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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Tobias Conradi (talk | contribs) at 13:44, 9 December 2005 (moved Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (subnational entities by Golbez and WAS)) to Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (subnational entities 1)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Introduction

There exist or existed several different naming variants in wikipedia for subnational entities. Some variants might be used because it just happened, other might have more reasons. Some people disagree about how to name the articles. The variants are as follows:

1. X
2. X Province
3. X province
4. X (province)
5. X Province of Argentina
6. X Province, Argentina
7. X Province (Argentina)
8. X (Argentine province)
9. X (province of Argentina)
10. X (province, Argentina)
11. Province of X
12. X Muhafazah
13. X muhafazah
14. X (muhafazah)
15. X Muhafazah of Syria
16. X Muhafazah, Syria
17. X Muhafazah (Syria)
18. X (Syrian muhafazah)
19. X (muhafazah Syria)
20. X (muhafazah, Syria)
21. Muhafazah of X

Background reading & ressources

• Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Subnational entities/Naming - with current use at WP (as of july 2005)
• Matrix of subnational entities - overview about reach of this convention
• Category:Subnational entities & Category:Subdivisions by country

Discussions:

• Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Subnational entities/Naming
• Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (provinces)
• Country specific
  • Misplaced Pages talk:Argentina-related regional notice board
  • Talk:Provinces of Italy
  • Talk:Counties of Croatia

Usability

Ease for reader

• Least surprise

Ease for editor

• number of characters to be typed (Pipe trick)
• research time to find possible wrong linking

Correctness - Coordination - Features

Comment: I fail to see how "X kommun" translates to "X Municipality". Perhaps you meant "X municipality"? And just because the long form is Estado Miranda does not mean that the article needs to contain State. The long form for Nevada is State of Nevada, but we don't have Nevada State. "Miranda" is sufficient unless disambiguation is required. (It's obviously not sufficient here, but I don't think including "State" is the best option) --Golbez 20:33, July 31, 2005 (UTC)

Issues

Respect for local usage

One of the biggest problems facing us is the fact that many, many countries have no Misplaced Pages editors with the local knowledge necessary to explain how the various national systems work. Regional forums such as the Misplaced Pages:Caribbean Wikipedians' notice board offer an excellent focal point for discussing local issues, but not every country has a community notice board, and even some of those that exist are very sparsely populated.

Anglophone countries

Moving Lancashire to Lancashire County would earn us a well-deserved lynching. Lack of familiarity with the local context might lead a foreigner into errors of hypercorrection, such as the hypothetical case of a visitor to the United States speaking of "Texas State".

Non-anglophone countries

On the other hand, in many non-Anglophone countries, either no local English usage exists or it is heavily informed by the local non-English use. In any event, it may appear "obscure" or "counter-intuitive" to an outisde observer.

Local Venezuelan usage favors "Estado Mérida", "Estado Miranda", so the articles are located at Mérida State, Miranda State, etc. This is not the case for Mexico, because local (Spanish) usage is different, preferring (eg) "... en (el estado de) Tamaulipas". For Italy the provinces are located at eg Province of Ragusa might be so because of italian (provincia di Ragusa). Other countries eg Sweden use Ale Municipality (Ale kommun).

This can be regarded as Mexican-, Venezuelan-, Italo- or Swedish- influenced Local-English forms, as it is with County Durham and Irish-English. The "X State" in particular might be strange to some anglophon. Eg "Last year I went to Kansas State" (informal short form redirects to a university) vs. "Last year I went to Miranda State" which leads to an article of a subnational entity. This might be a surprise, depending on the readers knowledge. On the other hand this might rarely occur and all surprises cannot be exclude see River Phoenix. Last but not least this surprise may only occur with X State and not with X Municipality, X County, X Province, etc.

Simulated discussion

If discussion is about a specific set the arguments may be as follows (don't sign, but put your arguments in)

format

• X province vs X Province
  • pro X province
    • not part of the name, therefore lowercase
  • pro X Province
    • it's part of the name. it is New York City not new York city.
    • other geographic features use X River, X Mountains etc.
• X (province) vs X province
  • pro X (province)
    • it's not part of the name therefore it belongs to parenthesis dab
    • I like the pipe trick
  • pro X province
    • please provide examples where it is not part of the (offical) name
    • parenthesis are uggly
• X (province) vs X Province
  • pro X (province)
    • it's not part of the name therefore it belongs to parenthesis dab
  • pro X Province
    • please provide examples where it is not part of the (offical) name

translation

• municipality vs commune/comune
  • pro municipality
    • commune/comune only in French (commune), Spanish (comuna) and Italian (comune), don't give them different treating to other translations in the world
    • are there spanish countries that would have conflict with municipio and comuna both translated as municipality?
  • pro com(m)une
    • they are different. Italian comuni are different from other municipalities; Italian comune and French "commune" are not equivalent, etc.
    • spanish also has municipio, so commune would avoid conflicts
    • Romania has both in one country, so we need both: Municipality in Romania

Datamining

• How many conflicts may occur? startet: Matrix of subnational entities you can help
  • after having added county, district, to the article name?
  • How many subnational entities do exist of each type?
  • currently WP may miss lots of articles on lower levels such as districts and municipalities.
• What's the local use?
• Sources for mining
  • Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Subnational entities/Naming
  • Category:Subdivisions by country
  • Category:First-order administrative divisions
  • Category:Second-order administrative divisions
  • Local embassies at WP?

