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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by WayeMason (talk | contribs) at 11:17, 20 July 2019 (→City Names in India: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Archive 1 • Archive 2 • Archive (settlements) • Archive (places) • September 2012 archives • September 2013 archives • October 2013 archives; February 2014 archives; Archive 3; Archive 4

WP:USPLACE: May 2004 discussion • June 2004 discussion • July 2005 proposal (not passed) • December 2005 proposal (not passed) • August 2006 proposals (not passed) • Aug 2006 proposal to use one international convention (not passed) • September 2006 proposals (not passed) • October 2006 proposal to use the AP Stylebook for major US cities (not passed) • November 2006 proposal to mirror Canadian city conventions (not passed) • November 2006 straw poll • December 2006 proposal (not passed) • January 2007 proposal to use the AP Stylebook for major US cities (not passed) • January 2007 discussion • July 2007 discussion • July 2007 proposal to use one international convention (not passed) • October 2008 decision to use the AP Stylebook for major US cities (passed) • March 2010 discussion • June 2010 discussion • January 2011 RFC (consensus to maintain status quo) • April 2012 discussion • October 2012 discussion on whether to initiate another RFC • December 2012 Collaborative Workspace • December 2012 RFC (consensus to maintain status quo) • February 2013 RFC (no consensus) • June 2013 discussion • February 2014 moratorium discussion

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Indigenous / Native Names for Geographic Places

I had trouble finding a policy on this. One issue in the Indigenous/Native American community in the US is the concept of "erasure". I think Wikipedia can play a small but meaningful role in helping correct that. In particular, regarding names of mountains or habitats, there are often pre-existing Indigenous names that many in the public are not aware of. The most striking example is Denali (aka Mt. McKinley), however others abound. I could not find a policy about this, other than in passing reference, so wanted to ask.

Is it acceptable to add indigenous names to mountains or other places in a parenthesis after the name of the article in the first sentence? Would it also be acceptable to add such names to the name of the article itself, or better just have it in the lead in paragraph and perhaps add a section on name to the article to discuss indigenous name? Thanks for your time, looking forward to hearing best way to approach this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Enviropearson (talk • contribs) 23:09, 26 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming there's a reliable source for the indigenous name, it's definitely valuable to inform readers of its existence. Exactly where it goes in the article will differ on a case by case basis. I would not simply add it in parentheses in most cases, because it would not be obvious to every reader why it's there. I would be more explicit, e.g. "The indigenous name of Mt. Jones is Xyz in the Algonquin language". Whether that goes in the lead or later in a naming section depends on how much weight we need to give it. Is the name still in use, or mostly obscure? Did the common name derive from it, or are they unrelated? Has there been controversy about it? The only place it would not go is in parentheses in the article title itself, since that would be contrary to policy at WP:AT. - Station1 (talk) 23:33, 26 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, that answered my question exactly and was very helpful. Enviropearson (talk) 03:49, 27 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This is something I've been thinking about as well. Is it beneficial to add the Indigenous place name to the attached Wikidata entry? Erniee jo (talk) 18:39, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: Remove WP:USPLACE from subpages

