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Is "concise" given as much priority as are Recognizability, Naturalness and Precision?

It just struck me that Conciseness does not have the priority of Recognizability, Naturalness and Precision. That is, if an article has a recognizable and natural name that is sufficiently precise to not be ambiguous, but no more precise than necessary, rarely if ever is it shortened in a manner that compromises its recognizability, naturalness or precision simply to be concise. Perhaps I'm missing something, so if anyone disagrees please provide counter-examples or something that explains how, why and where titles are more often than rarely shortened in a manner that compromises recognizability, naturalness or precision.

If there is no disagreement with explanation (I just don't like it arguments are irrelevant to determining consensus), I propose we modify the description of conciseness from this:

• Conciseness – shorter titles are often preferred to longer ones.

to something like this:

• Conciseness – when a title can be shortened without compromising recognizability, naturalness, or necessary precision, the shorter title is usually preferred.

--Born2cycle (talk) 16:41, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Is there really any need for the modification? The current language does not say that you must have a short title... just that they are preferred (which they are). Blueboar (talk) 18:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think the misapprehension behind all these discussions about consistency et al. is that we are somehow saying that all these five points are given equal priority. We aren't saying that - we're just observing that these are the factors that are most commonly looked at when determining article titles. The relative amounts of weight each one gets will depend on the circumstances of each particular case. (That said, I still think we can do a better job of describing how most titles are arrived at - though the task is complicated as always by the dual descriptive/prescriptive nature of the page). --Kotniski (talk) 21:23, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Then you will not object to my reinserting "Consistent – When other criteria do not indicate an obvious choice, consider giving similar articles similar titles." -- PBS (talk) 03:01, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that longstanding guideline should be restored. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:47, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't see it as a particularly "longstanding" guideline, nor do I think it should be restored, unless similar phrasing is added to all 5 criteria. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:10, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Certainly there was a lot of carry-on when I created an article entitled Observations, systematical and geographical, on the herbarium collected by Professor Christian Smith, in the vicinity of the Congo, during the expedition to explore that river, under the command of Captain Tuckey, in the year 1816. Amongst the carry-on there were people calling for it to be moved to various much less commonly used, more concise titles. Hesperian 22:53, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

And wouldn't there have been less debate and consternation about that had naming policy been clear about conciseness not being a justification for compromising naturalness or recognizability? That is, if the clear and commonly used name is available, we should not use a less commonly used name simply because it is more concise. Wouldn't it be best to spell this out, perhaps even using this article as an example of that? --Born2cycle (talk) 17:38, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

What I'm trying to accomplish is to make the process of naming articles be more deterministic, and, thus, less subject to debate and arbitrariness. Here is a line from WP:JDLI with respect to how deletion discussions are made:

To decide what should be in [the encyclopedia] purely on the basis of what is merely popular or interesting to whatever small group of editors happens to be around at the time that a discussion is had, is to head down the road towards chaos and confusion.

I recently added a slightly modified version to apply to title discussions:

To decide how articles are to be titled purely on the basis of what is merely popular or interesting to whatever small group of editors happens to be around at the time that a discussion is had, is to head down the road of balkanizing Wikipedia article titles.

In fact, I would argue that the ultimate purpose of naming policy, guidelines and conventions is precisely to avoid "balkanizing Wikipedia article titles". I suggest that as long as the policy is written in a manner such that just about any position can be rationalized as being consistent with policy by cherry-picking from the policy (and we're pretty close to that now), we are not serving this ultimate purpose. I realize we will never get to a perfect "10" in which the title of any article could be unambiguously determined, but I do think we could get much closer to this ideal "10" than we are now, and being more explicit about how the main criteria are prioritized would be a significant move in that direction.

Being clear that Conciseness is secondary to Recognizability and Naturalness, or that Recognizability and Naturalness are primary criteria, would be very helpful in that regard. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:39, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Re: "balkanizing Wikipedia article titles"... an interesting choice of terminology given the endless disputes over what gets to be called "Macedonia" on Wikipedia? (a set of disputes that were only resolved through a very long process of consensus building). Blueboar (talk) 21:19, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Those kinds of protracted discussions are not limited to the subject area of Balkan geography, or to even the area of place names in general; they occur all over Wikipedia in just about any subject area. Anything we can do to discourage these like it/don't like it pissing matches, is, I think, an improvement to Wikipedia.

I don't see any objection to adding some clarity on this point, so I've made the change per this proposal. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:43, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I am not oing to revert it... but I really think it is unnecessarily confusing the issue. The simple fact is, shorter titles are generally preferred over longer titles (but we accept that, when you get down to specifics, there are times longer titles are best). I think you are trying to resolve a conflict that does not really exist. Blueboar (talk) 21:57, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, Hesperian gave a specific example. To use your example, the current use of Republic of Macedonia rather than Macedonia (Republic) is arguably less than ideal. Officialness aside ([Greece]], officially, is Hellenic Republic, but we don't put it there) while adding "Republic of" to the front of Macedonia does not make it less Recognizable, it is less natural and certainly less concise. If you need to see more examples, I can try to think of some, or find some. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:11, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

This is coming at it from the wrong angle. We're not really in conflict over whether we like concise names. We're in conflict over the tradeoff between our desire to use names used in the real world, and our desire to impose order on our titles. Often that tradeoff doesn't lead to conflict. We don't seem to have any trouble with the idea that we follow usage in reliable sources... but in the singular noun form written in sentence case with an initial capital letter. Nonetheless there are areas where these two desires collide more aggressively, and we have difficulty reaching a consensus on how to compromise. The entire styles-and-titles debacle of a convention is one example. My long article title was another. To me it was clear that we should follow reliable sources. To others, the name used by reliable sources is an unwieldy title, and needs to be shortened. Fundamentally, though, the disagreement wasn't over whether we value conciseness; we do. The disagreement was over whether we should take the name used in reliable sources as-is, or apply our values to come up with a "better" title. Hesperian 23:43, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

This seems to be based on the premise that there is a view being expressed here that we don't value conciseness. I don't see that view expressed.

The issue is whether we value conciseness as much as we value naturalness, recognizability or how the name is used in reliable sources. To determine whether one criteria is valued more than another, you look and see what happens when the two criteria are in conflict - when one indicates one name and the other, another. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:49, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

And so far you have yet to provide such an analysis. You are simply asserting on philosophical grounds that conciseness is not as important as the other values, and that this convention should state that. Until you've actually demonstrated that this is the case, it is proper for the convention to remain non-committal about what what we value relatively more or less. Hesperian 00:45, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Also, from what I can tell, your position is irrefutable because you take everything as supporting it. If I show you a case where recognizability defeated conciseness, you say "See? We value conciseness less than recognizability! All the more reason to clarify the convention!" But if I show you a case where conciseness defeated recognizability (as I did), you say "See? The wrong decision! All the more reason to clarify the convention!"[1] I mean, Jeez, how do you reason with logic like that?! Hesperian 00:53, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you argued and eventually prevailed in having the article at the full unabbreviated title, but apparently those arguing for conciseness won. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:44, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I would like to ask both sides of this debate to provide some examples... Can anyone come up with an example of an article where we improperly chose Conciseness at the expense Recongizability or Naturalness? And on the other hand, can anyone come up with an example of where we improperly chose Recognizability or Naturalness at the expense of Conciseness? Blueboar (talk) 14:20, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Hesperian's example of choosing the abbreviated title,

Observations, systematical and geographical, on the herbarium collected by Professor Christian Smith, in the vicinity of the Congo

over the full title,

Observations, systematical and geographical, on the herbarium collected by Professor Christian Smith, in the vicinity of the Congo, during the expedition to explore that river, under the command of Captain Tuckey, in the year 1816

might be an example of wrongly choosing conciseness, though I'm not sure how reliable sources refer to this work. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:44, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Probably most uses are "Brown's 'Congo'", but only in contexts where the full title has already been given. And yes, it was argued that the title should be "Brown's 'Congo'", which would have been utterly stupid in the absense of the proper context. I argued against that, but couldn't be bothered arguing against somewhat arbitrarily abbreviating the title. The abbreviated title we ended up with is not, to my knowledge, used in reliable sources at all. Hesperian 06:25, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Sigh. The question here is whether concision is an argument actually made and listened to. It is; some obvious examples are Gulliver's Travels (Swift's actual title was quite different and much longer), and United Kingdom, where there are several longer and perhaps more recognizable alternatives available. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:30, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

No, that's not the question here because I don't know of anyone, certainly not me, that is arguing that concision is not "an argument actually made and listened to". Of course it is. There is no dispute about that. That's not the question.

Neither of these examples illustrate counter-examples to what the proposed wording states, since neither Gulliver's Travels nor United Kingdom are compromises of Recognizability, Naturalness or Precision. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:40, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Then you're not arguing about anything; none of these five is more than an argument made and listened to. Both of these are compromises (justified ones) of Precision; United Kingdom may also be a sacrifice of recognizability - and all these points have come up on the move requests. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:58, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Seasonal episode lists

There is currently a discussion going on about calling articles containing only a list or little more "List of" or not explicitly calling them lists at WP:TV-NC. _Xeworlebi ^(talk) 13:31, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

This is actually an interesting discussion. The core issue seems to be whether an article comprised mostly only of a list of episodes must be named "List of series-name season-#", or whether it's acceptable to name it after the related subject (in this case the TV series name and season identifier) without the "List of ..." prefix. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:01, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Advantage of disambiguating with parenthesis

PMAnderson just removed the following statement:

An advantage of disambiguating titles with parenthetical remarks is that the parentheses clearly distinguish the disambiguating information from the name of the subject, so such titles clearly and naturally still convey the name despite the disambiguation.

The summary comment of that edit is: "remove praise of parens; not consensus and undiscussed."

Fine, let's discuss. This is clearly an advantage, I think. Despite how obvious it is, it is often overlooked--Kotniski (talk) 08:50, 17 November 2010 (UTC) or under-appreciated, which is why I think Wikipedia is improved if it's stated explicitly.

We already state, and apparently have consensus for, this: ... a good title should convey what the subject is actually called in English.

For example, what conveys what the subject is actually called, Cork (city) or Cork City? The latter implies, at least to the uninitiated, that the name of that city in Ireland is Cork City. It's not. It's called, simply, Cork, and the former title conveys that clearly (no one fluent in English is going to think the remark in parenthesis is part of what it's called).

Does anyone disagree with adding this clarification back in? If so, what specifically is the objection? Thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:51, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Personally I agree with the removed text, and see no objection to its inclusion... but it shouldn't be restored before PMA has had the opportunity to state his position. Hesperian 06:01, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I also agree with it, but I don't think it should be included in the place where it was put - it's too specific to appear among the general principles. --Kotniski (talk) 08:50, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree the location is not ideal, but I'd rather see it here, ideally to be moved later when a better place can be found, than not be in there at all. Do you object to its restoration in this place, at least for the time being? --Born2cycle (talk) 18:15, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I like the statement and believe it should remain in the policy. --Mike Cline (talk) 14:02, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

This is largely redundant with what we already say on the subject of disambiguation

Otherwise that title cannot be used for the article without disambiguation. This is often done by adding a disambiguating tag in parentheses (or sometimes after a comma); however in certain cases it may be done by choosing a different form of the title in order to achieve uniqueness. If there is a natural mode of disambiguation in standard English, as with Cato the Elder and Cato the Younger, use that instead.

Insofar as it is not redundant, it misdescribes practice: both Catoes are (when there is no possibility of confusion) called Cato but we don't disambiguate them as Cato (censor) and Cato (political candidate) or something else made up and in parens; if anything, the existing wording is too weak: Wikipedia generally prefers to disambiguate without parentheses (as here) when the possibility exists, unless other principles give some strong reason to do so. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:16, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

If Cato the Elder and Cato the Younger are not commonly used to refer to the corresponding subjects, this illustrates my point, and I suggest something like Cato (elder) and Cato (younger) would be more in line with naming policy. If those are commonly used to refer to these subjects, then this example is moot. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:05, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

It appears that Cato the Elder is commonly used to refer to that subject, so the title Cato the Elder does at least accurately convey a commonly used name for the subject, so this is not a good example. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:15, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I would also like to see the statement retained in the policy. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:10, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I think Sept has a valid point (and would oppose a move to Cato (elder), for various reasons, scholarly tradition, mostly)

But I don't think that redundancy is necessarily "bad". If the text needs work, then let's discuss that : )

However, I think placing it within "naturalness" seems the wrong place. Maybe "precision"? - jc37 18:20, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you about opposing a move to Cato (elder) due to scholarly tradition, but that because Cato the Elder is scholarly tradition, so that's not a relevant example here. We don't prefer disambiguating with parenthesis or otherwise when the most common name, or at least a very common name, can be conveyed unambiguously by using that name alone in the title.

I'm fine with it under precision rather than naturalness. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:40, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

If Cato the Elder is a good choice of disambiguation then the proposed text is wrong. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:47, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

How is it wrong? First, Cato the Elder is not really disambiguation. The subject of that article is commonly referred to by several names, Cato the Elder being among them. Second, what the proposed text says is that parenthesis are preferred to "convey the name"; Cato the Elder does accurately convey the name. So, what is wrong? --Born2cycle (talk) 19:02, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

So are most subjects referred to several names; as often we are choosing among common names to supply a title. Cato is the most common, but ambiguous; therefore we choose Cato the Elder as being common, being unambiguous, being idiomatic or natural, and as lacking clumsy (and uncommon) parentheses. We do not choose titles to "convey the name"; that is the claim of most of our disruptive nationalists and we should not support it. We choose titles to indicate the subject. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:14, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

"Our disruptive nationalists?" I remind you again to please avoid incivility like that.

