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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 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 ; 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 Misplaced Pages, 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 Misplaced Pages'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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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. 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 ]. 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 Misplaced Pages: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 ] 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 Misplaced Pages); 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages naming convention followed by the vast majority of Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages: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 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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.wikipedia.org" 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages. 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 Misplaced Pages. 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages articles follow, makes Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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:NC(P) 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 Misplaced Pages, 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages is not just an encyclopedia of locations. If we were, then the AP Dateline guideline would be golden. But on Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages'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 Misplaced Pages:Disambiguation#Primary topic. Could everybody please review Misplaced Pages: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 Misplaced Pages: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 Misplaced Pages: 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 Misplaced Pages: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 Misplaced Pages. 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages. 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 Misplaced Pages 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 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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages among US cities at the moment not adequate? Being unique in Misplaced Pages is adequate for all other articles in Misplaced Pages, 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 Misplaced Pages. The advantage of Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages is not always adequate. I've written disambiguation pages in which only one of the entries has a Misplaced Pages entry, and the disambiguation page is given the primary position, because a number of the articles should be in Misplaced Pages.
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 Misplaced Pages'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 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 Misplaced Pages 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 ] (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 Misplaced Pages: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 ] (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 ] (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 Misplaced Pages: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.