I am proposing that subpages of places not in the AP Stylebook to use a title in the format History of Albuquerque rather than History of Albuquerque, New Mexico or Timeline of Austin rather than Timeline of Austin, Texas. This is not a proposal to remove USPLACE from everything, like removing it from the main article Albuquerque, New Mexico or Austin, Texas. The reason why I think this proposal is good is because it is concise and unambiguous. I am not proposing this just for Albuquerque or Austin, this is for all US places that redirect from a concise title to a more lengthy one. Please indicate your comments below. Mstrojny (talk) 11:08, 29 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • For consistency I would prefer to stick to the same convention as in WP:USPLACE, and omit the state only from those cities specifically listed. --David Biddulph (talk) 11:13, 29 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • David has it right... here the goals of consistency, Recognizanility, and precision out weigh the goal of conciseness. Finally, the state is often needed in the title for disambiguation (for example, there are multiple towns in the US with the name “Austin”). Blueboar (talk) 11:34, 29 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The premise is not entirely correct. USPLACE applies to article titles about the cities and towns themselves, but does not automatically apply to articles that simply have the place as part of the article title. In those cases the normal rules of WP:PRECISE and WP:CONCISE apply. There have been discussions about this regarding "List of tallest buildings in ...", county courthouse articles and transit station articles, where some editors thought USPLACE should apply but there was no consensus that it does. We already have articles like History of Charleston where the title is not ambiguous or is the primary topic, although I'm not aware of any discussion about those in particular. Station1 (talk) 00:02, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I have moved the page History of Charleston to History of Charleston, South Carolina because there is also a Charleston in West Virginia. Mstrojny (talk) 11:02, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Not to mention all the other “Charleston”s in other states... or in other countries. Charleston rivals “Springfield” for most repeated town name. Blueboar (talk) 12:04, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Blueboar: In this article here, Washington is the most common city name in the US. Springfield is number 2. Charleston isn't in the top 10. Mstrojny (talk) 20:57, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't get that. It's exactly analogous to your Timeline of Austin proposal. There are other Austins too. I was just pointing out that your proposal is already in effect. It doesn't matter if there are other Austins or Charlestons if there are no other History of Charleston or Timeline of Austin articles (or if those are primary topics). Most people recognize which Charleston is referred to in the title without adding the state, so the more concise title is preferred, as correctly stated by the editor who originally moved it there. Station1 (talk) 06:37, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Both the examples given (Austin and Albuquerque) have pretty clear cut primary topics, so the longer name shouldn't be necessary per WP:CONCISE. Calidum 22:23, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    Personally, I think there's a huge difference between Albuquerque (pretty much universally recognized as a city in New Mexico) and Austin (the name of dozens of cities, towns, schools, and people). Accepting this proposal would just put more incentive on making primary-topic grabs on ambiguous names like Austin (and Charleston, which currently does not have a primary topic). The state name should be included whenever it helps the name to be recognized as a city name, or disambiguates to a particular city. Dicklyon (talk) 23:09, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Already the case. USPLACE only refers to the actual articles about the cities. It has never automatically applied to other articles, and indeed some guidelines explicitly say not to use it, for example the metro area guideline (Jacksonville metropolitan area etc.) If Austin is the onlu city named that way then the state namd should be eligible for removal from the time line article without changing any Guidelines. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 23:05, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    There are lots of Austins. The proposal is to ignore that and go with primary-topic status. Dicklyon (talk) 23:09, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Dicklyon: If Austin is ambiguous, why does Austin redirect to Austin, Texas and not the disambiguation page? Should I propose an RM requesting that Austin go to the disambiguation page and not redirect to the city in Texas? Mstrojny (talk) 19:52, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No RM is needed, as no title changes; just fix the redirect. But first see if it's being used to go directly to the city, as you'd have to fix those links, too. Dicklyon (talk) 20:22, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, that is not quite correct. If a redirect change is controversial it should go through WP:RFD. Personally I would say Austin should redirect to the Texas city, although perhaps the old British car brand would be a contender too. Dicklyon I take your point about primary topic rather than being the only one. So yes, the point still applies. Name the article Timelime of Austin  — Amakuru (talk) 22:07, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
RM would be a slightly better venue since redirecting "Austin" to "Austin (disambiguation)" would create a WP:MALPLACED DAB page and RM has more editors familiar with primary topics than RFD, though both venues would work. Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:13, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I stand corrected. One would want an RM to move Austin (disambiguation) to Austin. I doubt that it would win, but I'd be in favor. My point stands, that just because a city name has primarytopic status doesn't mean it's not highly ambiguous. Dicklyon (talk) 22:21, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
True, good point Crouch.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:23, 31 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Amakuru: Did you mean Timeline of Austin? You spelt it wrong. Mstrojny (talk) 20:14, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Mstrojny: indeed. It was a typo. Although a timelime does sound interesting. A fruity clock perhaps.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:39, 1 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

RfC

CONSENSUS AGAINST
There is a clear consensus against this proposal. Closed per request at WP:ANRFC - if you have any questions please ask me. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 19:42, 12 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

{{rfc|hist}}

I would like to request more input in my proposal above (which is titled Proposal: Remove WP:USPLACE from subpages). RfC relisted by Cunard (talk) at 23:46, 21 April 2019 (UTC). Mstrojny (talk) 01:26, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Commas in the middle of titles

More general discussion opened at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Matching commas on attributive nouns in titles. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:58, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I want to raise an issue which has come up quite a bit lately. The above discussion merely deals with a matter of personal preference: History of Sacramento vs. History of Sacramento, California, with no one calling for it to be named Sacramento history or Sacramento, California history. However, that is not the case for events, which are typically structured as YEAR CITY EVENT_TYPE, such as 2018 Anchorage earthquake (note: the year is optional if unambiguous). There have now been multiple shootings in some place called Aurora, two of them in Aurora, Colorado and one in Aurora, Illinois. Multiple WP:RMs have dealt with or are dealing with this issue:

I suggest reviewing the content of the discussions before proceeding further. Currently, the de facto status quo is that, in unambiguous situations, WP:USPLACE is already disregarded on any subpage where the natural position of the place name is not at the end of the title. I think that makes sense and does not need revisiting. What we should codify is how to insert the state name when required for disambiguation. I think there are four general schools of thought:

  1. This is not a problem at all; "City, State" is always a valid drop-in replacement for "City". If "Aurora shooting" would be the preferred title if there were no ambiguity, then "Aurora, Illinois shooting" would also be the preferred title.
  2. This is a violation of grammatical rules (MOS:GEOCOMMA), so a closing comma should be used: "Aurora, Illinois, shooting".
  3. The first is a violation of grammatical rules, and the second looks weird, so in most cases such articles should be retitled to place the "City, State" at the end: "Shooting in Aurora, Illinois".
  4. Same objections to the first two, but if the year makes it unambiguous, then "2019 Aurora shooting" is perfectly OK.