Move suggestions

you can note your suggestion here, but let the moves take some time, as the naming problem is still being analized. Avoid moves that later might be reverted:

• X Department -> X department Talk:Departments of Guatemala - 15:58, July 31, 2005 (UTC)
• X Province -> X (province)/ X (province, Argentina) Talk:Provinces of Argentina July 2005

Preliminary analysis and proposals

We need to balance several factors, which appear to be what are driving various editors on this issue:

1. Standardization across the world, Nigerian states with U.S. states with Mexican states with Venezuelan states. This is important for countries that have entities with same names.
2. Consistency within a given country, considering an article on a given state, department, province, etc. as a member of a set including all the other states, depts and provinces of that country.
3. Respect for / primacy of local usage. Moving Lancashire to Lancashire County would earn us a well-deserved lynching. On the other hand, local English usage in some countries is not readily apparent or non-existent.
4. Ease of linking to and incorporating into wiki syntax. Might be subjective.
5. Principle of least surprise.

Examples

U.S. states: they are all at Alabama, Alaska, etc. Even Washington and New York. The sequence is broken only by Georgia (U.S. state). This scores a perfect score on factors Nos. 3 & 4, and near-perfect on Nos. 2 & 5.

Mexican states: Aguascalientes, Baja California, Baja California Sur, etc. Spendid consistency (no 2.), excellent scores on Nos. 3 & 4, slightly surprising (no. 5) to those who expect Baja California or Yucatán to link to the peninsulas or Veracruz to link to the city (cities are disambiguated in the locally used form Veracruz, Veracruz).

Venezuelan states: Local Venezuelan usage favors "Estado Mérida", "Estado Miranda", so the articles are located at (eg) Mérida State, Miranda State -- the "State" identifier is used in the article name even when it wouldn't be strictly necessary because there's no corresponding city with the unqualified name. Great consistency, great respect for local usage, easy to link to, pretty unsurprising. (One state, Amazonas, requires disambiguating from a similarly named state in Brazil.)

Here it looks as if global rules help. Otherwise for Brazil Amazonas (state) can be used and for Venezuela Amazonas State.

With a link at the top of each article pointing out the existence of a similarly named state in the neighbouring country. A splendid suggestion, one that greatly enhances in-series consistency for each of the two countries. –Hajor

reader might be confused if he sees two article named like that. E.g. in a unedited software generated alphatbetic article list, this would look strange, as if there is a false doublette entry. E.g. Special:Allpages/Amazonas If this autoindex would be filtered to exclude redirect and dab pages and only include articles in Category:Subnational entities and subcategories thereof one could easily create out a book "Subnational entities of the world". And the article list in the appendix would not need any edit.

That hypothetical possibility and function, of course, have to be weighed against simplicity and logic in the everyday reading, writing and linking to of articles.

Guatemalan departments: Alta Verapaz, Baja Verapaz, Chimaltenango Department, Chiquimula Department, El Petén, El Progreso Department, El Quiché, Escuintla Department, Santa Rosa Department, Guatemala, etc, etc.

This is like for rivers, even if distinct but still another geographic feature (Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_Rivers#Naming) See Category:Rivers of Hungary, Category:Rivers of Bulgaria. On a worldwide scale Amazon River and Danube are prominent examples. The River-Project had to solve disambiguities and possible wrong links. E.g. when moving "X (river)" to "X River" suddenly new whatlinkshere-links popped up. "X (river)" was only localy referenced. While "X River" was by articles about US military. Non-local editors can almost impossible know all river-disambiguation variants. For them it's easy to know a simple rule like, if disambig for "X" is needed, than use X River.

It's so easy to check a link, or to search for something you want to refer to. I think it's incredibly lazy not to do so. Many of these duplicate articles could have been prevented if there had been links from plain "X" disambiguations (or if the creators of new articles would have bothered to check that). Then we don't need rigourous naming systems. Markussep 17:57, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

this is saying someone who contributed to Mesta (river)

while there was already Mesta

Why did you not check all possibilities for other Mesta-River articles before typing? I discoverd the double entry, because there is this super-easy disambig rule 1) X 2) X River 3) X River (specifier). I can very fast correct every wrong link in any article without knowing how rivers are disambiguated specificly in Uganda, Malysia or Sibiria. They are disambiguated the same everywhere!

Mesta and Nestos are two names for the same river (resp. Bulgarian and Greek). I discovered the Mesta article on 25 June, with the reference to Mesta (river), so I linked to that, and added the Greek name there. Do you blame for me not looking further? Again, I don't think it's necessary to use only X, X River, and X River (spec) if the links from X are correct. I've come cross plenty of X River articles, where there was no article at all at X (for instance many Russian rivers). BTW this rule you talk about has not made it past the talk page yet, you may remember there's still some (legitimate) resistance there. Markussep 21:44, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

I did not blame you at all!!! It was just kind of time wasting because some of your work was unecessary because it was in "Mesta River" allready. But above you said people should check all links, before adding it. Well they do not. As this example shows. And you did not check all possible places after the Mesta (river) was created. Naturally nobody expects editors to check wether they work on doublettes. But unified scheme in river-project helps contributors to detect those doublettes. I didn't blame you, but you were victim (time wasting) of someone who didn't check. I posted this to your talk page. That's why I was astonished that you expect all people to check for doublettes before creating a new article. I did not blame you. Oh my dear! Where did you get this from!? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 22:02, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

OK, I'll give you a little more credit ;-) . The more I look at this Mesta thing, the stranger it gets, it looks like Valkov just copied his text from Mesta River to the new Mesta (river) article a few minutes after he created the first article. May be inexperience. I often scout for new river articles, categorize them, and put them in the appropriate lists. That helps avoid these problems. Markussep 07:42, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I saw this too. Valkov edits where kind of strange. ;-) Tobias Conradi (Talk) 20:46, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Hungarian counties: Baranya, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén, Békés (county) etc. The disambigation "(county)" is used if there is something else with the same name (usually a city in Hungary). "county" (megye in Hungarian) is not perceived as part of the name in Hungarian. An argument for the parentheses is the "piping trick": ] = Békés. This was decided after discussion at Talk:Counties of Hungary.

on the other hand the hungarian wiki uses hu:Bács-Kiskun megye - no paranthesis. And in the Infobox of Veszprém (county) it reads VESZPREM COUNTY. And websites from Hungary also use County: . Also a official county website was seen that used X County in the english section. Additionally there are historic counties of Hungary that share names with counties in Romania, this calls for coordination.

