? How does the practical applications of redirects not nullify that? When I type in Seattle for the city in Seattle, Washington I am still typing the same 7 letters. Maybe this is a uniquely American things but the US is a compilations of States and the identity with our states is one that is very important to individual and city. I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and spent some time in Kansas City, Missouri and am a proud Missourian, a title that the folks in the "other" Kansas City or other "St. Louis" can not claim. It is a very "natural" identity that cities have with their state and one that goes beyond postal addresses. What is then unnatural about a listing like Chicago, Illinois? Agne 01:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Agne, the only practical benefit I can think of in changing the convention is to eliminate most of the turmoil surrounding U.S. city article names, just like a similar change accomplished for reducing turmoil regarding Canadian city article names. The current convention has proven to be the cause of much turmoil. For example, the practical benefit associated with New York City being at New York City rather than New York City, New York or New York, New York is the peace associated with it being at New York City. I , for one, value the practical benefits of peace. Do you? --Serge 01:12, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I have to say the humor in the view "We will have peace when you agree with me" is like George Bush saying that we will have peace in Iraq as soon as the Insurgents "see the light" and just agree that we are right. The only turmoil is the one that is caused purposedly by page moves for reasons of overturning a convention in lieu of working to consensus on that convention page. Agne 01:35, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

But again note that many of the requested moves are proposed by people who have never been part of these debates. You're not saying they're causing turmoil are you? Look at Canada. There hasn't been a rash of move requests after the major cities were moved. --Polaron | Talk 01:52, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I prefer not to spend time analyzing the motivation of other editors. I don't think that will be very constructive for either side but the contribution history of some of the requestors does show a connection to the debate. As for Canada, that is a very week point considering that if the moves didn't go through the first time (like with Seattle) how many weeks would pass before another request? As it is, with the change being so recent I know that many editors are mindful of WP:POINT and the appearence that asking for a reversal move so soon would have. Furthermore, it is the inconsistency in the guideline that open the door to such moves. It is more productive to spend time here to sew up the loop holes and inconsistency before requesting point-driven moves to bring things in line with the convention. Agne 03:17, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Agne, I'm going to ask again: please do not waste time and space with straw man arguments. My argument, particularly in this section, has been completely objective. I'm not asking you to agree with me, please do not twist it into that. I am pointing out that Canada now has peace. I am pointing out that on pages like New York City where we don't have the State anymore, we have peace. And the peace has nothing to do with anyone agreeing with me. It has to do with the fact that these pages are no longer inconsistent with the by far most prevalent naming convention in Wikipedia: use the name most commonly used to refer to the subject of the article. --Serge 03:42, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

There Is No US Naming Convention at the Moment

There seems to be some sense by some people that there is some sort of US cities naming convention in existence which mandates that US cities be at the form "City, State." But let's go to the tape:

The canonical form for cities in the United States is City, State (the "comma convention") (exceptions include Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City). Those cities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish (for example Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina).

A United States city's article, however, should never be titled simply "city, country" (e.g "Detroit, United States").

Reading this without any preconceptions, I fail to see how this can possibly be read as a convention mandating that all US cities be at "City, State." The only clear rules are a) use county if you need additional disambiguation; and b) never use "City, United States." "Canonical form" does not mean "mandatory form," and there are already three exceptions (two, obviously, of recent vintage). The article does not indicate one way or another where articles should be - it simply indicates where they are.

An issue to consider here is that for most subjects, naming conventions are developed so that people c can write new articles. But for US cities, we actually have pretty much every possible article already in existence. Which means that the current "convention" basically lists the status quo, not what should be done with new articles, which we don't expect to be created.

So, at any rate, the idea that there is some kind of existing convention which is being violated by moves is absurd - there is no convention, there is just a description of the way things currently are. The insistence that there is a convention is clearly not something that users who haven't participated in this debate before are picking up - look at the number of different people who have been pretty much randomly popping up and proposing moves of articles on US cities. There is no convention at the moment, because there is absolutely no consensus. This means that most articles stay where they are, but that doesn't mean that there's an actual consensus for articles to stay where they are. There is not. There is a stalemate. There is no standard at the moment, which is exactly why we keep getting people proposing moves. That there is no standard is not the fault of "outside agitators" like Serge and me - it is due to the fact that there is no consensus one way or the other on this issue.

It seems to me that we are getting nowhere on this, and that we are unlikely to get anywhere, because one side is unwilling to accept any solution except "all cities at City, State." The proposal I made above was an attempt at a reasonable compromise, but one side is clearly not interested in compromise, because they view any solution other than "all cities at City, State" as a defeat and as unacceptable. So they oppose changing the conventions in any way, and they oppose any attempt to move individual pages on the basis that the convention says we cannot, even though the convention says absolutely no such thing. So how can this possibly move forward? Any solution that would be acceptable to Serge and Polaron and me seems to be entirely unacceptable to Agne and Will and Blankverse, and vice versa. What can possibly be done?

Beyond this, could everyone please read freaking Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Primary topic? And could everyone realize that "I think London should be moved to London, England, too," is not actually very useful. If you all think that, why hasn't anyone proposed it here? Will, Agne, why don't you propose a rule that All cities should be disambiguated in the form "City, Larger Entity," with Larger Entity being either the sovereign state in which they are located or notable first order subdivision thereof. I'd love to see the result of that. I'd really love to see the result of that. john k 03:12, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree there is no convention, but for different reasons. First what you quoted is not a convention, but a guideline. The guideline is supposed to be based on the convention, which is established by editor behavior in article space. In this case that never happened. There were several conventions in place when a few editors agreed to use a bot to create thousands of city articles according to the City, State format, and then manually renamed the others. Few were paying attention, but the corruption finally came to light when they tried New York, New York. To claim that the City, State guideline is based on a legitimate convention is like a dictator claiming he was reelected by unanimous vote. --Serge 03:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

"Corruptness"? Below you call users "morons", here you call them "corrupt". Please be civil no matter what your differences with other users. -Will Beback 05:04, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

"Corruptness" indeed! LOL! I fixed it... corruption... Contending that using bots to artificially create "convention" is corruption is uncivil? Sorry! Are you implying I was uncivil? Isn't that just as uncivil? Oh wait, if I imply something unflattering very indirectly about others, then it's uncivil. But if you do it very directly, then it's civil. Got it. --Serge 05:15, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think I've been uncivil towards anyone. I certainly haven't called anyone a "moron" for wanting move articles to new names. -Will Beback 05:44, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

John, to be fair, while I tend towards preferring a consistent and predictable naming convention for U.S. cities, which includes leaving the majority of less notable places at City, State, I agree that some of the City, State backers may be a little too inflexible in their arguments--but partisans on the other side also seem rather intransigent in continuing to argue for the complete abolition of the City, State form. If Serge and other supporters would make an explicit declaration of support for points B and C in your proposal and tone down the "moron" name-calling--that might go some ways towards building some basis for a workable compromise. older ≠ wiser 13:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I would like to believe this, and this is why I made the proposal that I did. Unfortunately, the fact that I chose a limited, but arbitrary, set of cities to move is being used as yet another argument against "changing the convention". Any kind of full overhaul of City, State naming conventions is rejected as to radical, but any more limited move is also rejected, on the basis that it is "arbitrary." And then Serge says something obnoxious, making it okay to ignore any actual discussion of the issues and focus on how Serge is being a jerk. I imagine that, as in all other instances, the stonewallers will get their way, and things will stay as they are. Serge - please quit describing the "history" of how this convention came to be in such a paranoid, conspiratorial way. Please stop making statements that suggest that everyone opposed to you is a moron and corrupt. It's not helpful at all. But that Serge is acting like a jerk is really beside the point. john k 17:08, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• I tend to agree with Serge's historical account. The correct convention is to disambiguate "when necessary," not because consistency demands it. The behavior of a bot cannot be said to establish an editorial convention. (But it can be instructed to enforce one). --Dystopos 14:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• Serge's account is more an exercise in polemics than accuracy. It implies bad faith on the part of those editors who discussed and agreed to the naming convention. His language, such as the charges of "corruption" and his using inflamatory language like "morons" below is profoundly unhelpful and offensive. older ≠ wiser 14:58, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, please. Is your skin truly so thin that you are offended merely by vague implications about specific types of behavior? Or is this an excuse to launch an ad hominem attack on me? Let's just stick to the facts and arguments, shall we? If you really think anything I said implies bad faith on the part of those editors, I assure you I had no such intent. There is a lot of confusion between guidelines and conventions because they are so closely related. But, the point is no one group of editors can agree to a naming convention for anyone other than themselves. The implementation of a "convention" agreed to by a small group of editors through the use of technology that unintentionally makes it look like dozens if not hundreds of editors created articles per that "convention" does not establish the same convention as would be established if dozens if not hundreds of editors actually did create articles per that convention. By characterizing a bot-created "convention" as "corrupt", there is no bad faith implied, or even moronic behavior. I'm a software engineer. I'm used to talking about memory corruption and the like. I just wanted to convey that an artificially created "convention" is not as legitimate as one created one article at a time by human individuals. That's all I meant. I do not question the good intent of these editors and, if anything, their implementation was quite clever. Never-the-less, I believe they overlooked the significance of using disambiguated names when not necessary, and that doing so is inconsistent with the rest of Wikipedia. I have no doubt none of them foresaw the years of turmoil that would result from their decision. But, never-the-less, here we are, and that's how we got here. And where exactly are we? Well, frankly, and I mean no offense to anyone by this, but we look like a bunch of morons arguing about this, especially considering that the Candadians have showed us how effortless it is to solve this. Facts are facts, however unpleasant they may be. --Serge 16:15, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

What I find offensive is your persistent extremism, intransigence, and inflamatory rhetoric. That is not conducive to seeking an amicable resolution to this matter. Whatever you might say was or was not your intention, your words obviously stir up resentment (and have done so on many other occasions (and I'm not speaking only of myself). If you want to look at "facts", why can you not see the reaction that your words cause? You continue to distort and misprepresent how this convention or guideline or whatever came about. In the first place ALL conventions are an artifice -- to criticize the U.S. convention as "artificially created" is bogus. At the time it came into being, that was the process -- some people discussed it and agreed (more or less) and one editor put a bot to work created the articles -- they've been that way for the past couple of years -- and with the exception of a relatively FEW high-profile cases, the convention is pretty well accepted (except for a very small minority of vocal detractors). Your desultory judgement of the process by which that convention came into being could very well apply to just about every convention or guideline developed in the early stages. Even your pet convention, Use Common Names, frequently come under criticism as some people do not understand why something should not be named at an official or formal name rather than the common name. That convention, which you embrace whole-heartedly, was arrived at by a handful of editors who talked about it and made a decision that set a convention. BTW, if you are concerned about looking like a moron for arguing about this, . . . well, I know an easy solution for that. :) older ≠ wiser 16:47, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

<-----------------

Okay, let's focus on what appears to be our main point of difference. You contend that, "the convention is pretty well-accepted (except for a very small minority of vocal detractors)". Pretty well-accepted? What do you mean by that? Do I really need to list the dozens and dozens of individual editors who, over the past years, long before I became involved, have made move requests contrary to the "well-accepted" convention, and voted to support them, who are not part of this "very small minority of vocal detractors"? How does their resistance to the convention and efforts to make moves contrary to it constitute it being "well-accepted"? Yes, like with any group, there tends to be a few "vocal" ones like myself, but you seem to be confusing the "very small minority of vocal detractors" with the less vocal (shall we say) masses that our words speak for. --Serge 17:12, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

There have only been a relatively small number of high-profile renaming cases. People voting to support renaming a specific city are not necessarily supporting the wholesale removal of the basic convention. There are many tens of thousands of articles named using this convention. How many of those have been questioned (even those that are not ambiguous)? Relatively few, probably around a dozen, certainly under fifty at the outside. That some people (the vocal minority) have raised objections in these high-profile cases, is hardly a good indication of widespread dissatisfaction with all the tens of thousands of other articles named this. It is far easier for a small number of editors to make a lot of noise than it is for the many editors complacently going about writing an encyclopedia to go out of their way to get involved in an unpleasant and occasionally histrionic debate. Why should we assume that the vocal detractors represent the masses? older ≠ wiser 17:27, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, "people voting to support renaming a specific city are not necessarily supporting the wholesale removal of the basic convention", but they are showing that they support exceptions, and, thus implicitly disagree with the "no exceptions for any reason" approach, which forms the basis of those (including you) opposing John's proposal. How about this? How about adopting the current Canadian guideline which has proved to be very successful for them so that we have one consistent convention for all of English-speaking North America again? Would you agree to that? If not, why not? --Serge 17:37, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I am not in opposition to this proposal. I have expressed conditional support--my reservation is that there has been little discussion of points B and C in the proposal -- I think some explicit acknowldgement from yourself and others in the anti-comma crowd that you agree with those provisions would go a long way towards building support for a compromise. older ≠ wiser 17:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Frankly, I didn't notice conditions (b) and (c)! Thank you for bringing them to my attention. I will now change my vote of support to oppose. Whether "we" agree to these conditions is immaterial, since "we" cannot speak for the vast majority of current and future Wikipedia editors who are not even aware of this vote, much less voting on it. --Serge 18:26, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Serge, (b) and (c) are figurative rather than literal. There are no binding decisions regarding guidelines and so we cannot exactly forbid anyone from discussing the guideline; what it means is something along the lines of it is okay to talk about it, but lets not make this a monthly debate; there are more important tasks available. I hope you can at least agree with the figurative interpretation, as you seem to be one of the most involved participants in this debate. -- tariqabjotu 18:40, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe, based on plenty of evidence for and none against, that as long as there are people who are trying to enforce City, State on any U.S. city article for which there is no "significant ambiguity issue" (per the Canadian guideline definition of that), there will be conflict and turmoil in Wikipedia. Therefore, I believe the only way to resolve this is to follow the Canadian lead to loosen up the guideline. It's proven to work. Now that I think about, John's proposal is really not an improvement because it retains the fundamental problem: the guideline specifies that certain cities (all those not in his list) must follow the city, state naming format, even when there are no significant ambiguity issues. The spirit of the Canadian guideline is totally different - in particular, it is not authoritarian. It allows editors to make decisions about individual articles on a case-by-case basis. This is consistent with how all of Wikipedia works. The current U.S. guideline, and John's proposal, on the other hand, are both authoritarian: they seek to dictate what city article titles shall be without leaving any leeway to editors of individual articles. Of course, like with authoritarian parents and authoritarian managers and politicians, that leads to only one result: revolt. It's human nature, and therefore inevitable. So the solution is to change the guideline so that it is not authoritarian, but merely authoritative. Like the Canadian one. --Serge 18:54, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Congratulations, Serge. You may have succeeded in torpedoeing yet another attempt to reach compromise in this matter. You see what evidence you want to see and you don't see the evidence that you don't want to see. It is a little disingenuous to cite the "conflict and turmoil" over these naming issues when you have been a major contributing factor to that conflict and turmoil. As tariq has noted, of course whatever we agree to here is not binding on future editors -- but you and I and anyone else participating in this now can AGREE to observe whatever is agreed to here. That might mean that you desist from campaigning to overturn the basic convention. Or that we all voluntarily limit our participation in any future move requests. Perhaps there should also be some explicit acknowledgement that the convention is not an absolute standard and that some flexibility is appropriate in some cases -- what this proposal offers is some sort of criteria for when it is appropriate to vary from the convention and a baseline threshhold. While it is clever of you to depict the convention as authoritarian, and contrast it with the Canadians. On the pro-convention side, we can point to the Australian rules, where they have virtually the same convention as the U.S. (with a couple of exceptions) and have none of the rancorous debates seen here -- so there is not much basis for to claim that it is the rule that is causing all of the uproar. It takes tendentious editors to engage in tendentious debates. older ≠ wiser 19:26, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Bkonrad, I'm disappointed as well, but I'm pretty dubious that there was any real chance for compromise, anyway, given the number of people on the other side who are clearly unwilling to agree to a rule which will mean that any US cities are going to not be at "City, State" (with the possible exception of New York). Why is it that Serge's unilateral unreasonableness is to blame here, rather than the uniform unreasonableness of most of the people on the other side? In terms of the Australian rules, the "couple of exceptions" make an enormous difference. In Australia, with the possible exception of Newcastle, whose name is ambiguous, anyway, all the major cities are state or national capitals, and it is those cities which are exempted from a "city, state" naming convention. 6 Australian cities are named at just "City." Those cities are, well, all the major cities in Australia, with the exception of the ambiguous Perth (and perhaps Newcastle, if you consider it a major city) - Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Hobart, Melbourne, and Sydney. That's 6 Australian cities. The population of Australia is something like 20 million. The population of the US is 300 million. That's 15x the size, so by analogy, one would expect, er, 90 US cities to be excepted. That seems a bit excessive, even to me, but to say that the US convention is similar to the Australian convention is absurd. If every US city of about the size and importance of a Brisbane or a Canberra fell under a rule where it only had to follow "City, State" form if it needed to be disambiguated, none of us would be complaining. The "AP convention" idea was, in fact, meant to bring us to something of an Australia-like situation. What we have now is not like Australia at all. Until we get Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Boston, San Francisco, and so forth, the situation won't be analogous to Australia. That Serge doesn't particularly agree with this is perhaps annoying, but no more annoying than the dozen or so people who seem to be unable or unwilling to comprehend what a primary topic is, and who think that London needs to be moved to London, England.