I don't know whether most subjects are referred to by several names. But, certainly many are, and in those cases we prefer the most commonly used name. When there are several names that are all reasonably close in terms of how commonly they are used, and the most common is ambiguous, we often choose one of the others. When no reasonable name is available for the title, then we disambiguate. But usually the title ends up being, and therefore conveying, the name of the subject. Name conveyance was almost certainly not an original intentional purpose of titles, but it is a natural byproduct, or unintended beneficial consequence, if you will. I've seen people use Wikipedia who obviously take it for granted that the name conveyed in the title of an article is the name of that article's subject. It would be irresponsible of us to ignore this aspect of the title when naming articles, and this policy should reflect that. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:35, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Just in case this is a genuine misunderstanding: My concern is not that Born2Cycle is a disruptive nationalist, but that he is advocating an approach which they will use as ammunition. This page was moved to avoid the idea that we are deciding on the name of the subject; which those with a one true and good name to peddle insisted meant their name. But Born2Cycle has a havit of backing up unsound arguments with spurious charges of incivility; if this is another, I will not engage in interminable discussion; I will simply oppose. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:36, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that conveying the name is one of the purposes which is usefully served by article titles, alongside telling people that they're on the right page. (But I don't mean "the name" in the way that the "disruptive nationalists" mean it, i.e. the one good and true name, I just mean the name (or at least one of such) that is likely to be used in the appropriate register of English.) I don't see any contradiction here - we prefer an unambiguous name if there is one available that is common and readily recognizable, but if not, we use a disambiguator (normally in parentheses, sometimes after a comma), and that works fine too. What we generally don't do is use some obscure name form (such as a form with little known middle initials) just because it happens to be unique. --Kotniski (talk) 20:03, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree except for the comma thing. I agree we sometimes use commas in titles, but that is usually (and ideally only) when the resulting title, including the comma and everything after it, comprises one of the commonly used names for the subject in question. That is, we don't use The Great Escape, film, but, rather The Great Escape (film), because "The Great Escape, film" is not how that subject is normally referred to. However, Portland, Oregon is a fine use of the comma convention for disambiguation, because "Portland, Oregon" is a common way to refer to that subject. This is also why we prefer Cork (city) to Cork City, or Cork, County Cork - because neither of the latter are common ways to refer to that subject. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:25, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Above, Hesperian supported the restoration of the text in question, pending hearing PMA's objection. That has been stated (and I, for one, find it unpersuasive). In the mean time, besides Hesperian and myself, Kotniski, Mike Cline, Jc37 and JHunterJ have all expressed support for inclusion of the text, though Kotniski and Jc37 expressed doubt about Naturalness being the right place, and I admit it might not be ideal. Jc37 suggested maybe under precision, but there is no consensus for that. Without any objection from anyone other than the person who removed it, I suggest this discussion clearly shows consensus for restoration of the text. We can work on moving it to a better place separately. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:03, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

In mere fact: Jc37 objects to its placement under Naturalism; Kotniski objects strongly to its placement under the first section at all. I would have placed it under Precision and disambiguation did it not contradict the rest of the section; it may still be possible to place it there with a {[tl|disputedtag}}. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:00, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I like Blueboar's use of generally above; but since there is some storm on the edit page, I will stick with often until we discuss this. I do think the five points are needlessly diverse in expression; but this can wait until the efforts to change the substance have ceased. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:49, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Blueboard's use of "generally" was in the context of preferring shorter titles. That's true... shorter titles are generally preferred. There is no evidence that consistency with the pattern used in similar articles is also generally preferred. There is plenty of evidence that it is not... for one example, just look at the guidelines at WP:PLACE; for the vast majority the convention is to use just the city name, and to follow some pattern like "city, country" or "city, state" only when disambiguation is required. The idea that consistency with patterns like that is generally preferred (and I challenge even "often" preferred) is preposterous). --Born2cycle (talk) 21:18, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

This is your view and your view alone; and even on those articles, the more similar the articles, the more similar the titles. Cities in California, neighborhoods in New York, villages in England, towns in Australia are each done alike. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:27, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Pmanderson has commented out the inclusion of this text despite the consensus support for it, along with the gall of referring to the inclusion as "vandalism" in the edit summary. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:09, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Two falsehoods in so short a sentence: there is no consensus to include this in the place where Born2Cycle insists on putting it; and I have placed it and then retained the point in the actual section on disambiguation; we don't need to be verbose, and it is another load of ammunition for the nationalists to suggest we are using names. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:18, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

And, yes, writing in one's own opinions as though they were policy, when several have told you that the edit is in the wrong place and others that it is wrong, is vandalism. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:23, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Under Naturalness?

After restoration of the text in question, here is what it Naturalness states:

• Naturalness – titles are expected to use names and terms that readers are most likely to look for in order to find the article (and to which editors will most naturally link from other articles). As part of this, a good title should convey what the subject is actually called in English. An advantage of disambiguating titles with parenthetical remarks is that the parentheses clearly distinguish the disambiguating information from the name of the subject, so such titles clearly and naturally still convey the name despite the disambiguation.

While consensus for inclusion of that last sentence was established above, there was some concern expressed about including it here, rather than, say, under Precision. Here is my argument for including it under Naturalness. The reason it should be here is to discourage objections to disambiguating with parenthesis on the grounds that a title so disambiguated is contrary to the Naturalness criterion. I think it should be clarified precisely here that parenthetic remarks are natural ways to express "by the way" separate but related information in English - and that only the part of the title not included in parenthesis is subject to "use names and terms that readers are most likely to look for" and "convey what the subject is actually called in English". The clarifying/disambiguating information in parenthesis should not be subject to that, as is clearly illustrated by countless titles in Wikipedia, like Gone with the Wind (film), John Hughes (editor), Cork (city), etc. etc. No one suggests that in these examples (film), (editor) or (city) are part of the names "that readers are most likely to look for" when searching for these respective subjects, or that they are part of the name for each subject that is conveyed by the title. But that doesn't mean that these titles do not adhere to the Naturalness criterion, or that Naturalness is compromised where parentheses are used like this to disambiguate. That's why this statement is particularly relevant to Naturalness. --18:23, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

There is no such consensus; if there is consensus, it is this: that if that is to be included anywhere, it is not to be in the first section - as Kotniski says above, it's too detailed. And Born2cycle's reasoning for it is exactly the case not to include it at all; if a disambiguation is unnatural and can be avoided by a natural disambiguation, it ought to be avoided.

Furthermore, the following text is a deliberate falsehood:

titles which follow the same pattern as those of similar articles are sometimes preferred, usually when disambiguation of an ambiguous name is required

• Every article (except for the minuscule portion which are not only uncategorized but uncategorizable) has similar articles.
• It is preferable to give similar articles similar titles; it is almost always done, except when one of the other principles conflicts.
• Disambiguation does not affect this; indeed disambiguation is one of the occasional reasons to give an article a dissimilar title.

Therefore the emphasized words in B2C's pipe-dream are undiscussed (here) and false. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:44, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

This second text is still undiscussed, and certainly not consensus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:00, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Only 2 of the 6 people supporting inclusion of the text mentioned that Naturalness might not be the appropriate place for it, neither as strongly as you have. Only one person, you, has objected to the text wholesale. How you get from that the following: "if that is to be included anywhere, it is not to be in the first section", is beyond me.

As to the other points, we have some kind of major disconnect here.

• It might be true that all articles have similar articles, but how is that relevant here? Take articles about books, for example. Each article about a book is arguably similar to other articles about books. So what? The title of each such article is, if possible, the title of that book. Does that make the title of Winnie-the-Pooh "similar" to Macbeth and Ivy Day in the Committee Room? How? Remember, in the context of the Consistency criterion "similar" means titles that "follow the same pattern as those of similar articles". What is the same pattern that is followed in articles about books (and movies and plays and places for that matter)? There is none.
• According to how most articles are actually named, it is NOT preferable to give similar articles similar (follow the same pattern) titles; it is sometimes done, but usually only when disambiguation is required, or for those articles for which what the subject is usually called in English is not obvious.
• I'd like to know when disambiguation indicates a dissimilar title (does not follow the same pattern followed by similar articles) when the undisambiguated title would follow the same pattern. The only potential examples of that I can think of are based on the assumption that the reason most articles about people follow the First Last pattern (and, so, disambiguating with, say (politician) arguably makes it dissimilar) is due to Consistency, but I reject that premise. The reason most articles about people follow the First Last pattern is not because of policy, but because for each subject whose article title happens to follow the First Last pattern, that is how that subject is usually called in English. This is made evident by all the articles about people which do not follow the First Last "pattern" - almost always because that is not how that subject is normally/usually called (e.g., Madonna (entertainer), Prince (musician), John F. Kennedy, Anne, Queen of Great Britain, Elizabeth II, etc.). Jimmy Carter is at Jimmy Carter (which happens to follow the First Last pattern) because that is how he usually called, not because of the "Consistency" criterion to follow the First Last pattern.

--Born2cycle (talk) 02:29, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Elizabeth II is not what she's usually called.
• And consistency is a general principle, not just consistency in disambiguation, or even consistency when disambiguation is required. I don't think it should necessarily be the determining factor in selecting article titles, but it should always be considered.

— Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:36, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• The point is that if articles about people tended to use the First Last pattern to be consistent with other articles about people, then Elizabeth II would be at Elizabeth Mary, but it's not, because Elizabeth Mary is not what she's usually (ever?) called (it's so unusual it's even a redlink). Maybe she's called Queen Elizabeth more often than Elizabeth II, but certainly Elizabeth II is not an unusual way to refer to her. And considering there are 2 1/2 million ghits for "Elizabeth II" I think the argument can be made that she is "usually" (typically, habitually, often) called that. Not sure why you're making this semantic point (which rests on the meaning of usually) so important, except apparently it's all you've got.
• We have no way to know what you mean by "consistency is a general principle" because you don't clarify what you mean by consistency, nor even if you mean exactly how it's defined in the policy criteria. It may or may not be "a general principle" depending on how you define consistency.

  However, in the context in which it matters, in this discussion about the criteria specified in this policy, consistency is very specifically defined as "follow the same pattern as those of similar articles". Doing that is not something we do with all articles or even a majority of articles, and it is something that we do usually only when disambiguation is required. That is not my opinion; that is fact. --Born2cycle (talk) 05:20, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

More vapid text

This edit is unacceptable.

When disambiguation with parentheses is used, it can have the advantage of distinguishing the disambiguator clearly from what the subject is called. When disambiguating without parentheses, the title conveys that the disambiguatory information is part of what the subject is called, and so should be avoided unless the subject is actually called that.

First of all, no policy should be so badly written; disambiguatory information is third-water bureaucratese.

Second, the advantage, if any, of titles which are most common usage is to convey what the subject is called in English. (For more on this, see the long discussion below; we don't want article titles which convey what it is called in a non-Roman script, for example.) If it is vital what it is called in Outer Slobbovian, that should be in the article (explained in English); if not, that is one of the things the interwiki link to the Outer Slobbovian wikipedia is for.

Third, the last sentence is nonsense; it defeats the whole purpose of moving this to Wikipedia:Article titles. The article title is what the article is called; what the subject is called may (as with Lady Byron#Name) take a couple paragraphs of explanation. We cannot - and rational editors do not pretend to - squeeze that into the title. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:16, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I nearly reverted it myself. I don't see how your second point is addressing the text, but I agree with your first and third.

I think the purpose of the edit was to say that readers may assume that the article title is a commonly used name of the subject, and therefore prose disambiguation may mislead where parenthetical disambiguation would not. Hesperian 00:54, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

That's exactly what it was supposed to mean (and what I thought it did mean - it was obviously close enough for you to glean that meaning). Any objections on saying that clearly? Any suggestions on exactly how to word it? Thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:39, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not going to disagree with the first point - but I will note that the appropriate remedy to badly written content is to improve the wording, not revert it.

I agree with Hesperian about the second point not addressing the text.

As to the third point, the policy states, and has stated for some time, that "a good title should convey what the subject is actually called in English.". Is that nonsense? Does it defeat the whole purpose of moving this policy to WP:TITLE? Speaking of nonsense, the idea that we can't reflect what a subject is commonly called in English in the title is absurd, at least with respect to the vast, vast majority of Wikipedia articles. The only exception I can think of is the one with the very long title Hesperian has referred to before, and even that one can conceivably convey this, as Hesperian has argued. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:59, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

This, like this unfortunate edit elsewhere, declares B2C's opinions to be matters of fact. They are not; they are not even consensus opinions. I have edited to show both sides; if B2C finds this unacceptable, I am content to say nothing, as we have long done. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:48, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Subjective opinion in policy wording

This edit just introduced the highlighted wording below:

The advantage of disambiguating with parentheses is that the non-parenthesized part of the title clearly conveys what the subject is called in English. On the other hand, such disambiguations tend to be longer and clumsier than choosing an alternate but unambiguous form.

I, for one, strongly disagree with the "clumsier" characterization -- but the point here is either way it is just pure subjective opinion and has no place in the policy. Note that the claim in the previous statement is much less subjective. No one can seriously question whether Prince (singer) and Cork (city) convey no less clearly than Prince and Cork that Prince and Cork are how the respective subjects are called in English.

And I don't see how parenthesized disambiguations tend to be longer. I mean, the difference between Madonna (entertainer) and Madonna, entertainer is but one byte, and of course if a non-parenthesized disambiguation like Cato the Elder were moved to the most obvious parenthesized disambiguation, Cato (elder), it would actually be shorter. So the "tend to be longer" claim is simply false.

Anyway, I'm just raising this issue in the hopes that someone else will see the problem and correct it. Since I have a history of conflict with the person who made the edit, I won't engage in actually changing it myself. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:00, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Think "and/or", not "and always both". "Cork (city)" is longer than Cork City; "Cato (elder)" is clumsier than Cato the Elder. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:20, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Changed to "or", although sometimes it is both. What parenthesized dab distinguishing River Thames from the river in Connecticut would be shorter or better formed? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:28, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

River Thames needs no disambiguation - as that is how that river is called (and that is not how the river in Connecticut is called, which is Thames River, and that is where it would be, but, due to disambiguation with another Thames River, it is, elegantly -- not clumsily -- at Thames River (Connecticut)). --Born2cycle (talk) 19:33, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)The wording is tend, implying more often than not. Again, "Cork (city)" is only one byte longer than "Cork City"... is that significant enough to even mention, much less characterize as "tend"? And that ignores all the instances where nonparenthesized disambiguation is longer. Overall it's a probably a wash, so tend to be longer is inaccurate.

I respect your opinion that "Cato (elder)" is clumsier than Cato the Elder, and respectively disagree. Maybe as a programmer my eyes are so accustomed to looking at parentheses that they seem more natural (and not clumsy... huh, is this remark "clumsy"?) than to non-programmers. Regardless, my point stands, it's a subjective opinion. I suppose we could have a vote to determine if the opinion that parenthesized disambiguations are "clumsier" than non-parenthesized disambiguations is prevalent. Hope you don't mind the clumsy parentheses around the word "talk" in my sig... --Born2cycle (talk) 19:33, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

It is diambiguated; or we would title it Thames, like Ganges.

