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Some examples

I think it may be easier to discuss this proposal if we can see how the page would look (rather than just the article name). Whichever method is used, two things are clear when we see the page mock-ups:

  • The lead sentence clearly identifies the name of the place as Elgin.
  • The lead sentence provides context for the disambiguation.

Below are three examples:

  1. The current, comma convention
  2. The proposed disambiguation "method"
  3. The proposed disambiguation "method" with a redirect from the comma convention page name
Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina

Elgin is a census-designated place (CDP) in Lancaster County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 2,426 at the 2000 census.

Elgin (Lancaster County, South Carolina)

Elgin is a census-designated place (CDP) in Lancaster County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 2,426 at the 2000 census.

Elgin (Lancaster County, South Carolina)
Elgin is a census-designated place (CDP) in Lancaster County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 2,426 at the 2000 census.

I would support this proposal provided that searches can be made by the comma convention notation. I know that this is already the case (as well as searches via the U.S. Postal Service state abbreviations), but I think it is important to emphasize in our discussion that comma-convention searches and links would be possible. In our discussion, we can decide whether this emphasis is only for discussion or whether it should be an explicit part of the convention. --ishu 19:34, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

If someone can fix the formatting so that the Elgins don't appear as separate sections, please do so. --ishu 19:36, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

And just to be clear on what the current Wikipedia general conventions and guidelines (WP:D, WP:NAME, etc.) dictate, this is probably what we should have:

Elgin (Lancaster County)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Elgin is a census-designated place (CDP) in Lancaster County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 2,426 at the 2000 census.

--Serge 20:59, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

That is... interesting to say the least. True that an "Elgin" will lead to an "Elgin" disambiguation page in most all circumstances (save the "best known", but that is another debate), but instead of putting the full disambiguation in the title, perhaps a partial disambiguation will suffice if it serves the purpose of disambiguation and the full explanation is provided in the disambiguation page. All that is important is that each article have its own name - and namespace (thanks to a "unique" disambiguation). This smacks of "technical" and lacks aesthetic... but technically it would work.
If I was to follow my gut feeling, if the disambiguation had to be a county, I would continue that between-bracket disambiguation all the way up the chain to the country.... most probably because, if needing disambiguation in its own (English-speaking for the US example) country, it would need the same in (from) others. Yet this need only apply if it is needed - that is to say, because of two different settlements in two different countries. THEPROMENADER 21:39, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
It seems to me that if you have more than one subject with name X (in this case, X=Elgin), you need to look at all the uses of X and decide how best to disambiguate them. The first priority is to use the most common name (Elgin). If we can't because that name conflicts with another use of the same name, the second priority is distinguishing from the other uses. Finally, if we can distinguish in a manner that is consistent with the way other articles in the same category are disambiguated, that's a nice bonus. But we should not sacrifice the first two priorities in order to meet the third. Hence, Elgin (Lancaster County). --Serge 23:27, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Serge, a bit of advice - don't dilute your own arguments with unneeded detail - here, abandon all arguments save those that concern most ignorant reader. The term "Common name" with them: this term only applies, as far as an encyclopedia is concerned, to a name itself and not what you (or anyone) add(s) to it.
That said, it is true that you can use any convention you want, as long as you can disassociate it from disambiguation. Disambiguation has to reserve a possiblility of messiness, as its form possibilities, circumstances for use and final form can be many and almost unpredictable. THEPROMENADER 00:29, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Additional thought - it may be possible to have two different levels of disambiguation - technical and asthetic - one for the ease of contributors (minimal disambiguation), and another (perhaps through a redirect) the full disambiguation indicating precisely (thus reason for thereof) the full disambiguation. Perhaps a case may arise where this is needed, but it certainly never be a standard. THEPROMENADER 10:07, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
This doesn't make sense to me, again. Wouldn't Elgin, South Carolina (Lancaster County) be the standardized form of disambiguation-following-convention? All these places where we throw the county in the middle of the name are even worse than the proposed "world cities/AP list" exclusion, because at least those you have a chance to remember... -- nae'blis 15:54, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Wow. That's combining the standard disambiguation method (parenthetic disambiguator) with the nonstandard one (comma-separated disambiguator). I suppose it does make sense. The , South Carolina disambiguator is used to disambiguate from all the Elgins outside of South Carolina, while the (Lancaster County) disambiguator is used to disambiguate this Elgin from the other one in South Carolina. I like it. --Serge 16:57, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
If Serge likes it, there must be something wrong with it, then.... Seriously, my reasoning for putting the county in the middle is that it reads in the normal order as a fully qualified name. Hence, my preference is in the following order
  1. Elgin (Lancaster County), South Carolina
  2. Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina
  3. Elgin, South Carolina (Lancaster County)
  4. ...delete article, as even disambiguation is impossible with the remaining selected choices.
  5. Elgin (Lancaster County) (we don't know, nor are likely to know, if the "Elgin"s in another state are also in a Lancaster County in that state.)
— Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:17, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
As for remembering, Elgin, South Carolina would still be a disambiguation page, and Elgin (Lancaster County) should also be a disambiguation page even if there is only one at the moment, because there is little likelyhood that, if an Elgin appeared in Lancaster County, Virginia, that the creator of that article (at Elgin, Virginia) would consider the "necessity" of disambiguating also by county. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 17:22, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
So returning to the question in the previous section. Elgin, South Carolina (Lancaster County) should be the dabed form of identical US city names within a state. I'll make this change again in a while since it again appears to have support. This is being done while the broader discussion about the US convention continues to grind along. I think I just need Arthur Rubin to say yea to say we have consensus. Vegaswikian 17:42, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree with my understanding of Promenader's suggestion--that all disambiguation be presented with uniform formatting, like this, in generic form:
CityOrTown (AllDisambiguation)
Not
CityOrTown, SomeDAB (MoreDAB)
I hope this is a correct interpretation of Promenader's suggestion, since we have too many proposals on the table (once again). --ishu 18:02, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Almost - that would be:
SubjectNameWithConvention (AllDisambiguation)
THEPROMENADER 19:16, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Is SubjectNameWithConvention the article title in this discussion or something else? Vegaswikian 03:30, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
At the risk of spinning this discussion out longer, SubjectNameWithConvention is not the article title, but one "flavor" of the "common name" of the article's subject. For example, SubjectNameWithConvention is like Madonna in Madonna (entertainer). The entertainer known as Madonna is not known as Madonna (entertainer). Of course, entertainer is the AllDisambiguation part. I hope that clarifies things in this discussion. --ishu 04:18, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Rationale for Changing Guideline

Please, no changes to the guideline. I think any change to mixing comma method parenthetical method will only result in confusion. I haven't responded to this discussion previously because as far as I could tell it was a set of competing solutions to a non-existent problem (or at least not a very significant problem). I think the mixing of styles will cause much confusion. older ≠ wiser 18:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

