Talk:Washington

Opening comment

Talk:Washington - I propose that the Washington State article be moved from Washington to Washington (U.S. state) and that Washington (disambiguation) be moved and redirected to Washington. This would be in line with Lincoln and other similar precedents. Nothing personal against the state - it's a very beautiful place, but having Washington be a disambig would be the best way for readers and linkers to effectively navigate. "Washington" has a lot common of uses - as a person's name (including the first American president), as the name of a university, and of course as the name of Washington, DC. Outside the United States, "Washington" as a place name almost always refers to the U.S. capital. Even within the United states (with the exception of the northwestern U.S.), when someone says they're gonna "go to Washington," it's generally assumed that they mean Washington, D.C. Blackcats 01:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose. The primary meaning is the U.S. state, unlike Lincoln, which has no primary meaning. Georgia guy 01:26, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • The discussion of this move is taking place at Talk:Washington, as listed above. Voting in more than one place doesn't accomplish anything. Blackcats 02:10, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

That discussion seems to have died. I think I can almost see both sides. The only place or person corresponding exactly with the name 'Washington' is the state (if it's understood that you mean the state). However the media exclusively uses 'Washington' to refer to D.C. (or the U.S. Gov). Washington in a search box would invariably be placed there with the intention of finding a similar result. Meanwhile Washington State is rarely referenced in the media, and only in the form of words 'Washington State' or 'the state of Washington' by way of clarification. On the other hand in an encyclopedic sense, as I ramble about below, Washington is principally a name, adopted by or applied to various things. There are many examples of disambig pages extrapolating from a name and then directing readers to people and places.

I'd go for either:

D.C. as the default with pointers to George Washington, Washington State, and disambig with Washington (name) or

Disambig as the default with top level pointers to the big names, and the rest lower down.

atm the default page is Washington State (which to me was a genuine surprise) and the disambig headlines you straight back to Washington State. I don't get it, I mean, you've just come from there :/ Hakluyt bean 04:48, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Washington (footballer)

Can this be replaced with Washington Stecanelo Cerqueira? While the article doesn't exist yet, it makes more sense to have the title be the person's full name, rather than his nickname and occupation. Ytny 15:08, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

George

As practically everything named Washington is named after George, a link to him would probably be in order at the top of the article. 70.16.1.166 05:02, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

sort of done that by setting out Washington as a name (place, people), which is how I imagined a disambig page would look anyway. What do people think?Hakluyt bean 04:55, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

That's not really how disambiguation pages work. See WP:MOSDAB for more. To address the original concern of the poster, most articles on places named after General Washington mention it near the top. He also has (in addition to his own page) George Washington (disambiguation) and List of places named for George Washington. This article should work despite of the General's influence to help readers find articles. Getting to the article George Washington is pretty straightforward. -Acjelen 19:40, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok. As there already is an article on Washington State, does this article need to reference it at the top? This is Washington disambig. Also if I'm interested in Washington in an encyclopedic way, ie in isolation, where would I go to find that info? Or where can I put the info that I assembled as it was what I was expecting to find here? In essence Washington is a personal and place name and tbh I don't see a reason why you wiped it. I'll revert it, but you may want to come back so I'll wait in case you do(?) - edit: nm, made Washington (name) page, which fixes my knowledge gap. Let me know if you object. There may be a reason there hasn't been a name page to date? Also there's the question of what goes where. So far I've just copied over personal names. Seemed to make sense ;) Hakluyt bean 01:41, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

While you rarely see a usage summary at the top of an article or a disambiguation page, I don't see why that wouldn't fly on Washington (name). You might want to emphasize the origins of the place- and surname rather than repeat the list of nameholders from this page. That is a worthwhile subject.

I'm going to respond here to your comments earlier about Washington state versus Washington seat-of-government. WP is under no obligation to follow U.S. press style. Indeed, many aspects of WP style direct and actively work against U.S. press style. Since Washington is about the state, this page will continue to list the state at the top, If you'd like to go to Talk:Washington and suggest changing that article title to Washington State, you're welcome to, but I'd be ready for the reaction. -Acjelen 18:29, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Let's hear it for the original Washington

Washington, Tyne and Wear is a little too de-emphasised here for my liking, given that this is the original Washington which everything else called Washington (including old George, whose ancestors hailed from here) is named after. 217.155.20.163 23:00, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I just attempted to clarify the distinction and two different editors undid any attempt to clarify that the original Washington is not named after the General.

"Almost all" does not cover it because that formulation strongly implies that George Washington as a surname is sui generis.