Are parenthesized expressions clumsier, caeteris paribus, than unparenthesized ones? Yes; this has been a usual argument against them; we parenthesize chiefly because there is often no good alternative. Born2Cycle is the only editor I have ever seen taking the other side of this one. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:38, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, River Thames is a disambiguation from what would be the title if there were no conflicts, but it's not a disambiguation from what the subject is called in English. Only the latter type of disambiguation is relevant to disambiguating with parentheses because parenthetic disambiguation is usually only considered when no title that conveys simply what the subject is called is available. That's why I said River Thames needs no disambiguation. That is, it doesn't need the can't-just-use-how-its-called-in-English type of disambiguation for which parenthetic disambiguation is normally used because there is a title available that is one of the ways it is called in English. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:52, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

What idiolect is this? I call any of them the Thames (as here) unless confusion is possible. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:07, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I see that the subjective "clumsier" was removed by a previously uninvolved editor, but then edit-warred back in by the person who originally inserted it. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:40, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

That was an edit conflict; I was inserting or, as WhatAmIdoing suggests. But On the other hand, such disambiguations may be longer an alternate but unambiguous form needs editing in any case - being ungrammatical. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:43, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

But it can certainly be "less natural", referring back to the principles. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:55, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Parenthetic remarks are a perfectly natural, if not the most natural, way to introduce extra information (at least in English), which is exactly what information added to a title in order to disambiguate it is. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:07, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Nonsense. If it were, English would have been using Thames River (Connecticut) in running prose all along, instead of waiting for Wikipedia to invent the expression. See the little book: §3: Enclose parenthetical expressions between commas. Parentheses are a device for those relatively rare occasions when ordinary syntax fails. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:11, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

The ambiguous context of a Wikipedia title is unusual with respect to ordinary prose, so ordinary syntax is more likely to fail (in ordinary prose context is more likely known and so disambiguatory clarification unneeded), especially when trying to convey what the subject is called in English with the title. But just because the need to use them occurs more often in WP titles than in ordinary prose, does not make their use any less natural than they are in prose. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:24, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Check the Britannica?

After an odd move request at Talk:Heroin#move request (now withdrawn), where an editor inisted that we had to use the chemical name, not the trademark, I have ventured to add a recommendation that claims about encyclopedic register be checked by consulting another encyclopedia. It may save somebody the time it takes to post and argue for a futile move request. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:33, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

The fourth paragraph in that section already recommends "In determining which of several alternative names is more common, it is useful to observe the usage of major international organizations, major English-language media outlets, quality encyclopedias, geographic name servers, major scientific bodies and scientific journals, and a search engine may help to collect this data." (emphasis added) -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:37, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes. This is a different point and a stronger reason to consult the Britannica - they are much more likely than we are to use a "correct" but uncommon name as a title; but their use of "heroin" as a title is direct evidenct that it isn't unencyclopedic. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:44, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:BRD. In addition to that, there doesn't appear to be much benefit gained from this instruction creep. -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:49, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I've tried to reflect just criticism; but it did come up - and if we can avoid such pointless requests, we've gained something. The point should be obvious - but our policies consist of obvious points which have needed saying repeatedly. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:52, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Ping Pong discussion

There is simply too much verbal "volleying" going on on this page. I can't follow that much verbiage in my watchlist and am dropping it, as, undoubtedly others have done. We are worn out with following entirely too much discussion that seems to go nowhere. Can't editors, when they see that the conversation is going nowheres, restrict themselves to five exchanges a day, then maybe limiting themselves to four the next day, 3 the next, etc. This is tiresome. I'm outta here! Student7 (talk) 19:33, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Aw... that takes all the fun out of it. What is the point of having policy talk pages if we can't go around in circles trying to convince others that we are right.

Seriously, I think the problem is that editors don't see that the conversation is going nowhere. People often get into a mindset that if they just explain their point one more time, everyone who opposes will suddenly get it and change their mind. It's a common reaction in policy talk page discussions... and I suspect all of us have been guilty of it at one point or another (I know I have)... but it often takes someone not involved in the discussion to say "stop". Blueboar (talk) 20:03, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Non-Roman characters in article titles

Should non-Roman character strings be used as article titles?

I asked the question; I would like an answer to the question I asked. As far as I am concerned, redirects are a secondary question; articles, including disambiguation pages, are the chief concern here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:34, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Aren't disambig. pages subject to the same principles as redirects? A redirect is when some title points uniquely to one place, but what to do when the title has three referents, each receiving coverage somewhere in the encyclopedia? I'd gladly accept that a pair of Chinese characters requiring disambiguation serve as a redirect to a Roman-character-titled disambiguation page, though. But some have suggested that the use of the same characters in different languages could make coming up with those Roman titles nearly impossible. Wareh (talk) 18:47, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Moved from WP:AN 19:09, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

There's an increasing number of articles which use Chinese characters as titles. In fact there's a whole category of them here. It seems to me this is a breach of policy at WP:UE and the guideline at WP:NC-CHINA, and they should all be transliterated into Pinyin. andy (talk) 16:02, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

What harm do they do? They're disambiguation pages! Physchim62 (talk) 16:08, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Physchim. If they were actually articles, that would be one thing, but disambiguation pages are definitely useful in that format. It is highly possible that Chinese users with alternate keyboards will enter in words like that (Don't ask me why they wouldn't just go to Chinese Wikipedia, but it's still possible), so it is necessary to direct them to the proper pages with the terms, especially since these terms seem to have multiple articles related to them, hence the disambiguation pages in the first place. Silverseren^C 16:25, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Not to mention people who are copypasting without necessarily knowing all the pronunciations. And then there's the fact that Chinese characters are also used in Japanese and Korean... Physchim62 (talk) 16:34, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't that open the door to a whole slew of dab pages in other languages? Why should Chinese be different? What about languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet, or Arabic or Hebrew -- should we allow dabs in which the title is written right to left?

It seems to me that this is en.wiki and that all article titles, dab or otherwise, should be readable by English-speakers. Beyond My Ken (talk) 16:34, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Just for the record here; Chinese and Japanese characters don't match up 100%. There are some Japanese kanji that Chinese people can't read, and vice versa. As for Korean hanja, that's basically classical Chinese writing; most Koreans don't know more than basic hanja, and most Chinese and Japanese people don't read a huge amount of classical writing. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:02, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

truism. I know for a fact that Japanese simplifies characters such as 廣 and 龍 differently, and it incorporates a few simplified Chinese characters, e.g. 国、区、学 into its writing. Hence why the "東北大學" debate below was pointless. If we keep strict to native naming standards, then it should have simply re-directed to the mainland Chinese university. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 04:12, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

There was at least one AFD that was easily findable Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/東北大學 that failed to find consensus. According to some of the comments there (and forgive me if I misspeak, I'm not that familiar in this area), different cultures may use the Chinese characters for things but pronounce them differently which causes the English language transliteration to be different. Personally, I can see the benefit of them as dab pages. Syrthiss (talk) 16:35, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

• I hate to be anal but the policy doesn't have exceptions for dab pages. And why should the English wikipedia provide dab pages for non-English languages? On the same basis the Chinese wikipedia should be full of English dab pages... andy (talk) 16:39, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

• But they do. zh:CCTV redirects to zh:中国中央电视台, zh:FIFA redirects to zh:国际足球联合会, and zh:Kevin Rudd redirects to zh:陆克文. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 05:21, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Since there is apparently a extraEnglish (which I thought I was just coining, but apparently exists according to my spell checker) reasoning for them then perhaps we should modify the policy to not be so xenophobic (in a good faith way, to be sure) or IAR and just leave them and bollocks to the policy. If we're going to modify the policy, it needs to take place in a venue that isn't AN (to be anal as well). Syrthiss (talk) 16:51, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree there should be no exceptions - unless we want to say that dab pages can be in any language and any characters. Dougweller (talk) 16:52, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Ironically enough, the close to that AfD doesn't say what it's supposed to say..."没有公众舆论" means "no public opinion", not "no consensus"... T. Canens (talk) 07:22, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

This sounds like a job for an RfC! I can see both sides of this issue, & can live with either decision as long as it's clear everyone with an opinion was given a chance to speak. However, it's nothing that either Superman or an Admin can do anything about (except offer an opinion about), so can this issue be taken there? Thanks. -- llywrch (talk) 19:55, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Where is the correct venue for such an RfC? one asks. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:44, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Article titles seems a suitable location. Physchim62 (talk) 21:53, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

One can't simply create Wikipedia:Requests for Comment/Chinese characters in article titles? If so, then many changes on Wikipedia have not been an improvement. :-( llywrch (talk) 22:07, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

@Llywrch: Perhaps you can, I've just never done anything like a general RfC before, and I thought the venue should be one which would attract people interested in the subject. I've no idea if the RfC area is high-volume or not, or whether, like some other areas, most of the traffic is from "regulars". Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:34, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

BMK, no matter where the RfC is created, just make sure it's announced at the Village Pump & has a link at Template:Centralized discussion‎. IMHO, those steps ought to get everyone's attention. -- llywrch (talk) 07:04, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

It should be something like Wikipedia:Requests for Comment/Non-roman characters in disambiguation page titles as no one is arguing that article titles should contain them. And it should also be announced to all related WikiProjects, too. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 07:29, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

That is a much better suggestion. What would count as related Wikiprojects though? The disambiguation one, obviously, but what else? Silverseren^C 07:39, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Any of the CJKV projects (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese), any projects about topics which generally use Cyrillic, Arabic, any of the southeast Asian projects, etc. Pretty much any which don't use Roman characters as their first mode of communication. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 17:05, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. A dab page is an article but it's arguable that a redirect is. So there are two separate issues here. andy (talk) 09:06, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

again, a DAB page is not an article per se. And considering that a re-direct is an article is irrational. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 13:51, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

• Moreover it should be Wikipedia:Requests for Comment/Non-roman characters in article titles, in which case an awful lot of policies and guidelines are thrown into doubt, perhaps even the idea that en.wikipedia.org is... err... English? (And of course that Russian WP is Russian, Thai WP is Thai and so on). My reason for raising this issue in the first place was to get a view on whether Chinese titles should be transliterated or if I'd missed some finer point of policy, not whether the working language of this encyclopaedia should remain English! andy (talk) 22:19, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

• I wouldn't use that sort of title, Andy, since what we're proposing here is the use of disambiguation pages with non-roman characters in order to direct readers to pages with roman characters. The title you've proposed is misleading and will obviously get people to oppose it. Silverseren^C 05:11, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

• Keep all. I know we're not officially voting yet, but I may not catch when we do so I want to make my opinion heard. From what I can see, most of these articles are about characters or character sequences, and as such, cannot really be transliterated. For example, 京 is pronounced "jing" in Mandarin Chinese, "ging" in Cantonese, "kinh" in old Vietnamese, "kyō" or "miyako" in Japanese, and "gyeong" in Korean. There are probably even more pronunciations if you look at different Chinese dialects. If we insisted on Romanizing every article title, this would have to either be split into many pages, or we'd pick one of them and treat the others as variant spellings. —Soap— 00:35, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
• Darn Chinese characters; you read them and then half an hour later you want to read something... HalfShadow 04:49, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

• I don't see any reason not to have Chinese characters in titles of redirects and dab pages, which is the only place I see them now anyway. Does anyone have any examples of articles with Chinese characters in the title? (Also, this would be more appropriate at WT:NC, WP:VP, or WP:RFC, as it's not an administrator issue). rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:09, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

• Some of articles on the 100 Family Surnames may have Chinese within their titles for disambiguation. I don't know readily know which, so... --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 05:16, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Don't we have WP:UE for a reason?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:17, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

who are you replying to? your indentation makes this ambiguous. and very interesting SN, BTW. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 05:19, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm commenting on the thread in general. WP:UE is a policy, after all, and having hànzì/hanja/hán tự/kanji and other non-Roman symbols really are not necessary in titles on the English Wikipedia unless it's a redirect solely concerning that character (such as redirects for a (kana), etc.). Having 東北大學 does not help the English language project. Also my username is irrelevant to this discussion.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 06:54, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

did I say it was relevant? A compliment is a compliment. I did not attempt to emphasise the issue, but your tone is ungrateful. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 20:49, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

oh really? 東北大學 is a re-direct. you somehow contradicted yourself. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 13:44, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Who is going to come to the English Wikipedia to look up the traditional Chinese name of a university? Having singular characters as redirects is one thing. Having an entire name in another language that also happens to be in a system that does not have an alphabet as a redirect is another.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:27, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Define a singular character. and you aren't being helpful in your clarity, so I don't understand the second part of your comment. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 20:49, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I just realised this. your first question does not address what I said. If you were paying attention, you should have asked the vice versa: "who is going to come to EN-Wiki to look for English information on the traditional Chinese [and indirectly native] name of a university?" --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 22:59, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

(od) I'm not keen to see this. If we allow the chinese characters thing to stand, then everyone will get into the act. And there are a lot of languages and scripts. Also, we'd have to consider whether to allow only transliterations of the original article or allow transliterations of every redirect page that points to the article. This is going to result in thousands of redirects for every article (I can already see someone writing a bot for this) and that seems both pointless as well as excessive. --RegentsPark (talk) 17:17, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

An additional point to consider is that this will become a boon for POV warriors. Since most people here can't read chinese, burmese, or maltese characters, it will be much easier to introduce a fringe or nonsense view as a redirect and hope that no one notices. Enough of these show up in English and we can do without the additional problem of detecting these in other scripts. --RegentsPark (talk) 17:21, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

od? what is that? "If we allow the Chinese characters thing to stand..." the fact that these debates are being brought up reduces the ambiguity, allowing what you consider to be "everyone getting into the act". and I interpret the sentence "...allow only transliterations..." to be self-defeating. We should obviously only allow transliterations of the original article title (and legitimate variations) in the native language(s). Contrary to what you believe, there aren't thousands of varieties of Chinese.

the re-directs help those learners of the language in question to copy-and-paste in the search field and read more about the subject at hand. They are not pointless. There already are thousands of them, and to mass delete them would infuriate countless users.

give me a foreign-language POV example. As far as I know, re-directs such as 台独分子 don't exist. I understand the concern, but the absence of an example as major as the one I gave (even on the Chinese wiki) indicates something. It shouldn't take long for you to realise this implication... --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 17:37, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

What I meant was that there are many languages (not varieties of Chinese). Obviously, if we allow chinese characters in redirects, then we will also allow Hindi, Albanian, or Maltese. A page like India has 32 redirects into it already. 100 languages X 32 redirects = 3200 redirect pages. A bit much, IMO. About the POV guys. Take something like 1984 Sikh Genocide, a title that is way fringe. Creating a Gurmukhi redirect with that title would be hard to counter (few editors here can read Gurmukhi). There are many such alternative titles that don't even exist as redirects on the english wikipedia that will get a new life in other scripts. --RegentsPark (talk) 18:56, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Is there a problem with 3200 redirect pages? Refer to Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 05:35, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

no. just no. we shouldn't allow re-directs from languages that are not native to the article in question. ok? issue resolved?

the re-direct POV concern is legitimate but at most means trouble. It should not result in a ban on non-POV, appropriate re-directs. That would be collateral damage. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 19:03, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, 'not native' is easier to say then to implement. For example, is India native or not native to China? And, I think you underestimate the POV issue. --RegentsPark (talk) 19:39, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

true, because I have in the past found a few inappropriate re-directs. And the example is hilarious. Obviously I am speaking on current terms here (i.e. what is official and/or widely used in a particular region).