What, make things more confused than they already are? I circumstantially disagree. As long as a convention remains consistent and disambiguation remains clear, there will be no confusion. Start combining multi-level (yet sometimes not) comma convention with comma disambiguation, on the other hand, and you have a mess. The only people who are going to "like" a like situation are those who can already identify each element in a muliti-level article name and differentiate between them.
Anyhow, as long as you remain consistent there can be no problem. "City, State (disambiguation)" and "City (disambiguation)" work basically the same.
Lastly, remember that anything outside of a place's name in an article name is disambiguation. It would help discussion greatly if it were thought of in that way. THEPROMENADER 19:16, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely wrong. "Disambiguation", "convention", and "qualification" are three distinct things. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 19:20, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps to longtime convention cabal Wikipedians. When you build a multi-level namespace using a unique comma separation, do you really expect the reader to one of those three definitions for each element within? Not. Any name added to a "subject name" that is not the subject's own name is disambiguation. Anything outside the subject's name in a title is disambiguation of one form or another - no matter what you call it. THEPROMENADER 19:28, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Promender, do you consider the , California in San Francisco, California to be a disambiguator, even though there is no other San Francisco and San Francisco redirects to San Francisco, California? If it is a disambiguator and San Francisco, California is a disambiguation, what is it disambiguation from? Or, is , California just a qualifier that happens to not be a disambiguator? --Serge 19:45, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Arthur, yes, they are distinct, but they are also closely related in Wikipedia. How disambiguation is generally done in Wikipedia -- with a parenthetic remark -- is a convention. Disambiguation is a particular type of name qualification. Qualification of a name that requires no disambiguation is contrary to convention in Wikipedia. --Serge 19:45, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I'm not certain if I agree with all of Arthur's analysis, but I second his disagreement -- inconsistency is not the only cause for confusion--the new proposal introduces more complexities. While I'm not a great fan of the three-level comma forms, they are implemented fairly consistently within U.S. city articles (and this is a problem that so far is peculiar to the U.S. due both to the relatively high degree of autonomy of state and local governments in the U.S. and the popularity of using common names for places--although I wonder what sorts of disambiguation challenges we'd face if we had an article on every hamlet in China or India down to the same level that we have in the U.S.). older ≠ wiser 19:46, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
To ThePromenader: When you build a multi-level namespace using a unique comma separation, do you really expect the reader to one of those three definitions for each element within? Yes, why not. It is not such a difficult thing to catch onto. I think that I do agree with Arthur about the destinction between convention and disambiguation -- there are many possible methods for disambiguation. Using parentheses only one. Using commas for place names is another. Selecting alternate terms is another. The convention is what provides guidance in determining which method to use in particular cases. older ≠ wiser 19:46, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
I can assure you that the reader, unless he is pre-informed on the subject, won't. I do agree that there are many forms of disambiguation, but what is most important is that, whatever method is used, that it be identifiable. Unfortunately our choices here at Wiki are limited, thus my preference. THEPROMENADER 20:39, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
So are you saying that the subtelties of an equally arbitrary parenthetical disambiguation is somehow more easily intuited than the comma method? I don't think so. older ≠ wiser 20:46, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
There is no arguing that parentheses are the most obvious form of disambiguation. THEPROMENADER 23:44, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Baloney! That is a patently ridiculous assertion. older ≠ wiser 01:29, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) There is indeed, no argument that parentheses are the most obvious form of disambiguation; they aren't. To a reader, who should be assumed to be ignorant of Wikipedia and its conventions, they are no more obvious than many possibilities, and probably less obvious than the slash. (Considering a editor, who knows WP, leads eventually to the conclusion that whatever this guideline says will be "obvious"; at least in a few months.) Septentrionalis 00:02, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Indeed. Even supporters of the comma format can't agree on whether it's a naming convention or a disambiguation/qualification of the name. With Portland (Oregon) there is no question as to what is the name of the subject of the article (Portland), and what is the disambiguator (Oregon). With Portland, Oregon it is much less clear on whether the name of the subject is Portland (and , Oregon is just a disambiguator) or Portland, Oregon (where , Oregon is part of the name). Since the primary purpose of the title of the article is specify the most common name use to reference the subject, this ambiguity in the comma format is inherently flawed. --Serge 23:59, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
On the contrary, we agree: it's both. Septentrionalis 00:02, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Still don't agree. Commas by default signify an "and then"; parantheses signify a "side comment." THEPROMENADER 00:15, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, Septentrionalis, some comma format supporters see use of the comma format as both a "fully qualified naming convention" and as a disambiguation. But my point stands. There is no agreement even among comma format supporters, much less among everyone, that Chicago, Illinois, for example, is the "fully qualified" name for the City of Chicago. It's not clear. It's ambiguous. It's a problem. Thankfully, in that case, the problem was solved by moving the article to Chicago. --Serge 00:23, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
"Fuly qualified" - by who? It would help mantain a coherent course of disucussion, Serge, if you wouldn't pick arguments just for their support of your views. There is a train of thought at play here - conflict and reader comprehension - so let's do our best to stick to it. THEPROMENADER 01:05, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Promenader, my point is that the comma format causes conflict and comprehension difficulties for readers by being ambiguous with respect to whether the , state part is a disambiguator, just a qualifier, both, or what. My evidence for the confusion it causes is the lack of agreement even among comma format supporters as to what it means. --Serge 01:10, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Serge, do you have any evidence that any Wikipedia readers have been confused by the name Oklahoma City, Oklahoma? (That name, by the way, appears on a t-shirt purchased in OKC, but I wasn't confused by that fact.) This really is a non-problem, as far as I can tell. Using the state in the article title gives useful additional information. I have seen no evidence whatsoever that it causes confusion. (Note: I don't argue that every title should be packed with as much useful additional information as possible. I just don't see the confusion that you're so very concerned with here.) Phiwum 15:51, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Hm. Okay. Perhaps we should just say that everything outside of the placename itself, no matter how it is attached, is a form of disambiguation - as it serves as such. THEPROMENADER 01:18, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Saying it does not make it true for everyone. No matter how much we say it, some will continue to argue the , State is not a form of disambiguation. You never answered my question above on this. I will repeat it here: Promender, do you consider the , California in San Francisco, California to be a disambiguator, even though there is no other San Francisco and San Francisco redirects to San Francisco, California? If it is a disambiguator and San Francisco, California is a disambiguation, what is it disambiguation from? --Serge 01:36, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Whoo. Yes, it is a form of disambiguation - as it is a convention made with future disambiguation in mind. The fact that this has become a convention does give it a right to use the comma as a separator (as a convention), but this will work (without conflict) only if that convention remains consistant and true to its own rule. Thus if "city, state" is the standard, every city article must use "city, state" for the convention to remain identifiable and avoid conflict (of reasoning and style) with other "settlement" articles. Thus any disambiguation outside the convention must be indicated in a different manner, or conflict and confusion between articles ensues. THEPROMENADER 15:52, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Edit conflict. Portland is ambiguous. Are you talking about Maine or Oregon? This is not a naming convention or a disambiguation/qualification issue. It is a editoral sytle for the encylopedia. You can call it a convention but it is more significant then that. As an editoral sytle, or naming convention, it is not about disambiguation. The US naming convention as implemented reduces the need for disambiguation in place name articles. Can a well designed editoral sytle deal with reduicing future disambiguation? Yes. That does not mean it is a disambiguation policy. Vegaswikian 00:25, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Yet the US city naming convention is a form of disambiguation - this is a large part of its very purpose, as you have just so said yourself! "Future" disambiguation, "reduces the need for disambiguation" - no turn of language can change this. Please let's just treat it as such and move on. THEPROMENADER 01:05, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
No I said it is an editoral style apart of what I believe is caleld a style sheet at a newspaper. This directs how you always write certain types of things. This is used to present a consistant presentation of like information. This is not disambiguation plain and simple. A side effect of a well designed style can be disambiguation. That is a different issue. Vegaswikian 06:02, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Whether it is an "editorial style" - or use any adjective you want - or not doesn't matter: anything tacked to a name that is not the name itself must have a justifiable purpose and raison d'être. Although "future disambiguation" justifies in part the "city, State" convention, I still think it is popular because of the comfort factor - it is a common US practice to name "other state" cities in this way. Yes, this could be called a "style", but this as a style this comfort is its justification. As a disambiguation it is not identifiable as such, and will conflict with any further disambiguation using the same comma separation. Thus I like less and less the "city, state" with comma (true) disambiguation. THEPROMENADER 15:37, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict x4) Disambiguate is a Wikipedia term, as can easily be seen from the cross-namespace redirect. To the extent it's used elsewhere, it means something different. A naming "convention" could be anything related to names, and "qualification" is a clear from computer science. Completely different concepts. Serge is still wrong, in that the general naming convention (policy) specifically states it can (and should) be modified as needed in specific subjects. (And qualification of names not required by disambiguation or convention is contrary to policy.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 19:52, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Arthur, it would seem that you're stuck in your own definition of things. it doesn't really matter how we (no matter how educated we are) define a certain object; it's its presentation, and the composition thereof, that informs the reader. One method of separation speaks of one method of composition but the comma, in this case, is actually several. I don't see how you expect anyone, informed or not, to see the different "methods" at work here - all the reader sees (and we must assume ignorance) is a chain of places separated by commas, and only the first of these is the subject of the article. Go figure. THEPROMENADER 20:39, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Serge writes:Since the primary purpose of the title of the article is to specify the most common name used to reference the subject, this ambiguity in the comma format is inherently flawed. I just don't see this as the purpose of WP:NC. Rather, WP:NC (aka WP:TITLE) provides guidance on "how to appropriately create and name pages". The purpose of the title is to assign a unique title (identifier) for the container of information (the article). The WP policy/guideline/convention is to use the "most common" name whenever possible but that rule is subordinated to uniqueness--which brings us to this discussion. As I've noted above and elsewhere, the lead sentence is a universal place in which to specify what is the "most common" name for a place. Additionally, there are numerous other locations in an article (e.g., infobox titles) that provide additional context as to the "most common" name. The disambiguation provides uniqueness to the title, but it is unreasonable to assume that the title alone will provide 100% clarity on the "most common" name for 100% of readers who are 100% might be largely ignorant of Wiki conventions/policies/etc. --ishu 02:12, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Ishu, Serge has consistently failed to acknowledge over a long period of time that the only purpose of an article title is to provide a unique identifier for the article.
Arthur, a naming convention that requires a qualified (not fully qualified in this case) name reduces the likelihood of name clashes, and therefore the naming convention serves to reduce the need for explicit disambiguation.
Promenader, I think your suggestions for how to disambiguate multiple towns in the same state may have merit, but nobody answered my earlier question about how it's done at the local level in real life. --Scott Davis Talk 04:26, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
I tried, but it didn't end up very clear. What I meant was that local DAB tends to leave out the larger geographic distinctions (e.g., state) since those are understood locally. While there are 22 Washington Townships in Pennsylvania, in most cases, little to no DAB is typically used, since people know the local Washington Township. On local news in the Philadelphia region, the typical DAB will mention Washington Township, Gloucester County, omitting the state, as it is assumed that the audience knows that Gloucester County is in New Jersey and not Pennsylvania. (Maryland and Delaware, the other two states in the broadcasting area, do not have townships at all, so they are presumed to be excluded by the "common name" plus context.) But that's just for this one region. Other town-based, smaller states like Massachusetts don't have duplicate names in the same way.
The big picture here is that we're working on a compendium of basically local information for use by a readership that's much broader than usual for smaller places. Given the large number of articles, achieving consistency is difficult--yet even more necessary than with a smaller reference source. --ishu 05:02, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Scott and Ishu, if the "only purpose of an article title is to provide a unique identifier for the article", then why doesn't Wikipedia just use randomly generated identifiers for each article title? Answer: because providing a unique identifier is not the only purpose of an article title. Why do Wikipedia conventions and guidelines call for using the most common name used to reference the subject of the article in the title? Answer: because providing a unique identifier is not the only purpose of an article title. The primary purpose of the article is NOT to provide a unique identifier. Other encyclopedias are setup with different articles sharing the same titles; Wikipedia could be as well. It just happens to be setup, albeit for various good reasons, such that the title must be unique. But that's not the only purpose of the title. If it were, then encyclopedias without unique titles would not have article titles at all - because the titles would not have any purpose. So, yeah, I have not acknowledged that the only purpose of titles is to provide a unique identifier - because it's not true. However, if one believes unique identity is the only purpose of titles, I can see why he would not have an issue with using the comma format for U.S. cities. It explains much. --Serge 05:13, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Please reread what I wrote in response to your claim that "the primary purpose of the title of the article is to specify the most common name." As I acknowledged, specifying the "most common" name is one purpose of the title, but it is not the primary purpose. The guidelines clearly indicate that adding terms for disambiguation is more important than "specifying the most common name." As a procedural rule (and common-sense usage), we expect the "most common" name to be part of the title. (Often times, it is the entire title.) However, the need for disambiguation means we should not and cannot expect the "most common" name always will be clear from the article title. Consequently, "to specify the most common name" is not and cannot be "the primary purpose of the title of the article." --ishu 05:34, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Ishu, I'm sorry for addressing that last post to you as well as Scott. I was really only addressing what Scott said: the only purpose of an article title is to provide a unique identifier.
Where does any guideline indicate that adding terms to the name (as opposed to adding them as a disambiguator) is more important than "specifying the most common name?" Where do you get the idea that the most common name only has to be part of the title? The general guidelines do say things like Use the most common name and When there is no risk of confusion, do not disambiguate. If the most common name is shared by two or more articles, okay, disambiguate. But when there is only one article subject with a given "most common name" (like Oklahoma City, for example), there is no risk of confusion by definition, and, therefore the do not disambiguate dictate applies. Why do we have a naming convention specific to a tiny corner of Wikipedia (U.S. cities) that blatantly violates these widely followed general conventions and guidelines for no apparent reason? Canada dropped it without any problems. Have the New York City, Chicago or Philadelphia suffered? Of coure not, because there was no reason for them to be at New York, New York, Chicago, Illinois, or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. If you're going to have an exception or specific guideline that blatantly violates general guidelines, fine, if you have a good reason. A good reason is what's missing as a basis to use the comma convention to disambiguate with state even when there is no risk of confusion with the most common name - the Cityname alone. --Serge 07:52, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
An encyclopedia article's title names the object of its content - this is its only purpose. An encyclopedia entry is not a newspaper nor magazine article: it does not need its title to serve as a summary of its storyline or content. Thus I (increasingly) find it pointless to add anything to the object name of an encyclopedia entry title that isn't the object name - unless it is for reasons of disambiguation. THEPROMENADER 15:37, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Serge: Where does any guideline indicate that adding terms to the name (as opposed to adding them as a disambiguator) is more important than "specifying the most common name?" Since the article title must be unique, disambiguation requires adding disambiguation terms to the "most common" name. That is, [common name] + [disambiguation] = [article title]. I simply noted that WP:TITLE is clear on this point: one must add terms when disambiguation is required. My second point is that adding terms for disambiguation (by any convention) dilutes the clarity of the common name in the article title, especially for readers who do not understand the conventions of DAB, etc. I think this debate does a good job of demonstrating this loss of clarity. The clarity reduction occurs regardless of which convention is followed, since disambiguation is required with any convention (though not for all articles).
Serge: Where do you get the idea that the most common name only has to be part of the title? I didn't say that. Rather, I wrote: we expect the "most common" name to be part of the title. (Often times, it is the entire title.)
As a side note, can we attempt to use the word title to refer to the Wikipedia identifier for a subject, and restrict the word name to mean "words that people use to describe the subject?" I will try to employ this usage. --ishu 15:56, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
That is, [common name] + [disambiguation] = [article title].
- That is it, to a tee. THEPROMENADER 16:36, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
I'll add that the policy is to use the common name in the article title, but the policy is not to specify the common name. If anything, the policy reduces clarity on the common name if and when disambiguation is used in the title. Of course, there are other more relevant places where the common name is specified, such as the lead sentence. --ishu 19:33, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Serge, responding to your comment to me: The purpose of the title is to identify the article, but life is easier for both editors and readers if it is a predictable sequence of letters and punctuation, rather than a random string. It's not that the purpose of the article title is to specify the most common name of the subject, but it is the convention that the name of the subject be used in the title of the article. --Scott Davis Talk 11:42, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Scott, we're in agreement: it is the Wiki-wide convention that the name of the subject be used in the title of the article (which the U.S. city guideline violates). See my concession immediately following that the purpose of the title is not to specify the most common name. However, I also explain why common name specification has turned out to be a very useful side-benefit of titling articles with the most common name. To this extent, each title specifying the most common name of the subject of its respective article has become a useful secondary purpose of the Wikipedia title. --Serge
Ah, so when it suits you, having a secondary benefit to a naming convention is a good thing. But when it is something you dislike, the secondary benefit is simply a violation. older ≠ wiser 17:10, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Benefits of standard parenthetic remark dab over inconsistent comma dab