You can find all the variants you like on the web, no problem. We chose this one with parentheses, and it looks OK to me. I'm not sure what to do with the headings of the infoboxes of Hungary and the Kingdom of Hungary (maybe megye and vármegye, resp.), but that's details. About Romania, that's only Arad, see Arad (Hungarian county) and Arad County, all the others have different names in Hungarian and Romanian (e.g. Bihar/Bihor, Kolozs/Cluj). Markussep 22:09, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Scotland, and its talk, may be having an edit war on whether England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are appropriate to label as independent country, nation, people, kingdom, etc. AlMac| 16:36, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Discussion

I think the "modifier, not part of the proper name" argument is valid for many subnational entities (and rivers), see the Hungary example above. I agree that consistency within a country is more important than global consistency. It should be comprehensible for non-locals, of course. What do you mean with "principle of least surprise"? Markussep 15:38, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Take a look at Principle of least astonishment -- "when two elements of an interface conflict or are ambiguous, the behaviour should be that which will least surprise the human user or programmer at the time the conflict arises." Having the Georgias at Georgia (U.S. state) and Georgia (country) probably violates the principle for people from both the USA and the Caucasus, but it's necessary to disambiguate the two, and to remain neutral as to which is most "important" in global terms (see "primary topic" disambiguation at Misplaced Pages:Disambiguation#Page naming. Having "Saskatchewan" at "Saskatchewan Province" would violate the principle by surprising or astonishing just about anyone looking for that article. –Hajor 16:30, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Saskatchewan is the most important thing, so it will stay there anyway.

I would say that principle of least surprise would tend to favor local usage, because most subnational entities are not well-known outside the country. So people in other parts of the world won't usually have any prior expectation - if a Greek tells me to call them "peripheries", I shrug and say "OK", while people in the country have a strong sense of what is correct; if you say "State of Nevada" I know you're an alien or a bureaucrat or both. :-) One place where things get messy is when you try to translate non-English phrases - Provincia di Chieti is uncontroversial, but is "Chieti Province" or "Province of Chieti" a better translation? Even people fluent in both English and Italian don't seem to have a clearcut preference, and neither seems "more surprising" than the other. Stan 17:53, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Actually this is the other way around. least surprise if the reader is a non-local, is to have all in one scheme.

• Definition has to change country to Republic , province to county, there can be here no hard and fast rules. We are writing this encyclopedia to serve the enquiring public. The enquiring person will type in the most common name whether that be County Durham, Lancashire or Province of Ragusa in the latter case he will find the province, if he types Ragusa (as he probably will) he will find a disambiguation sending him exactly where he wants to be, and this is the most important fact, an easy link to what one is seeking. The only consideration should be common parlance. If any citizen of USA were seeking information on say Kansas would he type in Kansas State or State of Kansas or just Kansas. Kansas State actually links to a university. If I wanted to know something about Kansas or Languedoc they are the words I would seek, so lets just go with general common speech and the locals with a redirects for the confused. Giano | talk 20:30, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

are we writing for locals or for the world?

For both. Locals will likely contribute the best and most detailed information for the article, and are also most likely to know the preferred nomenclature. If some ignorant Eurotrash :-) tries to tell me that it's "State of Nevada" instead of just "Nevada", I will make short work of them! Unfortunately for many countries we have few or no native editors that are contributing to en:, so we get in a situation of outsiders attempting to formulate a standard based on very little authoritative information. In many cases we ought to admit our ignorance and say that a country nomenclature is tentative pending better information. Stan 23:16, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Whatever you do with him, officially it's "State of Nevada". Being local does not prevent from errors. But the main issue are not entities of anglophon countries. Why will locals provide the best english article name?

The Nevada example is wholly irrelevant. "State of Nevada" is the long form; "Nevada" is the short form. Likewise, "United Mexican States" is the long form, but the article resides at Mexico. --Golbez 01:57, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's my point. The official speach is somehow irrelevant.

Please Tobias could you sign your contributions, this makes your argument easier to follow. The most important thing here as that the person using the encyclopedia can do so in the easiest and fastest way. Everyone knows that American states are commonly known as Oklahoma, Texas, etc., and unless there are 2 places in the world known by that name there is no reason at all why they cannot be listed here as such. Were I looking up Georgia then I would expect to find a disambiguation page. In countries of the world where a provincial capital city shares the name, the Province of whatever has to be used for the territory, a llink in th etowns text; each country is quite different, but all around the world people say simply Texas etc. so where is the problem - just go with the common flow and give everyone around the world an easy life Giano | talk 12:35, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

why sign if writing facts. Is the fact influenced by the signature? Because it says Tobias, its different? Have a look at 2ch section Anonymous posting. I read this last week. very interesting. Signing can put you in a corner where you don't want to be.

Because it's simple courtesy, Tobias. If you want to show you care about anyone else's opinions, maybe a little courtesy would be worthwhile. This isn't 2ch. --Golbez 20:31, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

Not signing does not show that someone does not care about others users opinions. Nobody signs words or phrases in WP articles. That's maybe why articles tend to be better than the lenghty talk pages.