Underestimate, but in what manner? Of the current situation, or the potential? I realise the potential problems, so I may have misgauged the response to the POV. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 20:42, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

(od means he outdented. Syrthiss (talk) 17:48, 17 November 2010 (UTC))

@Syrthiss: Thanks! --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 17:54, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Moved from WP:AN 19:09, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

The problem for a reader who does not know Chinese (Arabic, etc.), is if they encounter the name in non-Roman characters, and need to find something about it. The obvious place for them to go is Wiktionary, which works very nicely for common nouns. It does not work for many proper nouns, certainly not for most phrases such as the names of organizations. It makes sense to me that articles about Chines (Arabic, etc.) institutions have a redirect from the name in those characters. This fills the existing gap. (There are indirect means of course: they could go to the appropriate language encyclopedia (if they recognized the language) and search for the article, and then look for the English interwiki; and Google usually works--but not always.) DGG ( talk ) 19:53, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

except you can't assume all of them will go to Wiktionary. Remember there are Wikipedians who may fit the "learner" category. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 20:42, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

There are different language versions of Wikipedia for a reason. The purpose of the English language version of Wikipedia is so that those who primarily read/speak English can find information. When Chinese or Arabic readers/speakers need to find information, they should go to a Chinese or Arabic language version of Wikipedia. I could understand using a non-English character as the title of an article (in English) about that non-English letter or character ... but then again, Wikipedia is not a dictionary. The letter or character would have to be notable in terms of the English speaking/reading world for us to have an article on it, and I don't see that as being likely. Blueboar (talk) 20:52, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

DGG addressed an important point which I glossed over the first time around, as I was about to log-off and was thus rushed in my reading. In one sentence, he is basically saying that a wiktionary search for proper nouns is grossly insufficient and inefficient. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:59, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

• Keep them. Redirects are cheap. There is no harm in having them, and the potential for them to help. Most of them will not be used often, but not often is not never. DGG outlines situations where these can be useful. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 02:06, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
  • Agree. I think don't fix what ain't broke applies here. These redirects don't seem to be hurting anybody so far, and do have their beneficial uses. Non-native English speakers may use foreign scripts to search for things. Not my original idea, but I did find this logical: following the death of Roh Moo-hyun, the 노무현 redirect got more than 1000 hits in the days immediately after. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 05:37, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

There's still a problem with article titles using non-English lettering. Such as Снова в СССР -- which is in Cyrillic, is not a disambiguation page, and not a redirect, it is in fact an article. Or non-English letters, like þ (thorn) and ß (eszett). Should a new RfC be started on those issues? 76.66.203.138 (talk) 09:52, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Change the section title

As discussed above, the current section title is extremely misleading to what we are suppose to be discussing here. It should say "Non-roman characters in disambiguation page titles". The current title has the possibility of extremely biasing the discussion and any new users who try to join in. Please change it. Silverseren^C 19:56, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Okay.  Done —chaos5023 (talk) 20:00, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Again, though, there is a huge difference between regular articles and disambiguation pages. "Article titles" is still not accurate. Silverseren^C 20:03, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

article titles vs dab titles vs redirects

"there is a huge difference between regular articles and disambiguation pages"... I don't see the "huge difference" here. What is the purpose of having a dab page include non-English characters? About the only purpose I can think of would be to point those who don't read English to an article (and since that article will be written in English, that seems more than a bit silly). No, this is the English language version of Wikipedia... all of our content (even disambiguation) should be geared for our English reading audience... ie in English. Blueboar (talk) 20:52, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with Blueboar with respect to redirects as well as dab pages. However, I suppose it's conceivable to know how something is named in some other language but not how it's called in English, even though one is fluent in English. I could see how non-English redirects might help there. I mean, say someone knows the Japanese name of Kasumi, but not this English translation of it. If they could enter the Japanese name and be taken to Kasumi via redirects, that seems like a good thing. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:42, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

"I could see how non-English redirects might help there". Bingo. Helps learners of languages, either way. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 22:53, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, that's a reason to do it, but I don't think it's enough of a reason to justify doing it. Consider that only a very small percentage of English WP editors could verify that such redirects are even accurate, much less not offensive vandalism --Born2cycle (talk) 23:22, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

provided that the redirects are accurate, then that reason suffices for justification. and you have users such as me to check for appropriateness. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:49, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

How do you propose that all redirects in language X be efficiently brought to the attention of the few editors fluent in language X? Often, only those fluent in the language will even know what language it is. Something that appears as nonsense to me might be a redirect to, say Water. Maybe it's the legitimate word for water in some language. Maybe it's an offensive word and some kind of vandalism. Without this policy, we don't care and just delete it. With this policy we have to figure out how to determine what language, if any, it is written in, and then have it vetted. And once it is vetted, how do we know it is vetted? Maintain a separate database somewhere? Or do we keep checking it over and over? Do not underestimate the magnitude of this nightmare. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:57, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I propose we first recommend that people who wish to create foreign-language re-directs add the cat. For the thousands of the pre-existing re-directs, we need a bot to add categorisations. There are at most several hundred "Latin", including all the weird diacritics and Vietnamese, letters, so for non-Latin script, checking should only be a matter of asking the question "in Latin set or no?" I myself am normally correct with re-directs but occasionally make typos. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 01:35, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

It's not always a matter of fluency. For re-directs that are essentially copied from the native name listed on the page, a person with good enough eyes and judgment on primary topic can determine whether a re-direct matches its target. But for re-directs that are a variation of the native (or official) names listed, such as 阿坝州 or 樂山市, it is up to the discretion of what I propose be a taskforce dedicated to checking re-directs (obviously split by language). For objectiveness, no creator can check the legitimacy of his own re-direct or pressure a reviewer's decision. Not like #2 is highly likely, though.

And no, I don't think any foreign language should re-direct to water. It isn't culture- or language-specific. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 01:35, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Blueboar. To address Born2Cycle's esception. this is a comparatively reasonable thing to do; but it is not what we do. Typing in the Japanese for Kasumi, and getting back Kasumi, is the function of a Japanese-English dictionary. To some extent, interwiki links already do this, and it would probably be a good thing if Wikimedia were to statt one, complete with links to Wiktionary and Wikipedia; but we are not it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:21, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:34, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

• Is it not the case that all WP articles can link to foreign language versions via the languages box that appears on every page? Why do we need to provide foreign language links within English wikipedia when there's a robust mechanism for providing those links out of English wikipedia to the relevant foreign language versions? andy (talk) 23:13, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

  That's a different matter, I believe. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:14, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

• No, that's an alternative redirection mechanism that's built in to the encyclopaedia. andy (talk) 23:29, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

• I know that. but it is still not as relevant to this discussion. and Wikipedia, not just EN, is a multi-lingual project, as stated in places. You do want some sort of wiki-connectivity. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:49, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Wikipedia as a whole is multilingual; but this Wikipedia is anglophone; monoglot anglophones have no other. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:00, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

• I think that it is appropriate to have redirects with non-roman characters in the titles for subjects that have a specific link to that script and it's language. CCCP is (and should remain) a redirect to USSR. We don't need to have redirects in Chinese characters to articles like water and coffee, but the Chinese name's should be used as redirects to articles such as China, Taiwan and The Great Wall of China.
  
  This is also not really a matter of English vs Other languages so much as Roman Characters vs Other Scripts. Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei redirects to Nazi Party and I don't think that anyone is arguing that it shouldn't.
  
  Some editors have made the argument that allowing these redirects would be cause disruption due to the requirement for these titles to be vetted for POV, etc. There are already a great deal of redirects that are in non-roman script (e.g. [2]) and many that are very widely recognised (e.g. CCCP). Deleting them would in itself be disruptive. Also, disallowing a particular class of positive edits based on the potential for vandalism and abuse goes against the spirit of the project. If we disallow edits that have the potential for abuse, then we may as well just all pack up and go home now.
  
  It has also been pointed out that it will be difficult to vet these titles because not many of our users will understand the languages in question. By this logic, there will also be very few disruptive editors who understand the language enough to take advantage of that situation. It has also been suggested that an editor would need to seek out someone who can identify the language before they could go any further. This isn't really the case if we don't allow scripts not directly related to the subject of the article. If we can't identify the language that redirects to Great Wall of China then it isn't Chinese, so we can delete. And if there really is an issue with finding someone who knows what the language is, the article talk page may be a good place to start. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 02:14, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

The suggestion that there won't be many disruptive editors to create non-English titles is not valid because it only takes one such editor to create hundreds of unhelpful or POV redirects or dabs, with no clear way to proceed. An admin can speedy delete many kinds of title abuse (for example, POV redirects with BLP-violating language), but that would be much harder with non-English titles. Once the word gets around that it's easy to create joke/POV titles, we should expect the problem to explode. Johnuniq (talk) 03:19, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

keep in mind that IPs can no longer create re-directs. yet this still does not discount the possibility of one registered user trolling around. But what is that chance? We all know vandalism is most commonly performed on articles and DABs. Combine that with the fact that "not many of our users will understand the language in questions" and that only a handful of users (such as Joseph Solis and I) have created massive amounts of re-directs, and the probability for wreaking major havoc is slim. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 03:27, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Disruptive edits would still be dealt with as they are now. Once one bad edit gets picked up, the editor's whole history gets scrutinised. I think the impact that such vandalism would have is also being over-blown. The only way that you would come across the redirect is if you enter it as a search term. Very few readers are going to be searching for POV names in foreign languages. It's hardly going to bring the project to its knees. I realise that a disruptive edit may take the form of, say redirecting the Chinese word for pig to President Hu (oops...did I just violate WP:BEANS?), but who is going to be searching for that term in the English wikipedia? Handschuh-^{talk to me} 03:39, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Trolls do not care about logic, and adding joke redirects/dabs would appeal to their nature, regardless of whether the tactic is effective. Further, they can post links on other websites that point to a page on Wikipedia. People clicking Link to Wikipedia that uses an abusive URL would end up at some BLP. I'm not saying all this is a knock-out argument against non-English titles, but it is not valid to argue that only a small number of people would ever do it – it could be a major problem. Johnuniq (talk) 04:13, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Also, unintelligible titles tainted with POV are not a problem specific to non-Roman titles, but could happen to all non-English titles. Editors can already be disruptive by making POV redirects in other European languages (or pinyin), but we're yet to see the torrent of vulgar Romanian terms for their politicians bring down the project. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 04:19, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

There might be a few trolls who do that, sure, but likely not many. Trolls want attention, so writing inflammatory things in a language most people on Wikipedia do not understand is not going to be effective, especially in a redirect, where it's likely to go unnoticed. I can't see that the limited trolling we'd get in foreign languages is sufficient to justify forbidding these redirects; it just means we should be vigilant and, where necessary, ask for help from Wikipedians proficient in foreign languages. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 07:44, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposal

Based on the foregoing discussion I propose that the following sentences should be inserted into the policy for clarification:

"This policy also applies to the names of disambiguation pages."

"Redirection pages are not articles but simply pointers to articles and therefore may in theory have non-English titles. However this should generally be avoided because a reader who wishes to find an article by searching for a non-English title can reasonably be expected to use the appropriate language version of Wikipedia. Moreover Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Remember that any article can be linked to its non-English equivalent."

WP:DABNAME is quite clear on the first point and refers back to this policy. As for the second point I think a sensible resolution of the issue is to say in effect "yes, you can do it but please try not to". For example an English speaker may come across a commonly used French phrase and may well think it reasonable to search for it in the English Wikipedia; but that doesn't give carte blanche to the creation of a dual-language version of Wikipedia. andy (talk) 12:08, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

How does this policy apply to the names of disambiguation pages? The issue seems to be dealt with fully at WP:DABNAME, and I don't see what this policy has to add. I also wouldn't want this policy filled up with information about extraneous matters - it's long enough already - information about which redirects are appropriate should appear at WP:Redirect.--Kotniski (talk) 12:25, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:DABNAME says "See also: WP:Article titles" and "English spelling is preferred to that of non-English languages." So the guidelines on disambiguation explicitly include this policy and in particular the bit about foreign words, but it's not explicitly stated within the policy itself so it might be overlooked. andy (talk) 13:04, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Saying "see also" isn't the same as including. This page deals with article titles; that page deals with dab page titles; another page deals with redirects; others deal with category names and so on - some of the principles may be similar in different cases, but I wouldn't say that any of the policy/guideline pages (particular points, possibly, but not the whole pages) "apply to" titles that are not within their scope - there should just be clear and unobtrusive links between them.--Kotniski (talk) 14:57, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Andy, it's not about English versus non-English. It's more like Roman vs. non-Roman. You wish to ban DABs such as Santiago? --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 15:03, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I support applying a "Use English language spellings (either US or British) and thus Roman character lettering for page titles" statement throughout the English language Wikipedia... but Kotniski has a point. This page is focused on mainspace article titles (note, I would include redirects as mainspace article titles) ... and Disambiguation pages are not really articles. So... what I think is needed is a statement on WP:DABNAME that DAB page titles should also conform to English/Roman character spellings. The place to discuss that is WT:DABNAME. Blueboar (talk) 15:30, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

That is pretty much what WP:DABNAME already says, but the fact that we can have this discussion, and that there can be any disagreement in AfDs such as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/蜀, shows that it's not clear to many editors how to apply the policy outside of "proper" articles. And WP:REDIRECT is completely silent on the subject. If the guidelines arise from policy as well as practice then there shouldn't be any ambiguity in the policy. andy (talk) 16:16, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose Andy's proposed addition as not reflecting actual consensus or practice. His addition says that redirects in languages other than English "should generally be avoided because a reader who wishes to find an article by searching for a non-English title can reasonably be expected to use the appropriate language version of Wikipedia". That is not the consensus of this discussion, nor does it agree with our existing practices, which clearly do not suggest avoiding this. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 15:45, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Note: I just found Wikipedia:WikiProject_Disambiguation/CJKV_task_force which seems to indicate there are people who work specifically with dab pages with Chinese characters in them and there must have been a discussion of some sort that solidified their existence. Apologies if this has been mentioned above or on another page. —Soap— 16:38, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

• I completely disagree with this proposal, with both what it says about redirects and also about disambiguation pages. WP:DABNAME says "English spelling is preferred to that of non-English languages.", as expressed above. I have never known the words "preferred to" to mean "required to". There is a significant difference. And it also has nothing to do with Roman characters.