Please clarify the statement to exempt Tyne and Wear, or remove the reference to "almost all other use of the term" per WP:UNDUE, WP:MOSDAB. Either it belongs in Washington (name) in which case the entire parenthetical statement ("almost all"...) belongs there, or else the statement can be qualified. Note: I don't reside in England, in fact I live near another Washington so no bias here. Yclept:Berr (talk) 21:59, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

OK, I removed the unnecessary bit from the "George Washington" entry. Let's see if that is acceptable. Deor (talk) 22:06, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Deor. sorry for sounding irritable. Yclept:Berr (talk) 22:09, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

We simply need to remember that the only purpose of this page is to help readers find the articles they're looking for, not to give them additional snippets of information about particular topics. Deor (talk) 22:12, 16 March 2011 (UTC) ~~ <<- I understand. ~~Berr

Automated hints to disambiguate Washington links

I just made the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Washington/Link repair to help detect the state name in the now-ambiguous links caused by the move of "Washington" to Washington (U.S. state) on 4 May 2010. I've added some regular expressions already. Anyone have any other hints or automated tools or bots to help with this? I guess Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Washington/Link repair would be the place to talk about it. (I also asked at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Georgia (U.S. state)#Automated hints to disambiguate Georgia/Washington? because Georgia (U.S. state) has been in a similar position for years now.) I suppose tools could autodetect links to other meanings of Washington, also, for that small percentage of links to "Washington" that are newly or always were ambiguous. --Closeapple (talk) 07:06, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Try adding {{User:WildBot/tag}} to the talk pages of the articles that link to Washington. – allen四names 07:26, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

To clarify, please note that it's now at Washington (state) per further discussion, apparently due to the principle of economy, since Washington State is apparently the only Washington defined as a state worldwide. (?) Your bots might need to reflect that.

Although we ought to seriously consider moving Georgia (U.S. state) to Georgia (state) per the same overwhelming naming convention, on the basis that the nation of Georgia (country) is not described as a state under WP MOS, only as a technical classification (in the same sense that UK is not listed under "Britain (kingdom)" (!) and there are technically two entities which may be described as Mexico (state) <-- (!) but only one of them can reasonably be categorized as such. I'm not familiar with how & where to best broach the subject, though. Yclept:Berr (talk) 19:35, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

The best place to discuss the names of other articles is on those articles' talk pages. While you make a good case for moving Georgia (U.S. state) to Georgia (state), I don think you'll gain a consensus to move it, though I would support the move. - BilCat (talk) 19:53, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Order

I've changed the order of the intro section to put DC on top, followed by the state, and then by George. Yes, I know that George came first, but then his family was named for the town in England. The fact is that Wikipedia is an international resource, and outside the USA 9 or more times out of 10 when someone searches for "Washington" they're looking for the US capital - not for an 18th century general/politician or even a state in the Northwest of the States. And even within the States, DC is the most common thing people associate with "Washington," followed by the state, and then by George. So it just doesn't make sense to put DC third on the list when that's what the overwhelming majority of folks who arrive here are looking for. -Helvetica (talk) 18:07, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

It is all based on the guy's name. Enough to put that at the top. Considering that it negates the weird question of the state vs the district makes it even more of a reason. Cptnono (talk) 07:52, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with User:Helvetica. Dab pages are a navigation aid, not chronology. Entries should be sorted in the order of relevancy. It doesn't matter that the places were named after the president. See MOS:DABENTRY. -- intgr [talk] 16:01, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

@Helvetica 103.130.173.181 (talk) 12:08, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

When to use redirects

Generally, redirects should only be used to link to a section (rather than the top of an article) or optionally to link to a alternate name that is in the target articles lede. While the name Washington is mentioned in the lede, it's near the end of the second paragraph and mentioned only in passing (rather than in boldface in the first sentence) - based on this, it's better to link to Boeing B-29 Superfortress without a redirect for this entry. Dondegroovily (talk) 19:47, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Entries for dab pages

An editor persists in removing, in contravention of WP:HOWTODAB, the "(disambiguation)" from entries that linked to other dab pages via a redirect. (For his/her reasoning and my response, see User talk:Deor#Washington.) I'm not going to edit war about this, but could other watchers of this page please offer their opinions about the matter. Deor (talk) 13:30, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

The editor in question concurs with the request. Deor and I have read the same policies and reached different conclusions. Luckily, there are many more editors.--~TPW 13:44, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Deor is correct in how to create intentional links to disambiguation pages. The guideline seems quite clear. older ≠ wiser 14:29, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

On WP:Disambiguation, there is the section Links to disambiguation pages which quite explicitly explains: To link to a disambiguation page (rather than to a page whose topic is a specific meaning), link to the title that includes the text "(disambiguation)", even if that is a redirect—for example, link to the redirect America (disambiguation) rather than the target page at "America".

On WP:MOSDAB, there in the section Where redirecting may be appropriate, there is a bullet stating When linking another disambiguation page in the "See also" section. which links to the previously mentioned WP:INTDABLINK section in WP:DAB (Note, I just now removed the qualification about the See also section as this manner of linking is not intended to only be used in the see also section). Besides this explicit cross-reference, in most cases WP:DAB takes precedence over WP:MOSDAB in cases where there might be disagreement. WP:DAB is a general editing guideline while WP:MOSDAB is part of the manual of style. older ≠ wiser 14:44, 2 September 2013 (UTC)