Remember we are talking about the most common form of a name. "Nevada" is the most common form used by Nevadans and other USians every day. "State of Nevada" is not entirely equivalent in fact, because it may also denote the government specifically - for instance, "I work for Nevada" is a politician's slogan, while "I work for the State of Nevada" is something an employee of the state's government would normally say. Conversely, for counties we always add "County", so I say "I live in Clark County"; if I said "I live in Clark" everybody would be wondering what I meant (a town named Clark?). Non-USians frequently get this sort of thing wrong, and I've had to fix WP verbiage on a number of occasions, so it's not quite the case that "everyone knows". So my point here is that we have gotten little or no input from knowledgeable locals for Gabon or Ecuador or whatever, and yet we have people confidently making declarations about the right thing to do, even though they almost certainly don't know. Stan 19:56, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

So we need two arcticles one for State of Nevada, one for Nevada.? Maybe even locals will depending on the context the word City (New York "City"). Shall we write two articles depending on which context the user is clicking from? What is better with X (county) vs. X County in a country where nobody calls the entity county at all, because it is apskritys, kommun or something like that?

Proposals

Golbez's point of view

The articles should be named based on these standards:

FIRST-LEVEL DIVISONS

1. Local/official terminology for the short-form.
   • If it is referred only by its short form without a qualifier, use that. Nevada.
   • If it is referred to by Province X, then use that. County Fermanagh, Parish of Saint George.
   • If it is referred to by X Province, then use that. Saint Peter Parish, Kagoshima Prefecture. (Kagoshima-ken)
   • If it is referred to by X province, then use that. However, I have a feeling this usage will be rare.
   • If there is any confusion whatsoever - i.e. we lack enough locals or those familiar with the area to make the proper decision - go with "X" or "X province", whichever seems more aesthetically pleasing. Yes, this is purely subjective, but better IMO than "X Province" everywhere, or worse, "Province of X".
2. If local terminology offers a conflict, disambiguate.
   • Disambiguate with "(Country entity)" (i.e. (U.S. state)) or "(entity)" (i.e. "(province)"). I find this superior to "X, Country" (i.e. "Georgia, United States" or "Amazonas, Brazil") because we almost never use a country delimiter here. The name of the entity is Georgia; to add something after the comma implies that's part of the name, or is commonly referred to that by the people of that country. I doubt anyone in Brazil says "Amazonas, Brazil". Likewise, nor should we.
   • If if is referred to by X Province, then disambiguate solely with the country. Saint Peter Parish (Barbados). Note that it could be argued that "Saint Peter Parish, Barbados" is more aesthetically appealing; I honestly don't know what the preferred style is. The whole point of this is to discover that preferred style.
3. If the type is included in the name, use the official English name.
   • Use the English name if there is a official translation. If, for example, a country uses "oblast" but the government officially translates that as "republic", then we should probably use "republic". This is NPOV - Since such subnational entities tend to exist at the behest of the central government, that central government has final authority over the naming of them.
4. If there is not a official translation, then it should be discussed.
   • Candidates would include the "obvious" direct cognate, i.e. "municipos" to "municipality", or what not, or if that seems to be odd depending on language then perhaps consult a translation guide. The point is to be as accurate as possible. If there is any ambiguity at all, go with the local, non-English name until we come up with a better solution, if one needs to be found.
   • Countries with similar languages or regions are not evidence. If Argentina does something one way, that does not mean Chile does, or Uruguay, or Mexico, or Spain.
   • Nor are countries that use similar terms. A Greek prefecture is not a Japanese prefecture; a Venezuelan state is not a German state.
   • Asking locals their opinions, via their Misplaced Pages embassies, could be useful, especially for establishing the original list, but different languages have different "global" standards.

SECOND LEVEL DIVISIONS

1. Local/official terminology for the short form, but include the type, as per the local standard.
   • Example: Clark County
   • Example: Santa Rosa Department
   • Example: Northern District
   • Example: Province of El Cajon
     • For a first draft, these should be located at "X Province", 'Province' being the local term, or "X province", depending on what a cursory Google search indicates; first priority given to capitalization. When people who know better get to Misplaced Pages, they can move them to the proper location. For example, we might have all of a country's 2nd level departments at "X Department"; someome from that country might come along and indicate that the proper form is "Department of X, Y" or "X, Y" or even just "X". The fact is, we don't know. Note that this caveat doesn't apply for populations already large on Misplaced Pages; this includes all major Anglophone countries, most east Asian and western European countries, and Russia. For example, if the established standard for France disagrees with anything here, then the benefit of the doubt must be given to the established standard - I have a feeling the French on Misplaced Pages, of which there are many, know better than most of those working on this standard do. If we DO interfere in an area where people know better, I'm sure they will revert us quickly if we don't attack them on it. Hell, invite it!
2. Include the first-level division in most cases.
   • Example: Clark County, Nevada
   • Example: Santa Rosa Department, Jujuy
   • Example: Northern District, Bamiyan
   • Example: Province of El Cajon, Central
   • ALWAYS include the first-level division if any disambiguation is required.
   • ALWAYS include the first-level division if any second-level division in the country requires it.
     • By this, I mean, if the country has 10 first-level divisions, and each division only has two second-level divisions, then you don't need to disambiguate by first-level; since there's only 20, there's unlikely to be any confusion.
     • However, if 9 of the first-levels have two, and one of the first-levels has 20, then that one will require disambiguation, and then they should all require disambiguation.
     • Disambiguation should be carried out in comma form; unlike first-level divisions which can typically stand alone internationally, there are many, many thousands of second-level divisions, and most of these require the first-level division name for context.
     • This section nears getting into rulecruft. The fact remains, until we know more about each individual country, the best advice I can give is "go with what seems right".
3. Disambiguation between countries should remain in parenthetical form.
   • Examples: Santa Rosa Department, Jujuy (Argentina); Santa Rosa Department, Jujuy (Spain)
     • However, this is exepcted to be EXTREMELY RARE - There can't be more than a tiny handfull of areas that have identical first level AND second level divisions, if any at all.
       1. It's very widespread to use "Cityname, Countryname"
       • Yeah, maybe this should change. And I dunno about "very widespread" - easily 90% of the city articles in Misplaced Pages are about US towns, and not a single one of them includes the name of the country. --Golbez 16:38, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
       1. River project decided to use "X (Countryname)" opposed to "X, Countryname" to avoid confusion between inhabited areas and rivers. Maybe let them use parenthesis, while cities, municipalites, provinces etc. use comma, don't care which level: get an impression at San Miguel. This maybe only top of an iceberg of San Miguel's. San Miguel (municipality) currently refers to one in Chile - it will definatly not stay there.
       2. there may well be
4. In the rare case of a first level division being equal to another country - this occurs twice, with Georgia (U.S. state), and Zaire (Angolan province) - don't disambiguate with a country. Dekalb County, Georgia; Foo District, Zaire. Precedent set by the editors of the United States articles in this case, and it's a rare enough incidence as to not cause too many problems.
   • is Foo District, Zaire in Angola or Zaire?
     • In this case, as stated in the context, Angola. Angola has a Zaire province, the USA has a state of Georgia. Zaire used to be a name of a country, and Georgia still is. I simply mention these as the only two cases in which this happens. --Golbez 16:38, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
5. Use same linguistic standards and methods as in the first-level section.