I might be able to be convinced that there should be an added sentence to DABNAME that says "The use of Roman characters is preferred to that of non-Roman characters", but I completely disagree with any ultimatum on disambiguations pages or redirects that says that these things are required for all such articles. Silverseren^C 16:40, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose based first of all on the wording. We can't have policy that says, "In theory you can do it, but you shouldn't." That's just a really bad idea that opens us up to having this debate every single time someone makes such a redirect since the policy doesn't actually come down either way. And secondly, this proposed policy change concerns itself with language rather than script which is what this whole problem actually concerns. This policy would discourage a huge range of redirect titles in roman characters like Koeln, Muenchen, Geheime Staatspolizei, etc. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 22:53, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

  Most of our policies are "you can do this, but you shouldn't". You can insert HI, JOE in every article on your watchlist; but you shouldn't - and we will enforce that norm by ban. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:29, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

  that's a bit of a lopsided comparison... --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:32, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

  I am not suggesting that it be a banning offense. But as with other things (, (from Wikipedia as twitter to using masking to make two different articles appear to have the same title - see our footnotes), it is technically possible - and a bad idea. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:37, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

  So I ask you this: what harm do the accurate re-directs do? --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:49, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I disagree that most of our policies are worded like that. Policy is prescriptive, whereas guidelines are...well...guidelines. WP:V, WP:OR and WP:Vandalism don't say, "Well you can delete the main page if you want...but you shouldn't".Handschuh-^{talk to me} 02:16, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Accurate foreign language redirects don't do any direct harm of course, and in fact the guideline at WP:REDIRECT makes it clear that in some cases they are to be encouraged - "for example, Kurt Goedel and Kurt Godel redirect to Kurt Gödel". But this is a situation where the average English reader may be confused about how to spell the name. The average English reader might be unsure whether to look for Peking, Pekin or Beijing but it is not going to occur to them to look for 北京. There is a perfectly fine Chinese article at [3] and that's where a Chinese reader would expect to find it and it's why we have a Chinese wikipedia. The alternative is that every English language article could and probably should be the target of redirects from pretty much every language (e.g. Beijing should also be linked from redirect pages titled بكين, Pequín, Pekėns, Пекин and so on). Clearly mad - it means that if you type Пекин into Google who knows what version of wikipedia you'll be linked to! So yes, in the end, these redirects can do harm and that's why they should be limited to a bare minimum. andy (talk) 00:09, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Andy, as I have said in the past several days, IMO, an appropriate re-direct constitutes a re-direct that is the following: Accurate, Explicitly mentioned within the article as being the native language translation of the subject matter, or is a variation of such translation
• Oh, and also old names in the native language can be re-directs.
• An example would be the re-directs for Dêqên Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (the first three are simplified, the last three are the traditional equivalents): 迪庆 (most condensed name)、迪庆州 (a common abbreviation of the official name)、迪庆藏族自治州 (official name)、迪慶、迪慶州、迪慶藏族自治州. And I believe I am the only creator of re-directs in the form of #2 and #5. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 00:27, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. Propose instead "Redirection pages are not articles... and this policy is entitled "article titles", so why on earth would we have anything to say here about where we can redirect from?" Hesperian 00:01, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose per Silver seren, HXL49, and my comments in the discussion below. Wareh (talk) 16:30, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Alternate proposal

Discussion on an alternate proposal is now continued at the Redirect talk page. Handschuh-^{talk to me} 23:17, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Chinese emperor names

The current guideline for naming Chinese emperors specifically states to ignore policy and use names with which Chinese, not English, readers are familiar. This guideline is being uses as basis for a proposed move of a number of emperors here: Talk:Emperor_Taizu_of_Later_Liang#Requested move.

I've proposed a change to the guideline here: Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Chinese)#Names_of_emperors. Your input is requested. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:27, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Italic titles

I added mentions of the fact that Template:Infobox book, Template:Infobox film, and Template:Infobox album default to italicizing the titles of the pages they appear on, because this doesn't seem to have been documented here when that feature was implemented. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 16:34, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Not that it needs to be an example farm or anything, but I'll note that {{Infobox video game}}, {{Infobox video game series}}, and {{Infobox ship}} do as well. —chaos5023 (talk) 16:39, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

party apostrophes?

Please provide input to this discussion. --Soman (talk) 21:53, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Possible conflict between Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles) and Wikipedia:Article titles

It has recently been pointed out that the guideline for article names in the Manual of Style for Japan-related articles is in direct opposition to the common names policy and to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). More input is requested to determine whether or not WP:MJ needs to be modified to accurately reflect the community's actual practices and best advice. The discussion is taking place here. Jfgslo (talk) 17:07, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the Japanese manual of style has not been determined to be in direct opposition to any of the article titling policies. A minority of users believe the guideline to be in conflict with this policy.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:50, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Ganga

The nomenclature for Ganga is mentioned as a specific exception to the rule. Why is that so? Is it not arbitrary? What is this based on? There is no reason that the rule for spelling for Ganga be different than for Dhaka. Why this inconsistency? The reason given is that local usage is divided. This is simply baseless. There is no proof. I can provide evidence to the contrary, government of India website uses Ganges 20 times[4], and Ganga 1100 times[5]. For advanced search with the region specifier on India there were 2,180,000 results for Ganga[6] and 233,000 for Ganges,[7] less than 10%, that is no division. Please take this example off.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 15:31, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Move has been proposed to move Ganges to Ganga. The exception for Ganga is quoted in the discussion. In view of the evidence given above, I invite editors to look at the above. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 14:03, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

You seem to have misunderstood. Ganges/Ganga is not called out as an exception to the usual rule; it is given as the correct application of the normal rule, which is to not let one country whose actual use is divided (as proven by your links above, because, yes, 10% is division), overrule the entire rest of the English-speaking world (and especially not to do this by substituting a non-English (Hindu/Sanskrit) name for the widely accepted English name).

The Ganges is not unique in this respect. You may notice, for example, that the article is at Munich, not at the proper German name, which is München. Similarly, it's Vienna, not Wien, Venice, not Venezia, and Rome, not Roma. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:11, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

On the other hand, we have Mumbai, not Bombay; Chennai, not Madras; and similarly, we have Uluru, not Ayers Rock. This is legitimate, just like we use Australian English in Australian articles, British English in British articles, and US English in US articles, we should have the courtesy of using Indian English in Indian articles. According to Alexa, 6.3% of visitors to Wikipedia are from India, compared to 4.3% from the UK and 22.0% from the US (Australia does not figure among the top-ten countries). The Indian share is bound to grow. --JN466 16:13, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

"Mumbai" and "Chennai" are more widespread than Indian English. The AP Stylebook, for instance, specifies them rather than "Bombay" and "Madras". -- JHunterJ (talk) 16:26, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

It is unfair to compare Wein and Vienna do Austrians use the word Wien in English? When writing in English do the Italians spell Rome as Roma? That is the question? Indians when writing in English Romanise the name as Ganga, predominantly.(nine times out of ten.) Check this physical map of India published by the Survey of India, the country's official cartographer. It calls the river Ganga.[8] The analogy is with Canton and Guangzhou, if wikipedia uses the Chinese Romanisation rule pinyin, why should not the same principle be followed for Romanisation of Indian words and follow the Indian practice, (It is not a rule in India as India is a democratic country and does not have Romanisation committees and laws and the subsequent penalties for violation, Ganga is the preferred Romanisation for the name of the river) Yogesh Khandke (talk) 17:03, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, some Austrians use Wien quite often in English - and they get looked at funny by speakers with actual fluency. Some Austrians also come here and demand that Vienna be moved to its "correct" name, which is one reason we have such extensive guidance on geographic names. (Similarly, we probably should use Canton, not Guangzhou; but the pinyin is far more widespead than Ganga is.)

Maps tend to be unreliable on such points; most atlases will use Wien,München, Firenze although anglophones do not in other contexts. I am not sure of the reason for this; one reason must be the desire to minimize retouching for German or French editions of the atlas. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:22, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Not valid for India, no Indian language uses the Roman script. It is an English language map prepared by India's official cartographic agency, and it uses the Romanisation Ganga. See the map I have referenced here carefully there are accent marks to help pronunciation too. Nevertheless please give a proof for your statement that French and German agencies use the words Wien or Firenze in their English maps, just as I have given a proof for Ganga.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 17:37, 20 November 2010 (UTC)\

What does the script matter? Most English atlases use Moskva - and Ostrov - as well (in Roman, not Cyrillic). The rest of this is a misunderstanding; if an atlas uses Wien and Firenze, they can use the same image in other editions, changing an overlay for the limited and controllable amount of wording in English, such as the scale. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:51, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Please do not speculate give evidence for any statement made. Such as about Austrian use of Wein etc.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 17:40, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

This is not an article; WP:V does not apply; if you are unwilling to extend good faith to fellow editors, consult the archives of Talk:Vienna - and other cities. You convince nobody; and you are repeating the same argument over and over again. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:51, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Please do not misunderstand or be offended. This is a very important discussion that could potentially affect many articles. So we need to provide evidence, here. The same argument has been repeated over and over by me, because I have to repeat the same things to different people who come up with the same counter-argument. I have no choice. More over if Austrians use Wien for Vienna, when writing in English there is no reason why the city article should not be Wien, but it is up to them to bring it up here. Additionally that cannot be held against the case for the title of the article Ganga.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 18:28, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

No. You need to present evidence (not already discounted at WP:NCGN) that you have a case to answer or that any significant party of Wikipedians - as distinct from a handful of fellow patriots - agrees with you. That you do not see a reason why we should not write the foreign and uncustomary (and less than intelligible) Wien instead of the English Vienna - as the Britannica does is a different matter; we can supply you with a reason, and have done so. The rest is up to you. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:44, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Please do not make personal remarks about backgrounds of editors. Please do not make personal remarks at all. I have looked up wp:NCGN, I found two related statements, (1)When a widely accepted English name, in a modern context, exists for a place, we should use it. (2)we do not always follow a mere plurality of local English usage against the rest of the English-speaking world: Ganges, not Ganga, I have provided evidence that it is used in Asia, Africa and even in UK/US apart from India. Please help me with links to the discussion where it was discounted, so that I can study it and then come up with new points, if I can think of or let the case rest. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 19:17, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Spurious claims of personal attack constitute a sign that a conversation is over - nor do they inspire helpfulness. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:34, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

• Well, guys, but he has a point. German-speakers who speak English say Vienna. Indian English speakers say Ganga. The two are really not comparable. --JN466 20:17, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
  • He's been forum-shopping like there's no tomorrow. [exaggeration] But we go by reliable sources here, and Ganges is still the common name in English. Even Indian publications use the terms "Ganga" and "Ganges" interchangeably, as was pointed out on another page. If or when the London Times and the New York Times start calling it the Ganga exclusively, then we can and should change it here. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:24, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
    • I don't actually know he has been forum-shopping. He has made the point, on this page, that Ganges is a poor example to name in this guideline, and he has advocated moving the Ganges article to Ganga on the article talk page. That's all the discussions I am aware of.
    • Obviously, Ganges/Ganga is a borderline case. I have no real quarrel with anyone who goes one way or the other. But a significant proportion of our readers come from India, and I actually would be interested in seeing where page views for Ganges are coming from geographically. We need more editors from India – I am sure over time we will get them – but I imagine that having an important India article written from a Western perspective is alienating. I know that no US, British, Australian or New Zealand river or city would ever have an article title that didn't reflect in-country preference ... and to the extent that this is due to editors' taking Indian English somehow less seriously than other types of English, it is unhelpful. India is a major English-speaking nation and a key target group for this project. --JN466 20:46, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
      • He started with the Ganges article, then found himself taken to ANI, then came here, and I haven't followed all the details but the ANI discussion covers a lot of it. I am well aware, from my Indian colleagues, that names like Mumbai, Chennai and Ganga are common in India. Maybe Ganga will become the common name in English globally, and when it does, we can change it. The editor that's pushing this appears to be outside the norm of even India's media. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:52, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
        • He isn't outside the norm in India. The Times of India, which is the world's largest-circulation English newspaper, uses Ganga predominantly. On Indian websites, Ganga outranks Ganges by a mile. The ANI thread is one that he brought, and I fear correctly so, because it appears he was blocked for two weeks without warning, in violation of block policy, and without the blocking admin leaving a block notice or instructions on how to appeal on his talk page. --JN466 21:01, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
          • He's been here for two years, he's not a newbie, so he should have a clue about what to do when blocked. When Britain and the USA start using Ganga predominently instead of Ganges, then the article could be changed. It took awhile for "Peking" to become "Beijing" in America, and there are still many Chinese restaurants in America, run by Chinese people, that have "Peking" in their names. A redirect from Ganga to Ganges is sufficient for now. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:05, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
            • Indian government websites (.nic.in, .gov.in) use Ganga predominantly. It's a strange system whereby Britain and the US are held to be the arbiters for what something in another country, which has a bigger Anglophone population than the US and Britain put together, and generates 50% more Wikipedia site traffic than the UK, should be called. And by the way, I was able to find instances (not many, but some) of "Ganga" even on CNN and BBC. But enough said, I agree it is (still) a borderline case, and can be argued either way in good faith. --JN466 21:14, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
            • "When Britain and the USA start using Ganga predominently instead of Ganges". I really can't believe you just said that. WP:BIAS much? That sentence goes against the entire purpose of making an encyclopedia of all human knowledge. It is not an encyclopedia for knowledge only viewed by the US and Britain. Silverseren^C 21:19, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
              • I have a hunch this will open a bigger can of worms, but English is the native language of the UK and the USA, but not of India; although it's a strong secondary language, thanks to the Brits (that was their gift to India, along with cricket). Once native-English media get the clue and start calling it the Ganga, wikipedia will be happy to switch. I would prefer it if Mt. Everest were primarily called Chomolongma. It may be someday, but it isn't now. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:23, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
                • UK/US usage is a secondary issue. The point is that the river is referred to both as Ganges as well as Ganga in Indian English (see my examples of hotel names on Talk:Ganges) without any thought of a 'western perspective'. --RegentsPark (talk) 22:10, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
                  • Yes, which is what I meant by "outside the norm of even India's media". Maybe that comment was too vague. To be more direct, I mean the editor pushing this issue has significantly more of an issue with it than India's own media do. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:20, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
                    1. Can we agree that the overwhelming (about 10:1) majority of mentions of the river on Indian government websites use "Ganga" rather than "Ganges"? That is what I found when I looked. Did you find anything different?
                    2. Can we agree that the Indian press -- I checked the Times of India, The Hindu, and The Indian Express -- has a clear preference for "Ganga"?
                    3. Can we agree that "Ganga" is also occasionally found in Western media? [9] [10] [11], and others. --JN466 01:02, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Can we agree that "Ganges" is more common used in English language sources world wide than "Ganga"? ... if so, that is what we should use as our article title. Can we agree that this may change (and if it does, we would move the article)? Blueboar (talk) 01:55, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Given India's vast population, I'm not even sure of that. Searching for ganga AND india yields 5.75m google hits. Searching for ganges AND india yields 2.0m. --JN466 02:12, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

These results largely depend upon the wording. If you make a Google-search with "Ganges river" you get 3'350'000 hits while with "Ganga river" you get 936'000 hits. I also wish to add that this is not the proper place to debate if Ganga or Ganges is the common name of this river. Please use your arguments in the article's talkpage instead. Flamarande (talk) 11:55, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Pot/kettle? :) --JN466 13:32, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

"India is a major English-speaking nation" – no longer true. As of 2000, there were 226,449 native English speakers in India and 272,504 native English speakers in Germany; 23.18% of Indians were able to speak English, and 56% of Germans were. Now, you wouldn't consider Germany an English-speaking country, would you? A. di M. (talk) 12:24, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

(od)Doesn't matter if there are zero native speakers of English in India. I too am not a native speaker of English, and I live in India. The point is not about native but about language use.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 13:07, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

So, if there are plenty of people using "actually" to mean "now" in Germany (though none of them a native English speaker), does that allow one to use "actually" to mean "now" in an article about Germany on the English Wikipedia? A. di M. (talk) 14:28, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

The number of English speakers in any given country does not matter... we determine article titles by is what is used by the majority of English language sources. Blueboar (talk) 14:33, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Find an alternative example?

