Wikipedia talk:Geographical names naming policy (proposed)

Message posted to wikien-l

In the wake of the recent naming policy poll, which was sparked by the debate on Talk:Kiev as well as the poll on the New York City talk page, it cannot be denied that a firm policy needs to be adopted regarding the naming of articles about places.

The current policy at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names) is neither supported by consensus nor complete enough to handle the variety of problems with these articles' names.

I have drafted a proposed policy on the naming of articles about geographical places. I expect that there are some aspects of it which will be controversial, and some aspects which will be changed, but I have tried to justify the particulars of the policy. It is formulated as a set of principles and rejected principles.

It includes a proposed policy for dealing with disputes about article names, which would work for any kind of article, not just articles about places.

I propose a 4-week discussion and revision period followed by a two week binding voting period with a 70% majority rule. There will be separate votes for each section: "Multiple names", "Ambiguous names", and "Exceptions and naming polls". There will also be a separate vote about whether the naming polls policy shall apply to all articles or just to geographical place articles if it is adopted.

Unless there is strong objection to this voting proposal, the voting period will begin at midnight UTC June 11 and end at midnight UTC June 25.

For discussions about the details of the policy, please discuss on the relevant talk page. You can voice your objections to the voting proposal either here on the list or on the wiki.

I strongly urge that we have congenial discussion and make compromises in the proposed policy so that the vote will succeed, because I believe having a firm policy on naming will go a long way towards reducing the amount of energy expended on naming debates.

Nohat 02:24, 2004 May 11 (UTC)

Hey Nohat. I have some quibbles with the idea that we should start off by disambiguating by largest unit. I don't think there's anything wrong with specific policies for specific countries. I'll give more detailed objections at a later time. john 19:34, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, I have more than a few quibbles, but this is a start. In particular, I strongly object to any policy which uses the Google Test as the primary and binding method of discrimination. older≠wiser 19:57, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, I tend to think that in most of the actual discussed cases, the Google test will be inapplicable. I don't think that having a poll in every such case is a good way of settling. I think there are various problems with the proposal, and I think that, between various proposals, it's highly unlikely to result in a consensus. I'd also suggest that the question of disambiguation of city names is really not all that related to the question of translation of names, or whatever, and that it's not necessarily productive to combine the two questions. But I don't know... john 20:15, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

I think I largely agree--although these things came to the fore in various forms in the NYC discussion: 1) does the de facto (if not entirely consensual) policy of preemptive disambiguation for US cities take precedence over using the most Common Name and (this is where the Google Test comes in) 2) if the Common Name is preferred, then just how do we definitively establish what that is? I mean, the policy of "Use Common Names" is not much help if there isn't a solid (and consens-based) method for establishing what is the most common name used in the world-wide english-speaking community. Otherwise we are only left with periodic popularity polls (or perhaps that is the best method for the time being). With NYC, the question of what is the most common name was less of an issue, but as you saw, there were many advocates for NY,NY. On a different note, I'm also not terribly fond of the possibility of revisiting contentious votes every six months. I'd much rather see some clear statement of policy which can be used to settle these without the rancor and disruption of periodic votes. older≠wiser 20:58, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

For the most part, the procedure for choosing geographical names makes sense -- as a set of guidelines. I'm averse to calling someting "policy" when there's a procedure for making exceptions to it, though. We seem to be going on a policy binge lately, and I don't know that it's very helpful. It seems to often just be a tool by which users who are legalists can bludgeon other users who aren't so legalistic without attempting to engage in a cordial discussion first. I'd rather just have guidelines and let people hash things out through thoughtful deliberation, rather than uncritically pointing at rules.

I don't think it really matters what we call it as long as people follow it. Also, whether we call it a guideline or a policy or even WikiLaw, people will still argue about its legitimacy. Nohat 15:54, 2004 May 12 (UTC)

On a related question, I'm a bit flummoxed by rule no. 4 on the poll procedures: "Votes from users who have not made any edits in the 6 months previous to the re-opening of the poll should be removed. This means if a poll is re-opened immediately after the 6 month waiting period is over, then no votes can be removed." Can someone elucidate this for me? -- Seth Ilys 12:52, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

I admit it's a little confusing and needs revision. The main idea is that if you vote for a naming poll once, that vote should stay no matter how many times the poll is re-opened, unless you change or remove it yourself. However, it seemed that people might protest that the votes of users who have left Wikipedia shouldn't count. So I added this clause that says that you can remove votes from a naming poll if the user hasn't made any edits in the previous six months before the poll was opened.

The idea was that if a poll is re-opened immediately after it becomes eligible, then no votes could be removed, but I realize now this dosn't make sense because a poll can only be opened 6 months after the poll has closed, so if any vote in the previous incarnation of the poll was a user's last vote, then it would have occurred more than 6 months in the past, and would therefore be eligible for removal. Maybe it should be changed to be a one-year timeout for missing users. This particular detail is not really important: the point is that, in general, votes in a poll persist, and can only be removed by the voter, or if the voter has left, by someone else, but only if the voter has been gone for a while. Nohat 15:54, 2004 May 12 (UTC)

Conventions are not policy, they are conventions. The only policy we have in regards to conventions is to follow them. Also the comma convention is pretty much a North American thing - few other nations outside the U.S. and Canada use it as often. Cities outside of the U.S. should either:

• Follow a convention already in wide use and used by English speakers for disambiguating cities in that nation (adding the river name is often done in Europe for disambiguation - other places put the state/province/county in parenthesis when needed)
• Follow regular rules of disambiguation and thus use parenthesis - DO NOT use commas where they are not already in common use!