Let me add that the Canadian convention, in practice, seems to have led to a rather similar result to the Australian one. Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver are not disambiguated. As far as I can tell, pretty much every other city is at City, Province. This is because, while the conventions explicitly allow pages to be moved if they are unambiguous, the burden is still on the movers. Assuming that a bunch of people didn't decide to vote against every page move out of spite, I think such a system would work out for the US approximately along the lines of the AP convention I suggested, give or take a few. john k 19:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

John, yes you're the voice of reason once again. There's no question that there is an unwillingness to compromise by parties on both sides of this issues, making it difficult to engage in civil, rational discussions about how to proceed in a way that is acceptable to everyone. However, I don't think the comparison with the Australian standard is "absurd". Serge was attempting to blame all the turmoil on the existence of an "authoritarian" rule. My point is that the Australian rule is every bit as prescriptively authoritarian. It does not allow for case-by-case decisions on individual articles. older ≠ wiser 02:15, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Note that the Australian cities that are not qualified by state name are both the largest city in that state, and the capital of that state. This appears to be a rather uncommon situation in the USA. Some of the cities listed above fit that criteria, but most do not. All of Australia, Canada and USA are federations, so the state is both older and as significant legally as the nation. This is not the same as other English-speaking countries. --Scott Davis ^Talk 15:33, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

---

• Setting aside accusations of discourtesy, which are rather off-topic, I would like to state firmly that the official policy is to use the most common name, unless disambiguation is necessary. The current guideline on US city names should, in my considered opinion, be revised to conform with that policy. --Dystopos 19:22, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• Agree. 100%. --Serge 19:28, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

There are various settings in wikipedia in which that basic policy is modified in favor of other concerns. And constantly banging "official policy" isn't going to convince anyone who doesn't already agree with us. I think the thing to do is to try to internationalize this. There is a basic fact that we don't disambiguate in the way we do for US cities with cities in other countries. Those that come closest to the US convention are Japan, Canada, and Australia, but all of these allow for exceptions for the largest and most well known cities whose names are not ambiguous. Seeing as articles on US cities are not notably different from articles on cities in other countries, there's no reason not to set some kind of rule that would allow the movement of the largest and most notable US cities to follow the same format. The argument of "consistency" is nonsense, because the only thing that "consistency" within the US would accomplish is to make the US inconsistent with the rest of the world. The other option, which has been suggested by various participants here, is to make the rest of the world consistent with the US, by moving all those articles to things like Shanghai, China, and Rome, Italy and Moscow, Russia, and Nairobi, Kenya, and so forth. (or, alternately, to Shanghai, Shanghai, Rome, Lazio, Moscow, Moscow, and Nairobi, Nairobi - I'm unclear on which is preferred.) But that's not going to happen, because nobody outside the US seems to be obsessed with consistency to the same extent. And which would be a bad idea anyway, because there's absolutely no good reason to have articles in locations like that. So, anyway, basic point is that US cities need to be looked at in the context of the way cities are named world wide. Los Angeles is the only city at its level in the world to be disambiguated for no good reason except "consistency". How is that "consistent"? john k 19:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

What are some of the "various settings in wikipedia in which that basic policy is modified in favor of other concerns"? What are those "other concerns"? And what are the "other concerns" with respect to the U.S. city "setting", and how do the U.S. city setting concerns compare to the "other concerns" that apply to the other "various settings "? In particular, for the other "various settings" that I'm aware of (like aircraft names and names of royalty), there is no clear and obvious primary name such as there is for the city setting (the name of the city). That's why there are naming problems and conflicts in those settings, and the need for a consistent format to resolve those ambiguous cases is clear. If I'm wrong about, please give me an example of an article in one of those "various settings" where there is a clear and obvious most common name, and it is not used, and the reason it's not used is not to resolve a disambiguity issue, and where there is no conflict/turmoil about that article name. My main point is that just because the common name policy is not followed for good reasons in some other various settings, does not justify not following it in the U.S. city setting, for no good reasons. --Serge 20:15, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation#Primary topic does not help very much. And — in normal conversation, one does use the state unless the context of the surrounding conversation makes the state clear (not applicable to an encyclopedia) or the city really does have a unique name. Los Angeles might work, but Philadelphia definitely requires disambiguation. Hence the guideline (aka "policy") to use the state. Hence, if a standard for choosing not to use the state (along the lines of "people would look at you strangely if you used the term for anyting else"), I could agree to a modification of the guidelines. Being unique in Wikipedia among US cities at the moment is not adequate. Having a current redirect from the short-name to the full-name is not adequate. I'm not going to submit a move request to move Philadelphia back (at least not for a few months), but it's really not suitable for an exception. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 21:43, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

What is wrong with Philadelphia? Are you referring to the the movie? If so, that is certainly a derivative title, in the same manner that the Chicago films, songs, and musical are derivatives of the city by the same name. -- tariqabjotu 22:04, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• In my opinion the current arrangement of Philadelphia (main article at most common name), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (redirect from pre-disambiguated alternative) and Philadelphia (disambiguation) (disambiguation page linked from main article) is both the best fit for WP:NC and my own editorial perspective. --Dystopos 22:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Questions for Arthur:

1. In normal conversation, one uses additional geographical information to clarify location in many contexts, that doesn't make the additional information part of the name.
2. Philadelphia definitely requires disambiguation? From what? The movie? The song? If Philadelphia definitely requires disambiguation because of these other subjects, then why, before the move, did Philadelphia redirect to the city article rather than to the disambiguation page?

   I often find that when I tell people I go to school "in Philadelphia," they start asking me about those horrible murders of civil rights workers back in the 60s, and asking me what it's like being a yankee and going to school in the deep south. Either that or everybody assumes I'm talking about the city in Pennsylvania. Seriously, come on. If somebody says something as vague as "I like Philadelphia," or "Philadelphia is awful" I think one would clearly assume that the city in Pennsylvania is meant unless there were some context to indicate that one is talking about the movie, or some such. john k 23:19, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

3. Why is being unique in Wikipedia among US cities at the moment not adequate? Being unique in Wikipedia is adequate for all other articles in Wikipedia, including Canadian and other city articles, why not for US cities?
4. Why is having a current redirect from the short-name to the disambiguated name not adequate? It proves that anyone typing the short-name will get to the article anyway... so why mangle (disambiguate) the name of the article?

--Serge 22:20, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

1. It's not part of the name, but it's part of the handle, which is what an encyclopedia article title should be.
2. The movie, and the city in ancient Egypt. (As for the redirection, it's a mistake :) There are a lot of mistakes in Wikipedia. The advantage of Wikipedia over other encyclopedias (encyclopediae?) is that mistakes can be corrected.)

   Seriously ... it needs to be Philadelphia (city), but Philadelphia, Pennsylvania will do.

   The city of Amman hasn't been named Philadelphia for 1500 years. -- tariqabjotu 00:58, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

1. Well the Syracuse discussion should be considered here. Vegaswikian 09:03, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

1. Being unique in Wikipedia is not always adequate. I've written disambiguation pages in which only one of the entries has a Wikipedia entry, and the disambiguation page is given the primary position, because a number of the articles should be in Wikipedia.
2. A current redirect is more-or-less adequate, except that the comma notation clearly indicates it's a city, which is of interest to the browser. I might accept it if all the articles (including NYC) had (city) in their name, but a common scan of the list of articles will clearly show which are geographical areas and which are not — if the comma policy were global. If not, then the list does not so show. Advantage, comma. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 00:44, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Arthur, did you read and understand the "primary topic" concept? The example given is Rome. There are like 37 alternate uses of Rome listed at Rome (disambiguation). We have a specific rule which allows us to identify a "primary topic" (in this case, the capital of Italy), and to put the article there. The city in Pennsylvania is clearly the primary topic for "Philadelphia." The city in Massachusetts is the primary topic for "Boston," even if it's named after another, much smaller but still-existing, town in England, and provided the name for a kick-ass 70s arena rock outfit. Primary topics are a long-acknowledged part of wikipedia. Ambiguity simply isn't a reason not to move these pages. That doesn't mean there aren't reasons why we might not want an article to be at a location, even if it's the primary topic. For instance, I think the poet is clearly the primary topic for Lord Byron, but I still don't think the article should be at Lord Byron, because we don't name any articles on people that way. But I'm certainly not going to advocate not moving the article on the basis that "Lord Byron" is ambiguous. It is, of course, true that Lord Byron is ambiguous. That's not the point. The point is that we have a well-recognized exception to rules about ambiguity. That exception is called "primary topic." It's been around for as long as I've been around wikipedia, which is a while john k 01:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Peace in Canada - why?

The turmoil that dominates this talk page is entirely about U.S. cities. But not so long ago it was about Canadian cities as well. What changed? Why is there no more turmoil for Canadian cities? Are they smarter than us? Apparently. The guideline for Canada now contains this sentence:

Places which either have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name, such as Quebec City or Toronto, can have undisambiguated titles.

That's all it would take for U.S cities too. But noooo... let's be morons instead and insist on disambiguated titles for cities that "have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name." That way we can continue this for weeks, months and years to come. Editors will come and go but the debate will rage on as long as folks keep insisting on using the City, State format for cities with unique names. Way to go. --Serge 04:03, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Calling the opposers morons = not necessary. -- tariqabjotu 04:10, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Calling the opposers morons is indeed not necessary, and I didn't do it. I wrote "let's be morons" referring to all of us, not just the opposers. I did not mean to imply that those who opposed following the Canadian lead are morons. I intended to say that WE all appear to continue to be morons if we can't find a solution to this that ends the turmoil. In other words, the turmoil reflects on all of us poorly. --Serge 04:19, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

• To be fair, you implied initially that behaving like moron was characteristic of those who insist on disambiguating the unambiguous. I agree that doing so is clearly unnecessary and counter to the spirit of Wikipedia's naming conventions. I sympathize with your frustration with those who "strongly oppose" the sensible proposal made above. I think we can be big enough to admit when we've let our civility drop during the fray and focus on where the wise and moronic might share a limited consensus. --Dystopos 04:40, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

(unindent)

To answer the question in this section, Canadians are generally peaceful, unlike Americans. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 21:36, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

If you're at all serious, that makes no sense. The Canadian editors had anything but peace when operating under a joint U.S/Canada city naming guideline - similar to the turmoil we continue to have for U.S. cities - until they chose to deviate from the U.S. guideline and allow city articles to be named without additional geographical information when it is not needed for disambiguation purposes. The cause of the turmoil for them was the comma convention, as it is for us. For the turmoil to end, the comma convention must go (except when required for disambiguation). --Serge 22:27, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

— Arthur Rubin | (talk) 00:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The major concern of the Canadian editors did not appear to be so much about using ", province" as it appeared to be about having been lumped in with the USA with no discussion about whether they wanted the same conventions. --Scott Davis ^Talk 15:23, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Achieving peace for U.S. cities

I've cited the ongoing "conflict and turmoil" surround the U.S. city comma convention naming guideline as reason to switch to the Canadian convention, which had similar "conflict and turmoil" until they accepted exceptions in their guidelines. Bkonrad writes above: "It is a little disingenuous to cite the 'conflict and turmoil' over these naming issues when you have been a major contributing factor to that conflict and turmoil." To be clear, the "conflict and turmoil" to which I refer is not the discussions in which I'm involved. I'm talking about:

• the years of conflict and turmoil that anyone can see in the archives of this talk page, and in most talk pages for countless U.S. cities, that I had nothing to with.
• all the conflict and turmoil that existed for Canadian cities with which I had nothing to do, which ended virtually immediately with a change in their guideline.
• all the supporting votes and comments of the latest dozen or so U.S. city move requests, not including my own votes and comments, where applicable (I did not participate in the first two of the most recent three attempts to move Los Angeles, for example).

To dismiss my citation of the "conflict and turmoil" because I allegedly cause some of it myself is ridiculous. The conflict and turmoil caused by the insistence to enforce the comma convention even where there is no significant ambiguity issue existed long before I got here, and will continue to exist long after my Wiki retirement (to which I know many of you look forward), until the convention changes. The conflict and turmoil it causes is why I oppose the comma convention.

The only way to achieve peace on this issue, for those who are genuinely interested, is to stop insisting on enforcing the comma convention when there is no ambiguity issue. It worked for Australia. It worked for Canada. Why not for the U.S.? If I'm wrong about this, somebody should be able to explain how else they think peace could be achieved on this issue. Not with me. With everybody else who doesn't want this or that city's article to have the state be part of the article name, for whatever reason. How do you achieve peace with all of them, if not in the manner that the Canadians did? --Serge 00:29, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe you are misstating the Australian convention, which says that all cities go at "City, State" except capital cities. Of course, being a much smaller country than the US, Canberra and the 6 state capitals more or less represent all the well known cities in Australia. I'd add another example in Japan, whose convention is similar to Canada's, and where there's been a fair amount of argument. That said, I agree with you as to the best solution. I'm not sure, however, how useful it is to argue, more or less, that all this fighting will stop when the other side gives up. john k 00:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

(Edit conflict, but john k is very helpful.) The only to achieve peace on this issue is to create a standard, on which everyone can agree (or agree to follow, even if they think it idiotic), for deciding what the name of the article about a city is. There's no standard yet proposed. Added: There is a standard in Australia. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 00:50, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Rubbish. You don't need to respond to every little situation by making additional rules. Allow me to direct your attention to "avoid instruction creep." And in this particular case, what we have is one guideline too many - because cities already have perfectly serviceable names, and Wikipedia has clear ways of disambiguating. --Yath 01:11, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I did propose a standard, which was the AP list. And you disagreed with it. One could identify any number of other standards. The central city of the top 50 metropolitan areas, for instance, was another one I mentioned. (That's also the 50 metro areas with populations of over one million, fyi). The problem is that people on both sides have been objecting to a specific list as "arbitrary." Which it of course is. Alternately, we could just say "The canonical form for city names is "City, State" but if a city name is either unambiguous or clearly the primary topic, it can just go at "City," as e.g. Philadelphia, New York City, Chicago.") This would identify ambiguity and primary topic status as the key issues, but wouldn't say that articles that met these criteria would have to be moved, merely that they could be, and the default would still be "City, State." This would be similar to the current Canadian guideline. I assume that everyone would scream bloody murder over that on the "Where it will end?" front. Basically, there's no way to win. Either we pick some arbitrary list of cities to move, which is arbitrary, or we set a loose standard to allow common sense to come into play, which is threatening the very spheres of heaven with chaos.

Maybe we should go to mediation?? Can that work for purely content disputes? john k 01:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was lack of consensus to merge U.S and Canada guidelines.

Proposal: U.S. to adopt and merge with Canadian convention

The current guideline for Canada is as follows:

Canada

The canonical form for cities in Canada is [[City, Province/Territory]] (the "comma convention"). For the territories, please note that the canonical forms are "City, Yukon" (not "City, Yukon Territory") and "City, Nunavut" (not "City, Nunavut Territory"), but "City, Northwest Territories". For the easternmost Canadian province, the canonical form is "City, Newfoundland and Labrador"; although they might be referred to as such in casual conversation, a city's proper legal designation is never just "City, Newfoundland" or "City, Labrador".

Places which either have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name, such as Quebec City or Toronto, can have undisambiguated titles. Localities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish.

A Canadian city's article, however, should never be titled simply "city, Canada" (e.g "Halifax, Canada"), although it is permissible to create a title of this type as a redirect to the properly titled article. Similarly, a title that uses the province's two-letter postal abbreviation should never be the primary article title, although creating a redirect is permitted.

For communities whose names derive from the French language, a redirect should not be created at a translated title (e.g. "Rapids of St. Mary" for Sault Ste. Marie or "Three Rivers" for Trois-Rivières), unless evidence can be provided that the translated name is actually in use by a significant number of speakers. Such a name should normally include the proper French accenting where appropriate (see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)), although a redirect should always be created at an unaccented title since many Wikipedians do not know how to type accented characters.

The current guideline for the U.S. is as follows:

United States

The canonical form for cities in the United States is [[City, State]] (the "comma convention") (exceptions include Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City). Those cities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish (for example Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina).

A United States city's article, however, should never be titled simply "city, country" (e.g "Detroit, United States").

The following merger of the two conventions is hereby proposed:

Canada and United States (PROPOSED)

The canonical form for cities in Canada and the United States is [[City, State/Province/Territory]] (the "comma convention"). For the Canadian territories, please note that the canonical forms are "City, Yukon" (not "City, Yukon Territory") and "City, Nunavut" (not "City, Nunavut Territory"), but "City, Northwest Territories". For the easternmost Canadian province, the canonical form is "City, Newfoundland and Labrador"; although they might be referred to as such in casual conversation, a city's proper legal designation is never just "City, Newfoundland" or "City, Labrador".

Places which either have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name, such as Philadelphia or Toronto, can have undisambiguated titles. Localities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish.

A U.S. or Canadian city's article, however, should never be titled simply "city, Country" (e.g "Halifax, Canada"), although it is permissible to create a title of this type as a redirect to the properly titled article. Similarly, a title that uses the province's two-letter postal abbreviation should never be the primary article title, although creating a redirect is permitted (e.g., Portland, OR).

For Canadian communities whose names derive from the French language, a redirect should not be created at a translated title (e.g. "Rapids of St. Mary" for Sault Ste. Marie or "Three Rivers" for Trois-Rivières), unless evidence can be provided that the translated name is actually in use by a significant number of speakers. Such a name should normally include the proper French accenting where appropriate (see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)), although a redirect should always be created at an unaccented title since many Wikipedians do not know how to type accented characters.

United States (PROPOSED)

The canonical form for cities in the United States is [[City, State]] (the "comma convention"). It is required for those cities with names that require disambiguation. Cities which either have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name, can have undisambiguated titles (e.g., New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago). Cities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish (for example Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina).

A U.S. city article, however, should never be titled simply "City, USA" (e.g "Los Angeles, USA"), although it is permissible to create a title of this type as a redirect to the properly titled article. Similarly, a title that uses the state's two-letter postal abbreviation should never be the primary article title, although creating a redirect is permitted (e.g., Portland, OR).

Please vote with "# '''Support'''" or "* '''Not Yet'''". In the latter case, please specify what you would need changed before you could support this.