• I don't think the move from Ganges to Ganga will succeed at this time -- present consensus at Talk:Ganges#Move_Ganges_to_Ganga is 18:9 against the move, and I don't see it turning around. But one-third of editors supporting the move is actually quite a lot. So perhaps we could think of an alternative, more clear-cut example to use in this guideline instead of Ganges – two English terms for the same thing that enjoy equal use in a local variety of English, even though one of the two is completely unknown outside the country. In this way, this guideline would not stand in the way of moving the Ganges article if consensus should have changed in a year's time. Any ideas for an alternative example? --JN466 02:08, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

  No, actually that's about typical for a title change that gets made into a True Cause, complete with canvassing. The small band of True Believers all turn out, with perhaps a few others, against only spotty (but firmly phrased) representation of the overwhelming majority. If there is a opposing True Belief, as with the recurrent quarrel over the Republic of Macedonia, the !votes tend to be about 3:1, but there is little trace of one here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:45, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

  Will you please translate the above into English.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 17:45, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Divided local use

The whole argument on wp:commonname hinges on the statement that the local use is divided. I wish to contest it, and remove the example. That would open the door for Ganges to move to Ganga. Where it is proposed by me that it be moved. What tools could be employed for the veracity of this statement. Ghits have been given above, 10 to 1 - (India region), or 110 to 2(government site)[12], doesn't mark Ganges as very popular. Alternately is it possible that editors who are local users be invited to discuss, and arrive at a consensus that would then be reflected in the issue? Yogesh Khandke (talk) 06:48, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs has removed the Ganges/Ganga example (thanks!). --JN466 10:06, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

It has since been reintroduced:

• Kwamikagami (talk | contribs) (Undid revision 397996363 by Baseball Bugs (talk)--it's an example precisely because it's contentious.)
• Jayen466 (talk | contribs) (it's not a good example, as there is a good-faith community discussion about it, and the guideline shouldn't prejudice that discussion. Please join talk page thread -- we might find a better example)
• JHunterJ (talk | contribs) (Undid revision 398037660 by Jayen466 (talk) until the discussion results in a new consensus) --JN466 13:32, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Prove local use is divided for Ganga x Ganges, or take the example off.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 16:04, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

This place should be silent on a contentious issue, Ganges x Ganga is not a clear cut example. A bad example on a wikipolicy page please take it off. Taking it off won't make this policy pro-Ganga or anti-Ganga, it would make it neutral, or the article page. If it is not taken off in 24 hours or if no discussion takes place I will do it myself. nb. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 09:45, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

That's not how consensus works. Once there is consensus to add something, if consensus later changes to a consensus to remove it, then it's removed. If everything that anyone objected to were silenced in the Wikipedia space, they would have little to say indeed. Consensus to add, consensus (not contention) to delete. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:15, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I just meant that silence won't help, obviously I won't edit war. My point is that Ganga x Ganges is not a clear cut example and should not be an example. This is of-course without prejudice to whether of the said page should be Ganga or Ganges. The example is inappropriate. That is all that I request editors here to allow that or discuss why the example is the best representative of the policy, about divided local use.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 13:54, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

OK... Can you suggest a better example for us to use? Blueboar (talk) 14:46, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Isn't the fixed wing aircraft good enough.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 15:40, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

It is used to make a different point. I hope my recent edits make this clearer (revert if not). Blueboar (talk) 19:50, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

(outdent)(1)You are right, fixed wing aricraft is about an altogether different point. (2)The present edit contradicts WP:TIES, An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation uses the English of that nation (3)also ghits[13] and google fight have given confusing results[14] or this says that use of Ganga is dominant[15] (4)Summary Ganges x Ganga is a bad example for international use dominating over local use. (5)As a general statement too When the consensus usage of the rest of the English-speaking world contradicts local usage, we should follow the more general world consensus is bad, not just in case of Ganga, it contradicts the United Nations guideline on naming: Giving priority to domestic name forms, endonyms, means that both the need for unambiguity and respect for the cultural-historical values embodied in names are respected., [16], no reason Wikipedia an international encyclopaedia should contradict a United Nations guideline, and this is not just about Ganga x Ganges, it is also about Canton x Guangzhou et al. (6)My prefered version would look like this, All national varieties of English spelling are acceptable in article titles; Wikipedia does not prefer any national variety over any other. An article title on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the variety of English appropriate for that nation (for example Australian Defence Force). American spellings should not be respelled to British standards, and vice versa; for example, both color and colour are acceptable and both spellings are found in article titles (such as color gel and colour state. Occasionally, a less common term is selected as an article title because it is appropriate to all national varieties, (for example Fixed-wing aircraft). Yogesh Khandke (talk) 20:54, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Additionally the said edit also contradicts Guideline that National varieties of English should be used for articles related to those nations Please make appropriate changes.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 21:15, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

It's more complicated than that: You are asking us to stop using the dominant English name, and to start using the Hindu name instead, on the grounds that most (but not all) English speakers in India use the Hindu name. ENGVAR really doesn't address that point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:25, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

(1)Ganga is the name in English, (2)See above, all I have asked is for this be compliant with other Wikipedia guidelines and not contradict United Nations guidelines. See the following diffs[17][18](3)By not specifically mentioning Ganga/es, specifically it is neutral on the specific issue prima facie.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 21:49, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Ganga is a name in English, not the name in English. We do not care about United Nations guidelines (we are not the United Nations), we care about usage in English language sources. If it can be demonstrated that "Ganga" really is more common than "Ganges" (taking into account all English language sources, not just in India but throughout the world, both on line and in dead tree print, both modern and historical, etc.) then you can discuss moving the article title to "Ganga" (that discussion should occur on the article talk page, with a move request) ... but, at the moment the article points to the very common "Ganges". And, as long as it does, it is appropriate to use it as an example in this policy. It really is that simple. Blueboar (talk) 15:03, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

We are discussing two issues here (1)Whether international usage should take precedence over local usage (2)Whether the article title should be Ganga or Ganges. For (2) there is a discussion going on at the article talk page, and cannot have too many threads going on., this is the right place for (1) My comments are why should a United Nations guideline be considered irrelevent by Wikipedia? United Nations is an international bi-partisan organisation, that is representative of over 200 countries, you have to give wikireasons, quoting wikirules for your statement. My request is specific (A)regarding, Ganga, the example is contentious, and should be taken off without prejudice to whether Ganga or Ganges is the appropriate title. (B)Your statement that international usage should overrule local usage contradicts wikipedia policy[19][20], please revert to Bugs revision.[21], which does not contradict existing Wikipedia policy and is neutral on the Ganga x Ganges dispute. See one cannot make a wikipolicy specially to keep the title Ganges, first it says Ganga x Ganges is divided locally so it should be Ganges, when demonstrated otherwise, it is said that international usage should predominate local uses, comes across as finding excuses for Ganges. Please revert to Bugs' revision.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 07:31, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Clarification for Blueboar Ganga is the name in English, means it is not a Sanskrit. name, like Nippon is a Japanese name but they use Japan when writing in English, or Sindhu is the Sanskrit name for Indus, Ganga is English and not Sanskrit. I hope I am clear. Its context is WhatIamdoing's remarks that Ganga is a Hindu name, Christian or Hindu, it is written in English, that is what matters.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 13:19, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

You miss my point... "Ganga" is a name in English... but it is not the only name in English (another, more common name, is "Ganges"). As to why the UN is irrelevant... simple, Wikipedia isn't the UN. Wikipedia bases its policies and guidelines based on the practice and consensus of its editors, not on what some other entity may say. The consensus, in this case, is that Article Titles are based on recognizably, naturalness, precision, conciseness, and consistency. In practice, this means that our article titles are based on what is used by the greatest number of reliable English language sources. While consensus can change, I don't see the consensus for this changing any time soon. Blueboar (talk) 14:32, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Let me get it right, is it local English language sources or global English language sources?Yogesh Khandke (talk) 15:17, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

It's global English language usage, using local as a tie breaker when it could go either way (eg: Defence vs Defense). Blueboar (talk) 15:32, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

What you state is contrary to Wikipedia guideline that Guideline that National varieties of English should be used for articles related to those nationsYogesh Khandke (talk) 16:09, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Not for article titles (where the principle of recognizably is paramount)... I will also point out that earlier in WP:MOS (of which WP:ENGVAR is part) says that article titles should conform to WP:Article titles. Blueboar (talk) 23:09, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

All right, for Titles wp:Engvar is superseded by wp:Article titles, let us look at it, it goes All national varieties of English spelling are acceptable in article titles; Wikipedia does not prefer any national variety over any other. An article title on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the variety of English appropriate for that nation. Ganga is the form in the Indian variety of English. Why should Article Titles specifically exclude Ganga from the rule that an article title should reflect the variety of the subject, by using logic that contradicts its previous statements? But I am not asking for Article Titles to put its weight behind Ganga specifically, but I am requesting you to take the arbitrary and contradictory example off. I don't want this place to say, let Ganga be the title, this place has a policy statement, let it be interpreted. Please revert back to the Bugs revision.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 04:18, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

As long as the revision stays the way it stands now, I have little to add to the discussion, thanks folks.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 17:48, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I doubt it will stay as is... If you look below, we are discussing the underlying issues at play in the Ganges/Ganga situation... and whichever way the consensus falls it will result in a clarification of policy. Blueboar (talk) 18:05, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

What perplexes me is that we ignore WP:TIES when we name the city MIlan instead of Milano, Rome/Roma, Florence/Firenze, and Austria instead of uh Osterreich (sp?). And no one seems to care. But we are forced to use Sri Lanka instead of Ceylon, whatever Burma is calling itself nowdays, etc. And why Mumbai anyway? English is India's second or third language. Rules ought to be different for one's 2nd or 3rd choice. Do French speakers get to chose names for English or German places based on their facility with the language?

If we use anything other than Ganges, no one will recognize it. (Having said that, just discovered that EB is using Ganga. C**p! But they have a redirect like will do/will). @#$& Student7 (talk) 21:10, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Ganga is the form used when it is refered in English, just as Guangzhou, or Beijing or other Chinese propernouns are romanised using pinyin. Roma is not used as the name of the city in English no matter what the background of the writer, Ganga is an Indian English proper noun Romanisation. Sri Lanka or Mumbai or Myanmar though endonyms are not appropriate analogies. Dhaka, Pune, Kanpur, are. Saying this please use the Ganga talk page for discussion on Ganga. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 07:05, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Ganga has international acceptance, has won the Ganga x Ganges google fight, has more ghits than Ganges, links that prove are given on talk page. Will you provide the EB occurence.07:22, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

"Roma is not used as the name of the city in English no matter what the background of the writer"—you don't hang out with Italians very often, do you? (OK, maybe that's true for Rome, but probably most Italians refer to Florence and Turin as "Firenze" and "Torino" regardless of what language they're speaking.) A. di M. (talk) 15:57, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

This is why we look at the totality of English language sources... and not just those from a given region. Yes, Italians will often refer to Rome as Roma (or Turin as Torino etc) when writing in English. We account for that by including English language sources written by Italians in our examination of usage. We also include English language sources written by people from other origins... and base our article titles on the totality of usage, not just the usage from a particular country or region. Blueboar (talk) 16:31, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

(1)Can we have evidence that Torino, is the prefered form in English when Italian use the language. (2)Is there an Italian English, just as there is an Indian English dialect. (3)Is Torino so commonly used in English that it gets more ghits than Turin. (4)Does Torino win the Google fight against Turin.(5)Is the world's most circulated English language/Roman script newspaper written in Italian English? (6)We need evidence and not anecdotal information. wp:V based on wp:rs. (7)There are affirmative answers in case of Ganga/Indian English for all the above questions, based on evidence gathered from reliable sources. Again it would have been greatly appreciated had this discussion taken place on the Ganges talk page.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 17:17, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes A. di M. I have interacted with Italians - SACMI technicians from Imola, their English skills were very basic, could not write, so don't know whether they wrote Torino or Turin, another fellow, who owns a factory where I live, could check out, but he too does not read and write English, just barely speaks and understands it.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 17:28, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

That's my bloody point. What matters is people who speak English as their first language, not those who (imperfectly) learnt it at a later time: the latter always make mistakes, but that doesn't make them correct English. For example, in the sentence above you'd need "they" before "could", "I" before "don't", and a semicolon instead of a comma after "Turin". BTW, FWIW, if you use Google's "Advanced Search" and select "Language: English" and "Region: Italy", you get 870,000 hits for Torino but only 345,000 for Turin. This means absolutely nothing, as Google hit counts are notoriously bogus when above a few thousand. A. di M. (talk) 17:50, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Not quite... what matters is what sources written in English use... including both the sources written by those who have spoken English all their lives and the sources written by those who (however imperfectly) learned it later. It should be obvious that the majority of sources will be by native speakers, but that does not mean we ignore non-native speakers who write in English.