Preemptively disambiguating U.S. city names is not about providing context, it is about making a set of articles in the same subject area conform to a standard already in wide use outside of the project. Since U.S. city names are rarely unique, Americans have dealt with this issue by devising a way to name cities. This is so ingrained that the state name in the [City, State] format is almost treated like the last name of the city - even for every major city I can think of except maybe New York (where it does sound a bit odd). Having all U.S. cities in the same format (with the possible exception of the City of New York since New York, New York may not really be correct) prevents any controversy over the name and this format is very widely used preemptively outside of Wikipedia already. So when 99% of a set of things are named in one format, the others come along for the ride (just like ship names). Nobody will get lost due to redirects and disambiguation pages.

The only real issue I see, is that redirected pages have looked rather ugly in MediaWiki ever since Phase III came online (it gives me the feeling that I made some type of error). Phase II had the 'redirected from' message further up on the page. But that is a technical issue that can be fixed. I will bug the developers about this. --mav 06:55, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

Mav, the current naming convention doesn't seem to be doing a very good job of preventing controversy, does it? What with all the controversy. So that's not a very good reason. Also, I think you're greatly exaggerating the extent to which the city, state format is used. Certainly it is sometimes used. But the idea that this is the standard way of referring to major cities is, I think, unsustainable. Basically, I don't see why articles on the most important cities in the US should look completely different from articles on world cities everywhere else (except for Canada and, even more bizarrely, Japan). Especially when this is utterly needless, since most of those cities have the city name article already redirecting to the city, state article. At any rate, in what other context do we "pre-emptively disambiguate"? john 07:15, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

The controversy you are talking about comes from people who want to overturn the convention. The controversy I'm talking about would be the thousands of individual decisions that would have to be made and debated if the convention did not exist. The [City, State] convention provides a way to name all cities in the U.S. without need to debate just what each city should be named and which ones are "important enough" to be at the [City] (or whatever) format. It gives one answer to the naming question instead of many thousands of individual ones - each needing to be decided separately. 'Very often by out-of-staters' when the state has not already been established as the context would be a better way to characterize the usage of the [City, State] format within the U.S. Having the redirect go to a standardized title (when those standards are in very wide use) hurts no one. See: aircraft (the maker gets appended to the start of the name for almost all modern aircraft), Ships (U.S. Navy ships all get their hull numbers in their titles). -- mav

I like the proposed policy, particularly because it lists common name, the name most commonly used, as the first principle. One of the examples listed, though, Los Angeles, is not currently listed at the most commonly used name, but at a ridiculious name based on current 'policy', which endorses using strange, uncommon names by pre-emptively disambiguating US cities. The biggest improvement the new policy could make would be to list pre-emptive disambiguation of US cities as a rejected policy because that's not what people do, not how people talk, not how people write, not what Wikipedia does with cites eleswhere. And, besides that, it's just plain silly. Pre-emptive disambiguation of US cities is the biggest problem with the current policy. Los Angeles does not need disambiguation any more then Kiev does. Nobody says Los Angeles, California. If L.A. is going to be listed like that, then Paris should be at Paris, France, London at London, England, etc. Common usage: Los Angeles, New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, etc. and no amount of rationalization is going to change that, nor make Los Angeles, California look any sillier, nor make titles of the articles on major US cities any less inconsistent with the title of the article on Kiev, for example. Bluelion 08:31, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

I agree, Bluelion. Mav, has there ever been any serious dispute about the names of cities in other parts of the world? I'd also note that I don't think pre-emptively disambiguating small US towns is a bad idea. But for large, basically unambiguous places, it seems worthless. john 16:03, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

I for one do not see how anyone can think that Los Angeles, California is a silly title. Also, there is a factor that needs to be brought up. The nearer you are to a place, the less likely it is that you will use a disambiguating qualifier for it. I say "Vienna" and mean "Vienna, Virginia" quite often, because in the Washington metro area, I have more reason to talk about Vienna, Va. than Vienna, Austria. When I say "Baltimore" I don't mean "Baltimore, Ohio" because Baltimore, Md. is relatively close by. A former roommate of mine who came from the Columbus, Ohio area and whose grandmother lived in Baltimore, Ohio, however, often did mean "Baltimore, Ohio" by "Baltimore." This is, I am certain, why Europeans may not understand Americans' saying "Paris, France." My own proposal (except for the fact that it would never be acceptable to most other Wikipedians) would be for all cities to be at [City, State/Province] in the U. S., Canada, or Australia and [City, Country] elsewhere, except where an additional level of disambiguation is necessary, so that [City, County, State/Province] has to be done. -- BRG

I read at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names): "Convention: In general, there are no special naming conventions for cities..." But it's not true. There seems to be a very special convention that is being applied only to certain cities (those in the US and Canada) and not to other cities. The title Los Angeles, California is silly in light of the way other articles are named, which is by most common English language usage. I suspect that the policy of imposed disambiguation for US cities is as much a source of controversy as a means of avoiding it. If the Paris article were at Paris, France and the London article at London, England, that would at least be consistent for cities, even if not consistent with a more general policy of naming articles based on common usage. The problem is that the special convention for US cities is not consistent with the general convention for all of Wikipedia. It's not even consistent with the convention used for other cities. Bluelion 22:18, 13 May 2004 (UTC)