Changes

• Rescinded initial proposal to remerge U.S/Canada guidelines. Updated proposal is U.S. specific but based on the Canadian guidelines. By the way, this is a compromise since it allows for city, state naming even when it's not required for disambiguation, which is inconsistent with WP:NC(CN). --Serge 22:08, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Survey - Support votes

1. Support, but I agree very small cities probably should not be moved. I must, however, add that I'm not very happy that as soon as the AP proposal began to gather some steam, we propose this. I actually prefer this wording better (not that I expected the wording of the previous proposal would have actually stayed like that), but I fear that we will still have debates over whether Los Angeles really means Los Angeles, California and whether Amman might conflict with Philadelphia. However, with the other proposal, which seemed to read to me let's start with these twenty-seven cities and work out the Albuquerques and Nashvilles later, we would at least know what would get moved. Here I'm not so sure. -- tariqabjotu 01:54, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
2. Support, but would also support another version that changed the US convention to be essentially identical to the Canadian one but did not physically merge the two.--DaveOinSF 21:32, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
3. Support proposal as now revised; I've noted an expansion suggestion in the discussion below. Bearcat 22:26, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
4. Support Captures parts of Canadian guideline that is applicable to U.S. without actually merging the two. --Serge 09:00, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
5. Support This would be fine. john k 15:31, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
6. Support nobody in my neighbourhood (=europe) says "Las Vegas, NV"....-- ExpImp^talkcon 18:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Survey - Oppose votes

1. Strongly oppose. A merge of the Canadian and American conventions is completely inappropriate. The Canadian convention was split off from the American convention to avoid becoming embroiled in this endless debate. I'm not even sure that a discussion page that appears to be almost entirely devoted to endless discussion of the American convention (that, as a result, few Wikipedians with an interest in Canada are following) is the appropriate forum to discuss effectively eliminating the Canadian convention. In any event, from a practical perspective, there is no need to merge the conventions. Skeezix1000 11:35, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

One additional comment: The proposed merged convention is terribly cumbersome and awkward, because it contains numerous details that are relevant to Canada (what to do with cities in the territories, what to do with cities in Newfoundland and Labrador, what to do with cities with French-language names, etc.) but that have absolutely no relevance to U.S. cities. Putting aside all other objections to the merge, clarity and simplicity would dictate that the conventions remain separate. Skeezix1000 13:08, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Now that the proposal(s) no longer involved merging the American and Canadian conventions, my oppose vote is no longer relevant. Skeezix1000 11:30, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Survey - Not Yet votes

• My vote is to combine the two countries' city rules as follows:

1. Well-known cities in the United States and Canada should be titled with simply the city unless it deserves equal-topic dis-ambiguation with others of its name.
2. Not-so-well-known cities should be "City, State/Province", even if "City" can never be more than a re-direct. Georgia guy 01:21, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure why it is necessary to merge the two conventions. Other countries have separate conventions, so why anyone would assume that Canada and U.S. need to be merged is beyond me. Seeking to change the U.S. convention to be closer to the Canadian convention is fine, and having identical conventions is also not a problem. I know that the proposal was made in good faith, but frankly I am a little bothered by the suggestion (whether it was intended or not) that somehow Canada does not merit its own convention. Skeezix1000 12:06, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• I agree with Georgia guy regarding not-so-well-known places. But I can agree to some loosening of the convention for the most well-known places. I also agree with Bobblehead's comments below--I don't see the point to combining the U.S. and Canada. I don't see how Canada could possibly see that as being a good thing. :) older ≠ wiser 01:57, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• First, I'm glad that it seems that we're converging towards a consensus. I fully endorse john k's comments throughout, and I think Georgia guy's proposal above is in line with the general feeling. I still can't support the proposal as not being "cooked enough" yet. Two remarks: 1) while Canada and U.S. conventions need not be joined at any price, they certainly should at least have the same spirit 2) While endorsing Georgia guy comment, I feel that we should give some leeway to not-so-big cities/entities but which have worlwide fame for other reasons: I mean Hollywood in the first place, maybe Beverly Hills and Atlantic City, while Manhattan is already where it should be (OK, it's not a city in the strict sense). So, just as something to think about, I suggest a small addendum along the following line:

  Additional exceptions may include cities world-renowned for other reasons, like Hollywood, to be established on case-by-case basis. Duja 09:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• Not Yet. Yes, I know I proposed this, but I've been convinced that physically remerging the Canadian and U.S. policies is not a good one, at least as long as the Canadian-specific exceptions are part of it. My initial thoughts were that it would be worth doing for the sake of consistency. --Serge 18:41, 25 October 2006 (UTC) Revised to Support after split from Canadian guidelines. --Serge 16:20, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

• Having been involved in determining and writing the Canadian convention, I fully support it if those reviewing the American convention want to use something similar (and I always did find it kind of silly to insist on the state or province name being present at all times regardless of considerations like uniqueness of name and/or importance of topic). What I don't particularly see, however, is why Canada and the United States need to be yoked back together into a single convention, as opposed to two separate-but-similar conventions which can evolve separately as needed. Each country has a different set of considerations that the other one need not concern itself with — like Newfoundland and Labrador or census-designated places — so why bother bogging each other's conventions down with special cases that aren't really relevant to the other country? So put me down as follows: support the US adapting the Canadian convention as the basis for its own, but oppose merging them back together as a single convention. Bearcat 18:42, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• Ditto Bearcat. I've nothing against Seattle as opposed to Seattle, Washington, but I don't see the need to drag the policies back together. --user:Qviri 20:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
• We are not ready to decide anything yet. Starting a vote this far back in the discussion is too easy to miss. The colors, some of which are not readable don't help. I suggest that someone take the main points to a subpage and archive this discussion leaving a pointer to the subpage. If multiple proposals come back, they need to be given a subpage so that editors can follow the discussions. Once issues are resolved then we can bring it all together and maybe reach consensus. Vegaswikian 08:50, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

• I would support this, although I agree with Georgia guy that for very small places it's best to keep at "City, State/Province," even if they are not ambiguous. (Serge can now excommunicate me from the community of opponents of the current non-policy for heresy). I also think that the material about US cities in the same state that have the same name being disambiguated by county ought to be reinstated. But otherwise this is a perfectly sensible policy. Not that this will do it any good. john k 01:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Why drag Canada into this? No other countries share a standard and Canada has a relatively stable standard so there isn't any reason to drag it into the fray. Even if the end resolution to this little format conflict is a standard similar to Canada the two should remain a separate section. --Bobblehead 01:33, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

How about a little counter-proposal:

The title for any city requiring disambiguation shall be [[City, State/Province/Territory]].

Much shorter and easier to understand and follow. --Yath 01:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Bobblehead that it would probably be better to keep the US and Canada separate, even if they end up with very similar policies. I disagree with Yath, because I think that "City, State" should remain the default form, if only because we already have thousands of articles at that form. Note that with the current wording of the Canadian cities policy, there's only 9 Canadian cities that are at just "City." I assume that, the US being ten times as populous as Canada, there'd end up being considerably more US cities, but I think it's unwise to jettison the current policy entirely, and that it's unnecessarily antagonistic to those who want the current standards to remain unchanged. I'm willing to fight to see, say, Seattle, Washington moved to Seattle. I'm most certainly not willing to fight to see that Garrett Park, Maryland gets moved to Garrett Park, even if it's the only "Garrett Park" in the world, because it's silly. john k 02:06, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

There are actually 12 Canadian cities at just "City" (Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Lethbridge, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Flin Flon, Toronto, Ottawa, Gatineau, Montreal and Quebec City). Otherwise, I also fully agree with john k, Bobblehead and older ≠ wiser that it would be better to keep the US and Canada separate. Skeezix1000 12:17, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Is Lethbridge really a primary topic? What about Lethbridge? john k 14:00, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I think so. Almost 500 Wikipedia pages link to the article on the Alberta city, whereas 7 pages (excluding this one) link to the article on the Australian band. Using the Australian Google, the first 5 pages of hits (I stopped reviewing after page 5) pertained almost exclusively to the Alberta city. Skeezix1000 19:11, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. Lethbridge is an example of the kind of place where I don't see any pressing need for it not to be Lethbridge, Alberta, but don't really care either way. I care that we have Toronto or Philadelphia, rather than Toronto, Ontario or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I think it's perfectly reasonable for articles on cities of less than 100,000 to be "pre-disambiguated", if people prefer that, or not, if people don't. john k 19:45, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

To me, it depends on the situation. Even though they're all well over 100,000, there's just no way Regina, Saskatchewan, Victoria, British Columbia, Windsor, Ontario or London, Ontario will ever be the primary meaning of their city names; the geographic range in which any of them is the default meaning of the city name alone is just far too small. And I'm not prepared to assume that there's only one thing in the world called Garrett Park, either. Conversely, I am willing to support moving Iqaluit, Nunavut to just Iqaluit, even though it's a town of just 5,000 people, for a few reasons: for one, it's hard enough to spell correctly without putting additional complexity into the title; for two, it is a territorial capital and can thus be said to be at least moderately more important than its population would suggest; for three, in the case of Iqaluit I can safely state that there will never be a non-Canadian topic of equivalent importance to disambiguate that title from. And I'm also pretty willing to assert that there will probably never be a non-Canadian Aklavik, Pangnirtung, Spuzzum, Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, Moose Jaw, Medicine Hat or Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. We've already moved Lloydminster, pop. 22,000, for a special set of reasons (you'd rather we put a slash in the title?), but we didn't implement the move until after conducting extensive Google research to determine whether there was another Lloydminster out there notable enough to challenge the Canadian one for the main title. We didn't find one, but if one ever does come up we're going to have a major problem since the Canadian Lloydminster has no easy naming alternative. Long story short, I don't base it on population alone; for me it's a combination of multiple factors. Bearcat 23:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually 14 as far as I know; you missed Lloydminster (which was moved in advance of the current convention, because of the obvious difficulty shoehorning it in to a "city, province" standard) and Greater Sudbury (which was moved by User:David Kernow as "disambiguation unnecessary" without going for a vote first). Bearcat 18:15, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Good catch. I ought to have remembered Lloydminster. I didn't know about Greater Sudbury. Skeezix1000 19:11, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Whoops, 16. Moncton and Fredericton have been moved too. Bearcat 19:50, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

As has Halifax Regional Municipality, which is more or less the Halifax, Nova Scotia article. Kirjtc2 20:06, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

And the Regional Municipality of Niagara, Ontario before I moved it back for breaking convention of the other RMs. --user:Qviri 20:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Thinking on Garrett Park makes me want to figure out some way of wording things so that we can actually distinguish the case of Garrett Park (apparently the only place of note called Garrett Park) from that of Chicago. It seems to me that the issue is that while it seems that Garrett Park, Maryland is the only place called "Garrett Park," we have no real way of being sure of this. Garrett Park, Maryland, is so little known that the existence of pretty much anything else called Garrett Park would deprive it of primary topic status. And we can't rule out the existence of such a thing - an actual park somewhere, for instance, might be called "Garrett Park," we have no idea. As such, it seems to me that Garrett Park, while apparently unambiguous, can't actually be described as a primary topic. On the other hand, there may be hundreds of things called "Chicago" that I am unfamiliar with. But that doesn't matter, because the city is clearly the primary topic, no matter how many other things there are called Chicago. The same is true of Seattle, Boston, Baltimore, L.A., San Francisco, and so forth.

So, basically, I'd put the distinction this way: if the discovery of another thing called "Cityname" would make City stop being the primary topic for its name, then the article should remain disambiguated, even if we are not specifically aware of any other things called that. But if we could discover any number of other things called "Cityname," and the City nonetheless remains the primary topic, it should go at just "Cityname." Does this make sense? It seems to me that if we insert "Garrett Park" instead of, say, "Philadelphia," into some of the comments in the earlier discussion, they might actually make sense. john k 02:16, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

That's an intriguingly original approach to this John. At first glance, I like it a lot. It may be tricky expressing this clearly though. older ≠ wiser 02:47, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, quite tricky to express clearly. It seems to me that it's basically an attempt to articulate what is, at least, my gut instinct about which cities should break from "City, State." I'd be happy to work on articulating this better, if there's interest. john k 03:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• The point is taken, but I don't understand why all possible ambiguities need to be predicted with a guideline. There are enough editors around here to straighten out any ambiguity with Garrett Park whenever it becomes apparent, and following the existing article conventions. --Dystopos 04:08, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
• The concept is not new. It's called "predisambiguation". I've never understood why some people feel it's needed for U.S. cities, or relatively obscure U.S. cities like Garrett Park, but is not needed for any other article in Wikipedia. Like Dystopos noted, should an ambiguity issue arise with a new article or a move to the same name of an existing article, it can be handled by the editors handling those, just as it is for every article in Wikipedia. --Serge

  We predisambiguate Australian cities that aren't capitals, many Japanese cities, many Canadian cities. At the moment, at least, we predisambiguate royalty. But that's not the reason for this. Two things:

  1. This is not about "predisambiguation." It is about making a distinction between a "primary topic" and "disambiguation." Basically, what I am saying is that we untie the question of the "City, State" form from ambiguity entirely, and tie it instead to "primary topic." The thing about a town like Garrett Park, Maryland, is that even if it is the only notable thing called "Garrett Park," we have no way of knowing this. The issue isn't about "dealing with problems as they arise." The issue is that even if a problem never arises, we still have no idea whether or not Garrett Park, Maryland is really the primary topic for "Garrett Park." The issue is an epistemological one - basically, that places below a certain level of importance cannot be a primary topic, even if they are apparently unambiguous, because we just don't know enough to be able to say for sure. Without any context, the referent of "Chicago" is the city in Illinois. Without any context, the referent of "Garrett Park" is, er, nothing - the city is so little known that imaginary hypothetical towns or parks called "Garrett Park" interfere with the primary topic status of the actual town of Garrett Park, Maryland.
  2. There's also the idea of trying to compromise with people who don't agree with you. There's a large contingent who has opposed any change at all, and an even larger group who are unwilling to support a change if it seems to imply that we'll be doing things like moving Garrett Park, Maryland to Garrett Park. I'd prefer to try to come up with some idea that will lead to consensus than to just battle on. Not that I'm terribly hopeful that this idea will lead to consensus, but I'm at least trying to see if we can find common ground, which I cannot say for others. john k 12:56, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• Regarding the "epistemological" problem, I suggest checking with an encyclopedia to see if another topic with the same name might have priority. If that doesn't work, the suspected conflict can always be fixed whenever it shows its face. Regarding the compromise proposals, you will see that I have supported them, as a step in the right direction, while giving my opinion of where the discussion needs to be taken eventually. --Dystopos 14:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Dystopos, the issue isn't that we don't know whether or not "Garrett Park, Maryland" is a primary topic. It's that "Garrett Park" is so obscure that it's not a primary topic, even if there's nothing else by that name. Basically the idea is that something has to be positively demonstrated to be a primary topic - it can't just be a primary topic by default, because we're not aware of anything else that has the same name. john k 14:29, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• I fail to see where harm is caused by leaving an unambiguous title alone. What is this "primary topic" status you're talking about? Is there a policy on assigning them or is this some personal epistemologic? --Dystopos 14:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
• I think I'm starting to understand. I think the real issue John is trying to address is stability. I think he's suggesting current apparent uniqueness should not be the key factor to determining whether a name for a given subject should be disambiguated. What matters is whether the subject matter is sufficiently notable that it would get the undisambiguated name even if it were determined to be not unique. The logical flaw with this is you can't look at a given subject matter like Garrett Park and decide whether it would be the primary topic if it turned out to be not unique, because that depends on what the other claims are to Garrett Park. Just as importantly, this is not how names are determined for the vast majority of Wikipedia articles, why should cities be treated differently? I understand why royalty and aircraft are special cases (because members of royalty and aircraft typically do not have any one particular single name that is definitely their most common name), but why cities? The reason that members of royalty and aircraft are an exception does not apply to cities, since cities do have one particular single name that is definitely their most common name: the name of the city (e.g., Barrett Park. By the way, if there is a park named Barrett in some city, then I suggest it would likely be at [[Barrett Park (city)]], and Barrett Park would remain a redirect to the town, unless the park was particulary notable for some reason. Again, all this would be determined at the time the "new" article for the park is created. No one here has a crystal ball, so far as I know. --Serge 15:17, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, here's the guideline Wikipedia:Disambiguation on "Primary Topic":

When there is a well known primary meaning for a term or phrase (indicated by a majority of links in existing articles and consensus of the editors of those articles that it will be significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings), then that topic may be used for the title of the main article, with a disambiguation link at the top. Where there is no such clearly dominant usage there is no primary topic page.

Ensure that the "(disambiguation)" page links back to an unambiguous page name. The unambiguous page name should redirect to the primary topic page. This assists future editors (and automated processes).

For example, the primary topic Rome has a link at the top to Rome (disambiguation), where there is a link back via Rome, Italy (rather than directly to Rome).

• Thus, "well known" is established by links in existing articles and by editors dealing with articles with which that topic may need to be disambiguated. Nothing there indicates that we need to anticipate potential ambiguity. If there are no links to any Garrett Parks besides the one in Maryland, then there is a "clearly dominant usage", and, thus, a primary topic. --Dystopos 14:53, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, fine, if you guys don't want to compromise, don't compromise. I was trying to come up with a formulation that would be more acceptable to people opposed. I thought this was a fairly good stab at it, but whatever. I'm getting irritated that I previously put most of the blame on one side for the mess that we're in. Clearly you guys are just as unwilling to have any kind of compromise as Will and Agne. I'm going to go back to asking whether mediation would be a good idea. As far as I can tell, the vast majority of people involved here are not interested in trying to work towards a reasonable consensus, but rather on imposing their own preferences on the thing. Serge and Dystopos, I agree with your preferences much more than those of Agne or Will, but that doesn't really matter, because there's no possible way anything will change if you continue to pursue it in this manner. I'm not sure there's any possible way anything will change if we try to compromise (my AP proposal above suggests not, but perhaps it was the wrong proposal), but certainly repeatedly proposing that we need a convention that would allow Garrett Park, Maryland to be moved to Garrett Park is never going to get through, any more than Agne's preference that we move London to London, England is. I'm trying to work within the possible here and come up with some sort of solution that would be minimally acceptable to most everybody. You're trying to design a policy that fits with what your ideal policy would be. If it's between you guys' view and Agne's, nothing's every going to happen - we'll be stuck with the current "guideline" forever. So, mediation? john k 16:03, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• As stated above, I have supported the proposal on the table as a step in the right direction. I don't have to compromise my opinions in order to participate toward reaching consensus on the question at hand. Also, to clarify, I am not proposing that we need a new convention to allow "Garrett Park, Maryland" to be moved to "Garrett Park". I am arguing that such a convention is already policy (WP:NC) and that the present guideline for US city names is running counter to policy. I am aware that no consensus is possible on reversing the city name guideline altogether, but my opinion remains the same. --Dystopos 17:01, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

  Dystopos, indeed, WP:NC says that "Garrett Park" would be an appropriate title. However, we also have a specific naming convention which says it ought to be "Garrett Park, Maryland." That is also a common name which is used, and it is allowed to have a specific naming convention to regulate among different names. What we are proposing is to change the more specific naming convention to make it fit better with the general one. But that doesn't mean that it's always inappropriate to have a specific naming convention that somewhat contradicts a more general one. john k

• Call me an idealist, a simpleton, or a strict constructionist -- but it seems to me that the top level policy is clear enough, rational enough, and flexible enough to solve any problem that might arise by direct appeal and that adding another layer of instruction, one which "somewhat contradicts" the policy, is needlessly complicating the situation. Under no circumstances would Garrett Park, Maryland be required to move to Garrett Park according to WP:NC, but the editors would be able to make that decision with reference to a relatively simple policy instead of digging through reams of exegesis. Intermediate guidelines have a tendency to pollute the stream as it meanders from the five pillars to the 1.45 million articles. How much argument could have been saved if the editors of Philadelphia made reference only to the issue of disambiguation rather than getting caught up in precedent and consistency -- ideals that are nowhere enshrined in this wiki. --Dystopos 17:24, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• There seems to be general consensus not to merge the US and Canadian conventions together, but rather that if we are to have this proposal, it should involve the US and Canada each having separate conventions, that are similar to one another. Should we perhaps amend the proposal and start again? john k 18:53, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• SO the people opposed to the concept of a merger of US and Canada, would they agree to a change ONLY to the US convention so that it reads:

The canonical form for cities in the United States is [[City, State]] (the "comma convention").