As for the "Google test"... we need to put it in proper perspective... it is a great initial step. Google can show us whether there is a clear preference for one usage over all others. But, the "Google test" is not perfect, and we need to take that into account... If Google searches indicate something less than a clear preference in usage, we can not take our search to the next step and use it to determine which of the different usages should be used. Blueboar (talk) 18:36, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Ganga isn't an error in grammar or punctution, it is a Romanisation, so your example is inappropriate. Try checking for Torino with the language turned to English, and after that check a few links to confirm that the pages refered to are English and not Italian. If you consider that Google is inreliable, you are free to use alternative means. Wikipedia does not work on hear say, it works on information sourced from reliable sources.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 18:07, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Hold on YK... you stared this thread with the argument that Ganga was an English name... now you say it is a Romanization (which implies that it is not an English word)... which is it? Blueboar (talk) 18:36, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Ganga is the way the sound is spelt in English, which I understand is Romanisation, like my name Yogesh, which is pronounced as Yo-gay-sh (Yo as in yo yo, gay as in the word gay, and sh as in fish, so it could be spelt as Yogaysh, Ganga is a proper noun, just like my name is or just like Kanpur is. What would you call it? When I have written Ganga is an English name, I mean that is how it is written in English, like how Guangzhou is the spelling for the name of the city where the 2010 Asian Games were held, Chinese Romanisation rules follow pinyin and the same has been accepted on Wikipedia, Ganga is how the name is written in English, more often in Indian English, but also in other countries in Asia, Africa and Anglo-phone countries. Again I suggest that we take this thread to the Ganges talk page. Indians Romanise the word, this common way of Romanisation is used to create phonetic keyboards for abugida scripts.[22] Yogesh Khandke (talk) 19:04, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

The arguments pro x anti Ganga have been tabulated[23] at the Ganges discussion page, please check it out.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 22:01, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Hypothetically Any ways, if Torino predominates it should be used, it would be perfectly intelligible to me, I have used a FIAT car, and I know the T in it stands for Torino, the same goes with Köln etc. which I would understand because I studied German in Junior College. Endonyms ought to be used. Ignorance and stubborness should not decide what we name an article as. I do not claim that I would know each and every endonym, for that matter barring a few they may fox me, but that is what internal links are for, if there are editors who want Torino I would find no reason to oppose, on the other hand I will strongly support it. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 10:50, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Canton

If you think we can justify a case for 'Canton', I would support discussing the move. My experience is that, outside of maps, 'Canton' would appear to be much more common than 'Guangzhou'. — kwami (talk) 19:01, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I should probably have said "we should consider Canton"; although my experience is the same. A rough search of Google books since 1990 suggests that they are now about equally prevalent and that some of the hits are like once called Canton. In any case, it is a much closer call than Ganga. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:14, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

The matter is not about changing Guangzhou to Canton, but about changing Ganges to Ganga. I would oppose the move in case of Guangzhou. The Asian Games are held in Guangzhou, it is all over the TV screens. We have Chinese workers, technicians, and technocrats, whose visiting cards read Guangzhou. Freight containers are marked Guangzhou. If you wish I will upload scanned images for visiting cards and freight containers to commons, but you must be quick to access them or they may be deleted as not notable, and the evidence for Asian Games as referred by Times of India is here[24].Yogesh Khandke (talk) 19:18, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

No, your matter is about changing Ganges to Ganga. Kwami's matter is about changing Guangzhou to Canton. It's okay for Kwami to ask this question now, even if you have a similar question open. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:57, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

It's still known primarily as Canton, just as the Hellenic Republic is known primarily as Greece. But enough about restaurants. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:07, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

source? --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 02:22, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

There are plenty of Cantonese restaurants. How many Guangzhouese restaurants have you run across? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:05, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

so? much of the time the weirdos mark it as Szechuan cuisine instead of Sichuan cuisine. and yet the title of the province is at what it is.

and you don't keep to your words. like you said, enough about restaurants. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 04:38, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

"Cantonese" is a word that evolved separately, and is not superseded by any name with the root word "Guangzhou". It has no implications for "Canton". I would like to know in which contexts you "still primarily hear" Canton instead of Guangzhou, because my experience has been the opposite. Quigley (talk) 04:45, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

The use of "Cantonese" has resulted in much misconduct by various users in moving various articles all called "Cantonese" in common speech around (see Talk:Cantonese, Talk:Yue Chinese, Talk:Cantonese (disambiguation), WikiProject Languages, WikiProject China, WP:AN, WP:ANI and several other places). 76.66.194.212 (talk) 08:32, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I've found that, especially among those not so familiar with China, it's still pretty common to hear "Canton"; however, reliable sources all but invariably use "Guangzhou" (possibly with a "formerly known as Canton" thrown in there), so it should remain Guangzhou. Oh, and the adjective form is indeed pretty much invariably "Cantonese"; I've not found any adjective based on the word "Guangzhou" with any frequency at all. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 08:58, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I think the dab page Canton is wrong about Canton Province, as it is quite common, and not rare. So using "Canton" for the city is inappropriate, since Canton the province has high usage. 76.66.194.212 (talk) 08:32, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

The name of the place has been changed, it is not possible to change related words quickly, which are firmly entrenched, some times they may not change at all. I would be surprised if Bombay Duck would change to Mumbai Duck, but that does not mean that the change was unsuccessful. There is a United Negro College Fund, should we bring the word back? Yogesh Khandke (talk) 13:56, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

the word "the name" is a vague concept. The Western name has certainly changed, but the locals have been calling it as such for years. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 14:36, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

• By name I meant how the place is called in English, of course that is the boundary of this discussion, it need not be mentioned over and again.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 15:10, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

The discussion is off track... we don't base our article titles on what the name of the subject is... we base our titles on how the majority of reliable sources refer to the subject (or more accurately, we base the article title on what is going to be most recognizable title for English language readers). This may or may not be the subject's name. When something changes its name, it can take years before the majority of sources recognize and use the new name, indeed sometime they never do. We follow the sources.

This does not mean we should completely ignore the name change... as long as the new name is noted in even a minority of reliable sources we should note the new name in the text of our article... indeed we should do so prominently, in the lede of the article (usually in the first sentence) ... but the article title will lag behind events, until the sources catch up.

So the question here is simple... have we gotten to the point where 'Guangzhou' is more recognizable than 'Canton', as demonstrated by usage in English language sources. If so, we should use 'Guangzhou'... if not, we should use 'Canton'. Blueboar (talk) 14:43, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

The vast majority of modern news articles refer to the city by the more Chinese naming, and I'm going to pull off a few news searches, but not at this minute.

You would find that the divide between Postal map spelling/Wade-Giles usage and pinyin usage for articles on cities in historical context would be much closer. Yet we have pages entitled Shenyang, Dalian, Beijing, Tianjin, Qingdao, Nanjing, Chongqing, and Chengdu, not their historical equivalents (Mukden, Lushun or Port Arthur, Peking, Tientsin, Tsingtao, Nanking, Chungking, Chengtu, respectively). It's the usage in a modern context that counts, unless you wish to move all of the pages I mentioned, and many more. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 14:51, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I agree completely that we need to account for historical vs. modern context and usage... and we should base our determination on how modern sources refer to the place. My point was simply that we were off base in focusing on what the "name" of the city is. Wikipedia doesn't really care what the subject's official "name" is... we care about how sources refer to the subject (and that may or may not be the same as the subject's "name"). Blueboar (talk) 15:16, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Just saw this film. Mixed Chinese (Cantonese)-English. When speaking in English, the Chinese-Americans speak of going to "Canton". That does appear to be the WP:COMMONNAME in conversational English. — kwami (talk) 19:48, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Should wikipedia contradict ISO which has accepted pinyin as the method of Romanisation of Chinese.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 21:45, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

If you hang around Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) long enough, you'll find that Wikipedia frequently, and in my opinion for very good reason, makes a different choice than the ISO. Their standards often serve different purposes than our own. Few lay readers, for example, understand ISO dates (like today's, 2010-12-04) or could readily grasp the results of ISO conventions for separating thousands and decimal fractions without using commas or decimal points. In my opinion, Wikipedia should have kept the titles of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras with whose nationalistically-inspired name changes not even all Indians agree. In the case of Canton, many people have a vague feeling that Canton is a seaport and that Cantonese is "south Chinese" and Mandarin is "north Chinese"; they would have not the slightest idea where Guangzhou is (near Tibet, perhaps?) —— Shakescene (talk) 22:06, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

(1)I too made a mistake when I used ISO date format the first time, but a friendly editor explained that it is the way we keep time and is extrapolated, year/month/day/hour/minute/second/fraction of seconds, which makes immense sense, and have been following ISO dates off and on wiki as far as possible. (2)Your comments are entirely anecdotal unless evidencec by wp:V.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 22:26, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

If we want to discuss the naming of this article, surely the proper place would be Talk:Guangzhou and not here, right? Heimstern Läufer (talk) 00:20, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Agree, in the context of your question.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 04:38, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Conflict between WP:AT and WP:MOS

The discussion over Ganges vs Ganga (above) has highlighted a policy conflict between this policy and the MOS. The issue is essentially how to handle situations where the majority of sources do not agree with local usage. WP:AT clearly favors following the sources, while MOS favors deferring to local usage. This conflict needs to be resolved. To centralize the discussion, please see: WT:MOS#Conflict between WP:TIES and WP:Article titles. Blueboar (talk) 16:09, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

OK... I attempted to re-formulate the policy as I understood it to be... but apparently there is disagreement (I was reverted) I am fine with the revert, but we do need to discuss this because I strongly disagree with the current version... specifically the line:

• But when local usage is itself divided, we do not necessarily follow the majority or plurality of local English usage against the consensus of the rest of the English-speaking world.

I see this as being directly contradictory to WP:COMMONNAME and the principle of recognizability. the current version is exactly backwards from what is indicated by the rest of this policy. I feel that we should base our titles on what the majority of all English speaking sources use, and not on what may be preferred locally. Only when world usage is divided do we look to to local preference, as a tie breaker. Blueboar (talk) 01:13, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

OK... I have found when the objectionable wording was first added (with this good faith addition by PMA on Sept. 1 of this year). While there was a brief exchange on the issue (here), I can assure you that had I noticed the addition at the time, I would have objected. Pending further discussion, I am going to take the section back to the stable wording it had prior to PMA's addition. Blueboar (talk) 02:41, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I think PMA's addition is useful guidance further guidance of what to do if there is no local common name. -- PBS (talk) 04:02, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

PMA's addition may be useful, but it directly contradicts WP:COMMONNAME (by telling editors to prefer a less common local name over a more common name that is used by the English speaking world in general). PMA's guidance is exactly backwards... Instead of looking first at local usage, and only turning to the entire English speaking world as a tie breaker if local usage is divided, WP:COMMONNAME indicates that we should first look at usage in the entire English speaking world (ie all English language sources, both local and non-local), and only turn to the local usage as a tie breaker if the entire English speaking world is divided. And, if local usage is also divided, then we use consensus to determine the best article title. Blueboar (talk) 14:20, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I disagree, unless we are going to scrap national varieties of English, then common has to be interpreted of looking at the set reliable English language sources from that national background first and only if they disagree pull in more reliable sources from the set of all possible reliable sources. If we do not do that then for example the names of smaller countries defence forces my well end up with American spelling as more books may have been published about a subject in the US than in a country like Grenada. -- PBS (talk) 19:27, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't see a need to completely scrap the concept of national varieties of English when it comes to general spelling... but I do see names as being an exception to the concept. When choosing between "organization" vs "organisation", "honor" vs "honour", "aluminum" vs "aluminium", national variety is as good a reason to adopt a given spelling as any other... but names are different, and article titles are different still. There we need to follow common usage through the entire English speaking world... we need to use names that readers from all over the world will recognize, and not those that will only be recognized by those from a particular locality. Blueboar (talk) 22:17, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

And yet the net effect of your edits has been to remove the case for using generally intelligible titles altogether. Something was better than nothing. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:46, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I took out when local usage is divided.

The rest of it doesn't say majority, it says consensus. This is intended to prevent it being read as imposing American usage - or denying it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:54, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree with PMA's new version (my reverting back to before his Sept. edit was intended to be temporary... to encourage us to reach a consensus version)... Phil, can you live with this edit? Blueboar (talk) 23:01, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I think more emphasis has to be give to a local consensus on a name in an English speaking country, even if the rest of the world has not yet implemented the change. I don't think anyone objects to Australian Defence Force, but the debate about words like Calcutta and Kolkata is also fundamentally about spelling as is the current debate on Ganges and Ganga. These Subcontinent names probably cause more problems than Salisbury, Rhodesia -> Harare, because they are spellings based on transliterations rather than complete name changes, which the modern media seems in an Orwellian way quite happy to change from one day to the next. If we agree that "Australian Defence Force" is preferred because it is the spelling in Australia (and is presumably supported in reliable local sources) then why have one rule for that and a different one for Ganges/Ganga? I see the difference in national varieties of English covering much more than just spelling it also covers names and idioms for example I would object strongly to someone changing "he was taken to hospital" to "he was taken to a hospital" in a biography about a British MP, because the former is similar to the American idiom "he was hospitalized"; or changing the lead of "David Beckham is a English football player" to "David Beckham is an English soccer player" (although the latter is far less ambiguous). If we recognise differences in national varieties of English as legitimate then in my opinion it is difficult to say only dictionary differences in spelling in article titles count. Size matters, this is only an abstract debate for article titles about things British and American, but in publishing terms as we come to smaller and smaller Commonwealth counties then it becomes less abstract and more of an issue.-- PBS (talk) 01:19, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree that WP:ENGVAR covers syntax as well or more than spelling; but that's for MOS, not this page.

There are two auxiliary reasons for using Defence Force about Australia, including the title (besides catering to Australian readers): because it is Australian, it is also presumably most common usage among reliable sources, the ones that still use proofreaders (thus referring to TIES avoids a futile argument); and it is intelligible outside Oz, which is why nobody has complained. Neither of these is true of Ganga - which is why the move request is going nowhere. (Incidentally, "local usage" can be very tricky; my friend reports from Chennai that local usage (presumably excluding the point-scoring politicians) remains Madras; it's one way you can tell an actual native of the city.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:28, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Also, the Australians who write "Australian Defence Force" (with few exceptions) are native English speakers, whereas the Indians who write "Ganga" (with few exceptions) aren't. A. di M. (talk) 02:32, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

• Do you suggest that English wikipedia will cater to the sensitivities of native speakers of English? Can you quote a policy statement to the effect.?Yogesh Khandke (talk) 15:30, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

  Correct English is defined as what native English speakers normally do. So long as no native speakers normally pronounce "subtle" with a /b/ or "shit" the same as "sheet", or use "actually" to mean "now", no number of non-native speakers doing that would make them correct pronunciations or meanings, would they? Or should we starting using "actually" to mean "now" in articles about Germany because that's the local usage there? A. di M. (talk) 15:52, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Tricky area, English is an official language in India, so in my opinion Indian English can not be dismissed as inconsequential. -- PBS (talk) 03:41, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

We are not dismissing Indian English or saying it is inconsequential... It is certainly appropriate for "Ganga" to be listed as a local variant in big bold letters the first sentence of the article. But because "Ganges" is significanlty more commonly used, we use that as the article title.

I would argue that Australian Defence Force is the most commonly found way to spell the name for that entity, (while, on the other hand, United States Department of Defense is the most commonly found way to spell the name for that entity). I think this is the primary reason why we use the spellings of Defence/Defense in those titles.