Note: Making all districts, provinces, prefectures, etc. alike is not only not needed, but not desirable. Nor is making all Spanish-speaking, Russian-speaking, English-speaking countries the same. Every country is different. Being standard within each country is the extent of the name standardization we need.

Draft 3. Any comments, Tobias? --Golbez 17:35, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

I like the second-level section :-) I would remove/change every sentence of the Note:

• Making all districts, provinces, prefectures, etc. alike is not only not needed, but not desirable.
  • we don't make them alike, we only try to find a way to name them.
    • You want to name them all alike. Don't deny it. You've said it. "Why should Italy provinces be different from other provinces?" I paraphrase but if you'd like I could find the exact quote. --Golbez 16:38, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
• Nor is making all Spanish-speaking, Russian-speaking, English-speaking countries the same.
  • ?
    • You once said "Argentina, Chile, Bolivia do it this way, why not Peru?" You were saying that all in that region, or all that speak Spanish, should be done the same way. --Golbez 16:38, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
• Every country is different.
  • who ever contested this?
    • You. --Golbez 16:38, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
• Being standard within each country is the extent of the name standardization we need.
  • ah, you mean if it is X Department, it should also be X Province (in the same country)?
    • This makes no sense. I never said that. I meant, we should do the standard within the country. If we name one as "X Department", all the department-level divisions in that countries should be "X Department"; we don't name some "Department of X" or "X (department)". --Golbez 16:38, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

• This whole argument has gone on long enough, Golbez has given good reasons for a logical conclusion. Tobias Conraidi is debating in circles. All countries are different. and this has to be respected and reflected in Misplaced Pages's treatment of them and their various territories. Please Tobias do not come back with one of your convoluted responses. I've said all I have to say at Talk:Provinces of Italy and nothing you have said has changed my view in the least.

Thanks for the endorsement. The whole point of this is to try to get beyond circular arguing and get working, and go simple and local, rather than complexities in trying to unify all states, or all Spaniphones, or what not. --Golbez 21:52, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

it has not gone long enough. Just recently Golbez came with new stuff, we would not have had this before. I still would like to extend Matrix of subnational entities and to create a WP article about naming schemes. Thus we can estimate what to expect with respect to quantity of needed disambig and how many differences exist. Golbez said X department is unlikely. But only recently one user came moved one country and asked to move another in this direction. The reasons given could also have lead to X (department) or to Department of X. This is a little arbitrary and the number of naming variants will be related to views that current editors have, not to derivations from any verifiable rule. Why is Italy: Provincia di X -> Province of X and Honduras departamento de X -> X Department? I do not say this is province I don't see why not unifying hispanic countries? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 13:59, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

• Well one very good reason is Italy is not Hispanic! Giano | talk 14:30, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
• I said X department is unlikely, but not impossible. All that matters is finding what appears to be the most factual usage, putting it in, and then inviting people who know better to fix it. Linking to a wikiproject listing each country and the rationale is a good idea. I don't see what use the matrix has in this respect. For the purpose of naming, it doesn't matter that "department" is the second-level division of a certain list of countries, except beyond academic curiosity. --Golbez 16:38, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Hajor's point of view

The main problem with Guatemala, as I see it, is a lack of in-country consistency: The fact that the article is at El Progreso Department makes you wonder why Alta Verapaz isn't at Alta Verapaz Department -- the former article appears to be loudly asserting the word "Department" as part of its name. The presence of the word "Department" -- capital letter and all -- also goes against local usage, since the Guatemalans far more likely to talk about "Rabinal, en Baja Verapaz" or "Rabinal, Baja Verapaz" -- they know their county is divided into departments. The alternative of adding "Department" to each department name that doesn't have it (what we could call the "Venezuelan solution") therefore strikes me as less desirable than having a series of department articles under their own department names, some of which are disambiguated by the word "department" between parentheses: Escuintla (department), Santa Rosa (Guatemalan department). The parentheticals are read as modifiers, as clarifiers, not as part of the name.

These comments about Guatemalan departments also apply (as far as I know) to Honduras, El Salvador, Argentina, Colombia, and various others in that part of the world (which is the one that concerns me the most in terms of Wikihours). I'd really like to get this straightened out, agree on an acceptable system. My system would favor:

• Consistency within a given country "series" of articles -- at the price of sacrificing global standardization if necessary. Case by case, country by county. What works for Ukraine might not work for Bolivia. So what?
• Preference given to local usage.