Places which either have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name, such as Philadelphia or Chicago, can have undisambiguated titles. Those cities that need additional disambiguation include their county, borough or parish (for example Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina).

An American city's article, however, should never be titled simply "city, United States" (e.g "Houston, United States"), although it is permissible to create a title of this type as a redirect to the properly titled article. Similarly, a title that uses the state's two-letter postal abbreviation should never be the primary article title, although creating a redirect is permitted.

For communities whose names derive from a foreign language, a redirect should not be created at a translated title (e.g. "Rapids of St. Mary" for Sault Ste. Marie or "Saint Francis" for San Francisco), unless evidence can be provided that the translated name is actually in use by a significant number of speakers. Such a name should normally include the proper foreign language accenting where appropriate (see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)), although a redirect should always be created at an unaccented title since many Wikipedians do not know how to type accented characters.

--DaveOinSF 21:30, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Looks good to me. I would however recommend, as I did with the Canadian convention, adding special notes regarding those situations where the convention might be tricky for a newbie to understand. I'd suggest, for example, that the convention should clarify whether United States Virgin Islands or just Virgin Islands is the preferred naming format for communities in that territory. Or American Samoa vs. Samoa. Or things like the city of Watertown, New York vs. the separate town of Watertown that surrounds it. And on, and so forth. I know what the conventions are for those cases, but a newbie writing their very first Wikipedia article might not. Bearcat 22:16, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I've updated the proposed change to the guideline in purple above. Please vote on it. --Serge 22:17, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

With a different proposal, we should open a different voting heading. Also, it looks like it has the same meaning as my counter-proposal above... just with more words. --Yath 22:22, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Works for me too. I'm even going to add the part of the U.S. convention I left out (but you remembered to put in) into my suggestion below. The foreign language part may be a bit superfluous though, as Canada has more of a reason to have to worry about that due to Quebec. -- tariqabjotu 22:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Nah, there are a lot of Spanish-derived names in the US, especially in the Southwest. And a few French ones scattered throughout, too. Bearcat 23:27, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• Yup, in case there's any serious question of this - Canada's naming convention should not be merged with the one for the US (nor the reverse, should anyone care). At the moment, they're both pretty general - as such it *might* not hurt. However, a number of issues are irrelevant for the US that are relevant for Canada (the bilingual aspect of some, but not all, names, for instance.) So, just in case anyone gets too hot for bundling, there are good, useful reasons to maintain separate standards. AshleyMorton 17:31, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Subjective "well known" vs "not so well known"

In discussing the above the new proposal, I see some comments that "Well known" cities should be just City while "not so well known" should be City, State. But the question then follows, what is the objective criteria for determining "well known"?

• Is it well known to a native, US born citizen? Of what education level? Well known to a third grader? Sixth grader? High School? College? Someone featured on the Tonight Show's "Jaywalking"?
• Is it well known to an English speaker native outside of the US?
• Is it well known to a 2nd language English speaker?

I think we all must be aware that our citizenship, experience and level of education give us a frame reference and bias that might not best encompass the level of knowledge and familarity that the mass Wikipedia readership would have. What is so obviously well known to us (such as Nashville, Chicago, Flin Flon or Perth) might not be so well known to middle schooler in South Africa using Wikipedia and so forth. As WP:NC notes the overall principle of a naming convention is "Names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors; and for a general audience over specialists." and that principle should seemingly exclude using a subjective scale of determining what is "well known". Agne 13:05, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how optimizing readers has anything to do with using a subjective scale for what is "well known." You are advocating that we abandon the entire concept of "Primary topic," which has to be determined in a somewhat subjective way. That is not an appropriate thing to do in the context of this page. If this is what you want to do, I suggest you take it up at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation. john k 13:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The quote above is the main principle of naming conventions and thus, is exceedingly relevant to this topic. Our main consideration in titling the article is for the benefit of the reader. This latest proposal assumes that what is well known to this small segment of Wikipedia editors discussing this matter is going to be well known to the greater Wikipedia readership. That is rather disingenuous of us and assumes an unleveled playing ground between editors and readers who might now have the same systematic bias and familiarity as we do. The context of this page is the titling of articles of Cities (in the US and elsewhere) and I do not think it's unfair to request an objective standard of tilting that promotes stability and excludes any bias and subjective standard of what is "well known". There is no doubt of what an article about Seattle, Washington is about. There is no assumption that Seattle is universally well known among everyone equally and there is more stability in the small likelihood that Seattle or Washington are going to be renamed anytime soon. Agne 21:11, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

So what objective standard would you use to classify a city as well-known or major? --Polaron | Talk 21:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

There is no such thing in Wikipedia as the concept of "primary topic" outside the context of resolving a known ambiguity issue. The idea of whether a given Wikipedia article is a "primary topic" or not, independent of whether there are any other articles with a claim to the same name, is a concept that has been conjured specifically to rationalize the basis for using the comma convention on cities without ambiguity issues. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. As a friend, I suggest you consider not taking this particular road any further... --Serge 16:13, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

As john said being well-known is always somewhat subjective. But there are several measures for it, including the AP list that john posted above. It's either we choose one of these measures (like Australia) or leave it vague and let editors decide for themselves (like Canada). --Polaron | Talk 14:02, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

In a rare occurrence, I have to agree to an extent with Serge about your interpretation of "Primary topic" to this issue-though I think Arthur Rubin explained the weakness in that application better. For me it comes down to what the purpose of an encyclopedia entry title is meant to serve. Unlike changing redirects and top billing on a disambig page, retitling of articles is a bit more involved of a process and should not be reliant on the potentially changing whims of what is the "primary usages" at this time. An article title is meant to tell us what the article is about. It is what it is and there should be a degree of stability to it. The likelihood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania changing its name is a lot less likely to happen then the fact that the entity of the US City might hold the mantle of "Primary Usage". You can argue about how "unlikely" that later happening might be but again it is still more likely to happen then the former. It is because of this that I believe that we should strive for the most stable of titles instead of one that is based on subjective (and potentially ever changing) standards. Agne 21:11, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Are you suggesting it is likely that Philadelphia will stop being the primary usage of Philadelphia? This seems incredibly unlikely. In any event, while I may be using primary topic status incorrectly above, that doesn't mean that the concept is itself problematic. We have an example of primary topic. That is Rome. Philadelphia is pretty much exactly parallel to this. It is a textbook case of a primary topic, insofar as there is a textbook. john k 00:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Along these same lines, we should move Steven Spielberg to Steven Spielberg (movie director) and World War II to World War II (war from 1937-1945), just in case Steven Spielberg and World War II stop being the primary usage of those terms as well.--DaveOinSF 01:27, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

You know, that reply might actually be cute if we were discussing a convention like Seattle (City). :) However, your example falls weak because Steven Spielberg is an article about an individual named Steven Spielberg who just so happens to have a notable career as a Movie Director and so forth. There is a bit of a difference. Agne 06:55, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Why should cities be treated inconsistently?

The only time "well known" vs. "not so well known" is relevant in Wikipedia is when there is an apparent ambiguity issue. I am unaware of any precedent for expanding the names of unique article names that are consistent with WP:NC(CN) with additional information simply to augment their likelihood of recognition because they are "not so well known". Why should cities be treated inconsistently with the rest of Wikipedia in this respect? --Serge 16:00, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

That is incorrect. If we only followed the basic naming convention there'd be no reason for the numerous special naming conventions like this one. Many large topics use names which are not based on simple popularlity contests. For example, royalty and military airplanes. That's why there are no articles (only redirects) at "Princess Diana", "Queen Elizabeth II", "Spruce Goose", or "Stealth fighter", despite those being more common usage than the actual article titles. You've been informend of that before, so I don't know why you keep pleading ignorance of them. -Will Beback 23:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

It's worth noting that usually that has to do with issues of formal vs. informal names, rather than purely with common name issues. Los Angeles, California is no more formal than Los Angeles. john k 00:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

The cases within royalty and aircraft where the formal or technical name conventions result in titles that are clearly inconsistent with WP:NC(CN) are extremely rare, probably less than 5% of each respective subject area, if that. Those are hardly counter-examples, much less an explanation for why cities should be treated inconsistently in this respect. To contrast, note that any city article that is not at [[City]] is inconsistent with WP:NC(CN). The comparision is not even close. Serge 09:05, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I haven't counted them, but there at at least 50 naming conventions. Are you saying that all of them are violations of the overall naming convention? Why even have these specific naming conventions if the sole rule is "use the most common term"? Because naming conventions help provide internal consistency within a topic. -Will Beback 17:53, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

For most of the other categories, the "most common name" for a given article affected by the convention matches the convention, or is not clear. Look at royalty. Where the most common name for a given member of royalty is clearly not the formal name dictated by the convention is true for only a tiny fraction of famous royalty. For most of the others, it's a toss-up, at best. So, at worst, that convention is clearly inconsistent with WP:NC(CN) for a very small minority of cases in that category. The same is true for every other category affected by the naming conventions, so far as I know. Cities are unique in that respect: every single article named according to the convention violates WP:NC(CN). Can you find me even one more naming convention that even causes violation of WP:NC(CN) in about half the cases, much less in every single case? A few minor exceptions is one thing, but blatant violation in every single case is something entirely different. Why should cities be inconsistent in this respect? --Serge 20:19, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Cork ... city or material primary topic?

Cork is currently the article about the city in Ireland, rather than the article about the Cork (material). There is a vote to move Cork to Cork City and Cork (material) to Cork. See Talk:Cork (material). --Serge 05:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there is a primary topic in this case. john k 13:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Now that the original poll is closed (no consensus), I've opened a new one to move Cork to Cork (city) and Cork (disambiguation) to Cork. See Talk:Cork. --Serge 07:16, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I could use some help at Talk:Cork. If Cork was a U.S. city even I would not argue that it should not be disambiguated. The Ireland guidelines indicate the city should be disambiguated as Cork, County Cork, but the Irish biased are opposing the requested move to the disambiguated name. This city has less than 120,000 residents. Your assistance is appreciated. Thanks. --Serge 17:08, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually the policy indicates it should be at Cork, County Cork if not located at Cork. What is the relevance of your personal beliefs or bias to the vote (re "even I would not argue that"). Djegan 17:24, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Its also out of order imply their is a "Irish bias", you dont make friends by sticking your fingers up at people. Not that friendship has anything to do with it. Djegan 17:26, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

1. The guideline says, specifically, Where disambiguation is needed, [Irish city] articles should go under placename, County x.. If disambiguation is not needed for a small city that shares its name with a subject as commonly known as cork, then disambiguation should never be needed.
2. The Irish bias is obvious - 7 out of 8 oppose voters display heavy Irish bias on their own Talk pages. If you want to blame me for pointing out plain fact... whatever.
3. As far as my personal beliefs go, they are relevant here because I'm a staunch and consistent advocate of following WP:NC(CN) and not disambiguating unless there is a good reason to disambiguate. I've never encountered a better reason to disambigate then that which is faced at Cork.

--Serge 18:23, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

You need to face the fact that all votes carry equal weight. Djegan 18:27, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I recognize that all votes carry equal weight. I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that the opposition to the move is biased. The implications of that fact must be considered by each individual editor. --Serge 18:34, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Just to point out that the notes disambiguation point is clearly talking about disambiguation between places in Ireland, and not about disambiguation between a city in Ireland and a type of wooden material. Frelke 11:45, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was though not a poll, this proposed idea and request for comments looks like one, and makes it look like we have more proposals open than we really do. Close. --Serge 15:46, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Yet Another Idea

How about…

The canonical form for cities in the United States is City, State (the "comma convention"). However, if a major city has a unique name or is unquestionably the most significant subject sharing its name, such as Chicago and Philadelphia, it can reside at a disambiguated location, without the state. Those cities that need additional disambiguation include their county, borough or parish (for example Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina). Small cities and settlements unknown by the vast majority of the world population, such as Walla Walla, Washington and Garrett Park, Maryland, should remain disambiguated with their respective state names, regardless of the uniqueness of the names of the cities.

An U.S. city's article, however, should never be titled simply "city, United States" (e.g "Houston, United States"), although it is permissible to create a title of this type as a redirect to the properly titled article. Similarly, a title that uses the state's two-letter postal abbreviation should never be the primary article title, although creating a redirect is permitted.

Additionally, can we agree to move the twenty-seven cities mentioned by john k in his AP-related proposal, as they would abide by the requirements needed for disambiguation.

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 Pittsburgh Salt Lake City San Antonio San Diego San Francisco Seattle

In my opinion, this would a) create a brief statement for the guideline, b) leave the Canadian guideline alone, c) provide a starting point for moves according to the guideline, d) still leave the possibility of future moves open, and e) make sure very small cities like Garrett Park, Maryland retain the state disambiguation. Comments are, of course, welcome. -- tariqabjotu 21:11, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment Considering how measures affects a drastic number of articles, I would encourage a long "voting/discussion" period with several periodic invitations on the Village Pump (and on some of the city talk pages) for other editors to give their input. It would be ideal to get an RfA level of response (at least 50 editors or so).Agne 21:17, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment I've revised my proposal above, to not merge with Canada. I still want someone to answer my question above about why cities should be treated differently from all other Wikipedia topics with regard to requiring additional information in the article title just because subject is "unknown by the vast majority of the world population". Why the inconsistency for cities? --Serge 22:15, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• I already said I support Serge's revised version (more or less), but this proposal would also be fine with me. Serge: except in limited contexts, I'd think the most common name of Garrett Park, Maryland is Garrett Park, Maryland. For instance, I wouldn't say "I'm from Garrett Park" unless the conversation had already come around to the fact that I'm from Maryland. I would say "I live in Philadelphia (or, I would have said it, when I lived there, and will say it again, when I live there again) without mentioning the state, because the state is unnecessary, as everyone would know what I'm talking about. How about a "if you were from this place, how would you say you are from there to another American you've just met?" standard? john k 22:35, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• Most references to any subject are made among people who are already familiar with the subject. Why? Because after the first time someone encounters the subject, he too is familiar with it. If you were God and could tabulate all references to Garrett Park that were made by all people in, say, September of 2006, don't you think the vast majority would have been made in and around Garret Park itself, and therefore, not clarified with the state? And, even references outside of the area, like the ones I'm making in this paragraph, don't need the state clarified, because we've already established what we're talking about. By far, the most common name used to reference any city is just the city name. Sure, the first time you refer to something you might have to clarify what you're talking about with additional contextual information, and that applies to cities (by specifying which county, state or country it is in), but not only to cities (like specifying who the main star is in a movie you're talking about, or the year in which it was released). That fact does not make the clarifying information part of the name of the subject. Most people have probably never heard of the movie, The Seven Samurai. So if you tell someone you're going to go see it, to someone you know to be unfamiliar with it (just like you might know them to be unfamiliar with Garrett Park), you might say, "I'm going to go see the The Seven Samurai, the classic samurai movie directed by Akira Kurosawa and starring Toshiro Mifune, do you want to go?" But the need for additional clarifying information for those who are unfamiliar with the subject does not make the additional clarifying information part of the name of the article about that subject in Wikipedia, unless that name has a known ambiguity issue. I ask again: why should names of city articles be treated inconsistently in this respect? --Serge 23:04, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• • These suggestions are starting to converge on one idea. Perhaps we should stick with one and discuss that (that's partially why I copied part of Dave's proposal here). -- tariqabjotu 22:42, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I do think the language matter should be left in; the US does have a lot of place names derived from French or Spanish or native languages. Baton Rouge, San Francisco, El Paso, La Crosse, etc. Bearcat 23:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with Serge here. We don't want to use the proper name of a place as the name of an article unless the name, itself, makes it clear that it is a place. Garrett Park fails. (One of the other ideas in the Los Angeles discussions was to suggest that all places have geographic categorization and a typical lat/lon in the first line of the article. If someone wants to change the umpty-thousand places we have listed to do that, I would have less objection to the naming ambiguities.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:43, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Again, while this is a conversation for another day, why should places or cities be any different than everything else in Wikipedia? There are tons of articles in Wikipedia where the title of the article is unclear as to what sort of thing the item is. Can you tell from the title that Boab is a tree, Lunalilo was a person, or that Chiodos is a band?--DaveOinSF 00:27, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Not addressing the broader issue, but in terms of the language issue, I doubt that anybody is going to think that they should create redirects at Red Stick, Louisiana, Saint Francis, California, The Passage, Texas, or The Cross, Wisconsin. The reason to mention it specifically with Canada is because of the dual official languages thing (if that). I see no particular reason to mention it specifically for the US. It's just common sense - nobody calls these places by those names. john k 00:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Nobody actually calls French-named places in Canada by translated names, either, but that hasn't stopped some people from trying to move those articles to English titles on the patently false assumption that Wikipedia has some kind of "names must always be in English, no matter what" requirement. Bearcat 02:09, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

But, in fact, nobody that I'm aware of has tried to do this on US articles, and, at any rate, the basic naming conventions are plenty of basis for shutting down such nonsense. The kind of people who do this kind of thing aren't the kind of people who read naming conventions, anyway. john k 02:15, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Too many proposals

4 proposals have appeared since the last time I checked this page. Perhaps we should have a subpage for proposals.