Ishu, okay, your reason and logic have convinced me that saying that the purpose of the title is to specify the most common name of the subject of the article is inaccurate. However, because the title is supposed to be the most common name when DAB is not required, in at least those cases the title does serve to specify the most common name used to refer to the subject of the article. Would you agree that specifying the most common name is a very useful and helpful side benefit of the title in those cases?
Now, if we look at the titles that are disambiguated using the standard parenthetic remark method, don't you think in the vast majority of cases it is obvious to even a novice that the parenthetic remark is a qualifier that is distinct from the common/primary name? For example, consider a novice encountering the article, Hair (film). Do you agree that it is obvious to the vast majority of readers that the article is about the film named Hair? Now, how many (if not just one) similar encounters do you think the average Wikipedia user has to have to figure out that the standard method for dabbing here is the parenthetic remark? Consider the reader who gets to Hair (film) via the main page on Hair, where he clicks on the second link in this phrase at the top of the page: Hair is also the name of a musical; see the stage production and the movie.
My point is that the parenthetic remark method, like it or not, is consistent, standard and very intuitive. Plus, when used, such as in Hair (film), it clearly distinguishes the common name part from the disambiguator in parentheses. Thus, the very useful and helpful side benefit of titles specifying the most common name applies not only to articles with titles that don't require ambiguation, but also to those that are disambiguated with the standard parenthetic remark method.
Finally, following the dab guidelines consistently means not disambiguating a title except when there is a risk of confusion which achieves the additional side benefit of telling the reader that any article with title Name is either the only or primary usage of Name (if it's not the only usage there should be a dab link right under the title). But if the title is of the form Name (disambiguator), then that immediately tells the user that there is at least one other subject whose most common name is also Name. All this communication about the most common name is lost with U.S. cities because of the use of the comma convention, especially because it is used contrary to WP:DAB: even when disambiguation is not required.
For example, whether you're at Morgan Hill, California or neighboring Gilroy, California, from their titles, the reader has no way of knowing whether there are any other Morgan Hills or Gilroys. However, if the titles were formed in accordance to WP:TITLE and WP:DAB, it would be obvious, for we would have: Morgan Hill and Gilroy (California), clearly indicating that Morgan Hill is unique and that there is at least one more Gilroy. That's useful and helpful information that we lose because of the current naming convention to always use the comma format. Of course, this information would also be true if the comma convention were only used when dab was required, so we would have Morgan Hill and Gilroy, California. But, in that case, for Gilroy, whether the name of the town is Gilroy or Gilroy, California is unclear. --Serge 21:39, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

First of all, in case you missed it, I have stated my general agreement with the dab-in-parentheses convention yesterday and the day before. I have stated elsewhere my willingness to depart from the comma convention as well.
Serge: Would you agree...common name...[has a] side benefit? Yes. I do not recall disagreeing.
Serge: don't you think...[it's] obvious to novice...[that] parenthetic remark...[is] distinct from common name? We should not assume this is true, and it is beside the point, since we agree there is a benefit for non-disambiguated titles.
Serge: [With the comma convention] the reader has no way of knowing whether there are any other [towns with a particular name]. It cannot be proven or disproven, but I doubt that people scrutinize a title to establish whether there is another place sharing a name. There are enough compelling reasons to place all disambiguation within the parentheses without presenting weak reasons. --ishu 02:11, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree. Serge, you can't fix yourself on a target and call a halt to all reasoning to dig up and expose every argument possible in favour of it - in ignoring all else - this won't make you many fans, especially when it seems that your not even reading what others write. Anyhow.
I'm almost fully convinced that, if there is a city state convention, it was built around the "comfort" of typical US "talking from one state of another" common usage. If there isn't - well, it's popular for the same reason. US wikipedians may be the majority on English Wiki, but this technique, for all its faults and potential conflicts if not abided to the letter in its own identifiable form, is a rather "narrow" point of view on a world scale. There is no reason at all why entire Wiki can adopt a "Name (disambiguation)" method, and the "US convention" is one of the only things stopping it from doing just that. THEPROMENADER 09:10, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Except that, you know, there are several other country-specific conventions that use the comma method for disambiguation. I'm sure that the substantial number of UK and Autralian contributors could have adopted the parenthetical method. But the comma method was chosen. I don't know how they arrived at such a convention, but I suspect it was not out of any desire to emulate the U.S., but rather because that convention was familiar in those countries. older ≠ wiser 14:10, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Or rather could it have been because the comma is a more natural form of ambiguation adapted to everyday oral and writing habits? With your suggestion, I'm sure it was some of all of these. Anyhow, such practices don't seem very adapted to article titles/encyclopaedia entries. Especially when they need further disambiguation. THEPROMENADER 14:57, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
No, to be honest I don't really see that there is much of a problem with using the comma method for disambiguation. It may be slightly less intuitive for completely clueless nubies. But is is familiar and consistent (for the most part) and is powerful and extensible enough to uniquely designate a place with minimal confusion. With the parenthetical method, there is ALWAYS discrepencies as to what disambiguating term is used. Look at just about any categorical domain in Wikipedia where parenthetical disambiguation is used and there is a considerable variation in the disambiguating terms that are used. IMO, this makes such an approach less consistent and less user-friendly. Beyond that, there is the problem of confusion with geographic landforms. Under such a system, would Indian River (Michigan) refer to a city or a river? Would Green Lake (Wisconsin) be a city or a lake? There are hundreds of such ambiguities between landforms and populated places. As it is presently, parenthetic disambiguation is applied to landforms to help distinguish them from populated places. Granted, this is completely artificial, but it is pretty easy to pick up on with a minimal amount of cluefulness. older ≠ wiser 15:56, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
(Grin) now you're doing the same thing as Serge - cherrypicking in the opposite direction : )
With the parenthetical method, there is ALWAYS discrepencies as to what disambiguating term is used.
...that's another problem - what disambiguation terms to use -but with parathenses at least you know what is the name and what is the disambiguation. There is absolutely nothing wrong with disambiguating using (example) Indian River (waterway, Michigan) - if the need be. Once the disambiguation is identifiable you can disambiguate with whatever you want. Thanks for the rare example. THEPROMENADER 17:26, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Except that it isn't so rare. There are hundreds of such place names in the U.S. And as a personal opinion, ugly neologisms like Indian River (waterway, Michigan) are not an improvement. older ≠ wiser 17:43, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, fine, but with such examples, with comma disambiguation alone, you're going to have even more problems. Excuses, but ugly != doesn't work. THEPROMENADER 23:45, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
No, not at all. Indian River, Michigan is the town; Indian River (Michigan) is the stream. Green Lake, Wisconsin is the city, Green Lake (Wisconsin) is the lake. It is pretty simple to understand, and for the long run a much better alternative that making a determination at each and every instance what form to use. older ≠ wiser 02:54, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Indian River, Michigan is the town; Indian River (Michigan) is the stream.
In what way is this intuitive? How is it clear to the reader that one is a river and the other a town? This is only clear only to the informed Wikipedian. Bad example, my friend - this is in fact another problem completely. When's a river not a river? When you don't say it is! THEPROMENADER 05:32, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
I didn't say it was intuitive--but it is pretty darn easy to figure out because it is applied relatively consistently. older ≠ wiser 11:57, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Ishu and Promenader, I did read what you wrote. What makes you think I was arguing with anything you wrote? Did you read what I wrote? I started this section to eat some crow and then explain some of the advantages of using standard parethetic dabbing over comma dabbing. If you agree, great. I asked some questions to confirm. So, okay, we may differ on how significant we think some of these benefits are, that's fine. But there is no need to get insulting.

Well, when you treat issues in your answers in ignoring others who have done the same in their replys to you, one only has to wonder. I'm sure you can understand the doubt, and no it's not insulting. The point of this remark was to show the desire for a clearer method of argument - thus a shorter talk-page. THEPROMENADER 05:32, 18 November 2006 (UTC)


As to older ≠ wiser who writes, Under such a system, would Indian River (Michigan) refer to a city or a river? Would Green Lake (Wisconsin) be a city or a lake?, the answer is... with all due respect... who cares? These questions presuppose that one should be able to identify the type from the article title. This is not true for any article in Wikipedia. This is not a goal of disambiguation for which the only purpose is to distinguish a title from all others uses of the same name. His entire argument is a red herring. --Serge 17:39, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Who cares?, well I guess fair number of those who have previously opposed your extremist propositions. older ≠ wiser 17:43, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
How is calling for any and all naming conventions specific to any small corner of Wikipedia to be consistent, and not violate, the broader/general naming guidelines that apply to all of Wikipedia, extremist? That's like labeling someone who claims the U.S. Constitution should protect the rights of all citizens in all states to be an extremist. In case you don't know, I'm making the identical arguments aout TV episode naming over at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television), and arguments similar to yours here are made there in response, primarily by Elonka. --Serge 18:27, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Serge writes: What makes you think I was arguing with anything you wrote? Your tone and questions sound to me like you believe I disagreed with you. Specifically, after agreeing with me (by name) in sentence one, the next word is however, followed by five leading questions whose apparent purpose is to convince me in favor of the parenthesis convention that I'd already agreed with. First you call the question/answer format an "explanation," but then say it's "confirmation."
Later, you wrote:
My point is that the parenthetic remark method, like it or not, is consistent, standard and very intuitive. Plus, when used, such as in Hair (film), it clearly distinguishes the common name part from the disambiguator in parentheses.
The expression "like it or not" generally connotes that the other party does not like "it," and then you pile on additional reasons why I should buy into the parenthesis convention. Please let me know whether I'm being overly sensitive here, but this all comes across as an effort to convince me of something I'd already agreed with.
When I wrote There are enough compelling reasons to place all disambiguation within the parentheses without presenting weak reasons, it was to suggest that we focus on the strongest arguments for this (or any) convention, rather than get bogged down discussing weak (and unsupportable) reasons. Speaking only for myself, I intended no insult nor do I see any in what I wrote, and I apologize for not being clearer. --ishu 18:46, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
I am really sorry for botching this. I switched from addressing you specifically to "you" in general gradually and unclearly. The first sentence and paragraph is addressed to you specifically. Most of the rest refers to "you" in general... meaning anyone who is reading it. I know I really botched that. Sorry! --Serge 19:01, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Answer this question

The following question was posed at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television).