I think it would be good to cover this special scenario somewhere in our guidelines, such as WP:NCE, WP:USPLACE, and/or MOS:GEOCOMMA, so that we're not always arguing over an adhoc solution that breaks one rule to save another. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:32, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

King, as you've seen in the discussions, the "drop-in" idea needs another comma to terminate the offsetting of the state, per all English grammar and usage guides. The unbalanced comma makes no sense. The impression that all these commas makes it "bumpy" is why Garner recommends avoiding such constructions, by omitting the state or by not putting the city and state before a noun. There are a handful of editors who are OK with the agrammatical construction (as you can see most recently in the Sandy attack discussion that's open), but the majority in recent discussions were not OK with that. I doubt that we need to cover this in guidelines, as it comes up only rarely, but it would be nice to get to a resolution that's not just momentum with a majority opposing it as in the most recent Aurora discussion that closed with "no consensus", and that's not in conflict with all outside English grammar guides. Thanks for bringing this here. Dicklyon (talk) 03:40, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I thought about it some more, and realized that there is more to it. If City, State is being used as a noun adjunct, as in the examples above, it looks really weird to have a matching comma, because we don't normally put commas between adjectives and nouns. On the other hand, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in the American Civil War (the example given in WP:USPLACE) looks totally OK, because prepositional phrases are frequently preceded by commas. So basically we only need to worry about the noun adjunct case; all options on the table are not ideal but we have to pick something. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:56, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any need to change any of these examples. —⁠烏⁠Γ (kaw) │ 01:03, 03 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Including "Australia" after "Western Australia" in an article

For Blockbuster LLC article, I added ", Australia" after "Morley, Western Australia" (this and this) twice to the lead section of that article, and this has been undone. I did that because United States has been added after Bend, Oregon to pinpoint as a part of the U.S. Following an undoing of such an addition, I created new discussion at Talk:Blockbuster LLC § "Morley, Western Australia" in the lead section and claimed that Western Australia is actually a state/territory of Australia. While Morley, Western Australia, Australia was fine in the article, another editor has disagreed, and following his second undoing, he replied to my thread in the discussion, citing "Oregon is fairly obscure if you're not a U.S. citizen" and "the fact that Western Australia is the western part of Australia is extremely self-evident and it looks wrong/redundant to state the similarly named country after the territory in that case". Despite frequent omission of Australia in many Australian-based articles, including Morley, Western Australia, about things in South Australia and Western Australia in the English Wikipedia, the article on Blockbuster LLC is a U.S.-based article. There is only one Blockbuster store of Bend, Oregon, in the U.S.; while another, which is scheduled to close at the end of March this year, is in Australia. That named country is omitted in the article's lead section (as seen in the current version). Having just Western Australia in there makes it look read like a country, even though the term is technically not. It would make sense to include the country, but why not? At the time of this posting, I have not heard from the same editor who previously posted on the article's talk page several hours ago. Because I was told to get consensus first, I need some feedback from different editors who are watching this talk page. --AnhDucYang (talk) 01:39, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • If I am referring to a place where the name is repeated I still include it, for example see Commons:Category:Whittington (the Staffordshire ones) although Staffordshire is the equivalent of Western Australia. This is because its usual to state the parish, district, county and country in articles and on DAB pages, although the 1st 2 aren't often needed on DAB pages since there are considerably less cases of multiple places in a parish of district that county. So yes I'd include it even though it may seen a bit redundant. Crouch, Swale (talk) 09:45, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • It seems to me that this is a false argument, obsessive following of a rule that does not exist but is just an elaboration of the US rule that "thou shalt always give the state after city". Bend, Oregon does not need "USA" appending. Bend, Georgia does, because it is still (potentially) ambiguous. Bend, Western Australia definitely does not further clarification. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:20, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • This report from Australian daily newspaper The West Australian just mentions Bend, Oregon. So I am wondering whether we have consensus that United States shall be omitted after the location of the sole U.S. Blockbuster video retail chain in the Blockbuster LLC article. --AnhDucYang (talk) 16:39, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Mnmh. "Someplace, Victoria, Australia" looks and sounds fine. "Someplace, Western Australia, Australia" looks and sounds silly. That's just how language works. That's why references to what is done with Bend, Oregon etc. don't much matter for the Australian case. Doing silly things for the sake of consistency is not necessary. If you want to make a rule to the effect of "if the name a country is included as part of a the name of a top-level sub-national political subdivision, as a general rule don't include the name of the country when referring to the political subdivision", OK I guess. "Don't write stuff that sounds queer" is a more encompassing rule, and is already in effect, really: when I come across passages that read as though written by a non native English speaker, I will sometimes correct. Herostratus (talk) 12:55, 21 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Administrative divisions of China