As it stands, I still don't think any of the proposals are adequate. Tariq's seems the best, except that we have some oddities in that, even in the present disambiguated structure, the correct redirects would be:

• Los Angeles → Greater Los Angeles Area (although mapping to Los Angeles, California is not precisely wrong)
• Las Vegas → Las Vegas metropolitan area (here, mapping to Las Vegas, Nevada is almost certainly wrong. Referring to the city, itself, is not at all common.)

I think we might need to have the base be Los Angeles (city) and Las Vegas (city) for even WP:NC(CN) to be followed. These are just the one's I'm familiar with. NYC and Chicago don't seem to suffer from that problem, and I don't know about Philadelphia. San Diego may also have an ambiguity with the county, but I think the city is probably a more common use than the metropolitan area. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 22:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

As has been said repeatedly, the fact that Las Vegas and Los Angeles are often used to refer to metropolitan areas is not unique to U.S. cities. If someone links to just Las Vegas or Los Angeles or Tokyo or London or Nairobi, I expect to be taken to the article about those cities, regardless of what the author intended. I feel changing the short titles to redirect to articles about metropolitan areas is especially pedantic. Similarly, people will sometimes say I see thunder but we shouldn't create a disambiguation page that links to both Lightning and Thunder. The Thunder page should stand as-is and anyone who says the aforementioned statement will just have to understand that that usage is incorrect. -- tariqabjotu 23:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Las Vegas really is a special case; hardly anyone refers to the city of Las Vegas unless referring to municipal government, not even Las Vegasians Las Vegasanti people from Las Vegas. But perhaps a modified {{dablink}} would be adequate, along the lines of:

This article is about the city of Las Vegas in the U.S. state of Nevada.
Unless you got here from Las Vegas, Nevada, you almost certainly want to see the article Las Vegas metropolitan area or Las Vegas Strip.
For other uses of the term, see Las Vegas (disambiguation) and Vegas (disambiguation).

So I'll withdraw that part of the comment, but will watch the {{dablink}}s for Los Angeles and Las Vegas. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:37, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I see what you mean... Orlando, Florida is like that too. -- tariqabjotu 00:01, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I see why this needs to be any more complicated than other cities; as far as I'm concerned, it's more than enough that Las Vegas Strip and Las Vegas metropolitan area are linked from Las Vegas, Nevada. I don't think anybody would seriously suggest that Toronto be redirected to an article about the entire Greater Toronto Area just because some people from Caledon will say they're from Toronto if they're not sure the person they're talking to has ever heard of Caledon. Bearcat 00:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how the current title Las Vegas, Nevada deals with the issue of the suburbs any better than Las Vegas would. I agree that there's a ridiculous number of proposals at the moment, and that Tariq's is probably the best at the moment. john k 00:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

---

Canadian Regional Municipalities

The Regional Municipalities in Canada are many times refered as actual place names .One of them the " Halifax Regional Municipality"( which has 188 places within it) which is a Regional Municipality not a place name like Halifax ( a legal place name and a separate community) according to the Governments of Nova Scotia and Canada is example where the municipality is wrongly refered as a place name . WEhaat is convention for this ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Markhamman (talk • contribs) .

There are different types of regional municipalities in Canada. In Ontario, regional municipalities exist as part of what are effectively "federal" municipal structures in certain parts of the province: the upper-tier municipal government (the region) has jurisdiction over matters of a regional nature (i.e. arterial roads, sewer systems, often public transit, etc.), whereas the lower-tier municipalities (the constituent cities, towns and townships that make up the region) handle local issues (e.g. local roads, libraries, etc.). So, for example, Vaughan, Ontario is a city, but it also forms part of the Regional Municipality of York, Ontario. York Region in this case is a place, and a level of municipal government, but it isn't a city (it is made up of cities, such as Vaughan).

In Nova Scotia, however, the Halifax Regional Municipality is, effectively, a city -- there is no longer a City of Halifax (as I understand it, not being from Nova Scotia), as Halifax was amalgamated with neighbouring municipalities to form the new HRM. So we should treat Halifax Regional Municipality as a city.

I can't speak to other provinces, because I have no idea what the case is in, say, Saskatchewan. I suspect regional municipalities in most other provinces, to the extent they exist, are closer to the Ontario model, but I couldn't say for sure. Skeezix1000 14:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Skeezix is correct; the Halifax Regional Municipality (and, similarly, the Cape Breton Regional Municipality) are the only level of municipal government that exist within their borders. While Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford, Cole Harbour, etc., all still exist as communities, they don't have any separate governments; the HRM is the only legal entity that has municipal government authority over them. They're more akin to the role of Don Mills, Scarborough, East York, Cabbagetown and the Junction within Toronto than they are to the role of Vaughan or Bradford or Markham within York Region. Wikipedia does and should reflect both individual communities and their actual governing bodies as "places". Bearcat 17:50, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Halifax Regional Municipality is not a city but a "Regional Municipality" period and not a place name . The area does not appear in the Canadian Postal Code Directory nor does the Halifax Regional Municipality is allowed as a postal address . The separate communities are the proper - legal name places when it comes to services as such . The area is not organized to be a place name . In fact the municipality has more a rural area than urban . The locals in the Eastern Shore area of HRM do not want anything to do with Halifax if they had it thier way . The thing is the community of Halifax {the place) and the Halifax Regional Municipality are two separate things. The present " Halifax Regional Municipality" is nothing more the County of Halifax and the Cities and Bedford with one government and any place within it is still whatever it was before HRM . That what says on the Nova Scotia and Halifax Regional Municipality websites . --Bill 21:52, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

That doesn't change the fact that the municipal government is an entity called the Halifax Regional Municipality, which therefore is an existing thing which needs an encyclopedia article of its own. Nobody has proposed merging all the different communities into a single HRM article; every one of them already has its own separate article in addition to the HRM article. So I really don't see what the issue is. Bearcat 23:03, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

U.S. city change proposal active and updated

Just a reminder that the "colored" proposal has been revised and is still active here (note: it has been moved to just below this section). --Serge 20:27, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

It was revised under the discussion, so it's not clear that any comments other than Serge's are valid. Please close and re-open, if you want the proposal to be taken seriously. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 20:31, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Arthur that the survey should be started over for the sake of accuracy, since we do not want people supporting or opposing the unrevised version.
—Asatruer 21:07, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

At the time the proposal was updated, there was one oppose vote and two support votes. Mine was one of the two support votes, tariq was the second. The oppose vote, subsequent to the update, removed his/her objection, and I will clarify that I support the revised proposal. If tariq clarifies that he/she supports the revised version, there will be no votes from anyone who has not seen the revised proposal.--DaveOinSF 21:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Only one Support vote that remains was not made or updated since the update. The reasoning makes it clear that he would support this one too. The only oppose votes were removed since the reasoning was based on the Canada/U.S. merger. This is an active proposal. There is no point in starting over. Let's be reasonable, okay? --Serge 21:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Can we limit oursleves to one propsoed change survey at a time? The "Modest Proposal" is still open, yet there are two or three other proposals being offered. It's unclear which would even prevail if more than one were approved. -Will Beback 21:43, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but the modest proposal never seemed "official", and appeared to not be achieving consensus. I don't think John even originally intended for people to vote on it. He didn't set it up that way. So, there is only one proposal open that proposes an actual change to the written guidelines for U.S. city names. There should be no confusion. --Serge 23:39, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

If it wasn't intended to be voted on then why did you vote? Why did the rest of us vote? As far as anyone can tell, that was a formal proposal that was being, and is being, voted on in a survey. If it isn't active, then it should be closed. It's confusing and unhelpful to have so many open surveys at once. A survey can't make a consensus, it can only reflect it. -Will Beback 05:32, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

While it's good that the other surveys have been closed, it'd be best if neutral parties did the closing. -Will Beback 17:30, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

i totally agree. *g-- ExpImp^talkcon 22:02, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I withdrew my support for the proposal, Serge. You may be roughly on the same side of this debate as I am, but I feel comments like "Let's be reasonable, okay?" are going to turn people off, especially if they are relatively new to this debate, and result in the loss of valuable input. I'm sorry, but I cannot continue to support your proposal unless you begin to make a sincere effort to stop biting those who disagree with you (and even those who agree with you). -- tariqabjotu 21:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to express a bit of frustration. No offense was intended. --Serge 23:39, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Umm....with all these active proposals going and changing and changing again. Let's hold off on editing the convention on the main page. Agne 08:01, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I closed the other discussions and moved this one specific proposal to the bottom. --Serge 15:46, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was Closed: no consensus to change; proposer agrees to close. Septentrionalis 14:48, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Proposal: U.S. Mirroring Canada

The current guideline for Canada is as follows:

Canada

The canonical form for cities in Canada is [[City, Province/Territory]] (the "comma convention"). For the territories, please note that the canonical forms are "City, Yukon" (not "City, Yukon Territory") and "City, Nunavut" (not "City, Nunavut Territory"), but "City, Northwest Territories". For the easternmost Canadian province, the canonical form is "City, Newfoundland and Labrador"; although they might be referred to as such in casual conversation, a city's proper legal designation is never just "City, Newfoundland" or "City, Labrador".

Places which either have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name, such as Quebec City or Toronto, can have undisambiguated titles. Localities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish.

A Canadian city's article, however, should never be titled simply "city, Canada" (e.g "Halifax, Canada"), although it is permissible to create a title of this type as a redirect to the properly titled article. Similarly, a title that uses the province's two-letter postal abbreviation should never be the primary article title, although creating a redirect is permitted.

For communities whose names derive from the French language, a redirect should not be created at a translated title (e.g. "Rapids of St. Mary" for Sault Ste. Marie or "Three Rivers" for Trois-Rivières), unless evidence can be provided that the translated name is actually in use by a significant number of speakers. Such a name should normally include the proper French accenting where appropriate (see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)), although a redirect should always be created at an unaccented title since many Wikipedians do not know how to type accented characters.

The current guideline for the U.S. is as follows:

United States (CURRENT)

The canonical form for cities in the United States is [[City, State]] (the "comma convention") (exceptions include Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City). Those cities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish (for example Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina).

A United States city's article, however, should never be titled simply "city, country" (e.g "Detroit, United States").

The following new guideline for the U.S., borrowing from the spirit of the Canadian guideline, and reflecting convention actually in use, is hereby proposed:

United States (PROPOSED)

The canonical form for cities in the United States is [[City, State]] (the "comma convention"). It is required for those cities with names that require disambiguation. Cities which either have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name, can have undisambiguated titles (e.g., New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago). Cities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish (for example Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina).

A U.S. city article, however, should never be titled simply "City, USA" (e.g "Los Angeles, USA"), although it is permissible to create a title of this type as a redirect to the properly titled article. Similarly, a title that uses the state's two-letter postal abbreviation should never be the primary article title, although creating a redirect is permitted (e.g., Portland, OR).

Please vote with "# '''Support'''" or "* '''Not Yet'''". In the latter case, please specify what you would need changed before you could support this. An Oppose vote is appropriate only if you're opposed to any change to the current U.S. City guideline.

Survey - Support votes -2

1. Support, but would also support another version that changed the US convention to be essentially identical to the Canadian one but did not physically merge the two.--DaveOinSF 21:32, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

   My vote here was made prior to the proposal being revised. I wish to clarify that my support still stands.--DaveOinSF 21:18, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

2. Support proposal as now revised; I've noted an expansion suggestion in the discussion below. Bearcat 22:26, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
3. Support Captures parts of Canadian guideline that is applicable to U.S. without actually merging the two. --Serge 09:00, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
4. Support This would be fine. john k 15:31, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
5. Support nobody in my neighbourhood (=europe) says "Las Vegas, NV"....-- ExpImp^talkcon 18:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
6. Support; though I don't know what differences to make in my votes for the American and Canadian sections. Georgia guy 20:20, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

   The Canadian section isn't up for a vote; it's an already-established convention that's just listed for comparison. Bearcat 02:29, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

7. Support --Polaron | Talk 02:16, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
8. Support—consistency is good where it does no harm. The guideline could probably be condensed and made a bit more transparent with the use of some examples. —Michael Z. 2006-10-27 21:52 Z

   Support—Asatruer 22:12, 27 October 2006 (UTC)—

9. Support the current conventionion maintains consistency in the face of ridiculousness. Seattle SchmuckyTheCat 15:56, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
10. Support --In many ways, this is also inline with journalistic conventions with datelines, etc. I think if the city is large enough it shouldn't require the state. Vertigo700 17:01, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
11. Support per Vertigo700 Johntex\^talk 17:31, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
12. Support Will help create uniformity across city articles regardless of the nation they are located in. Furthermore, there are many other major US cities that could use disambiguated titles though it may get contentious deciding which ones. Off the top of my head, we could add St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Houston, Dallas, San Diego, San Francisco, Las Vegas... --The Way 19:36, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

    Those are all among the 30 AP cities listed above, except for Kansas City, which is clearly ambiguous - there are two Kansas Cities - Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas. St. Louis, I would argue, is also ambiguous, with the actual Saint being a fairly common referent for the name. The others were all in my proposal above, along with Honolulu, Los Angeles, Seattle, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, New Orleans, Miami, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Boston, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee. john k 00:53, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

13. Support --Bobster687 01:09, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
14. Support. --Soltras 03:15, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Survey - Oppose votes -2

1. Oppose. This is the same propsoal as we rejected in August. It discards the naming convnetuion now in general use. That convnetion provides consistency and predictability for readers and editors. I have seen no compelling reason for changing that convention. Unlike the "Modest Proposal", this one does not even define which cities are "unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name", vagueness which would undoubtedly lead to many long debates over individual articles. It's a recipe for chaos without any benefit. -Will Beback 17:38, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

   This is not the same proposal. The concern over potential "long debates" due to the "vague" wording is arguably not warranted given the wording is taken verbatim from the Canadian guidelines where no such problems have materialized. Of course, that's not a guarantee. Just an indication. Note that prior to going t this wording, the Canadians had much more turmoil than they do now. This should at least reduce what we've been going through too. Also, what has changed since August is the moves of Philadelphia and Chicago, and, thus, the convention and the consensus on this issue has shifted. What would be helpful is a "not yet" vote (rather than oppose) that indicates what would have to change for you to accept this proposal, not just an explanation of why you oppose it in current form. Thanks. --Serge 18:09, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

   I'll change my vote if you will. I don't see the difference between this proposal and the August proposal, perhaps you could explain it. I hardly think that the moves of two articles is a sufficeint reason to change the convnetion. Every convention is just a guideline that the editors of individual articles can make a case to ignore. -Will Beback 18:32, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

   Are you asking me to change my Support vote to Not Yet? On what grounds? If I was unwilling to compromise, I would not support this one for the first sentence alone. If I was unwilling to compromise, I would only support a guideline that explicitly stated additional disambiguating/clarifying information should only be part of a city article, like for any article in Wikipedia (except for some rare exceptions, like Diana, Princess of Wales), when it's required for disambiguation. If I was unwilling to compromise, I would only support a guideline that called for disambiguation of U.S. city articles consistent with the rest of Wikipedia: use parentheses (e.g., Portland). But I'm willing to compromise, so I'm not proposing my ideal version here that I know cannot achieve consensus. I'm supporting a version which I formed based on my understanding of what was most likely to be found acceptable by consensus here. Are you willing to compromise? I'm just asking you to let us know what would have to change in this proposal for you to support it. As to the difference between this and the August poll, that was a straw poll just checking for consensus informally, among some other choices, which, by the way, was favored 9:3 by those participating. This is a formal survey for this specific change. As to whether the moves of two articles is insufficent reason to change does not change the fact that others in other city polls referenced those changes as being influential in terms of changing their views on this issue in general (some would use the moves to support their vote on some other city, others said it was time for a vote like this). If you choose to change your vote to Support or Not Yet (with information on what would have to change for you to support this proposal), feel free to remove my comments associated with this Oppose vote, including this one. Thanks. --Serge 19:43, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

   It's kind ofi a surprise to find out that all the other surveys held on this page didn't really count. If this one is supposed to count then we should conduct it properly by announcing that there is a formal survey being conducted., Otherwise someone may say that it was just a strawpoll or just an informal proposal and we'll have to do this again and again and again. -Will Beback 01:18, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

   All of the other ones either stated they were straw polls, or asked for comments (not votes), etc. This is the first one that I know of that is presented formally. I will announce it widely. Thanks. --Serge 05:06, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

2. Oppose strongly. Not only is this a violation of what Americans actually expect to see, it would be a logstical nightmare to have to fix all of the double redirects, let alone having to make all of the moves. This bus has left the station, let's not redesign the wheel. (yeah, mixed metaphors). User:Zoe|(talk) 19:14, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

   There are a fair number of redirects, but I don't think that should ever be a reason not to move a page. And I don't understand this "what Americans actually expect to see" business. I expect articles on major American cities to be treated the same as articles on major foreign cities. I.e., for Paris and Los Angeles and Toronto and Sydney and Shanghai to all follow the same rules. john k 19:27, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

   There aren't that many double redirects that would be created. Typically they range from 10-20. Los Angeles has the most with 46. These are very easily fixed with something like AWB. 130.132.94.174 19:38, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

   Not another vote based on worries about technical issues? Seriously, there are people here who can make such changes, if necessary, with relative ease. --Yath 23:53, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

3. Oppose. This may be OK for Global cities, but there are only nine to eleven of those in the U.S. I think it would be a mistake to apply it wholesale. For one thing, which Kansas City gets to be the Kansas City? -- Donald Albury 20:27, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