This is directed at those who do not want to follow the standard "disambiguate only when necessary". So far it has been ignored every time I have asked this question. What makes the articles on "Lost" or "Star Trek" special compared to other TV series on Wikipedia? What makes a TV episode article special compared for a mometo any other Wikipedia article? If these questions cannot not be answered, then you have no point. You cannot call for a "common sense exception" when no special case exists. Please also note that the question is not "What makes the editors special?" The fact that the editors have handled the articles differently does not make the article special. Jay32183 20:18, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it, slightly modified, is an interesting question here too. Here it goes:

This is directed at those who do not want to follow the standard "disambiguate only when necessary". What makes the U.S. city articles special compared to other city articles on Wikipedia? What makes a city article special compared to any other Wikipedia article? If these questions cannot be answered, then you have no basis for disambiguating even when not necessary. You cannot call for a "common sense exception" when no special case exists. Please also note that the question is not "What makes the editors special?" The fact that U.S. city editors have handled the articles differently does not make the article special. --Serge 18:34, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Serge writes: ". What makes the U.S. city articles special compared to other city articles on Wikipedia? I'm half inclined to borrow his words to me previously "the answer is... with all due respect... who cares?" But I might also point out some exaggerations: 1) The convention for Australian and Japanese cities is to use city, province by default (with some exceptions. (And although the Canadian convention allows cities to be at the simple name if unambiguous, only dozen or so have been moved) 2) The comma convention is not strictly speaking ONLY a matter of disambiguation--it is a naming convention; disambiguation is just one aspect of it. 3) The fetishization of the Use Common Names guideline has resulted in it being distorted and extended far beyond the original intentions. Its principle purpose had been to place well-known persons or things at their common name, such as Bill Clinton rather than William Jefferson Clinton. Once we leave the arena of the well-known, it become much more difficult to say what "common" really means. I don't think that it is necessarily the simplest form of the name. 4) There are already other areas of Wikipedia where a longer, more precise name is used in preference to the simplest name, such as for naval vessels and for royalty and for U.S. state highways. There may be other areas as well. It is not merely a matter of disambiguation, but naming convention. older ≠ wiser 19:43, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
older ≠ wiser argues that the "Use Common Names" guideline has been "distorted and extended" beyond the supposed original intent to place well-known persons or things at their common name, such as Bill Clinton. Funny that since there is no mention of the "well-known" factor in the statement of the guideline itself,
Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things.
nor is the term famous (or well-known) mentioned anywhere on the page describing the rationale and specifics for the common names guideline. In fact, that page even says things like:
In cases where the common name of a subject is misleading, then it is sometimes reasonable to fall back on a well-accepted alternative.
The implication is that where the common name of a subject is NOT misleading (you know, like Oklahoma City or San Francisco or even Carmel-by-the-Sea), it is not reasonable to not use the most common name and fall back on a well-accepted alternative (like Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, San Francisco, California and Carmel-by-the-Sea, California). Yet falling back on a well-accepted alternative is exactly what adhering to the comma convention for cities without ambiguity issues is, without any reasonable basis whatsoever. Being famous or well-known has nothing to do with it. It's all about disambiguity - not being misleading or confusing. I will say that for certain subjects "the most common name" is simply not clear. That is arguably the case for ships, aircraft and even all but the most famous royalty, and, hence, why the common names guideline is not that helpful in those areas. But for cities, where the most common name is clearly the name of the city itself, older ≠ wiser's excuse does not apply at all. --Serge 21:25, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Official names notwithstanding, why isn't Carmel-by-the-Sea, California the redirect and Carmel, California the article title? Surely the Google test would validate that usage? --ishu 21:36, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
That's an issue for the talk page of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. To some locals referring to Carmel-by-the-Sea as Carmel is akin to referring to San Francisco as Frisco... unacceptable. This is actually a case where In cases where the common name of a subject is misleading, then it is sometimes reasonable to fall back on a well-accepted alternative may apply. --Serge 21:40, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

What older ≠ wiser and all comma naming convention supporters do is make all articles comprising an entire class of articles (U.S. Cities), not just individual articles on a case-by-case basis, exceptions to the Use Common Names guideline. On what grounds? What makes U.S. cities so special? --Serge 21:47, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not even sure why I even bother attempting to engage Serge in dialog. It's like the person who complains that his head hurts when he bangs it against the wall and the doctor says, "Well, why don't you stop?".
In a sense, I agree with Serge. It is almost an exercise in futility to expect consistency or orderliness on Wikipedia, so one might as well give in to what appears to be the endemic, chaotic nature of Wikipedia and simply allow things to be named in whatever manner happens to be in vogue at that instant in time. There is nothing "special" about U.S. cities other than that they are all within the U.S. and happen to have a very simple and familiar method for describing them, which happily also happens to disambiguate them as well. In the very same way that a bunch of editors discussed things early on and arrived at the Common Names guideline, which you happen to find so very dear, not much later editors also discussed how to name U.S. cities and came up with the U.S. naming convention, which you happen to despise. One you seem to see as the supreme guiding principle, the other apparently, by your interpretation, was some sort of aberration from the natural order of the wiki way. I obviously disagree. I don't see any conflict between the common names guideline and the general sense of the U.S. city naming convention (or at least no more than the typical discord amongst the weltering multitude of policies/guidelines/conventions developed and continually modified ad hoc to address ever changing circumstances). I support making allowances for those U.S. cities that genuinely have a "common name" to have the article at that title. But I do believe that the common names guidance has been turned into something more than what it was originally intended to be. The topics discussed and the examples used were such things as Bill Clinton vs. William Jefferson Clinton. Interesting side note, the common names guidance developed in part as a response to the deprecation of the use of subpages (which in a way combined aspects of disambiguation with categorization). There is some meaning to using the "common" name of something that is well-known. But talking about the common name of obscure entities is somewhat oxymoronic. Where there are multiple names for obscure entities, there is benefit is using a naming convention that encodes additional information into the title. older ≠ wiser 04:11, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Aside: Really, Serge, with all due respect: I would not want you on my debating team. By turning this into an "us vs. them" issue by singling out (through your targeted questions) those who do not agree with you, you are almost obliging your targets to draw a line; others will simply leave the debate rather than discuss in that tone. Both dilute the process of a) discussing the issue through to a logical and mutually accepted conclusion with a b) comfortable consensus.

Everyone else: even though Serge's "debate practices" are not the best, this is not a reason to say he is wrong when he isn't. Please remain objective when picking through arguments.

Concerning the comment just above: It seems that there is some confounding of "common name" and "disambiguation". If it is a common practice to disambiguate a name with another, it does not make the combination into a "common name" - it is still disambiguation. The "common name" convention targets only the "language and form of the base name"; it was not made to encompass common disambiguation practices. I don't see the utility of compiling and comparing conventions to justify another - conventions are guidelines for their own issues, not those of others. THEPROMENADER 11:20, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

older ≠ wiser writes: talking about the common name of obscure entities is somewhat oxymoronic. This comment points to the real "problem:" U.S. places (in Wikipedia) are different because hundreds (if not thousands) of otherwise non-notable places (e.g., Indian River, Michigan) now have articles. Our options include:

  1. Submit multiple deletion requests to eliminate non-notable places
  2. Agree upon a standard or convention that is consistent with existing naming conventions.
  3. Agree upon a standard or convention that may deviate from other conventions but is internally consistent.

I think it is much better to keep these articles, since the alternative is to have hundreds of inconsistent articles created, one for the birthplace of each celebrity to merit a new article, for example. It is certain that these articles will be completely different from one another--much as they were before Rambot. So we're left with (2) and (3). Older/Wiser correctly notes that the naming conventions weren't intended to deal with "obscure" (i.e., non-notable) places. The existence of these articles already deviates from article creation conventions, hence our problem. So I think it makes sense also to depart there's a case to be made for departing from the article naming conventions. I don't think that other countries have been article-ized to the extent that the U.S. has. If that's not correct, please let me know. --ishu 13:55, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