Those two are the clinchers. The rest is secondary.

• Principle of least surprise: only when not trumped by local usage or national consistency.
• The ease of linking issue is addressed, eloquently, on both sides of the debate, by User: Tobias Conradi and User: 2004-12-29T22:45Z on Misplaced Pages talk:Argentina-related regional notice board
• Pursuing international consistency is not worth the price of appearing boorish or ignorant about how things are done locally.

Anyone else? User:Hajor 04:06, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Exactly - the articles must be consistent within each country first, globally second. There is no need nor desire for a global standard if it means that would break a local standard. Personally, I think any disambiguation parenth should include the country. "Georgia (U.S. state)" seems more appealing that "Georgia (state)". Likewise, I prefer "Santa Rosa (Guatemalan department)" to "Santa Rosa (department)", possibly because the second disambiguity offers no context. --Golbez 02:28, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm... my initial thought was to prefer not specifying the country in the parens unless absolutely necessary (as it is with Santa Rosa -- there's another couple in Argentina -- but, oddly enough, not with Georgia). Less typing, for one thing, particularly with long adjectives like Guatemalan or Salvadoran. Something I'll have to mull over. –Hajor 05:16, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Georgia's a bad example too... because if you didn't specify U.S., you'd end up with "Georgia (state)" and "Georgia (country)", which, uh, could be synonyms. :) You have a point too. --Golbez 06:27, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

RfC

if we use brackets

• can we use it for Venezuela? Miranda (state)?
• how disambiguate if two things have the same name?
  • X (municipality of Y (department of Argentina)) - would be consequent
  • X (municipality, Y, Chaco)
    • imagine municipalities with same name in one of the five (or more) La Paz Departments.

You bring up an interesting point there, but ultimately moot, I think. Even if two places are named, say, Foo province, if only one has a locale named Houston, then it can be at "Houston, Foo". However, if both the Salvadorian Foo and the Mongolian Foo have a Houston, then yes, the country disambiguator is necessary. However, this is not our major concern. All we should be concerned with at the moment is top level divisions. Also, just because it contains brackets doesn't mean they are required. The article for Atlanta is not located at "Atlantia, Georgia (U.S. state)". --Golbez 05:32, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

This page is "Naming conventions (subnational entities)" not "Naming conventions (first level subnational entities) "

We aren't discussing stuff like US counties here. The first priority is first-level divisions. You can read it any way you like, that's the way I read it. --Golbez 17:01, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

You are right we do not discuss US counties. Nonetheless the title is not first-level. If you want we can create a seperate page for you and those that read things into the title in the same way you do. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 16:27, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Comments on the proposals

Proposal A

My general feeling on Proposal A is that it creates a set of formats, then attempts to shoehorn every country into these formats, with little regard for local usage. We should put local usage - translated into English - above all else. We should not pick a format and then find some way to make the country fit into it, no matter how vile the term looks to locals. It explicitly puts regional and linguistic consistency above local standards; Prop B only does this in the case of the Caribbean parishes, for well-expressed reasons. Yes, this is the English wikipedia - and where there is not an official English name for an entity, we have to make do with what we have, which is testimony of the locals and those familiar with the country. Prop A has been attempted on many articles, and the locals in many cases have raised objections to it. --Golbez 22:45, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

IMO this is the better proposal. Redwolf24 22:33, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

@Golbez: what is many objections? We talk about more than 150 sets. And leave out the objections, were later on the people where convinced. Proposal A translates local usage in English, and in one English. Not in lowercase for lowercase languages and uppercase for uppercase foreign languages. Or in 2nd letter uppercase because there is a language that writes the second letter uppercase. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 04:00, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

It's funny that you keep bringing that up as an example, because, uh.. well, just look at this: IJssel. --Golbez 04:06, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

it's not "X PRovince". Discussions here are in general about X but the added terms. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 02:03, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Proposal B

General

These proposals are very detailed. Can anyone summarize them and the background? Maurreen (talk) 15:22, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

If I may. The basic gist of Proposal B is that, for countries we don't necessarily have proper information on, choose a standard format that seems to be correct and remain consistent with that within the country. For the countries we DO have proper information on, go with that; don't second guess people familiar with the country, even if you have Google. And finally, use a standard disambiguation scheme, in this case using parentheses with the type and/or country.

The basic gist of Proposal A, as I see it, is that there are a set number of formats that all countries should use, regardless of whether locals say it is correct or not, and disambiguation is performed with commas, rather than parentheses. (Example: "Amazonas (Brazilian state)" as opposed to "Amazonas State, Brazil"), though Prop A keeps exceptions for things like Georgia, I think.

The background? Why am I doing this? I got involved in these articles because of my mapmaking, and I saw Tobias Conradi (person behind Prop A) making a lot of renames while disregarding the concerns of locals; basically saying, "all other countries on wikipedia do this, so should this one", or, "all other Spanish-speaking countries do this, so should Peru" or what not. (examples: ; and his response , and the last paragraph of ) I saw a lot of users get angry with him and simply give up . I thought about starting an RfC but I decided to attempt the high road and create a competing proposal. However, I'm obviously not objective here, so if anyone else wants to summarize, please do. I want the proposals evaluated on the basis of their merit, and I hope what I see as the logical choice wins. --Golbez 16:13, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, that's helpful. Maurreen (talk) 16:37, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