   Kansas City can be a dis-ambiguation page because it has 2 major meanings. However, this discussion is only for city names with one major meaning. Georgia guy 20:28, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

   The proposal does not seek to remove state names "wholesale". Moves to unqualified names still have to be justified by the requesters. --Polaron | Talk 20:30, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

   I don't think anybody has suggested that Kansas City should be a page on the city in Missouri (which would obviously be the one one would choose as the most important). john k 23:54, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

4. Oppose for reasons repeated ad nauseum here and on a dozen city talk pages. Phiwum 21:22, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

   What changes would you want implemented in the proposal for it to become acceptable to you? --Polaron | Talk 21:30, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

   I don't see any need for a change. I prefer a simple, uniform rule. "All U.S. cities should be identified so" is better than "All U.S. cities should be identified so, unless...". So I have no suggestions for changes in the proposal. Sorry. Phiwum 21:38, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

5. Oppose. The status quo is just fine, and has been just fine for the many years it has been established. There are a thousand more important things to be working on than to argue this issue ad infinitum. Stan 12:54, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
6. Oppose The current system works and it's annoying if there all of a sudden is a bunch of exceptions that we have to keep track of in order to preserve linking, etc. I agree with the above that states Let's not redesign the wheel.Gohiking 17:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

   It is almost a certainty that any "exceptions" created already have the unqualilfied name redirecting to the city article so link tracking is not going to be an issue. --Polaron | Talk 19:04, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

7. Oppose This one goes too far. I'm not at all opposed to having US cities that are known around the world being under "Cityname", but I am opposed to Podunk, US being put under "Cityname". --Bobblehead 00:09, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
8. Strongly Oppose As per everyone else. Pacific Coast Highway ^{{blah • Happy Halloween! • WP:NYCS}} 00:11, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
9. Oppose In the United States, the States themselves are sovereign entities, not mere administrative districts. In the same way that a person is both a citizen of United States and the State in which they reside, so too, in my opinion, is a city both part of the United States and the State in which it is located. Given this, I would hesitate to remove reference of the State from our naming conventions."Country" Bushrod Washington 01:14, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
10. Oppose There are so many cities in the United States with the same name but in different states that it would evolve into an argument over who gets the page with only the city name. Charleston, South Carolina or West Virginia? Columbia, Missouri or South Carolina? Columbus, Georgia or Ohio? Portland, Maine or Oregon? Rochester, Minnesota or New York? The list would be enormous and who would decide which city gets the single name page and how many times will it end up being disputed? It appears that to do this would create a problem that there is no need to create. --Chris24 01:26, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
11. Oppose. Leaving off the state is fine for cities known that way worldwide. But if it's just because they can be recognized that way by U.S. users, then that's presumptious and confusing to residents outside the U.S. And there aren't all that many in the former category. I doubt my own city of Seattle would qualify. --Rbraunwa 01:26, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
12. Strong oppose. Per comments left above. It would be a logistical nightmare to redirect thousands of cities that are non-repeatable. What about cities such as Charleston, West Virginia and Charleston, South Carolina (someone else mentioned this too, sorry)? Who would get the grabs on this? Would it be based on population? If so, that would be unfair and unbalanced. What about tiny communities versus large cities? This would create unfair bias, would disrupt thousands of pages, and would never be completed in a tidy fashion because each page would need review and comparison that there are no other pages that share the same city name within the United States. The current system works wonderfully; if it isn't broken, no need to fix it, or change it into something radically different that would only cause mass confusion amongst long-time editors and guests alike. The current system of using "City, State" and "City" works wonderfully. If, for instance, there is a major city, such as New York City, that is unrivaled, then it would be approperiate to have both "City, State" and "City" naming conventions. Seicer (talk) (contribs) 04:29, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

    In response to your Charleston example (and the Columbus and Portland examples from the previous statement), the proposal addresses that. It says

    The canonical form for cities in the United States is City, State (the "comma convention"). It is required for those cities with names that require disambiguation.

    Thus no city would be at Charleston, Columbus, Portland, Rochester, Phoenix, and Columbia, as they all disambiguation (since they conflict with other comparably notable topics). -- tariqabjotu 04:34, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

    Noted. But how would this renaming process take effect? We are still having a mess of a time after WP:USSH was enacted at a weak consensus, but it was accepted to "end the debate" once and for all. I hope that the messes at WP:USSH won't happen here. Seicer (talk) (contribs) 04:43, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

13. Oppose, for reasons I've described elsewhere on this page and others. Basically, my contention is that the canonical form for a US city name is (contra Serge) "City, State", regardless of fame. AJD 00:41, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

    But that is what the current proposal says -- the canonical form is "city,state". --Polaron | Talk 01:55, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

    But it goes on to say that that form should only be used if required for disambiguation. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 02:01, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

    Yes, but what is the state name used for? Isn't its primary reason to distinguish it from other places with the same name? --Polaron | Talk 02:05, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

    To be clear: I meant it's the canonical form in real life, not just in Wikipedia conventions. It's the default method of referring to a U.S. city or town, absent context which makes the state clear. For a very few cities (Philadelphia, etc.), the name of the city itself often provides sufficient context, but (my position is) that does not mean the omission of the state name is not still exceptional in those cases. And, no, Polaron, I don't believe that the reason the state name is used in real life is to distinguish it from other places that have the same name; if that were the case, nobody would say "Yreka, California" (because there's no other Yreka) or "Elgin, South Carolina" (because that doesn't disambiguate). It's just because that's the way people refer to cities by name in the U.S., without context. In Wikipedia article titles, (my opinion is) we shouldn't assume that the context is present. AJD 02:22, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

    So to get your support, would the proposal have to say that this is the standard form used in real life? And also to be clear, the current proposal is saying that outside a small number of possible exceptions, the default style to be used is "city,state". It would be helpful if people say what needs to be changed in order for the proposal to be acceptable. Then at some point (soon I hope), a new proposal that tries to accomodate as much of the concerns as possible will be put up. --Polaron | Talk 02:46, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

    No. The fact that this is the standard form used in real life is the reason that I oppose the proposal. I think "Philadelphia, Pennsylvania" is more correct, as an article title, than "Philadelphia". Changing the proposal (within the bounds of recognizability) isn't going to win it my vote. (Also, the current proposal doesn't say a "small number" of possible exceptions; indeed, as it is currently stated, the number of exceptions would be very large.) AJD 03:06, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

    So you're saying you'd prefer the current vague wording of the US city guideline over anything that clarifies what can and cannot be exempted. Anyway, if you'd prefer not to compromise, that's your right. --Polaron | Talk 03:12, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

    I mean, the proposal I'd vote for—in order to eliminate vagueness of the wording—would be to remove the existing parenthetical remark about exceptions. I think the exemptions are, though well-intentioned, misguided and confusing (with the possible exception of New York City, merely because in many contexts "New York, New York" refers specifically to Manhattan—but I'm not that happy about that either). AJD 03:37, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

    But every other encyclopedia in the world has its article on Philadelphia as "Philadelphia." And the current proposal does not say that the number of exceptions would be very large. It implies that the number of exceptions could be very large - any city that is not ambiguous or is a primary topic would be a candidate to be moved. However, each move would have to go through a requested move process. I imagine many pages that would be candidates would never even get that far. john k 11:50, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

14. Oppose As I have reiterated numerous times, this is a solution in search of a nonexistent problem. Is there something wrong with the article title? No. Will it shave milliseconds off typing? No. Is there something wrong with the current convention? No. So far, no decent rationale has been put forth why such a drastic change is necessary. And the constant polling regarding this matter is not only annoying and ludicrous, but (if interpreted broadly enough) disruptive. Let's get back to writing and bettering this encyclopedia, not arguing over such a trivial matter that should not have existed in the first place. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 03:18, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

    Do article names ever matter in the sense you're describing? It seems to me that the answer is clearly no. Would there be something wrong with having Seattle, Washington at Seattle instead? No. Does the current title shave milliseconds off typing? No, if anything, it adds milliseconds. Is there anything wrong with the proposed convention? No, it is used with no serious trouble for Canada. So far no decent rationale has been put forth as to why the current "convention," which is really a mess and not a convention at all due to the lack of consensus about whether there should be exceptions, is a good idea. Your position, so far as I can tell, is an argument against ever changing naming conventions when a naming convention already exists, even if that naming convention is a complete and total mess and has no consensus behind it. john k 11:47, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

    I am quite amused by your reasoning and your apparent cut-and-paste rebuttal of my arguments that only serve to recycle and regurgitate discredited arguments. Is there something wrong with Seattle, Washington at Seattle? No. Is there a need to move it? No! Do you have to type the current full title of the article? No! Redirects exist to mitigate this problem. Is there something wrong with the proposed convention? Yes, in that it is unnecessary. I am not against changing naming conventions; however, I am against changing conventions when such changes are unnecessary and pointless, if not downright ridiculous. You have not elaborated upon on how the current convention is a "mess"; more likely than not the proposed convention will create the mess that you "see" in the current convention (if it even exists). Your seeming lamentation that there is "lack of consensus on whether there should be exceptions" should tell you that there should not be any exceptions at all. Your allusion of me as an obstructionist is dubious at best, insulting at worst. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 03:49, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

    And before you use the same arguments as before, please see negative proof. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 03:51, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

15. Oppose. Quite strongly... Not only is it going to start [ERR: Overflow] debates about which cities are worthy and worldly enough, but it breaks from the structured system we have now. I'm also opposed to individual "exemptions" popping up on a monthly basis. Chicago, Philadelphia... Now LA is going to say "well if Philadelphia is worthy then we definitely are." New York City makes sense due to the repetitive nature of its name, but otherwise I'm for staying with the City, State format. As mentioned above, it can easily be bypassed by piping when necessary. -newkai t-c 17:40, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Survey - Not Yet votes -2

• We are not ready to decide anything yet. Starting a vote this far back in the discussion is too easy to miss. The colors, some of which are not readable don't help. I suggest that someone take the main points to a subpage and archive this discussion leaving a pointer to the subpage. If multiple proposals come back, they need to be given a subpage so that editors can follow the discussions. Once issues are resolved then we can bring it all together and maybe reach consensus. Vegaswikian 08:50, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

• I've tried to address your concerns. Let us know. Thanks. --Serge 22:17, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
  • What is the name of the subpages you set up? Vegaswikian 00:32, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
    • It is now clear that there is only one proposal active, therefore no need for a subpage, no? --Serge 15:24, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
      • See the immediately following comment by me. Tariq's proposal was in the investigative stage, asking for suggestions for improvement. Your proposal overrides that, so this is not a valid proposal until tariq's proposal, which you improperly closed, properly terminates. May I suggest that you close this proposal as improper and start over? (Note that I did close an AfD which was opened simultaneously with a deletion review of the immediately previous keep (no consensus) AfD. But that's not the same thing as having two active proposals.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:59, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
      • No it is not clear. This whole discussion is a mess. It needs to be cleared out so that a single unified discussion can be started. I will go on record as opposing any proposal on this page since it is so confusing if that is what is needed. The links from the TOC don't work since they are duplicated! Vegaswikian 20:10, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

• The active proposal, if any, is Tariq's. The refactoring has obscured discussion. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 20:28, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

• Tariq's proposal was an informal request for comments started while a formal proposal was active that caused confusion. I've tried to address your concerns... let us know. Thanks. --Serge 22:17, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• Not Yet This discussion ought to be restarted and this section archived; it has become impossible to follow. Also, I'm getting real tired of Serge's abrasive comments. They aren't even directed towards me, but nevertheless I still feel they foster an unfriendly and at times intimidating environment; it needs to stop. -- tariqabjotu 21:36, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

• I've tried to address your concerns... let us know... Thanks. --Serge 22:17, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• 'Not yet' Strong Oppose Unclear as to the treatment of names (like Matawan, which is a redirect) which are neither ambiguous nor clear world-wide primary usage. There are a lot of these; and we should be clear on how they are to be treated; presently, Matawan, New Jersey. Septentrionalis 20:34, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• If it's not clear world-wide primary usage, then it shouldn't be a redirect either. That's a separate issue. If it is clearly world-wide primary usage, then the proposed guideline is open on what to do, just like the Canadian one is for this situation. If we specify what to do in that case, we are unlikely to achieve consensus. This wording turns out to work quite well for Canada. Let's try it too. We'll never know until we do. --Serge 22:17, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Changing a convention to something deliberately vague because neither of the two alternatives has consensus is an invitation to disaster; both sides will assert, reasonably, that they have consensus, and attempt to impose their variant. Septentrionalis 20:19, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

• Not Yet This proposal is certainly better than what we have, but I feel we should provide a starting point with some of the moves. If this alone is enacted, we'll still have a large number of move requests to go through. It would be nice if we could come up with a set of cities, like in the Modest Proposal, that would get moved at the conclusion of this type of discussion. I would also like the convention to address the issue of smaller cities, such of Matawan, New Jersey. In my opinion, they should stay where they are because the likelihood of their primary status being usurped by a city/town that decides to copy their names is high (see john k's Garrett Park, Maryland example). -- tariqabjotu 22:27, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• What if we have a separate specific multi-move proposal that is in accordance with this guideline if and when it passes? As to the Matwan concern, if you will, how often do new cities appear? Wouldn't we deal with the ambiguity as it surfaces like we do for all Wikipedia articles? Is that really a deal-breaker issue for you? --Serge 22:36, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• I suppose having a separate multi-move proposal post-guideline would be a reasonable thing to do. Regarding your second point, however, I am not suggesting that new cities will just appear (although it can happen) but rather that new articles will appear. For example, if a little-known city or town by the name of Seattle suddenly got its own article, it is highly unlikely Seattle, Washington would no longer be the primary subject for Seattle. However, if a little-known city or town by the name of Matawan suddenly got its article, we would likely have to make Matawan a disambiguation page because Matawan, New Jersey is little-known as it is. -- tariqabjotu 22:47, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• Ah, well, the Canadian wording handles that, no? That is, have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name burdens all those who request or support the move of City, State to City to verify that City indeed meets this requirement, which can be rather easily and quickly ascertained with WP:GOOGLE. Again, it seems to work for Canada. --Serge 23:12, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• The Google test is not perfect. If a city is not well-known to the Internet-using population (i.e. the developed world, usually) it may not turn up prominently in a Google test. -- tariqabjotu 23:20, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• Indeed, and to the extent that that's a real problem, it is already shared (and solved on an as-needed basis) with every other modestly notable article that is not predisambiguated in Wikipedia. Why should (small) U.S. cities be treated inconsistently? --Serge 23:27, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• Not yet/Strong Oppose. The wiki way is to have a discussion FIRST, and then have a survey. These continuing surveys on this page, and on the talk pages of quite a few large cities, are getting quite tedious. It is time to get the issue settled, but you should start a fresh discussion on a subpage or separate Wikipedia namespace page, advertise it widely (WP:RFC, Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), the Cities WikiProject, every page where there has been a no consensus survey on page moves--Los Angeles, New Orleans, Boston, Seattle, etc., as well as any other relavant policy pages, WikiProjects or Wikipedia news pages. This is a major change from the current practice, and should not be done by stealth. ^BlankVerse 01:42, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

• There has been a LOT of discussion over and over about this issue, by anyone interested in coming to this page. We've had multiple informal straw polls, now some of us feel it's time for a formal poll. I really don't want to start the discussion all over again, on another page. But maybe we should archive some of the stale stuff above. The separate page idea was tried back in August and flopped. But getting the word out is certainly the next step, but I wanted to get some idea if we have consensus here first before I went to that step. Any help in getting the word out would be appreciated. Thanks. --Serge 05:22, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Agree 100% with BlankVerse. Agne 02:18, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

We are still discussing, aren't we? Anyway, you are correct that we should not leave this up to bean-counting. It seems some are in a rush to get this thing changed. The way things are going, something probably will get changed once the dust settles, but there is no reason to shut down other discussions because they weren't in survey format or are seen as "informal". But back on the other side, I do not think it would be unreasonable for some of the most involved editors in this debate to try to come up with a few important points for the proposal to cover and then bring the matter to the forefront via RfC and the other means you mentioned. -- tariqabjotu 02:46, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

In a rush? No one is in a rush, certainly not me. But I am hopeful we have found something on which we can get consensus. It seems to address most of the concerns everyone has, except for those who want to retain a strict comma convention, period. --Serge 05:22, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

• Not yet OpposeScott Davis ^Talk 09:47, 28 October 2006 (UTC). I object to the idea of not being supposed to vote "oppose" to a change proposal, as it implies that the old version must be changed, and we are only discussing what to change it to. That said, the beginning should be expanded to "The canonical title for articles about cities in the United States is ..." (we are naming an article, not a city). Therefore I vote "not yet" instead of "oppose". Reasons I would vote to oppose include:

1. the changed tone of the guideline which moves from certainty of naming with a few exceptions to there being two candidate names for the article about each city/town
2. There are no clear criteria for how to identify which cities/towns would have unqualified article names. Candidate explanations would be the AP list or similar, or state capitals which are also the largest city in that state.
3. Remember that the most significant use of the word (without explicit or implicit geographic context) might actually be something named after a city, but the city itself is not well known outside the USA. Examples of what I'm thinking of include Dublin Core, Cleveland Engine (which usually means Ford 335 engine), Detroit Diesel, Indianapolis 500. All of these are not places, but would normally be abbreviated to a single word which is also a city name. Link counts are not reliable for identifying primary use as city articles by their nature have many more incoming links than articles about other kinds of concepts.

I also agree with Agne and BlankVerse. --Scott Davis ^Talk 02:44, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose votes are allowed but discouraged in order to encourage movement towards consensus.
• The "canonical form" language is in the current language for the U.S. and Canada guidelines - I just cloned it. This is a separate issue that can be fixed probably without a vote.
• (1) As I indicated in the compromise section below, this is not my first choice either, by far. But this language works for Canada, and probably is more likely to cause less strife than is caused by the current U.S. version, and has a chance of being adopted. Anything more specific will probably get more opposition, or so it has seemed in the informal polls.
• (2) Again, the point here is to piggy-back on something that works for Canada, and see if it works for us. It seems like it is likely to be problematic in theory, but in reality, at least in Canada, it has not been.
• (3) Good point and I suspect are good arguments for why a given city is not "unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name". I think rewording to clarify that it must not only be the most significant place, but the most significant subject using that name, is a good idea, but, again, relatively a nit that can be ironed out later. Voting "support" on the assumption that there are certain relatively minor wording adjustments to be done is certainly acceptable. I just don't want to change something minor such that others will claim all the votes made prior to the change are invalid. For a major change (like the previous version which was a merge with Canada)... sure.