The proposition of destroying articles for the sake of maintaining a status quo is pretty silly I must say - I take it that it was made in jest : ) One of the beauties of Wiki is its ability to have articles on anything and everything - but it has to be prepared for it, and this no matter the "type" of article. THEPROMENADER 14:32, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
The deletion option was presented in the name of completeness: Unless we are willing to remove non-notable places (not just a silly idea, but bad idea), then we must recognize that the U.S. is different because of the large number of "obscure" places. The U.S. has the largest number of "obscure" places (and articles about them) because it
  • has the third largest population in the world
  • has nearly 4x population of Germany, 5x of the U.K., 10x of Canada and 15x of Australia
  • is by far the most populous country that also has a "significant" population of wiki editors (in any language)
and because
  • Rambot created articles for most of these places
If we are to have so many articles, it only makes sense to organize them in a coherent fashion. --ishu 17:57, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Ishu, arguing that a particular category (U.S. cities) needs to be organized in a coherent fashion (that is inconsistent with Wiki-wide conventions and guidelines) is an example of bottom-up thinking. See below for what I mean by this in more detail, and the problems with doing so. Paris is an exception to WP:DAB because it is so famous; this is why it is at Paris. And because Paris is at Paris, Paris, Texas of course can't be at Paris, and therefore must be disambiguated. Now, whether we put it at Paris (Texas) or Paris, Texas is a matter for Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements), so that those cities that are disambiguated, are disambiguated consistently. But to define a naming convention for cities whose name does not require disambiguation is going beyond the scope of this or any category-specific naming convention. This argument is why the convention to predisambiguate TV episode names (with the name of the TV series in paretheses) is in the process of being reversed. See Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television). --Serge 16:11, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Serge, there is a huge difference between the television series naming issue and places names (and you continue to conveniently regard this as a U.S. only matter, when Australia and Japan have similar conventions and Canada, although allowing for renaming, the vast majority of place names remain at the full city,province title, even where there is no ambiguity). With the preemptive parenthetical disambiguation of television series, you have a title that very few people would be likely to look for, without prior knowledge of the convention. With place names, the city,state convention is familiar and widely used throughout the English-speaking world. City,state is an alternate common name for these places, that also happily, has the side benefit of disambiguating the names. BTW, Paris is not an "exception" to WP:DAB, it exemplifies one of the principles discussed in that guideline, primary topic. older ≠ wiser 17:21, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Serge writes: Ishu, arguing that a particular category (U.S. cities) needs to be organized in a coherent fashion (that is inconsistent with Wiki-wide conventions and guidelines) is an example of bottom-up thinking. In this remark, I did not argue whether it should be organized in any particular way. Please try to keep the context in mind. When you write comments like this, it sounds like you don't care about any coherent organization. Disambiguation-when-necessary isn't a coherent fashion at all--particularly for places that are "obscure" or "not well-known" or non-notable--unless you favor deletion of all articles for non-notable places. If we decide to keep them (as most of us seem to want), then we have to deal with them. I and others believe "obscure" places should be organized coherently. Coherent organization does not need to conflict with any basic policies, principles, guidelines, or conventions. Of course, it may conflict, in which case we need to find a coherent, logical way to resolve the conflict--which may include modifying guidelines, conventions, policies, or principles. --ishu 17:02, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
  • See Communes of South Tyrol for another list of places, many of them not particularly notable; I know about this because the names of all 116 of them are disputed <sigh> but not actively, this week. I think a massive deletion of US places would be very unfortunate: all of them contain information, almost all of them contain something more than the census; and any of them may be linked to at any time. Most events are in places, some of them obscure places, and these, which have been worked over, are better than redlinks. Septentrionalis 17:17, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, as far as wiki is concerned anyone can make an article about their hometown as long as there's something informative to say about it - I think it best that we prepare for that eventuality. Imagine that every city in the US has its own article - there's going to be two and even three level disambiguation, and possibly even more when it comes to disambiguation-needed names shared with places in other countries. Wiki thinks large; so should we. THEPROMENADER 01:17, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Our tone sounds like we (Promenader, Septentrionalis, me) disagree. But I don't think we do. Am I correct? --ishu 05:03, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Apologies for my tone then - perhaps we're all a little exasperated at the chaotic nature of this discussion. So many details have been thrown in that simple don't need to be. The problem in itself is simple, and so is the solution.
Yes, it seems that we do agree. Are we all for a "ProperName (allDisambiguation)" method? Side note: this is much ado about nothing, actually, because it would seem that most of Wiki already operates this way. THEPROMENADER 09:04, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
I was referring only to the issue of whether we should delete articles for "obscure" places. I'll agree on the disambiguation for the following reasons:
  1. "ProperName (allDisambiguation)" is relatively wiki-wide.
  2. For the reader, the lead sentence is the most meaningful statement of what is the subject of the article. Any confusion from "ugly titles" (and some might be quite ugly) can and should be clarified by a well-written lead sentence. If readers are confused by the title, a likely first step is to scan the text of the article. (All articles should have a well-written lead sentence anyway.) I can't think of any issues related to "ugly titles" that aren't aesthetic, although I'm willing to hear the case for non-aesthetic problems.
  3. Well-written disambiguation pages should also relieve reader burdens posed by complicated disambiguation schemes.
  4. If Rambot can create all these city,state pages, then another bot should be able to handle the conversion.
  5. Redirects can solve many other search problems.
I think that covers it. --ishu 13:12, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Yep. Agreed on all points here. I didn't even consider the "deletion" proposition as a serious one, so missed the point there. No of course we should not delete anything. THEPROMENADER 14:08, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
But as for the "ProperName (allDisambiguation)" method: no, I absolutely oppose it. It's not necessary; it's not useful; and it makes leads of the form: "The Something in Portland, Oregon..." significantly harder to write. Septentrionalis 18:44, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
1, "ProperName (allDisambiguation)" is relatively wiki-wide, Yes but it is not the sole method of disambiguation and the comma form is in common use for places. Unless you are proposing that ALL places for ALL countries MUST use the parenthetical method, I don't see any point to discussing replacing a familiar and consistent method with a less familiar and likely less consistent one (less consistent in that the there will likely be greater variation in the terms used to disambiguate, if other uses of parenthetical disambiguation are any measure).
2, True enough. My concern about "ugly titles" is NOT confusion -- rather, IMO, any system that disregards aesthetics is doomed. I think there is a tendency for humans to prefer more elegant and less "ugly" solutions. I see no basis for rejecting a simple, familiar method for one which is less familiar and unnecessarily increases the "ugly" factor. Aesthetics alone would not be a very significant factor to consider, but considering that, IMO, the alternative is inferior on other grounds, it is a factor to consider.
3, is a truism whichever schema is in place.
4, also true, but you had better be certain there is widespread support -- and, as with #1, that this applies uniformly to ALL comma-separated place names, not only the U.S. ones.
5, also a truism whichever schema is in place.
So, I do not support switching over to a parenthetical method for names of settlements. If there turns out to be a groundswell of support for this -- and it is applied uniformly across all countries, then I wouldn't stand in the way. older ≠ wiser 15:29, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Now that Serge mentions it, I hate current policy on most television show episodes. When I see an episode title all by its lonesome, I have no idea the context until I click on the link. Terrible. It's as if Wikipedia expects us to recognize what show the title is associated with (or that it's associated with some show at all). For the same reason, I like the current US city name guidelines. That way, I can see that Nowata is a city in Oklahoma without clicking on its link in the "See also" list. Phiwum 17:16, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Does it also bother you when you run across an article name like Ernesto de la Guardia Navarro? Does that mean we need to add more context to the article name to have Ernesto de la Guardia Navarro (President of Panama)? Or Ernesto de la Guardia Navarro (former President of Panama)? Bringing context into the article name is useless. How is it that you're finding television episode names and not seeing any context around it? —Wknight94 (talk) 17:45, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Actually, Phiwum, for the "city, State" convention, the context is in your own mind: you already know what the states are. Can you assume everyone does? THEPROMENADER 19:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Wknight94 makes a decent point and perhaps it applies to cities. But frankly, I find it less applicable to the titles of sitcom episodes. Since this talk page isn't about sitcoms, let's let it pass. Promenader's point is entirely lost on me. Yes, I know the name of fifty states. But if I wasn't raised in Oklahoma, then I sure as heck wouldn't know where Nowata was. Phiwum 20:06, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Wiki-wide consistency and orderliness

older ≠ wiser, you wrote:

In a sense, I agree with Serge. It is almost an exercise in futility to expect consistency or orderliness on Wikipedia, so one might as well give in to what appears to be the endemic, chaotic nature of Wikipedia and simply allow things to be named in whatever manner happens to be in vogue at that instant in time.

If I understand this correctly, what you're saying is that the alternative to having a consistent naming convention for U.S. cities is the "endemic, chaotic nature of Wikipedia" where we "simply allow things to be named in whatever manner happens to be in vogue". In essence, you're saying that naming in accordance to WP:NAME and WP:DAB is simply allowing "things to be named in whatever manner happens to be in vogue". If that's not what you're saying, please correct me.

The thing is, contrary to what you're saying, I do expect consistency and orderliness on Wikipedia. Naming in accordance to general conventions reflected by Wiki-wide guidelines like WP:NAME and WP:DAB, along with disambiguating when required on a case-by-case basis depending on the particular ambiguity issues that are relevant in each case, does lead to consistency and orderliness. The reason the current U.S. city naming convention drives me nuts is precisely because of my expectation of consistency and orderliness: because it is inconsistent with the consistency and orderliness that exists at Wikipedia. In particular, the vast majority of Wikipedia articles are named in accordance with WP:NAME and WP:DAB. Putting aside the comma vs. parenthesis issue, all U.S. cities with city names that require disambiguation are also named consistentently with WP:NAME and WP:DAB. The ones that are inconsistent and out of order are the U.S. city articles with city names that do not require disambiguation, but are never-the-less not located at the city name (e.g., San Francisco, California, Los Angeles, California, Houston, Texas, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, etc.).

I think the problem is that you're looking at this bottom-up, and I'm looking top-down. The common ground we share is seeking consistency and orderliness. But you want to see it from the bottom looking up, and I want to see it from the top looking down. I don't know why you favor the bottom-up view, but I favor top-down because that allows consistency throughout Wikipedia, rather than islands of consistency that are inconsistent with each other, which is what you get with the bottom-up view. For example, because the U.S. city naming convention is constructed from a bottom-up consistency POV, U.S. cities are named inconsistently not only with the vast majority of Wikipedia articles, but also inconsistently with most other cities in the world.

Using a top-down approach, you have general guidelines at the top that apply to all Wikipedia articles, and more specific guidelines as you go down to particular areas, but those guidelines must remain consistent with the higher-level guidelines. That's how you achieve consistency and orderliness throughout Wikipedia. Achieving Wiki-wide consistency using the bottom-up approach, where lower level guidelines trump higher level guidelines, is practically impossible.

Your comparison of the guidelines in question is very revealing. You write, In the very same way that a bunch of editors discussed things early on and arrived at the Common Names guideline, which you happen to find so very dear, not much later editors also discussed how to name U.S. cities and came up with the U.S. naming convention, which you happen to despise. One you seem to see as the supreme guiding principle, the other apparently, by your interpretation, was some sort of aberration from the natural order of the wiki way. Here I believe you're implying that the two guidelines should be given equal weight since they were arrived at "in the very same way". But here's what you seem to be missing. The higher-level guideline, common names, simply reflects a convention that was naturally adopted in Wikipedia. Using the most common name to name an article is how people naturally name articles, not because of some guideline; the guideline does not dictate the convention, it reflects it. The U.S. city guideline, on the other hand, was arrived at for whatever reason (seeking consistency from the bottom-up, and not reflecting a convention that was naturally adopted by editors), and then imposed mostly through a bot. There was no convention established for any significant period of time to name all U.S. cities per the Cityname, Statename format before the guideline was written to say it must be so just because. To give both guidelines in question equal weight seems preposterous to me. And, of course, you don't give them equal weight anyway. I'm open about my position: in the name of Wiki-wide top-down consistency and orderliness, when there is a conflict between guidelines, the Wiki-wide guideline trumps the category-specific guideline. You seem to pay homage to the idea that the conflicting guidelines should be given equal weight, but your position indicates you're viewing this bottom-up: the category-specific guideline trumps the Wiki-wide guideline.

