Talk:Botanic garden

What is the difference between this topic and.....

Botanical garden....

These are the criteria of botanic garden http://www.anbg.gov.au/anbg/what-is-a-botanic-gardens.html

What is the ones of botanical garden???--222.64.219.122 (talk) 01:45, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

'Botanic' and 'botanical' are exact synonyms in English. So there aren't different criteria for a 'botanical' garden. Because 'botanic' is used in the titles of most of the oldest such gardens in the English-speaking world, I think there's a slight feeling that 'botanic' is more prestigious, more scientific. But the words have exactly the same meaning (according to every dictionary I've found). Peter coxhead (talk) 07:52, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Disambiguation page

Given that 'botanic garden' and 'botanical garden' (and indeed the same phrases with 'gardens') are synonyms, I think it's very odd to have one title as a disambiguation page and one as a topic page.
Proposal:

• Searching for 'botanic garden' and 'botanical garden' should both lead to the topic page.
• The topic page should have a standard top link to the disambiguation page, which should have '(disambiguation)' in the title as normal.

Peter coxhead (talk) 07:52, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Support. All sounds reasonable to me. To be concrete,I would suggest:

• 'Botanic garden' is the main topic title, as the shorter of the two.
• It should have a hatnote to the dab page, Botanic garden (disambiguation)
• 'Botanical garden' should be a redirect to this page.
• I would say it is unnecessary to have Botanical garden (disambiguation) redirect to this.

Best wishes Si Trew (talk) 08:19, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Support - largely as per Si Trew.

I have no firm opinion about which should be THE main page, and will support the "best" arguement. (Note, "Best" is deliberately undefined at this stage.)

At the moment, and in the absence of any other suggestion, "best" = "shortest" seems good ... (Note that I am not firmly wed to this pov and am open to persuasion, perhaps even bribery.)

So, to dot the "i"s and cross the "t"s, if we agree Botanic garden is to be the main page:

• Main page: Botanic garden with hatnote to Botanic garden (disambiguation)
• Botanical Garden, Botanical garden, Botanical Gardens, Botanical gardens, Botanic Gardens, Botanic gardens, and Botanic Garden ALL redirect to Botanic garden
• Botanical Garden (disambiguation), Botanical garden (disambiguation), Botanical Gardens (disambiguation), Botanical gardens (disambiguation), Botanic Gardens (disambiguation), Botanic gardens (disambiguation), and Botanic Garden (disambiguation) ALL redirect to Botanic garden (disambiguation).

Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 09:30, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your quick responses. I'm making the changes at present. For now, I've left 'Botanical garden' as the main topic title, rather than 'Botanic garden'. I have to say that my personal preference is for the latter, but:

• The Wiktionary entry, and most of the other dictionaries I've looked at, refer 'botanic garden' to 'botanical garden', which kind of establishes the latter as the 'prime' term.
• 'Botanical' does seem to be the more modern usage, in that if you look at recently created gardens, this is the word normally used rather than 'botanic'.

But like you I don't have a strong opinion about this. I think it's ok as it is. (Although you could say it's illogical to have the main topic as 'BotanicAL garden' and the disambiguation page as 'Botanic garden (disambiguation)'.) Peter coxhead (talk) 11:20, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Another issue is that there are many more links from other articles to 'botanical garden' than to 'botanic garden'. This seems a good reason to keep things as they are. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:31, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm quite happy with "botanical garden" as main, given the arguments above. Si Trew (talk) 11:41, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I've gone through all the articles linking to botanic garden and changed to use botanical garden. I have tried to use judgment whether to pipe to botanic garden. In particular Australian and Scottish seem more to prefer botanic, and articles on a specific garden so-named I have tried to give preference to botanic. Hope this makes sense, but it cuts down the double redirect problem. Si Trew (talk) 12:41, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

So, to be unambigouous, we have agreed:

• Main page: Botanical garden with hatnote to Botanical garden (disambiguation)
• Botanical Garden, Botanical Gardens, Botanical gardens, Botanic Gardens, Botanic gardens, Botanic garden, and Botanic Garden ALL redirect to Botanical garden
• Botanical Garden (disambiguation), Botanical Gardens (disambiguation), Botanical gardens (disambiguation), Botanic Gardens (disambiguation), Botanic gardens (disambiguation), Botanic garden (disambiguation), and Botanic Garden (disambiguation) ALL redirect to Botanical garden (disambiguation).

Yes? On that basis, I'll "move" the "wrong" ones, and create the red ones. OK? Pdfpdf (talk) 12:59, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I'll work a bit more on relinking articles to Botanical garden, but leave the DABs to you. Note as redirects I think they should not, themselves, be categorised as DABs. Si Trew (talk) 13:06, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Pdfpdf (talk) 13:11, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

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Further discussion is on Talk:Botanical garden

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