  I would agree with this, but I strongly disagree with Scott's claims that Detroit Diesel, Cleveland Engine and Dublin Core are competitors with the cities for primary topic status (less sure about Indianapolis, but I think that "Indy 500" is the term one would use for the Indianapolis 500, and that if one said "Indianapolis," the primary meaning would normally be the city). Dublin is already the main article, and in the other cases we already have the City page redirecting to City, State. Attempts based on similar concerns to move the City redirect at various pages to redirect to City (disambiguation) have all been failures, as far as I'm aware. john k 11:56, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

John: Here "Indy" means the Lexmark Indy 300, "Indianapolis" would be at least as likely to mean the race as the city. I'm sure that Dublin in Ireland is the primary meaning of "Dublin", but I'd guess a lot more people have heard of Dublin Core than have heard of the place it is named after, which was my point (Waco is another example where the town itself is not well known). "Detroit" is an alternative to "Caterpillar" as an engine in a truck. It's also a euphemism for the big American car companies (as distinct from their Australian subordinates). Most people know it's the name of a city, but the first association is not to the city itself. --Scott Davis ^Talk 13:42, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you're harping on something having to do with Dublin, Ohio, which wouldn't get moved. In terms of things like Waco and Detroit, I think you are confusing metonymy with actual confusion of reference. "Waco" is used as a metonymy for the assault on the Branch Davidian compound, and "Detroit" is used as a metonymy for the American auto industry. But "London" is used as a metonymy for "the British government." That doesn't mean that the primary meaning isn't the city. Primary topic doesn't mean that in every context one would assume that given meaning. Otherwise nothing is a primary topic, and everything needs to be disambiguated. john k 20:11, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I hope I've addressed most of your concerns. --Serge 05:22, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Thankyou. You have addressed my concerns (but not assuaged them), and introduced a new one: that "not yet" votes will be counted as "support change with suggested minor rewording", whereas I intended it to mean "oppose change unless major shortcomings in the proposed version are fixed". I must therefore strengthen my vote to oppose change from the current version to the currently-proposed version as I believe the current proposal to be inferior. --Scott Davis ^Talk 09:47, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Not sure what I wrote to give you that impression. Only if you change your vote to Support will it count as support. In terms of counting towards consensus at any given time, Not Yet and Oppose are the same. --Serge 14:36, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

• Not yet: As much as I support a change from the current guideline, or more importantly how it is currently being used, I agree with BlankVerse and feel that this should not be decided by a small and insular community of this Ivory Tower, like the six people —four for and two against— that came up with this guideline in the first place, but rather by a larger and more deverse selection of people. I strongly support the notion that the Cities Project should play an active part in his discussion and that all reasonable effort should be made to inform those who may not watch this page but have an interest because of some city or another that they watch, and while a request for comment would be good, it almost seems that sometimes mediation is needed here.—Asatruer— 03:42, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

• I intend to keep this survey open for a week or two, at least, and only after it has much broader exposure. Good idea withholding your vote until that happens. Wikipedia is better for it. Thank you. --Serge 05:22, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

There should certainly be more exposure - posting on village pump, and on WP:CS would be in order, I think. I also agree with Asatruer that possibly the only real solution is

• Strong Oppose for many reasons but namely that this proposal does nothing to increase stability and consistency within the US convention, introduces a subjective criteria that opens the door for a US centric bias, and also lessens the ability for a title to precisely and unequivocally points to what the subject of the article is about. Agne 10:31, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
  • US centric bias? Because making articles on US cities look more like articles on cities in the rest of the world shows a US centric bias? And how would Los Angeles, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, or Honolulu indicate less precisely or unequivocally what the subject of the article is? john k 11:56, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I am trying to avoid a straight cut an paste from here so I won't go into all the details. The subjective consideration of what is "ambiguous" or not (as demonstrated on this talk page) is rife with a US Centric bias. What is so obvious and familiar to us might not be so to a middle school student in South Africa. An effective title should convey precisely what the article is about and not require the reader to have to read the BODY of the article to figure it out. (Especially if they already had some initial awareness that a city exist). For a wiki reader who is not familiar with disambiguation or primary topic, how effective is the single city topic in conveying the subject of the article is ACTUALLY the city article and not one of the several other things that share a name with those cities. Remember, titles are for the benefit of readers and not editors. Agne 18:05, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

This is completely wrong.

An effective title should convey precisely what the article is about and not require the reader to have to read the BODY of the article to figure it out.

According to WP:TITLE:

Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.

I think you should take your preference to what a title should convey to WP:TITLE.--DaveOinSF 18:27, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Well you have the fundamental and fatal flaw that calling something by CITY, STATE title is uncommon. On what scale? Verbal speaking? Print? (I wonder about those business cards, signs, letterheads, etc). The "Common Name" argument doesn't invalidate the City, State convention in the slightest. It not like we discussing the difference in titling an article Dog or Canis lupus familiaris. Second, it is clearly within all practical and common sense evaluation that a title that requires you to read the BODY in order to know what page you are at is clearly not a good title. I'm sure the WP:TITLE folks would agree, but if you like we can open up a strawpoll? If a title requires the reader to have to read the BODY of the article to know if they are on the right page, is that a good or effective title? I don't know what use that would be but if you seriously disagree with that, we can go that route. Agne 18:49, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Google hits for "Boston" = 412 million

Google hits for "Boston, MA" = 69 million

Google hits for "Boston, Massachusetts" = 17.9 million

Google hits for "Boston, Mass." = 4.4 million

Thus, "Boston" = 412 - (69 + 17.9 + 4.4) = 320.7

320.7/69 = 4.7

"Boston" is 4.7 times as common as "Boston, Massachusetts"--DaveOinSF 19:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Um...Dude any Google hit for Boston, MA and Boston, Massachusetts would hit for "Boston" as well as Boston Red Sox, Boston Bruins, Boston baked beans. I think your google hit count is a little off. :/ - Pete

Um...Dude, that's why I subtracted hits for "Boston, MA" etc. from the total hits for "Boston", Dude.--DaveOinSF 02:34, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

And you've help demonstrate the point...they're Boston baked beans, not Boston, Massachusetts baked beans.--DaveOinSF 02:36, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Dude, I still think your google foo is crossed up. There are hundreds of things with Boston in the title (even that English Boston town and the boy band). I don't care either way about City or City & State whatever but the google hit thing is ridiculous, Dog. Hits for "Baked Beans" don't jack about whether people call a city Boston or Boston, MA-whatever. In fact, my boys from up there don't even call it neither. They say they from "Boss-Mass". Maybe they should put that on the baked beans - Pete

OK, Dude, how about, dude, 287million hits, dude, for "San Francisco"; "61.3 million", dude, hits for, dude, "San Francisco, CA"; and, dude, 12.4 million hits for "San Francisco, California", dude. That makes 287-61.3-12.4=213.3million hits for "San Francisco", about 18 times more common, dude, than "San Francisco, California". So the google hits for "Boston" were probably an underestimation, dude.--DaveOinSF 04:05, 29 October 2006 (UTC) (I can hear the song now..."I left my heart in San Francisco, California")

Dude, You still have no bearings on legit Google Foo, man. You're trying to prove a point with a crooked arrow that's twice bent. How many of those "San Fran" hits are for the city of San Francisco and not for the San Fran sports teams? Or that extra special "San Francisco treat?" Without going through all milly of them you can't tell. Same with the Boston. You can try to finger paint whatever picture you want to make but you looking really silly dude when you try to cook Google to fit your picture. Let me try to make it elementary for you Unless your search word is exclusive to one usage or you can effectively eliminate all other false-positives usages with boolean perimeters, you look like an idiot trying to throw around Google hits to prove your point. It's like using the google hits for "Star" and trying to say that they prove that the shinny thing in the sky is the most common usage. - Pete —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 205.157.110.11 (talk • contribs) 12:30, October 29, 2006 (UTC)

Dude, references to the San Francisco 49ers and the San Francisco Giants are references to the city of San Francisco. So are references to the University of San Francisco. These usages are not in competition with each other - references to things named after the city are also references to the city. john k 13:18, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

That means jack to the point that my Bro Dave is trying to say. The fact that the 49ers are the San Francisco 49ers instead of the San Francisco, California 49ers doesn't jive with anything other then a sport's team markerting. I was digging that Dave was fishing for support for the City name thing instead of City & State. So what does markerting (like Boston Bake beans) have to do with what a Wikipedia article is called? They're jonesing for other priorities and thing that have nothing to do with an encyclopedia. The only things that seem to matter to *this deal* is context that refer to situations where there is equal reason to choose to call THE CITY either it's name all alone or with the State tagging along. There is no equal reason to what goes on a sport's team jersey or a can of baked beans so the G-hits on stuff like that doesn't support Davey's point. Now if he wants to read through all those milly of g-hits and see what actually refers to the City context then that's one thing. But wavy pointless G-hits like a panty raid trophy is kinda dumb and only shows a lack of understanding in how to use Google. - Pete

You are saying that the title should contain the context of the subject of the article not just the name of the subject. Note that the comma convention is not as dominant in other parts of the world. One would have to be already familiar with the convention and the U.S. states to gain the benefit you imply. For example, "Hartford, Connecticut" is not necessarily meaningful to someone not already familiar with the US naming convention and the state of Connecticut. "Hartford (city in the U.S. state of Connecticut)" would have to be the title in order for your context benefit to apply. --Polaron | Talk 18:49, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Incorrect. If I was saying that the title should contain the context then I would be saying an article should be titled Seattle (City) since the context of that article is that it is about a City versus the article about the Indian Chief. Rather, I'm arguing that it is an accurate and precise description of the location at the coordinates 47.61° -122.33° is Seattle, Washington. It's consistent and leaves no room for ambiguity, allowing the reader who comes across this page to know EXACTLY whether or not they are at the right page.Agne 18:53, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

How does one know it is a city without already knowing the US city naming convention? Could it be a county, a metro area, an airport, some other object in Washington, a neighborhood in a city called Washington, some object called "Seattle, Washington"? There is no substantial benefit from the comma convention when the name of the object is unique or the primary topic. And that is all what the proposal is. It is not seeking to abolish the convention for the vast majority of city articles. --Polaron | Talk 19:00, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

• Not Yet/Oppose I like this proposal less than the one that involved the AP cities. I don't see any benefit to making the default just "city name". If the convention is going to move away from City, State, in my opinion the exceptions need to be clearly defined and limited. The proposal as it's currently written makes the cases where just the city name is used subjective. Where is the line for "unquestionably?" Is the name unique, because it's truly unique or no one realized that there was a town in Montana with 52 people that also had the same name? -- The Bethling^(Talk) 02:43, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

  The default is still "city, state". It just allows "city" as the title if it can be shown that the name is either unique or is the primary topic of the term. It's still up to the move requesters to justify moves. Would you rather have a set list of cities? We could probably include that as well since a few other people have indicated so. --Polaron | Talk 02:48, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose (as written). I admit I'm taking the proposer's previous proposals into account, but I believe he would request amendments to the point that we wouldn't know whether a move should be done. Neutral/not yet on tariq's proposal. (And there is a significant difference between them). — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 05:38, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

  What would you like to see changed in the proposal for it to become acceptable? Do you want to specify a set of cities that will definitely be moved (as in tariq's proposal)? --Polaron | Talk 05:43, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

  tariq's proposal is enough of a compromise between what I think would be good for the encyclopedia (which is essentially, the current status) and the other proposals here. The list of cities is not important to me, but tariq's intial paragraph seems significantly different to me than Serge's.

  tariq: However, if a major city has a unique name or is unquestionably the most significant subject sharing its name, such as Chicago and Philadelphia, it can reside at a disambiguated location, without the state.

  Serge: Cities which either have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name, can have undisambiguated titles (e.g., New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago).

  There are other differences, but I don't think I would accept anything much different than tariq's proposal. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 06:13, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

  Also, the sentence about disambiguation in the current proposal would have to go. The "default" should be [[City, State]], and there should be justification required for the move in the unqualified name. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 06:17, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

• This is long and confusing. Is the question regarding how US cities will appear in the text of articles or how articles and categories on US cities be named or both? And is there an 'international standard' or should there be, and not special standards for individual countries? Thanks Hmains 00:23, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
• Not Yet is my vote only because Tariq's proposal is not open (which I would support were it open). If Serge's proposal is changed to conform with Tariq's proposal, then I would change my vote. However, there are many votes cast on the current proposal, and we might see confusion if Serge's proposal were to change. I'll watch the page and try to keep up, but there's a lot going on here. I think it's better to keep one proposal at a time. (And while I've supported the comma convention until this point, we must stop these repeated discussions across who knows how many pages.) --ishu 04:52, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Discussion -2

This appears to be the exact same proposal that didn't get consensus in August, Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)/U.S. convention change (August 2006)#Not to be Mr.-Let's-Do-a-Straw-Poll. -Will Beback 17:33, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually that version got 9 votes of support (including 2nd choices) and only 3 opposing. Plus, it was only an informal straw poll. --Serge 18:13, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

At the risk of sounding conceited...

• The active proposal, if any, is Tariq's. The refactoring has obscured discussion. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 20:28, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
• I agree that there's a ridiculous number of proposals at the moment, and that Tariq's is probably the best at the moment. john k 00:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
• As it stands, I still don't think any of the proposals are adequate. Tariq's seems the best, except that we ... — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 22:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
• Unlike the "Modest Proposal", this one does not even define which cities are "unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name" ... -Will Beback 17:38, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• Note that my proposal included the list of cites in the Modest Proposal.

My point essentially is, I'm not sure why Serge decided to close all the other discussions – the original one by john k and mine which at least a couple people thought was good – in favor of his own, which essentially is a carbon copy of the August proposal. Again, I don't mean to sound conceited, but I feel we should have stayed with my proposal (which is in some ways a merge of john k's proposal and the Serge / August proposal). Alternatively, we could look at both john's proposal and the Serge / August proposal and discuss them simulataneously. The two operate independently of each other and so one could be approved while the other is rejected. -- tariqabjotu 20:14, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• I opened my formal proposal in response to John's own wondering in writing about whether it was time to open a formal proposal apparently indicating his informal "modest proposal" had accomplished what he intended. My formal proposal, which began as a merger of the U.S. and Canada guidelines, was designed to be evolutionary to reach a consensus. That's why I had "Support" and "Not Yet" sections. You opened your proposal while that proposal was still active, then people complained about too many open proposals. I agree it would have been ideal for more neutral parties to close the proposals, but no one was doing it. Also, the other "proposals" were all informal, including yours, where you were simply seeking comment. I'm just trying to bring focus to one formal proposal, which I explained above in the Oppose section under Will's vote includes major compromises with respect to my position so we can make some progress here. I encourage you to vote "not yet" if that's how you feel and specify what changes, ideally and at a minimum, you would require to support this or any proposal. Thanks. --Serge 20:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Serge, my comment was on, er, whether we should have a formal vote on my proposal. I certainly wasn't suggesting that we have a formal vote on an entirely different proposal. I don't mind, per se, discussing other proposals, and mine, I think, clearly didn't receive consensus, but it's deeply confusing to start up another proposal in the middle of an ongoing one, especially if said proposal is identical to a failed proposal of a couple of months ago. john k 21:15, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I started up a formal proposal to make a change as your informal proposal was, by your own words, winding down. Why propose something formal that was not achieving consensus even informally? Based on what others were saying, I thought a merger of the U.S. and Canada guidelines should be formally proposed, so I did. I also did it in the "evolutionary" format which I hoped would help us move towards consensus. Indeed, it was made abundantly obvious that the merger idea was a flop, but retaining the Canadian words seemed acceptable; so I modified the proposal accordingly. This was met immediately with votes of support... signs that we're moving in the right direction. During that process, Tariq made yet another informal proposal (asking for comments not votes of support), and mostly based on yours which was not achieving consensus, that really confused things. Finally, the current proposal is not based on a failed proposal! It was an informal straw poll, not formal, but with 9 support and only 3 opposing, that's hardly a "failed proposal"! --Serge 21:26, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• Also, many people, including Tariq, complained about things being too confusing. Please understand I'm just trying to respond to the various complaints. Forgive me if I have not managed to address everyone's complaints. Any "solution" is inevitably another person's new problem. The best we can do is minimize the inevitable problems - that's what I'm trying to do. --Serge 20:43, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd prefer to vote on Tariq's proposal, which I think has a considerably better chance of passing. But I imagine Serge doesn't like it because it excludes smaller cities...I seem to recall something similar happening the last time we discussed changing the convention. john k 20:35, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• If you register a "not yet" vote and specify the sentence from Tariq's proposal - or whatever would do it - that would allow you to support this or any proposal, that would help us make some progress here. Thanks. --Serge 20:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm not registering a "not yet" vote, because I think your proposal is perfectly adequate as is. I think it would be more likely to pass, however, if, as in Tariq's proposal, small cities were actively excluded. I also liked that Tariq's proposal specifically mentioned the 27 unambiguous AP cities as being candidates for immediate moving as a result of the vote on the new convention. john k 18:22, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Serge, perhaps it's time you update the proposal based on some of the comments by the not yet and/or oppose commenters. Simply responding to and refuting these comments is okay, but I feel it would be better if you tried to address some of the points that have been brought up by multiple editors. -- tariqabjotu 23:35, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Let's give folks a week or so to register their comments, then see where we are. I'm sensitive to the possibity of making even a relatively small change, and having to face arguments that all of the voting has to restart. If we do that, and require everyone to refresh their votes, I'd like to have a version that meets the requirements of a consensus. By the way, if it gets to that, I would appreciate help notifying all those who had voted before to be notified that they had to vote again. --Serge 15:31, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

It's probably a good time to make some changes here; there's no need to wait much longer. Oppose comments are starting to flurry in, and many of them cite issues that were brought up long ago. There is no reason to continue to refrain from updating the proposal (and starting from scratch). -- tariqabjotu 02:39, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

It should be noted that the pipe trick now works on commas - in other words, [[Buffalo, NY|]] becomes Buffalo. I have no opinion on this naming convention, since I will continue to link with the state abbreviation either way. --NE2 23:55, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Whoa, the pipe trick works with commas?! That's terrific! john k 19:52, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Compromising your ideal?