Finally, your view about what constitutes "common name" remains, well, original, if I may. You've backed off saying it applies only to the "well-known", now that I've pointed out there is no mention of that term per se in the guideline, but you continue to cling to the underlying concept: ...talking about the common name of obscure entities is somewhat oxymoronic. What you're ignoring is that if you click on Special:Random any significant number of times, what you'll find, with few exceptions, is articles named in accordance with the common names convention (the one reflected by the guideline), regardless of how "obscure" the subject may be. There is nothing oxymoronic with talking about the common name of "obscure" entities. First, all subjects in Wikipedia are supposed to be "notable", and, therefore, we arguably don't have any truly "obscure" topics anyway. But if what you mean by "obscure" is "the typical reader doesn't know about it, doesn't recognize the name, until he encounters the article", or something like that, there is still nothing oxymoronic about it having a common name. The whole concept of a common name only applies to the context of those who know about it; those who don't know the subject are not relevant to the determination of the most common name. There are many technical articles in Wikipedia, for example. Articles about "obscure" mechanical parts to the names of "obscure" Unix commands like Uniq. Note that Uniq is not at Unix command-line command for filtering out duplicate lines. It is not even at Uniq (Unix command) or even Uniq (Unix). This is not a Wikipedia exception, it is the quintessential example. To claim that talking about the common names convention and guideline applying to "obscure" topics in Wikipedia is oxymoronic is, frankly, a weak attempt to dismiss an argument built on reason and cemented with logic.

You concluded with, Where there are multiple names for obscure entities, there is benefit is using a naming convention that encodes additional information into the title. First, we're not talking about obscure entities. We're talking about incorporated cities in the United States, and notable unincorporated towns, every single one of which is sufficiently notable to be in Wikipedia by definition, or it should be deleted. Second, we're not talking about anything that has multiple names. Carmel-by-the-Sea, California is not an alternative name for Carmel-by-the-Sea, it is the name qualified with additional information about the subject that belongs in the article, not in the title, unless perhaps disambiguation is needed. The "California" in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California is not part of the name of the town, it is location information about the town. Whether there is "benefit" in having more informative titles is irrelevant to the question of whether Wikipedia articles in one little corner of Wikipedia should have more informative titles. What's relevant is whether having more informative titles - beyond the clear and obvious common name in cases where that name has no significant ambiguity issues - is consistent and orderly with respect to the rest of Wikipedia. And, it's clearly inconsistent and not orderly with the rest of Wikipedia to have these more informative titles. --Serge 06:26, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

what you're saying is that the alternative to having a consistent naming convention for U.S. cities is the "endemic, chaotic nature of Wikipedia" where we "simply allow things to be named in whatever manner happens to be in vogue". In essence, you're saying that naming in accordance to WP:NAME and WP:DAB is simply allowing "things to be named in whatever manner happens to be in vogue". If that's not what you're saying, please correct me.
What I'm saying is that despite your torturing the point, the U.S. cities naming convention is internally consistent and familiar. The parenthetical method is less familiar for place names (at least in the U.S., and apparently also for the many other countries that also use that method, although not necessarily as the prescriptive canonical form) and is less consistent in that there will likely be greater variation in the disambiguating term used in the parentheses, if existing usage of the parenthetical method is any indication. As I've said many times, I don't agree with your basic premise that the U.S. city names convention is in conflict with WP:NAME and WP:DAB. The city,state name is a common name for these places, and it happily also disambiguates and is very familiar to most native speakers of English. I agree that for some places it makes sense to have them at the simple name. But I don't see any advantage whatsoever and plenty of disadvantages to making that the default canonical form.
I'm not sure what you're getting at with top-down vs bottom-up. Yes, U.S. place names are internally consistent, for the most part, and that is a good thing, IMO. So are place names in Australia and Canada and New Zealand and Japan and many other places that use the comma method. Granted many of those do not require the city,state form, which appears to be your main objection, but my comment about inconsistency was primarily directed at the use of the parenthetic method, not whether the name is city,state or simply at cityname. I regard your statement U.S. cities are named inconsistently not only with the vast majority of Wikipedia articles, but also inconsistently with most other cities in the world as untrue and merely an example of your polemics.
Curiously, your description of the top-down method is somewhat at odds with objections you made much earlier to the effect that the U.S, convention was "authoritarian". Here you seem to advocate a rather authoritarian top-down process. While you find the Common Names convention to be very near and dear, and have a peculiar notion that it is somehow the supreme law of naming conventions, and further use an extremely narrow interpretation of it to conclude that the U.S. convention is in flagrant violation of your interpretation. I disagree. Your abbreviated history of the U.S. naming convention again betrays more of your bias in the matter than the truth. But, beyond that, I simply don't agree that there is any fundamental contradiction between the general sense of the U.S. naming convention and the use common names guideline.
Regarding the common name of obscure entities being somewhat oxymoronic, obviously we disagree yet again and you've said nothing to change my opinion. "all subjects in Wikipedia are supposed to be "notable", and, therefore, we arguably don't have any truly "obscure" topics anyway." LOL. That is a good one. I hope you realize how patently ridiculous that statement is.
What I mean, in regards to place names, is that city,state IS arguably the most familiar common name for many obscure places. There is nothing wrong with using such a recognizable and familiar alternative name. Your discussion of uniq is beside the point. There is nothing else known by that name, nor is there likely to be anything else by that name. With U.S. city names, there is a very high probability for many of them that there is some other place with that name. Even despite Rambot's adding place names from the U.S. Census, there are thousands of place names in the U.S alone for which there are no articles yet. The USGS Geographic Names Information Service contains a multitude of such place names, not only for populated places, but other geographic features. Having a convention in place that easily allows for the addition of more places with a minimum of renaming and disambiguating seems to me a good thing. older ≠ wiser 17:02, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
It should also pointed out that no one other than Serge seems to be claiming that the United States, Australia, and Canada city naming conventions are contrary to WP:NAME and/or WP:DAB. I'm beginning to think that this section should be closed under WP:SNOW. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 18:27, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Is comma convention in conflict with other guidelines?

Main article: /Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)/Is comma convention in conflict with other guidelines?

It has been established that Serge has reframed the poll question again. There's clear consensus that the "present" United States, Australia, and Canada city naming conventions are not contrary to WP:NAME and WP:DAB. Moving doublly reframed poll to subpage. I agree that Serge is not the only one, but the there would have been consensus that Serge was wrong in his statements if he hadn't reframed and closed the poll. Removing the voting (but not discussion) to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)/Serge reframed poll —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Arthur Rubin (talk • contribs) 22:33, November 20, 2006 (UTC)

I've moved that to the less biased title Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)/Is comma convention in conflict with other guidelines?. I'm not sure what poll question you're claiming that Serge reframed; the question he was asking was whether there was a consensus that the comma convention is not in conflict with WP:NAME and WP:DAB. There was a majority saying that, but I'm not sure I'd call it a consensus. The discussion below is ongoing.
Now, perhaps Serge shouldn't have closed the poll with the explicit reference to your comment at the bottom of the previous section, but I'm not sure that constitutes "reframing". What is clear to me is that as a poll, the archived material was unhelpful; but as Wikipedia:Straw polls points out, when a poll generates further discussion that is not a failure, but a success. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:46, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Point of clarification (not that it makes much of a difference in such a botched mess as this naming issue), when Serge started the poll [1], it was titled Strawpoll: do current U.S. city guidelines violate WP:NAME and/or WP:DAB? and the questions were agree/disagree that "U.S. guideline is contrary to WP:NAME and/or WP:DAB". This was how it was framed throughout the abbreviated voting and discussion period. The discussion has been reframed by Josiah [2] as Is comma convention in conflict with other guidelines?. Not exactly the same question. Many conventions and guidelines "conflict" in that there may be some degree of overlap and different interpretations as to which guideline or convention takes precedence. To assert that one convention is "contrary to" or "violates" other guidelines is a much higher standard. older ≠ wiser 14:25, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Survey - Voting is evil

  1. We're actually voting on a fact here. That's not really helpful. The discussion section below is more useful. (Radiant) 15:53, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
    I think we need a vote to determine if we're voting on fact above!  :) Seriously, this whole section is turning out to be kind of useless. I'm sure all of these opinions have been stated somewhere in the endless mire above, right? —Wknight94 (talk) 16:38, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
  2. I concur. It is question that asks for a "yes or no" answer to something that be answered neither yes or no.
    1. The "City, State" convention is not a name. The only real name in an article title is the subject of the article itself - anything added is disambiguation. So this is another problem than "common name" and is not "contrary" per se.
    2. Most disambiguation is done with parantheses, but there are guidelines allowing for comma disambiguation too. I cannot see how this is "contrary" to dab - what is odd is that some say that "City, State" convention is not disambiguation when it most obviously is. THEPROMENADER 17:28, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
      I absolutely disagree with the claim that the "City, State" convention is "disambiguation". — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 18:16, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
      Sorry, but pre-disambiguation is still disambiguation. A state's name is not at all that of every placename within, so adding it such to cities is indeed disambiguation. THEPROMENADER 18:38, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
      Indeed, the recognition that city naming varies according to context seems to me an acknowledgement that using the state is a form of disambiguation. If you're in Virginia, you'll refer to Fredericksburg, Virginia as "Fredericksburg". If you're in Texas, you'll say "Fredericksburg, Virginia", to distinguish it from Fredericksburg, Texas. That much is clearly disambiguation, since by its very nature disambiguation is not necessary when context makes it clear. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 18:54, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
      But, no matter where I am, I'm going to refer to "Seattle", not "Seattle, Washington". Whether we all know which state Seattle is in is somewhat immaterial. Most of us know what city we're referring to and the rest can click on the link to find out - just as is the case in any other category of article subjects. (Hell, in this case, the "Washington" part isn't even disambiguating - according to Seattle (disambiguation), this is apparently the only Seattle city in the world.) —Wknight94 (talk) 20:21, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
  3. I agree that this poll isn't very helpful, and said so below. I somewhat regret casting a "ballot" in it. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 18:32, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
  4. Even I agree it's not very helpful to the overall discussion. However, it does help establish that I'm not the only one who sees that titling articles per the current U.S. city naming guidelines creates article titles that are in conflict with Wiki-wide naming conventions and guidelines. Just above the survey, Arthur threatened to invoke WP:SNOW to shut down the discussion based on the assertion that I was the only one making this claim. Now that this survey has established that Arthur's assertion is incorrect, I'm all for closing it. Any objections? --Serge 18:55, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
    • But it does establish, fairly clearly, that Serge's viewpoint is a minority, even here. It does have WP:SNOW chance of being consensus unless enough time passes for there to be a new set of views. Let's set a time limit on Tariq's proposal, and see if it is consensus; and then leave this for three months. Septentrionalis 19:04, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
    • This poll was open for only a few hours and so established nothing other than what it was intended to establish: I am not the only one holding that particular point of view, which is but one of many reasons to seek change in the current guidelines. Currently, a majority of participants are in support of Tariq's proposal, which was never officially opened. Note that the note at the top of the voting, This is for later use; but if anyone has decided, fine. was never removed. I would support taking a week or two off, and I'll probably do that anyway, but we need to create an official well-publicized comprehensive survey that allows participants to assign preference priorities among several proposed changes, including sticking with the status quo before we can conclude that there is currently no consensus to change the current guidelines. --Serge 19:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