@Golbez: it's not that you want the stuff to be judged on "their merit" if you make it personal again and randomly pick out some statements. Regarding to Peru you allready said that you didn't read all and better not should have put your nose in this. Or something like that. You also spread the wrong word that I called people stupid what you could never proof and where you never took back the statement. You are not the angel Golbez. Why do you say I made lots of people angry? You could also have said how many agreed with me or didn't care. Why do you quote people simple gave up? What personal raid are you going against me? Do you remember your words: "if you don't... I will go for a second RfC against you" There never was even one! Why are you saying wrong stuff and only picking bad stuff about me? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 02:18, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

You're talking to me again! Anyway, you're right, it wasn't an RfC - it was an RfM. My mistake. --Golbez 02:47, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

and this was not an RfM against me, but an RfM by me between me and NoPuzzleStranger because he was constantly spreading lies about me. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 21:07, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Again, sincere apologies. I saw "NoPuzzleStranger" first and assumed he was the one who brought it. From what I can tell, though, that mediation went nowhere. And now NoPuzzleStranger is banned. Tobias, I've noticed you've not given a reason why we should pick your proposal, while I have. Would you enlighten us? Or shall we keep this on personal attacks? (an avenue I admittedly opened, in this instance) --Golbez 21:18, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Redundant or competing pages

Without getting into the specifics of either proposal right now, it appears that we have competing or redundant pages. I'd like to suggest a discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions for where to have what conversation. Maurreen (talk) 16:37, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Indian naming convention

I'd just like to share the Indian naming convention we've decided on.

• L1 divisions: States + Union Territories (UT)
• L2 divisions (subdivisions of the above): Divisions (divisions are a cluster of districts; all states may not have divisions)
• L3 divisions: districts. (subdivisions of states/ UTs)
• L4 divisions: talukas or tehsils (subdivisons of districts)

This is what we've decided:

1. If a state or UT conflicts with any other location: state gets the exclusive title.
2. If a city conflicts with a district or division, city gets the exclusive title.
3. If a district or division conflicts with a city: note the following convention for disambiguation eg:
   • Mysore>> Mysore district>> Mysore division. (Note the capitalisation)

Exceptions:

• If a district is ~100% urbanised eg Daman, Dimapur; the article should not be split into city and district articles.
• Mumbai is a metropolis which consists of two districts. In this case Mumbai gets the exclusive title, districts are sorted as Mumbai city district and Mumbai suburban district.
• Chandigarh is a UT, city and district. No sorting required.
• The term Delhi is referred to both the city and the National capital territory. Popular usage dictates that Delhi holds only city information, while the UT details are moved to National capital territory of Delhi.
• The term district may not be used for cases like East Sikkim, where the dist. hq and district do not share the same name.

Any clarifications, comments etc, if needed please direct to my talk. Thanks User:Nichalp/sg 06:42, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

why "Mysore district" and not "Mysore District" or "Mysore (district)"? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 02:08, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Proposal UP

Motivation: trying to find a middle ground between Proposals A and B. It's closer to B, but it resolves some of the conflicts by disallowing some of the less formal forms in B, thus favoring A.

However, the one drastic difference is that ease of use, searching, and editting are given higher priority. (See Usability above.) If the system is easy to use and understand, it could promote consistency across the project, without resorting to rigid orthodoxy and draconian mass changes.

William Allen Simpson 04:43, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Goals

To clarify, the goals are reordered (from Preliminary analysis and proposals above) as:

1. Principle of least astonishment.
2. Ease of linking to and incorporating into wiki syntax. Might be subjective.
3. Respect for / primacy of local usage. Moving Lancashire to Lancashire County would earn us a well-deserved lynching. On the other hand, local English usage in some countries is not readily apparent or non-existent.
4. Consistency within a given country, considering an article on a given state, department, province, etc. as a member of a set including all the other states, depts and provinces of that country.
5. Standardization across the world, Nigerian states with U.S. states with Mexican states with Venezuelan states. This is important for countries that have entities with same names.

William Allen Simpson 04:43, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Discussion

(Be forwarned, unsigned comments might be summarily deleted!)

The following comment was the first seen in on the project page, and was unsigned, but the history indicates it was from User:Tobias Conradi:

lol. In Turkey Adana (city) is the capital of Adana (province). How then can province be ommitted in Turkey-texts relating to province?

You are the hero-inspector of the day Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:56, 8 December 2005 (UTC) BTW: it seems you are the new king here? To warn other people that their comments are deleted only because they are not signed? Better adress the problem that are meant to help to increase the quality of your proposal. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:58, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand your English. In fact, where one province is referenced, the "Province" portion of others is often omitted. Likewise, most city lists within an article don't bother referring to the province more than once, as that would make a rather ugly and repetitious text.

• At: Adana Province, you can see references to 5 other provinces, all in only their "short" version (all hand editted). The cities and districts are also in their "short" version.
  • Now look at "Kozan" carefully. There are several Kozan towns in Turkey, and here we also have a Kozan District. These lists would look horrible with fully qualified names in comma form, but would be easy to use in parenthesis form, with a pipe.
  • The Kozan city is actually entitled "Kozan, Adana". But that has lead (elsewhere) to ] Province, ]. Both astonishing to edit and hard to search and use.
  • Searches for Kozan town or district need to find both province and nation. Therefore, the better Proposal UP title would be:
    • "Adana" — the existing city, currently no conflicts, future disambiguation page
    • "Adana (Adana Province, Turkey)" — the redirect, for future use
    • "Adana Province" — the existing province
    • "Adana Province, Turkey" — redirect, to be used in full links
    • "Kozan (Adana Province, Turkey)" — consistency within towns
    • "Kozan District (Adana Province, Turkey)"

William Allen Simpson 04:43, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

why don't let "Adana" and "Adana Province"? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:56, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I still don't understand your English. I see both "Adana" and "Adana Province" in the list above.

