Talk:Dumnicë e Poshtme, Podujevo

Naming dispute: Is it "Donja Dubnica" or "Dumnice e poshtme"?

I came here from Pages with missing references list. I seem to have walked into an Albania/Kosovo/Serbia dispute. Why not have both names in the article? There is already a note about the disputed status of Kosovo itself. Pathore (talk) 21:13, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

A proposal that might shed some light on the issue: What is the village's historical name? Can everyone agree that it had a certain name when it was first founded? Or is that also disputed? Pathore (talk) 21:22, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

I wrote both names in the lead section, but one user is constantly removing Serbian name. Both names, Serbian and Albanian mean the same: "Lower Dub(m)nica", it's just in different languages. Vanjagenije (talk) 21:35, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Then I would think that we should list both names in the article. That still doesn't answer what language the original settlers spoke, which might help to resolve what to put on top in the infobox. Purely based on "it will be easier for a speaker of English to find", I think we should use the transliterated Serbian "Donja Dubnica" as the article title because it is at least (probably incorrectly) pronounceable under English rules. Alternately, if both names translate identically to English, maybe we should name the article in English, since we are on the English Wikipedia, after all. (To be sure, I assume proper Serbian is written in Cyrillic, right? So transliterating it gives Serbs something (theoretically) to complain about also?) Pathore (talk) 21:56, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Serbian is written in both Cyrillic and Latin script (see: Serbian_language#Writing_system), so "Donja Dubnica" is not transliteration, it is Serbian Latin spelling of the name. I'm not sure if the original name of the settlement is relevant at all. There is no Wikipedia policy that suggests using original name. I don't even know how to find out the original name, as there are almost no sources about this village. Translating the name into English is even worse solution, as the result would be a name that is not used by anyone, and Wikipedia needs the most commonly used name in English. Vanjagenije (talk) 22:08, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Interesting, I've just learned something about Serbian, then. I was not proposing moving the article to a historical name, but rather listing names in the infobox in the chronological order in which they came into use as a compromise. The (not entirely serious) proposal to put the article at an English name, even though no one uses that name, was an attempt to find any possible common ground as an alternative to a move war, although I think we may be able to just say "consensus at the Serbian Latin name" if no one else comes to the discussion. I do favor the Serbian Latin name, unless there is some alternate way to write the Albanian name, simply on the basis that the Serbian name is vaguely pronounceable under English orthography, even if that pronunciation is completely wrong in Serbian, while the Albanian name has too many consonants in a group for an English speaker to pronounce. Pathore (talk) 23:19, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Then again, if there are almost no sources about the village, maybe it isn't notable and shouldn't be in Wikipedia at all? I've tagged the article as a stub, maybe there are other sources out there that we don't know about? It seems to be very near the border. Is it involved in a border dispute? Maybe that could make it notable? Pathore (talk) 23:19, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Per WP:GEOLAND, villages are always considered notable, "even if their population is very low". I found some sources in Serbian that just mention the village (no significant coverage), but can not find any in English. Vanjagenije (talk) 12:13, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

At the moment, Google search returns 4,310 results for "Donja Dubnica" and 2,130 results for "Dumnice e poshtme". So, I'm moving the article to "Donja Dubnica" as a more common name. If someone has some English language sources that show that the name "Dumnice e poshtme" is more commonly used, I invite him to cite them here. Although I am Serbian, I have no strong feelings toward Serbian name, I just think it is more common name at the moment. Vanjagenije (talk) 22:17, 1 February 2015 (UTC)