'It is important to note that these are conventions, not rules carved in stone. As Wikipedia grows and changes, some conventions that once made sense may become outdated, and there may be cases where a particular convention is "obviously" inappropriate.' So when editors believe that we have a more appropriate solution, you use it. Vegaswikian 19:56, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but that's not the question above. Is the current U.S. city naming convention contrary to WP:D? To me, the answer is yes. —Wknight94 (talk) 03:37, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

The U.S. convention is not, strictly speaking, about disambiguation, it is a convention for naming the articles. If there were no risk of confusion with anything else named "Houston", then why is there Houston (disambiguation) and a note at the top of Houston, Texas with a link directing readers there? Mentioning this as evidence demonstrates a faulty understanding of disambiguation. While there may be some rationale to moving Houston, Texas to Houston as a primary topic, both "Houston, Texas" and "Houston" are "common names" for the place. Which is the "most" common, and whether one is so overwhelmingly more common than the other so as to override the naming convention is a different sort of argument than simply asserting that the U.S. guideline is in contrary to either WP:NAME and/or WP:DAB. older ≠ wiser 19:57, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

To me, if the choice is between "Houston, Texas" and "Houston" and folks feel they are equally common, then you go with the simplest which would be "Houston". Frankly, I disagree with the assertion that "Houston, Texas" is as common as just "Houston" but that's another story. —Wknight94 (talk) 03:37, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I didn't assert that it is "as common", only that both are common names for the place. I explicitly left it open for discussion as to whether one was more common than the other. I support loosening the convention to allow extremely well-known cities to use the simple name as the title. IMO, the flaw in the convention is not that it is contrary to either WP:NAME and/or WP:DAB, but that it is too inflexible. older ≠ wiser 04:15, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Lookit, who cares if 'this practice' "breaks" 'this other convention' - this is completely besides the point and after the fact. The question should be: does the practice work or does it cause problems, and it is based on that study, discussion and experimentation and eventual consensus that conventions are made. I a~l~m~o~s~t went into "full caps" mode there.

I say we trash this entire page and start from scratch. Getting lost in the details is getting us nowhere. THEPROMENADER 20:36, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm for archiving most of this page at least. It's impossible for anyone to weed through anyway. —Wknight94 (talk) 03:37, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, I just finished reading the entire page. (Whew!) I got a bit lost in the middle, when the conversation veered into a rather abstract discussion of the difference between disambiguation, clarification and qualification, but I did make it through alive. After reading it all (though not the extensive archives) it seems to me that participants in this conversation are losing sight of the purpose of article naming, which is twofold: first, to provide a unique identifier for the article; and second, to label it in a way that is as short, clear and intuitive as possible.
It seems quite obvious to me that the comma convention for U.S. cities is an exception to the general naming pattern supported by WP:NAME and WP:DAB. However, the question that needs to be answered is whether it is a justified exception. I'm not at all certain that it is.
That said, I feel obliged to point out that voting is evil, and I doubt that this particular poll is likely to be helpful in this discussion. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:02, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

All due respect but it seems a little like folks are ducking Serge's question here by saying, "What does it matter?" and "The convention can have exceptions". —Wknight94 (talk) 03:37, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Which question is that? And are you saying that no convention can have exceptions? Or only certain ones? And who said "What does it matter?" older ≠ wiser 04:15, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Serge's question is the section header, "do current U.S. city guidelines violate WP:NAME and/or WP:DAB?" I'm not saying no convention can have exceptions, I'm just saying that Serge's question was a yes-or-no question, not a "there can be exceptions"-or-"it doesn't matter" question. My "What does it matter?" was in reference to ThePromenader (talk · contribs). Granted, his exact words were "who cares", but my still point still holds. —Wknight94 (talk) 04:29, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
The difference between an exception and a violation is in how seriously you take the guideline being excepted or violated. I would suggest that any exception which is unjustified is a violation, and I'm not clear on the justification for this exception. However, if other editors feel that the exception is justified, it's appropriate for them to say that the convention isn't being violated. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:02, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
My "who cares" is a reflection on the real use of this section's question in this discussion. Convention is there for contributors seeking guidelines; if contributors see problems with the guidelines, they discuss them on the talk page. We're already doing that here! I think this question was an attempt to boost participation and herd opinion into one camp or another. Not the straightest line to a reasoned conclusion.
The question should not be about "what conventions does the US comma disambiguation "break" (or not)", the question should be: "is the practice compatible with the rest of Wiki?".
Myself I do see problems: an incompatibility with the "rest of the world" articles, an incompatibility that destroys the pattern (set by the rest of Wiki) of precognitive recognition from one article to the next - this incompatibility is easily discerned and interpreted only by the reader already familiar with the US, its States and its habits. Secondo - the form if disambiguation used - in this case, the comma - is only easily identifiable as disambiguation to the same "US-informed" readers. With all due respect, the "qualification" argument is not even worth considering: adding a second name to that of an article's subject is still a form of disambiguation, no matter what you call it; it was an argument made with wikipedians, not the reader, in mind.
So there you have what comma disambiguation "breaks". It's not even a question of names or places: for the sake of Encyclopaedia-wide consistency, disambiguation must be recognisable as such. THEPROMENADER 09:29, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
precognitive recognition Say what? Is there evidence or is this just fancy clothing for a POV? this incompatibility is easily discerned and interpreted only by the reader already familiar with the US If this were true, then why has the city, state/province from been used for articles in so many other countries other than the U.S.? older ≠ wiser 17:51, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
In the case of Japan, one of the reasons the proponents of the current convention used to justify the comma convention was that this was the convention the US cities were using. I'll have to dig up actual quotes from the enormous amount of debate about how to disambiguate Japanese city names later. Also, just noting that comma disambiguation is much rarer in other language Wikipedias. --Polaron | Talk 18:05, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Most Wiki disambiguation is done with parentheses. Go figure! THEPROMENADER 18:03, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Ah, and for the "city, State" convention - who's to recognise which is the city and which is the state? You're right though, I suppose it doesn't matter much, as only the base name (the subject of the article) counts. There's also thoughts about conflicts between "city", "City, State" and "inCityPlace, City" articles (such as my Paris streets project or articles such as La Jolla, San Diego, California) in that comment . You can keep the POV accusations though - it's quite obvious that mine is anything but set in stone. THEPROMENADER 18:10, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Incompatibility with the "rest of the world" articles: Most of the articles about communities are about communities in the United States (or Canada or Australia); if we wanted Wikipedia to be consistent, we'd have to go to the clearly rejected comma convention.
And it is not disambiguation, any more than the royalty, numbers, or highway conventions are disambiguation. (Well, numbers and highways are "pre-emptive disambiguation", but numbers greater than one million clearly don't need disambiguation from years.) In regard highways, Ontario does have pre-emptive disambiguation with the Kings highway naming: See Wikipedia:WikiProject Canada Roads#Naming conventions for the Ontario Kings Highway designation. I see no evidence that there are any other "Kings Highway nn" around.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 18:16, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Re:King's Highway. I don't know who created that convention, but the articles have been for quite some time now at "Highway X (Ontario)". Somebody must have just changed the Wikiproject text. --Polaron | Talk 18:28, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Pre-emptive disambiguation is still disambiguation. I didn't say "all commas are disambiguation", I said that "anything added to the name that is not that of the name itself" is disambiguation. Commas have other uses as well, granted - namely for attaching secondary titles (such as "King of Spain" or "King's highway" as per your examples) - but these are still the article subject's own name. A state's name is certainly not also that of every city it contains. There is place for conflict with placenames there, too. I am beginning to see logic in getting rid of comma disambiguation altogether. THEPROMENADER 18:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
In re Kings Highway, the WikiProject text has been the same since it was inserted in Juny 2006. There's just a disconnect between the project and the articles names. I should have checked.... And the comma convention is common IRL for English language place names, so why shouldn't it be used in Wikipedia? — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 22:20, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Context determines meaning. It's fine to use the comma convention in a context where we are clarifying where a city is located in Wikipedia as it is done in IRL. It is something else again to incorrectly imply that the clarifying location information is part of the name of the city, rather than just a disambiguator, which is what happens when you specify location information using the comma convention in a city article title rather than in the standard parenthetic remark disambiguator. If the , Statename is not part of the name, then using it when not necessary for disambiguation is predisambiguating and contary to WP:DAB. If the , Statename is part of the name, then that's just wrong, because the name of Carmel-by-the-Sea, for example, is not Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. --Serge 22:41, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I've about had it. Serge, if you keep up with the "on this side, against that side, according to this former decision, against that former decision", then we're never going to get around to making new decisions. No-one is going to take any legitimate points seriously under that context. THEPROMENADER 23:14, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Are you contending that we should not be referring to Wiki-wide conventions and guidelines like WP:DAB in our arguments for change? If we are to ignore established Wiki-wide conventions and guidelines, then on what grounds would any new decisions for U.S. city article naming be made? U.S. city guideline writers ignoring established Wiki-wide conventions and guidelines is how we got into this mess in the first place. --Serge 19:24, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
You make rules based on a logic; you do not build a logic based on rules. Constructive and credible discussion is based in the former context, not the latter. THEPROMENADER 08:16, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

How do we like the ones changed so far

I was curious how people felt about the few cities which have been renamed so far, Philadelphia, Chicago, and whatever others I may have missed. Have they caused problems? Have they improved things? Any other comments? —Wknight94 (talk) 16:43, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, they're still very nice cities. : ) THEPROMENADER 18:13, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Walked right into that one, didn't I?... Any serious feedback?!  :) —Wknight94 (talk) 18:29, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't know of any problems the moves have caused whatsoever. It is an improvement because these articles are now named in accordance to WP:NAME and WP:DAB, whereas before, their titles were contrary to those general Wiki-wide conventions and guidelines. Also, it is now clear that each is at least the primary topic for the respective name, if not the only topic. The old titles made it unclear as to whether that was the case, and even implied that they were not the primary topic for that name. --Serge
I don't think the moves have helped anything, nor have the tens of thousands of words that have gone into arguing over a non-problem. This entire effort is counter-productive and a waste of editing time. -Will Beback · † · 21:47, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
There are still a few bad links pointing to Chicago which meant the play or the film. More to the point, there is now no way to check all the links systematically, because there are so many. We'd need to work from a database dump. If all the links to the city were to be changed to Chicago, then the fewer links directly to Chicago could be checked in a few days work. That being said, I haven't heard of any more problems then would be expected by a formerly featured page being renamed. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 22:43, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Archiving

Can someone please archive a good part of this page? It took me three cups of coffee just to get down here.