William Allen Simpson 19:51, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

COMMENT: I renamed UP -> C to make a more neutral in naming. Everybody can claim usability. This is highly subjective. I made comments in and questions and "wrong"-markers in the proposal. Maybe you can adress these issues. Some are really minor, so I think you can fix them. I made the comments in the texts, because otherwise refering to the various things is dificult. I did not sign all this, because this would make the stuff to long. Of course remove my comments if adressed. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:51, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

• And multiple folks renamed it back. Apparently your understanding of English needs improvement. "Usage" and "Usability" are different words, with different denotations and different connotations. "Usage" is not subjective, as it's empirical.

William Allen Simpson 19:51, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

multiple folks committe genocid. thanx for your helpless comment. Your understanding of my understandings seems to need improvement. What about that I simple misread/misremebered "usage/usability" ? I just wanted to tell you why i renamed. so don't make strange assumptions on my english. So if you refer to "usage" - WP is an encyclopedia. It covers worldwide information. We have naming conflicts. Nobody claims that the dab-titles we create are used in daily speech Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:14, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

(moved here from project page) QUESTION: near to what? Are links depending on where you link from? If I write an article about Abdullah living in New York but born in Adana how should I link? Is this a near link? a far link?

• Apparently, another English language problem. Nothing in the definition refers to "near link" or "far link".

William Allen Simpson 19:51, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

you wrote All the references to the place will be (are) in other articles saying it's "near" - yes, your english at this point is an english that's not very easy for me. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:14, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

• Tobias, please stop editing his proposal. If you wish to make comments, make them outside the text of his proposal, you're altering the meaning and understanding of it. Second of all, I think his examples - like mine - were hypothetical. (Even though Kagoshima-ken kind of translates to Kagoshima Prefecture, and we're in the ENGLISH pedia as you so lovingly point out all the time) Right now, my proposal is used on the bulk of pages here, and what few are left will be negotiated over time. As of late, this hasn't been a high priority with me, but I will start working on it again soon.

Tobias did not alter any meaning, he added comments, to help the author to fix bugs. Tobias did never pointed out anything "lovingly". Don't spread this disinformation. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 23:14, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

• I appreciate UP's proposal (it wasn't signed and I'm not about to go history diving, I need to get to work), but I think it relies too much on parentheses. The typical standard on Wiki is to use a comma when dealing with a city; i.e. "Adana, Turkey" or "Adana, Adana". The pipe trick is useful, but aesthetics and logic should not be sacrificed for it. The largest bloc of articles on Wiki is the United States towns - over 30,000 in all, and none use the pipe trick except where necessary for disambiguation. See: Colonie (village), New York, Colonie (town), New York. I also disagree that X and X Term can't exist. Most countries in the world are not like the USA, where the state came first and the city came second. In most areas, the state/province exists because of its central city. Therefore, we have (hypothetically) Basra, and then the Basra Province that is specifically centered on that large city. In this case, X and X Term coexisting seems to make sense, to me at least. --Golbez 15:37, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry for the apparent confusion, I signed it on the Talk page, as usual.

• The problem with the typical standard is that progression — "Place", "Place (city)", "Place, Nation" (or "Place, Region"), "there's actually 40 of them in the nation, now what do we do?" — is not scalable.

• • When that happens, then we disambiguate further. No need to mess up the top level just because the lower levels need more disambiguation... --Golbez 21:30, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

• • That process is what is not scalable. It both requires an incredible amount of editting as the disambiguation levels increase (and too many aren't bothering, look at the Breman fiasco), and sometimes needs a change to the "upper" levels, too. With clear guidelines, the top levels will be simple, and there will never need to be more than 1 disambiguation of any lower level, at a time when the process is still likely to be small!

William Allen Simpson 23:46, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

• I don't know what you mean about "cannot exist", as I copied that text directly from Proposal B. "Basra" and "Basra Province" co-exist, at different sub-national levels. "Basra" and "Basra City" and "Basra (city)" do not. At least that was my understanding of the text, I'll try to make it more clear.

• • Oh, heh, I wrote that, didn't I. What I meant was, don't have one province named "Adana" and another province named "Foo Province". I misunderstood, I thought you meant we couldn't have one style for cities and another for provinces. My bad. :) --Golbez 21:30, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Good thing I understood what you meant. ;-) Note that I split it into my 4.1 and 4.2.

William Allen Simpson 23:46, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

• I certainly agree that "... aesthetics and logic should not be sacrificed...." That was the whole point. Look at how it is _used_ in the actual articles before deciding whether comma form or parenthesis form is best.

William Allen Simpson 19:51, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

• • As I've said many times before, my primary focus is on the top-level entity - states, provinces, wilaya, etc. However, I think my solution scales well. Perhaps what we need is some more real-world examples, outside of Turkey, of how your proposal is different from mine? --Golbez 21:30, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

• • I used Turkey because it was a current topic, and I'd just been told by somebody on the Talk:Provinces of Turkey how to match the TR version. Anyway, there are only 2 differences from B to UP:

• • • Decide early which form to use, comma or pipe, and stick with it.

• • • Never use (city), (province), (state), because as soon as you find 1 split, you're going to find more! So, go straight to COMPLETE long form disambiguation.

William Allen Simpson 23:46, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

• Oh, and Tobias, if you cannot respect us enough to let him name his proposal whatever the hell he wants to, then we have no reason to respect your responses. --Golbez 21:30, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

• • Please write him up for each revert you do, and I'll do the same!

William Allen Simpson 23:46, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

1. Fair representation is fair representation is fair representation is
2. telling lies within a proposal is unfair represantation is unfair representation is unfair representation

Tobias Conradi (Talk) 00:10, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

BTW you can also send me postcards. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 00:11, 9 December 2005 (UTC)