User talk:Agne27/City, State convention/Chicago & Philadelphia style "Consensus"

What does this say about the Page Move process?

While I do think the Chicago and Philadelphia moves were improperly done, I do not think this is a fault of the closing admins. Rather, I think it demonstrates more serious flaws in the page move process that essentially exploits ignorance of the debate. Essentially, those who are aware of the discussion-maybe after being canvassed, religiously follow WP:RM or an active editor with a systematic bias towards the subject matter are the ones who are going to chim in on the discussion. While editors who remain active at the core convention discussion could essentially be left in the dark as the page move goes right under everyone's noses. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 19:07, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

People who propose a move like Chicago or Philadelphia may not know about the specific U.S. city convention, as the nominators for those articles appeared not to, and there is no reason to think they should have. As with a WikiProject, the city naming convention discussion is a subject that only selected users will follow. WP:RM is a much broader forum to notify users about page moves, just as WP:AFD, WP:CFD, etc. are the first forums that people go to for deletions. Most people will not know the history of an article or circumstances suggesting the article is part of a broader debate before it is nominated to be deleted, unless the nominator knows so. Therefore, leaving a notice at WT:NC:CITY, whether by a move nominator or someone who knows the debate at WP:NC:CITY is the only way to notify more users other than WP:RM without the risk of canvassing. Likewise, there is no way but for NC:CITY participants to "discover" page move proposals, and, in turn, choose to announce in the specialized forum.

Finally, as page moves are done by consensus, and WP:NC are guidelines that allow for occasional exceptions, it is fair to judge each exception on its own, as well as compared to a group. I absolutely respect conventions. But as long as reasonable and policy-driven exceptions could be proposed, naming conventions will always be challenged at any point in time, regardless of how strong or weak it is. As a member of WP:NYCPT, I have seen an existing naming convention ignored, which led to the proposal of a stronger convention, which appears close to being adopted and should be more enforceable. So I don't talk about naming conventions blindly. At the very least, you should be glad that these city articles were not moved freely, as articles in my project had. TLK^'in 08:59, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Potentially involved voters

I confirm that I would have expressed an opinion against both moves had I noticed the discussions. After some effort, I eventually found the earlier conversation I had been involved in at Talk:Philadelphia/Redirect talk page, which was actually about what the redirect at Philadelphia should point at, but is related.

1. Neither word is completely unambiguous, and incoming links are much easier to sort out and correct if the primary topic is the disambiguation page. This is especially an issue with words where people thinking about some other context don't even realise there could be a different meaning. both of these cities are the largest city of that name, and the best-known meaning of the word, but not the only significant meaning.
2. Consistency in naming conventions makes it simpler and more predictable to edit other articles that link to articles about cities and towns.

--Scott Davis ^Talk 22:01, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I didn't vote in either one of the move requests, but I would have been opposed to both moves. I'm not opposed to some cities being at City, but I don't think the change should be done piecemeal, but that it should be changed at WP:NC:CITY. Main reason for this is that I'd prefer not to see the UK or Canadian convention implemented as those are most often implemented without concern for cities in other countries or other uses of the word. Additionally, they are fraught with little known cities with a title of "City" and in those cases the additional location identifier of Province, State, County, etc are important.--Bobblehead 01:13, 15 March 2007 (UTC)