Thanks. THEPROMENADER 21:45, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Just from the last couple days that I've kept track here, it sounds like the whole issue should be shelved indefinitely. I think we'll just need to live with city naming conventions that are not consistent internationally and get on with our lives. Although I disagree with Will Beback (talk · contribs) regarding the current methodology, I have to agree with him that this is going nowhere fast. As much as I'd like to see American cities represented here in the same vein as international cities - i.e., clearly recognizable just by name instead of name and state - it's obviously not worth the time that's being spent. —Wknight94 (talk) 22:43, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Tariq's proposal (at the top of this talk page) is still open. It is currently being approved by 55% to 45%. The majority clearly wants a change, but we'll never get it if we stop pushing. Let's not give up yet, please! --Serge 22:54, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
That survey has been going on for far over a week. It does not show anything close to a consensus. It's time to close it. -Will Beback · † · 22:56, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
People are still voting. There was a vote today. Closing now would be very premature. It takes time to get the word out about stuff like this. I would give it at least a month before closing it. --Serge 23:16, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
#Strawpoll: do current U.S. city guidelines violate WP:NAME and/or WP:DAB? was opened and closed by you in about 24 hours, so I'm not sure what your precedent is. Preivious surveys on this page have lasted a week. Why drag this one out longer? -Will Beback · † · 23:22, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
It shouldn't be closed because it is still a very active poll (3 votes today) and is a poll about the guidelines that are supposed to be discussed on this talk page. My strawpoll was something else entirely intended to resolve a relatively minor side issue, which it did and so I closed it. --Serge 00:06, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Regardless of precedent, Will is correct in that the survey has been going for a relatively long time and does not show anything resembling a consensus. It serves no purpose to keep it open any further, and we should fall back on discussing the issue rather than voting on proposals. (Radiant) 11:45, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Here's the thing - it was never widely advertised anywhere. The reason we never get anywhere with any of these polls is that we never try to get the opinion of anybody except the people already watching this page. A real survey would be one where we actually advertised it. As it stands, it's obviously impossible for pretty much any proposal to get a consensus. john k 14:21, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

  • That is incorrect. I've seen several proposals get accepted in the past month. The point is that (1) most proposals do fail period, but that's because people don't like them, not for lack of input; and (2) it is not necessary (and often, not desirable) to hold a vote, poll or survey on a proposal. (Radiant) 14:44, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
A few suggestions for how to proceed. First, one major drawback to previous votes/surveys/polls is that many of them were shoot-from-the-hip questions tossed out by individuals, usually reflecting that individual's bias (or the frustrations of the moment). Before commencing any new voting, I think there should be a period to discuss how to frame the issues in the poll as well as thresholds for acceptance. Second, I think the initial question/issue is determining whether there is consensus that the current U.S. convention needs to be changed (deliberately staying far away from what the specifics of any change might entail). Until we can demonstrate that there is a consensus that the current convention needs to be changed, any discussions of specific changes simply get bogged down with factional infighting between various camps, with the net result that nothing changes. Depending on the outcome of this first question, we'll either discover that there really is no consensus support to change and we'll have to agree to live with the current convention or we can then proceed to Phase II and begin discussion about how to frame the issues of what to change. I think there may be some merit to using a consensus polling sort of process (sorry I don't have a link for this handy anymore--it had come up before and Serge attempted his own interpretation of the process, though I think that exemplified the problem of having only one individual framing the questions). As I understand how that process works, there is an initial period of discussion during which the proposal on the table is fluid and can be re-framed and modified until it reaches an initial threshold, after which it is frozen until it reaches a second threshold for acceptance or the set time limit expires. Part this initial phase is also determining the thresholds for participation and acceptance (things like, the proposal remains on the table for X number of days, if it doesn't gain acceptance or proceed to the next stage by then it is withdrawn; a minimum of X number of people must participate; acceptance is X% of the vote, etc.). Although I don't think it would be enforceable, I also like to see participation in the process contingent on accepting the outcome, even if the result might not be exactly what you would have preferred individually. older ≠ wiser 15:14, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Great suggeestions. For sure it would be best to get discussion into a solid framework with solid goals - Juggling issues just leads us in circles and leads to exasperation. THEPROMENADER 15:25, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Not to get too parliamentary about things, but it might be a good idea to hold a "quorum" straw poll to measure only the intent-to-vote, especially if we use a minimum number of votes standard and/or a longer poll period. Some of these recent polls suffered from low vote counts. Given the potential scope-of-impact for a convention change, I think it would be a good idea to ensure a "meaningfully large" vote before undertaking the vote. The "quorum call" would last only a few days at most. Feel free to let me know that I'm being overly pariamentary. --ishu 16:08, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Excellent idea, Bkonrad. The multiple polls (all changing per the respective proponent) are confusing at best. As for ishu, I'm not sure about a "quorum call", except on the appropriate Wikipedia-wide survey question, although some WikiProjects should probably be pinged (again). — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 16:12, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Is asking people to come here multiple times productive? How about working towards consensus among us regulars for one big survey. How about letting participants choose, in order of preference, say 1st, 2nd and 3rd, from some number of choices of guidelines. Each 1st choice would get 3 points, 2nd choice 2 points, and 3rd choice 1 point. One of the choices would be status quo. The other choices would be formed here by consensus before the survey is opened. Something like that? --Serge 17:26, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that a big problem with determining whether there's a consensus for change is that one side has been treating it as though what the guideline page currently says is that there are to be no exceptions to the "City, State" format, and thus argue that there is no need for a change. This is not, however, would the guideline currently states at all. At present, the guideline is entirely incoherent, and doesn't say anything useful at all. I think we all actually do agree that there needs to be a change (although there is wide disagreement over what the change should be), but one side wants to pretend that the current formula supports their preferred version. john k 05:55, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm trying to address all of this at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)/U.S. convention change (November 2006). Your assistance would be appreciated. --Serge 06:21, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
All naming conventions are guidelines, and all guidelines have exceptions. That's implicit in every guideline in Wikipedia. Other than that, the current convention on U.S. cities is very clear. That's a good thing. -Will Beback · † · 06:29, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

My opinion

I think that it should ALWAYS (in North America, including Mexico, at least) be City, State (or City, Province). The current rules should remain in place for US cities and it should be standardized across the board. In other countries, it should be City, Country (or City, Sub-national region if preferred) but that should be debated later. All current situations where such does not exist (especially in Canada) should be moved to its new location. If two communities or municipalities with the same name appear in the same state, then disambiguate by adding the county name (as it is now). As for redirects and naming conventions, that is a judgement call. If a city with a specific name clearly stands out among the rest, then the redirect for just that name should go to the city it shifts to. If it is not clearly a standout, then the sole name should be the dab. CrazyC83 00:21, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

CrazyC83, what you propose used to be the guideline in Canada and it was fought tooth and nail. When they changed their guideline to allow Cityname only (without , Province) where disambiguation is not required, all the warring ended. Why would you want to bring back that kind of conflict to Canada, and perpetuate it for the U.S. (no comment/knowledge about Mexico)? Let's end it already. If Canada can do it, so can we. --Serge 02:12, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
I think simplicity is best; don't dab unless necessary. Serge has a good point about the Canada resolution. (Radiant) 10:18, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Naming conventions are about more than just disambiguation. They also address consistency within a group of articles. Consistency is a benefit for readers and editors alike. -Will Beback · † · 10:37, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
  • That begs the question whether consistency should be applied to the group of articles about cities in the USA, or the group of city articles as a whole. (Radiant) 11:39, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
We do what we can. This project will never be perfect. I favor pragmatic approaches to solving these problems. U.S. place names have already been estabished, and the reasoning for changing them appears dogmatic. Why change them? The U.S placenames form a sufficiently large contingent that we should think of them as a cohort and treat them consistently. -Will Beback · † · 12:20, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Your "pragmatic" view, Will, is bottom-up... achieving consistency within one specific little Wiki corner according to naming guidelines that conflict with the rest of Wikipedia can only achieve titles that are inconsistent with the rest of Wikipedia. The reason to change them is pragmatic - to end the resulting conflicts and warring (e.g., despite the recent consensus change of Chicago, Illinois to Chicago, you yourself encouraged others to propose changing it back just yesterday[3]). There is nothing practical about having hundreds if not thousands of articles at names that confuse countless readers who wonder, "Since Cityname redirects here, why is this at Cityname, Statename instead of Cityname alone?"
For articles with subjects that lack a clear "most common name" (royalty, ships, aircraft, etc.), no such confusion can occur, and it makes sense to have a naming convention that is used consistently in those areas. But there is nothing pragmatic about extending this approach to articles about cities that clearly do have a most common name (the Cityname alone). There is nothing pragmatic about being blatantly inconsistent with the rest of Wikipedia. --Serge 17:14, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
There is nothing practical about having hundreds if not thousands of articles at names that confuse countless readers who wonder, "Since Cityname redirects here, why is this at Cityname, Statename instead of Cityname alone?" Is there any evidence that this hypothetical confusion is an actual problem or merely a rhetorical phantasm manufactured by some editors to support their opinion? There is nothing pragmatic about being blatantly inconsistent with the rest of Wikipedia. This also represents nothing more than an opinion, as recent discussions have clearly shown opinion is clearly divided about just how "blatantly" inconsistent the U.S. convention is with the rest of Wikipedia. older ≠ wiser 17:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
The primary evidence for the confusion is the repeated and never-ending move requests and inquiries on the city article talk pages that have been going on for years. Of course, there is no way to know for sure how many more folks are confused and frustrated but don't bother to make the inquiries or move requests, but the fact is that when there are move requests, usually close to half (though often not enough to warrant a consensus because usually so many regular defenders -- the "experts" -- of the U.S. city guideline participate) vote to make the move, and many are newcomers who express confusion and frustration in their comments. You may not care about them, but I do, probably because I used to be one of those newcomers wondering what the heck was wrong with U.S. city and community naming. Now I know. As far as the current guidelines creating article names that are "blatantly inconsistent with the rest of Wikipedia", okay, maybe I shouldn't state that as fact despite how obvious it seems to me. But this issue is at the heart of the matter, and we should probably discuss it in a separate section at length. --Serge 18:45, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Of course it can be perfect. If the system is consistent across the board, it will be, and complicated disambiguation situations can be dealt with. But - introduce two different types of disambiguation, take one select corner of Wiki (namely US placenames) that chips out their "own" type of disambiguation (that does not treat it as disambiguation), split this between two different "levels" of treatment, mix this with a third level of comma disambiguation and you have... this situation. Not to mention other country placenames copying the same.

It is never "too late" to homogenise any situation. Yet the strongest argument existing for the "City, State" disambiguation/convention to date seems to be "We like it like that. Leave it be". THEPROMENADER 13:49, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

  • We don't do consistency for the sake of it as yet, and a consensus would need to be built to make that the case. We use the most common name possible, and we don't disambiguate unless we have to. So just use city where it is appropriate. Hiding Talk 11:53, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Scientists can't define planet: A lesson for us?

Given the recent multi-day vote of the International Astronomical Union, it seems that astronomers can't agree on the definition of planet with any unanimity. Perhaps the disorder in conventions is simply the order of the universe. --ishu 20:58, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I think you're confusing the process with an inability. Today it looks like an inability to agree. 100 years from now (perhaps much sooner) they will look at today's process as brilliance. Sometimes, it just takes time to work it out... --Serge 21:12, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
In any case, the lack of consensus (either way) indicates there is more work to be done... --Serge 21:14, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
No-one has even discussed anything in any organised manner yet. What are you two going on about? : ) THEPROMENADER 21:52, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
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