For the record, is this proposal a compromise from what you believe would be the ideal U.S. city guideline? If so, how? --Serge 23:38, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

• Proposing and supporting this change is a big compromise for someone like me, whose ideal U.S. city guideline would be something like:

Like with virtually all Wikipedia articles, use the most common name of the article's subject (i.e., city alone) unless the name is not unique or is not unquestionably the primary use of that name. When disambiguation is required, specify the name of the city's state in parentheses (e.g., Portland (Maine)), or the name of the county and state when necessary (e.g., Elgin (Lancaster County, South Carolina) and Elgin (Kershaw County, South Carolina)).

--Serge 23:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Why would you possibly want to do that, when that is completely inconsistant with what any American would expect to see? Is this simply an attempt at making sure that Americans can't find these articles, so that they can then eventually be deleted? User:Zoe|(talk) 19:17, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with Serge's proposed standard, too, but this is just ridiculous. Where on earth are you getting that from? john k 00:47, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I think she means that any American would expect to find Portland, Maine at that location [or possibly Portland ME, but we shouldn't do that]. If so, I agree. Septentrionalis 03:37, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand the objection. Per the guidelines that I ultimately favor (as opposed to the Canadianish ones I proposed), all cities would be found either at Cityname, or would be listed on a disambiguation page titled with Cityname. So to find Portland, you would type in Portland, which would take you to a dab page titled Portland, on which you could click on Portland (Maine) (or Portland (Oregon), or whatever), which would take you to the article entitled Portland (Maine). Also, if you did type Portland, Maine, that would redirect you to Portland (Maine). How would this contribute to users being unable to find articles? This a red herring objection, since finding articles is not an issue among these various conventions, thanks to redirects. --Serge 04:19, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Curious Observation in the support votes in the above

In the formal/informal/discussion/poll/thingie above above, all the support votes seem to be for "philosophical" and "editorial" reasons and not practical reasons based on how it would benefit the article. There has been no demonstration that

1. That there is some harm that is being done to US city articles with the current City, State title
2. OR conversely there is substantial benefit to the article with the CITYNAME only title

What benefit is being offer that exist on a practical level? Philosophies and editorial judgement changes with the passing editor base but real, practical applications are constant. The only practical concern that was brought up is that it take longer to type the full name but the practical application of redirect solves that concern. Agne 18:12, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The good is having simpler, shorter titles that are easier to find, and that make US city articles look like articles on cities elsewhere in the world. It is avoiding ugly, unnecessary titles like Los Angeles, California. The main point is the same basic issue of consistency that you are using to argue in the opposite direction. Your whole purpose with all this business seems to be to claim that the arguments of those of us who disagree with you aren't valid

How is it easier to find? If you want to find Seattle, Washington you can still type Seattle into the search engine and find the same page. Second, considering the US naming convention covers more articles then the other countries convention, what influence should these "smaller scope" conventions have? In terms of scope, they are actually the "exception". The merit of the US convention (and the thousand of articles it covers) should be evaluated on it's own and maybe it will have an influence on the "small countries scope". My claim is there is a philosophical and editorial disagreement with the City, State convention (which is good and fine to have) but that there are no practical reasons to shelve it. There is no "harm" to the articles with the current City, State convention and there is no "benefit" to a CITYNAME only convention--it only "looks" better to it's proponent. If we are going to expell all this effort with page moves and discussion and debate then there should at least be a tangible benefit that enhances the reader's experience with Wikipedia. So what is in it for the reader? Agne 18:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

It would have the benefit that US cities with international recognition would be titled in the same way as other similar cities in the rest of the world. With regards to "harm", there is also no harm to naming the an article George Walker Bush. So why is it at George W. Bush? --Polaron | Talk 18:54, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Agne, the fact that you don't agree with me doesn't mean that I haven't provided you with reasons why I support this position. All it means is that you don't agree with my reasons. What "benefit" is there to any page name over another? My purpose is that articles that meet the definition of a "primary topic" should have their article there, as Wikipedia:Disambiguation suggests. What is the practical benefit to have the article where they are now? This whole line of questioning is simply question begging. john k 19:04, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

You are correct, there is no significant practical benefit of the proposed guideline over the current guideline, nor is there a significant practical benefit of the current guideline over the proposed guideline. --Serge 04:01, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, the US convention avoids renaming issues like the current one being discussed for Cork. Vegaswikian 04:07, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Each move request would have to be evaluated on its merits as to whether the name is unique or is the primary topic. If the proponents of a move cannot convince others that it is a primary topic, then the default would be the "city,state" style. But at least, the debate now will be on the merits. --Polaron | Talk 04:12, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

No it doesn't. With the US convention in place, what do you think the page Buffalo is? It cannot be the city in New York, but it also cannot be the animal. It's a disambiguation page. Without the US convention in place, guess what, Buffalo will continue to be a disambiguation page.--DaveOinSF 05:11, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

And what about Miami? It's a redirect to Miami, Florida, despite the fact that there is an indigenous North American tribe, several schools and a language all also named Miami. Even today, with the convention in place, a city must demonstrate that its use of a name is more prominent than any other use of the name, and if it is, that name redirects to the city article at City, State. Otherwise, the best it can hope for is that the article City redirects to a disambiguation page.--DaveOinSF 05:19, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Miami should redirect to Miami (disambiguation). ^BlankVerse 12:35, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I tend to agree; {{sofixit}}. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 13:01, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

The city is a primary topic. There's tons of things called Rome, too, and tons of things called London, and tons of things called Paris, and so on and so forth ad infinitum. In particular, the idea that a university named for the city (that is, the University of Miami, not Miami University, which competes, but is clearly beaten out by the city in Florida for primary topic status) can somehow compete for primary topic status with the city itself is absurd. What about the University of Paris, the University of Heidelberg, the University of Bologna, the University of Padua? john k 13:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, wait, there is a perfectly easy practical benefit to this, which is that we can link directly to [[Boston]] rather than [[Boston, Massachusetts|Boston]]. This seems like at least as much of a practical benefit as any practical benefit of the current "consistency." john k 00:57, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Boston is already a redirect for Boston, Massachusetts. So from an editting standpoint, your practical benefit is already in place. What's the practical benefit of the article being named Boston over it being named Boston, Massachusetts? This holds true for most cities that are commonly known outside the US. --Bobblehead 01:54, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Linking directly is always preferred, even if not mandatory. The little "redirected from" line at the top is ugly. john k 23:41, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

That is a subjective "style" editorial view. Other editors do not view that as ugly and in fact it has the real practical benefit of confirming for the reader that the page that they have arrived at is the page the wanted. Agne 20:05, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

The present system makes it easier to link directly. If changed, we will have to guess (or preview and click) to be sure whether Matawan is the direct link, or whether it's been disambiguated to Matawan, New Jersey. (which is partly remembering how Mattawan, Michigan and Matteawan, New York are spelled; do I have them right?) Septentrionalis 00:47, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, one can always use the redirect if one isn't sure, with no extra time over the current status quo. john k 11:55, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

• There's no need for scare quotes around "editorial" when discussing the decisions of editors. (nor around "philosophical" when discussing how the presentation of knowledge might benefit from those decisions.) --Dystopos 16:46, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Um...Dystopos, there are other uses of quotes mark in the world outside of being considered "scare quotes"--like when you are using words that cover a broad spectrum of applications but don't want to give the impression that you are narrowly defining them.Agne 04:12, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

• Agne, what do you see as being the practical benefit of the current convention? Because I don't see one. Bearcat 02:23, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Sure. The long explanation is here. The short and sweet is 1.) Consistency (EVERY US city and state can be consistantly follow the City, State convention.) 2.) Stability (Assuming we strengthen the language in the naming convention and remove the exception loophole. Nothing is guarantee 100% stable in a wiki but the City, State convention has the highest potential offering of stability then any other convention.) 3.) History (There is a reason why we are called the United States) and 4.) Precision (No worry about readers wondering what the heck an Assawoman is and also no need for debating how "well known" or "ambiguous" something is). Agne 04:12, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

(1) What about consistency with the conventions in place for the rest of the world? That's a more important consideration than internal consistency on a convention that's the opposite of everywhere else. (2) People already quite regularly link to undisambiguated city-only titles, even where the city-only titles are disambiguation pages or communities elsewhere in the world. This takes a lot of work to clean up, if it gets cleaned up at all...which it often doesn't. So stability isn't especially well-served by things as they stand now. (3) What, exactly, does this have to do with the question of what an article title should be? (4) Where, exactly, does the proposed convention suggest or even imply that Assawoman would have to be moved? It's a ridiculous example to cite against a policy proposal that exists primarily to serve major, internationally-famous cities like New York City, Boston or Chicago. Have you ever heard of the straw man fallacy? Bearcat 16:01, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

1.) The US convention is presumeably the largest (in terms of articles affected) naming convention. What makes these other smaller country conventions "correct"? Furthermore, the US has the state element because of how intimately connected states are in US history and to city, identity. That is an element that is not present in other countries. Additionally, the consistency mentioned is internal consistency within the convention. (Something the Canadian convention is lacking) Every US city can be consistent and be titled at City, State. 2.) Changing redirects and top billing on a disambig page are not the same as page move requests, which are certainly more serious to a degree. When editors start disagreeing over how "well known" something is or what should be the primary topic (Like Cork in the Irish naming convention which is an EXCELLENT example) you get instability. The Irish are following Serge's ideal convention and this shows perfect well there is no hope for stability with it as long as subjective standards of "well known" and "primary topic" are used. Show us how the "Cityname" only standard can avoid things like the instability of Cork and you maybe onto something. 3.) Simply, the faulty "common names" argument assumes that calling location City, State is uncommon which is simply not the case. In the US we have a strong identity to the individual states and are in fact a federation of States. There is even more intimate of a connection between a City and its state then to the greater country as a whole. The City, State convention acknowledged this facet of both history and identity which is why it is QUITE proper to have US cities titled at City, State. 4.) As John notes below, this is a very real aspect of Serge's proposal.Agne 20:05, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

That is why any proposed moves have to be justified. If it has a potential naming issue with another significant topic, then we use the default "city,state". Also note the countries that have states as subdivisions (India, Germany, Australia) typically have major cities without the state name. --Polaron | Talk 21:31, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

The situation with states and cities in India and Germany is quite different from that in the U.S.. For one thing the borders have been redrawn repeatedly over the last hundred years, so there is not the same stability as political entities as the states of the U.S. Even more important, they do no have anywhere near the level of duplication of city names that happens across the U.S. -Will Beback 22:13, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

And the Germans have a different standard, widely accepted, means of dealing with their duplicate names, which we should also follow in general; as exemplified by Frankfurt am Main vs Frankfurt an der Oder. (There are complications which this particular example, I know; but it's the most well known. I agree that Frankfurt am Main should, exceptionally, be at Frankfurt.) Septentrionalis 23:34, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

A similar system has been used in the U.K., for example, Newcastle-on-Clun, Newcastle-under-Lyme, and Newcastle upon Tyne. -Will Beback 00:14, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes but all these places (even the UK where the main subdivisions are historically more independent than US states) have their major cities without the higher level subdivision. --Polaron | Talk 00:34, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

• Polaron misses the point here: In Germany they disambiguate by rivers; in the United States, they disambiguate by states. In both cases, we should follow suit (as far as English does).

Huh? I said in other countries that have states as subdivisions, their major cities do not have any disambiguator. Then you say, "but in these countries, they disambiguate by <whatever>". Then I reply, but even then, their major cities are still undisambiguated. Then you day, "Polaron misses the point". I am not the one misisng the point. You are saying that most cities in other parts of the world are disambiguated by some means. I am not disputing that. Most cities do need disambiguation. All I'm saying is, virtually all countries have their major cities using the city name alone. If I am missing your point, what is your point? --Polaron | Talk 03:23, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

• Historically more independent than US States? Depends on which higher division you're thinking of. Scotland? Probably, but it depends. Wales? Usually not. Cheshire or Banff, which are what is used for disambiguation? Never. Septentrionalis 03:12, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

The Assawoman straw man is why I wish we could be voting on Tariq's proposal, as it prevents people from making silly arguments like that. Of course Serge won't let us vote on any proposal that sets an arbitrary size limit on which cities don't have to be at City, State, so Agne will be able to keep making these silly arguments, and we'll never change the damned convention. john k 17:01, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

There is merit to Tariq's proposal that is certainly absent in Serge's. With Serge (and the current "exceptions loophole") the possibilities of Assawoman type articles are quite real since they are undoubtly unambiguious and the "primary topic" of the name. There was also merit to your "tongue in cheek" proposal that included the "We never talk about this again" part because as Polaron has alluded to underneath nearly every Oppose/Not Yet votes that with Serge's proposal can we expect to see more of the same page move request from City to City as we try to iron out what is ambiguious and what is the primary topic, etc. Agne 20:05, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I also said that if people want a specific small list of cities, then we should alter the proposal should accomodate that. In practice, I don't think anyone would propose moving minor cities even with the current wording as it has virtually no chance of succeeding. Would you be willing to compromise on the naming style if we explicitly list which cities can be moved? --Polaron | Talk 21:31, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Size is not a good metric for using only the city name. As pointed out above, for some cities, the city name may best be a redirect to something other then then city. The problem with discussing individual cases is that emotions usually enter the discussion and as a result the decision may not be rational. That leads to bad decisions and more votes/polls. Having clear criteria that is objective and common across the entire encylopedia is important. I'm starting to believe that the best solution for all city articles is to name the article 'name, higher level of government' and link it as '[[name, higher level of government|]]'. Then limit the exceptions to capitals. This allows short entiries in the articles as they are read anda fuller definition of where the place is for those that are not sure. Vegaswikian 23:31, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Everyone keeps saying something like this, and nobody is actually willing to propose it formally. I say let's do it. Put your money where your mouth is, and write a proposal that all cities need to be pre-disambiguated by "higher level of government". Figure out criteria for how we determine which "higher level of government" to use. We clear out all the junk here, and hold a clear vote on the thing. And when you guys lose that vote overwhelmingly, can we then discuss the actual feasible way to have US conventions be in line with the rest of the world? john k 01:04, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm game to have a go at drafting something later today or on the weekend, but it might become the third poll on this page again (Serge's above still, and Tariq's new one below). --Scott Davis ^Talk 06:07, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Please start the poll at a subpage, say Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)/your name for the poll. That way it will be a shorter page and might be easier to follow discussions. Vegaswikian 06:20, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

The discussion is at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)/comma for all cities. --Scott Davis ^Talk 10:24, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Also, nobody is saying that size alone is a good metric for using only the city name. We are saying size+non-ambiguity/primary topic status. john k 01:06, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Which is very difficult to definitively state without listing the actual cities in the guideline itself. By the way, what harm is there in having Assawoman at Assawoman? Because you can't tell it's a city from just the name. So what? Since when is being able to recognize the kind of thing an article subject is from the article title a Wikipedia requirement or even desire? --Serge 01:24, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

But if you link it as Assawoman then you can get the information by moving the cursor over the link. Vegaswikian 01:33, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Which you can do regardless of how the article is titled (because you can link to the redirect). For example: Philadelphia. --Serge 04:21, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, your point is? That's the example I just used. If the article in your example is at Philadelphia, how many would actually link it as Philadelphia? The only case I would do that was if I was linking it as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 05:57, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Time to close?

By my count, Serge's proposal is at 8/20/4. This is not consensus. This is never likely to be consensus. Let's close this, and move on to something else. Septentrionalis 03:22, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

First, I get 14 support and 14 oppose, not including any votes in the not yet section. Not sure how you got 8/20/4. What's the 8? What's the 20? What's the 4? But I that's a very a small total number of votes. By the way, the discussion continues. --Serge 06:28, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I see that another proposal has opened. That's fine. I'm okay with closing this one. Canadians proves they're smarter than Americans once again. --Serge 06:38, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I expect the 8 was a miscounted 14 support - the autonumbering had a glitch in the middle and reset partway down (now fixed). The 20 Would be the 14 votes in the "Oppose" section plus 6 "Oppose" votes in the "Not yet" section. 4 Is the remaining 4 "Not yet" votes. So it's not quite as one-sided, but still a long way from consensus to change. --Scott Davis ^Talk 09:41, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Quick Question

In looking at all the different naming conventions on the English Encyclopedia, is the US one the "largest" in terms of the number of articles it affects? I don't know if there is a way to prove that but at first assumption it seems like it would be but I don't know for sure in contrast to the number of articles on Indian cities or Canadian cities, etc. Agne 05:56, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Most likely, since every city, town, township, borough, village, and census-designated place in the US has an article. I don't see as it terribly matters. The default form will remain City, State, and each article will have to have an RM to be moved (unless we agree as we change the rule to also move the 27 AP cities, as Tariq has suggested, and as makes sense to me). All articles will be officially fine at City, State under the proposed change. Anyone who wants a page moved will have to request it. john k 11:33, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

India

I removed the India section. Was only inserted by one User. [1] Tobias Conradi (Talk) 18:13, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

( the next two posts by Ganeshk are from user_talk:Tobias Conradi - Tobias Conradi (Talk) 18:59, 28 October 2006 (UTC))

I have reverted your removal of content from that page. I think a discussion is needed here. Nichalp is on wikibreak. He would be back middle of Novemeber. We can have a discussion when he returns. -- Ganeshk (talk) 18:41, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The content could be removed/kept based on the result on our discussion at Talk:Hyderabad, India. Thanks, Ganeshk (talk) 18:44, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I see you have reverted me. I will stick to 1RR. :) -- Ganeshk (talk) 19:03, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

All the same... I'd like to keep that section till the poll closes. Reverting back. --hydkat 13:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I'm only requesting the relevant section be kept till the poll closes --hydkat 13:43, 29 October 2006 (UTC)