You may be interested in the following discussion: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/China and Chinese-related articles#Naming administrative divisions of China within articles. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:10, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalizing Indian subdivision terms (tehsil/taluk/taluka/mandal) when part of a name?

Hi,

There are many articles about specific Indian tehsils, taluks, talukas, and mandals (small political subdivisions, roughly equivalent to a U.S. county). I've noticed that these are inconsistent in capitalizing the term as part of the name, e.g., Raisinghnagar Tehsil, but Rishabhdeo tehsil. I would think the term should be capitalized, as is done with U.S. counties (e.g., Orange County) and the examples at WP:NCCS. However, it looks like a majority of the articles in Category:Tehsils of India do not use a capital letter. As someone who frequently edits these articles for the Guild of Copy Editors, it would be helpful to me if there was a consistent rule I could point to. What do others think? Thanks, Tdslk (talk) 21:15, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I am pleased this is up for discussion, thank you @Tdslk:. Before offering any substantive points in response to the question, may I ask, what is the criteria we must consider when discussing whether a standard exists or what it should be? I.e., are we looking internally at what most editors do, or externally to ""do what English does"?Deccantrap (talk)
Good questions, Deccantrap! There's not an existing Wiki guideline I'm aware of that 100% addresses my questions, although MOS:POLITICALUNITS would seem to imply that "tehsil", etc., should be capitalized when part of a name. I think most style guides would agree with that, although if it's not a convention in Indian English that would win out per MOS:ENGVAR. As to whether to have a standard at all, I do think it would be helpful given how many of these articles there are and how likely it is that references to multiple places would appear together (e.g., "The road goes from Raisinghnagar Tehsil to Rishabhdeo tehsil" looks awkward to me). Tdslk (talk) 23:39, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that under MOS:POLITICALUNITS, tehsil and taluka should be spelt 'Tehsil' and 'Taluka', unless there is a convention otherwise. As to convention in Indian English: Being that administrative sub-divisions are purely animals of statutory/administrative origin, I though looking at what conventions various arms of Government of India follow would provide some insight, as well as what the Times of India uses. It appears there is no convention. For example, the Census of India uses 'tehsil', the Gazette of India uses 'Tehsil', the Supreme Court of India uses 'taluk', and the Times of India uses 'tehsil'. Because the Gazette is a quintessential voice of the Government of India, the sampling result of 3 (not capitalized) to 1 (capitalized) doesn't quite mean a preference for the former. Being that there doesn't appear to be a convention in Indian English, would it be safe to fall back on Tehsil/Taluka as per MOS:POLITICALUNITS?
At some point in the past there was a discussion about this at WT:INB in relation to capitalisation of District. I am fairly sure the consensus was to use lower-case but it looks a bit weird to me. - Sitush (talk) 13:45, 12 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
And here is the discussion. I'm surprised that I can remember that far back. - Sitush (talk) 13:48, 12 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Sitush, the district, mandals/tehsil/taluka (as they are known with respect to their state) is the correct format.--Vin09 (talk) 02:46, 13 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Matching commas on attributive nouns in titles

Followers of this page may be interested in WT:MOS#Matching commas on attributive nouns in titles. --Izno (talk) 12:02, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]


The Falkland Islands and The Malvinas

There is a discussion about these names here [3] if anybody is interested. The guidelines on this main page are mentioned. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 23:55, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

City Names in India

Interesting debate going on regarding changing the name of Bengalore to Bengaluru. Talk:Bangalore#Move_to_Bengaluru My research into "Disinterested, authoritative reference works" shows a strong shift to the new name. Given this, and if further research showed a similar change on other India city pages, is there a way to have a policy that these official government name changes in English speaking countries, or just India, are considered en mass rather than having to have this argument over and over on several dozen pages? I feel disappointed that there is significant resistance to recognizing these names, it does feel like a colonial holdover, though to be fair there may be similar instances where in US/UK/CAN/AUS/NS names were officially changed and wikipedia lagged behind for years. My only reference is my home town of Halifax, Nova Scotia where the moment the name was officially changed wikipedia changed, even though many protested that Halifax Regional Municipality was still being used. WayeMason (talk) 11:17, 20 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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