Sure, 99% of the time the consensus of sources will reflect local usage... and when that happens we will also reflect local usage... but, that is the result of our following the consensus of sources, not the local usage. For the 1% of the time when the consensus of sources doesn't reflect local usage (such as Ganges vs Ganga), neither should we... we should follow the sources. Blueboar (talk) 04:19, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

We are talking across 2 pages (as you will know) so for those who do not see my reply about systemic bias against smaller English speaking publishing nations on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. -- PBS (talk) 08:24, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I would just like to point out that Ganges is no longer more commonly used than Ganga. Here are the Google Scholar publications from this year:

• 27 with Ganges in the title, and river in the text.
• 38 with Ganga in the title, and river in the text.

It's the same in recent news reporting; Ganga now seems to occur more often in English-language sources than Ganges. --JN466 10:11, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I think "this year" is too short a time frame to make an accurate assessment. If we broaden the search to "since 2000" you get a more accurate picture, one that allows us to see the trend... Google Scholar still favors "Ganga" (with both getting hits in the 300s, but more for "Ganga" than "Ganges")... however Google News shows a significant difference ("Ganges river" gets 1100 hits while "Ganga river" only gets 422 hits). What this tells me is that we are probably in the midst of a shift in usage. "Ganga" does seem to be becoming more common... but the shift is not yet complete. If the trend continues for a few more years, I think there will be a much better argument for moving the article title... but not yet.

That said, JN's examination of usage Google Scholar and Google News is the right approach, as it focuses the determination on broad common usage as opposed to local preference and national variety. Whether we limit our search parameters to hits from this year, or broaden them to hits from the decade... we are basing the determination on common usage in a broad sense, and not basing it on local usage. And that is in keeping with this policy. Blueboar (talk) 14:25, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

We should reflect present-day usage, and base our decisions on usage after any important name change, be it through marriage, official renaming, or whatever circumstance applies, to assess to what extent the new name has been adopted by reliable sources. Otherwise we live in the past. (Note also that the phrase "Ganga river" may be less common than "Ganges river" not because Ganga is less common than Ganges, but because many sources that use Ganga just use the name on its own, or use "River Ganga". If you drop the quotes around "Ganges river" and "Ganga river", the gap narrows considerably (2540 vs. 1950). Also note that result numbers shown on the first page of Google search hits are algorithm-based estimates, rather than actual source counts). --JN466 14:27, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, google searches do have flaws... they are good for giving us a general indication of usage, not for firm, exact results. I also agree with accounting for "historical context vs modern usage" ... when there is a name change, we should base our determination on sources written after the change took place. However, I am not sure if this is the situation with Ganges/Ganga. Is this a name change or a gradual shift from one preferance to another? Is there a date when a "change" took place... something we can point to and say "don't use sources from before this date"? Blueboar (talk) 15:01, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

As I said over at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Conflict_between_WP:TIES_and_WP:Article_titles, I agree with you that looking at sources broadly, without prejudice according to geographical origin, is in many ways the best way for us to proceed, because the geographical distribution of sources will largely reflect the geographical distribution of our readers. The only situation where I feel uncomfortable here is small countries like St. Lucia or Jamaica, which may change the name of a place or geographical feature, but not generate the amount of sources in google news to make a numerical impact. But we can discuss that over at MOS talk. --JN466 14:36, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I think that should be discussed here first... as it relates specifically to choosing Article titles. Blueboar (talk) 15:01, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

We are discussing the draft of National varieties of English, this place is not appropriate for discussion about a particular article title, unless it is felt that it is landmark or important enough. In that case too it should follow a version that has been established after a clear acceptance by both or multiple parties, and has resulted in a steady version. Please do not discuss particular titles here, discuss policy, and determine benchmarks, and apply it for all articles. For example (1)Local or global (2)Traditional or contemporary (3)Popular or official (4)International or divided local (5)Divided local or neutral. (6)Preferred Romanisations ie local or European.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 15:23, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Yogesh, it is both appropriate and useful to discuss specific articles when trying to iron out a consensus on policy pages, as doing so helps us to understand how both the current language, and any proposed changes affect real life articles. We realize that you would prefer not to have the Ganges/Ganga debate used as a test case, but that debate is one of the best examples we can use to examine what we are talking about... precisely because it is a debated issue. Blueboar (talk) 16:09, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

<butting in> I believe you may have misunderstood Yogesh there. I am sure he is not saying we shouldn't discuss it here on this talk page; I think his concern is that we shouldn't state a preference for Ganga or Ganges in the policy, because that would prejudice the good-faith discussion that editors are having over at the article page. <butting out> --JN466 17:09, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, I think it is helpful to include examples in the policy... but we can't choose a good example until we have finished ironing out exactly what we think the policy statement should be. It may be that the ganges/ganga debate is still a good example... or it may be that it isn't. We can determine that later. Blueboar (talk) 04:09, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

break

OK, I think we have the beginnings of a consensus. The next question is, does the current language accurately reflect that consensus? Blueboar (talk) 15:18, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Blueboar & Jayen: (1)It is actually chicken and egg, but we can have an iterative process. Step 1: A policy should first be decided, after consulting other wiki-policies. Then it should be tested against a few but not a minuscule number of examples, there are hundreds of thousands of articles, so I am sure we can find quiet a few on either side of the policy, at the moment the policy statement is prepared. Step 2: Then the policy be suggested on the respective talk pages, with request for feedback. Of course Ganga though holy ain't a holy cow; (user:A. di M., apparently I have mixed phrases, but it is not so, it is a demonstration of the dialectical nature of English, the phrase used is an Indian English phrase, for the meaning of which I suggest you look up, you see if McDonald's has to set up shop in India, it is forced to give up beef, and make Indian recipes, which it does, and if McDonald's finds that these recipes have a global appeal, they would be available internationally, The little devil called globalisation, isn't one way boss.") so the policy can be tested on Ganga/es too. Step 3: With the process being repeated until a consensus is reached. (2) All I suggest is that that neither should a policy be specifically designed for Ganga/es, nor should the debate be exclusive about Ganga/es. We need bigger sample size.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 22:49, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree we should not write a policy specifically for Ganges/Ganga... I don't think we are doing that. Blueboar (talk) 00:28, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

The current wording is, "On the other hand, general intelligibility is valuable: Occasionally a less common term is selected as an article title because it appears in all national varieties; for example, Fixed-wing aircraft; nor does Wikipedia necessarily follow the majority or plurality of local English usage against the consensus of the rest of the English-speaking world."

That ties in with WP:VNE, which also gives fixed-wing aircraft as an example. The principle we were leaning towards above would be that we should generally prefer the term most prevalent in the totality of English sources available, without consideration for the global distribution of each term. Now I think fixed-wing aircraft is fine, so if we want to formulate a principle whereby majority in the entire universe of English-language sources should be a criterion, we probably should not make it an exclusive criterion; if we did, it would outlaw the fixed-wing aircraft. So anything we do put here would have to be worded carefully. --JN466 03:25, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I think that reference to article titles in WP:VNE should be deleted (or moved into this policy). This policy covers article titles and having wording in the MOS on this issue only causes confusion (as does this policy and its guidelines trespasses on the content of articles.

Blueboar I do not think that there is consensus on this issue at all. "The only situation where I feel uncomfortable here is small countries like St. Lucia or Jamaica, which may change the name of a place or geographical feature, but not generate the amount of sources in Google news to make a numerical impact" (Jayen466). This is precisely the issue. I am of the opinion if there is a topic tie to an English speaking nation, then the common name in the reliable sources the local dialect of English (for that nation) should be used. Only if there is no clear guidance in the local dialect should the universal set of reliable sources be consulted. Let me give you an example at the moment we do not have an article on the "Eastern Caribbean Defence Force", should that spelling be used as that is what the members of the "Eastern Caribbean Defence Force" would have used or should we use the most common spelling in reliable sources which is "Eastern Caribbean Defense Force" because of its participation in the invasion of Grenada. At the moment because there are two spellings used in articles Grenada (Commonwealth English) and invasion of Grenada (American English). If someone was to write an article on the Force I would suggest that although the majority of sources are American and use Defense, the title should be spelt Defence because of close ties to the nations that made up the force.

In other words I am in favour of the wording similar to that Blueboar objects to: But when local usage is itself divided, we do not necessarily follow the majority or plurality of local English usage against the consensus of the rest of the English-speaking world. I would also qualify that with "or if there is a paucity of local sources". It would be better to reword in in the positive:

When determining an article title on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation use the common name in the local reliable English language sources. If there is a paucity of local sources, or if the local sources do not give a clear indication of the article title to use, then use the common name as indicated in all reliable English language sources.

--PBS (talk) 12:47, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I do object... strongly... I have no problem with looking at the local sources as a tie breaker if no generally used common name can be determined, but we should first look to see if there is a common general usage... then (if needed) we look at local usages. To favor a relatively common local usage over a more common general usage is POV. Blueboar (talk) 15:21, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Not "POV" surely? - using a particular name isn't an expression of a point of view - but it may be unhelpful to readers.--Kotniski (talk) 15:58, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Using a particular name can definitely be an expression of POV. Names often get wrapped up in political and/or nationalistic identity. Names are often the subject of highly POV debate... with various factions insisting that their preferred name is "correct". Blueboar (talk) 16:16, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

If the name is subject to political and/or nationalistic identity and are subject to a POV debate then there will not be a consensus in local sources (so we can look for a global consensus). Also the Americans and British are just a capable of subjecting names to political and/or nationalistic identities, which the rest of the English speaking world do not use, but because of their predominance in the publishing industry are used on Wikipedia because they appear to be the most common name. And it is not always because they are subject to external (to Wikipedia) nationalistic debate but to internal Wikipedia debate, take for example Utility knife and Gasoline -- If the American publishing industry was not so large we would not be using these paticular names. Blueboar your dismissal of local consensus for a subject with strong national ties, would suggest that you are supporting an American homogeneity which is precisely what "National verities of English" is meant to counter. -- PBS (talk) 09:06, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

In comparatively rare cases, yes. But that doesn't mean that by using name X we are saying "name X is the most correct". If it did, then we wouldn't be able to use any name at all.--Kotniski (talk) 16:30, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Exactly my point... in order to be utterly neutral, we don't base our titles on what name is most "correct"... we base them on what is most common. That means that we favor commonality over local preference. If a generally used name is more common than a locally used one, we should use the general usage name. Blueboar (talk) 16:58, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

So you would favour American spelling of "Eastern Caribbean Defense Force" over the Commonwealth spelling simply because the majority of reliable sources use it (because the force was subject to American Senatorial debate etc) even though the local sources would use "Eastern Caribbean Defence Force". -- PBS (talk) 08:38, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

If a significant majority of reliable secondary sources refer to it using the American spelling... yes. (question... are you perhaps referring to the Caribbean Peace Force?) Blueboar (talk) 14:57, 11 December 2010 (UTC)the

AFAICT the "Caribbean Peace Force" was the name of an organisation post the Invasion of Grenada that helped with the reconstruction of Grenada (occupied the country) while "Eastern Caribbean Defense Force" was the name of the fighting force that took part in the invasion, they may have had the same personnel but they were under a different mandate. If you go down the "significant majority of reliable secondary sources refer to it using the American spelling..." then we can have article titles that are not the same spelling as the content if WP:TIES in the MOS means anything. -- PBS (talk) 12:00, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Titles of biographies (and some other pages)

At a current requested move (Talk:Tōru Takemitsu#Move?) it has essentially been brought up that the subject of an article cannot be counted as a reliable source as how their name should be written in the English language, and we should instead rely on independent third party sources that have their own style guides into how to treat characters that do not appear on a standard QWERTY keyboard.

Why is this? If someone decides to write their name with a diacritic that's commonly found in their native language (or in the romanization of their native language) why should Wikipedia not use their way of writing their name but instead defer to sources that simply do not bother using these diacritic marks?

I've come across this issue many times in the past, in particular when it comes to the names of bands and the names of songs. Why do we have to enforce a style that goes against common sense in these cases?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:14, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

I do not think a style is being enforced against commonsense. Instead, the style is consistently asserting that Wikipedia should follow reliable English sources: if a name is written by authoritative English sources as X, then that's how it should be written at en.wikipedia. Johnuniq (talk) 23:42, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Let me give an example then. If Björk was referred to in the press more commonly as "Bjork" rather than "Björk" because the press sources cannot be bothered to include the diaresis over the o, this policy to me would state that the article should be at "Bjork" rather than "Björk".

This aspect of the policy is at least being discussed in the Tōru Takemitsu move (where it seems "Toru" is used more often than "Tōru", even though "Tōru" is the approximation of his name in the English language), and is most certainly trying to be enforced in a the proposed change to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles) mentioned in the thread above (where people are suggesting that another page be moved because of the same lack of the more correct ō over ou or o).

And then there's the other two articles I brought up. The band calls itself "m.o.v.e" and is most certainly referred to as "m.o.v.e" in all Japanese and English media, but the article is now at Move (Japanese band) due to the various policies and manuals of style. Similar issue with WBX (W-Boiled Extreme) which is a song that is exclusively called "W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~" in all media, but due to the various guidelines and policies it was forced to move.

Why can't the subject's preferences determine how the article is named? Why do we have to default to independent third party sources to tell us how to name people and other items?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:06, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

And then there's the issue of "English" sources. What if the majority of the subject's mentions in third party sources are not English to begin with? Why should we go with how the English speaking world calls the subject, when the sources in the non-English speaking nations use the Roman alphabet to refer to the subject?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:01, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Because this is the English language Wikipedia and this policy concerns what the English speaking world calls the subject. The policy does not give any weight to the subject's preferences.--SaskatchewanSenator (talk) 01:36, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Why should the subjects' personal preference be entirely thrown out as to how the English Wikipedia titles the article on them? If they write their name a particular way, why shouldn't we copy that? It seems we do that on some pages but not on others (the band and song listed above are examples).—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 03:05, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

The subjects' personal preference is not "entirely thrown out", but is not given any extra weight. The title of the k.d. lang article is based on "regular and established use in reliable third-party sources."--SaskatchewanSenator (talk) 04:11, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

So why does "regular and established use in reliable third party sources" overrule the subject's preference should it conflict?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 04:35, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Ultimately it is because we had to make a choice... and the consensus was to favor the sources. Blueboar (talk) 17:02, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

It may be useful to state a reason explicitly, to see if those who agree with the conclusion also agree with the road to it.

• We are a third-party (unreliable) source, intended for other third parties; we wish to communicate with our audience in a neutral manner.
• If you wish to call yourself the Emperor Ryulong and the rest of the anglophone world goes along, fine; we'll do so too. We already do for Screaming Lord Sutch and the Emperor Norton as well as k. d. lang.
• If not, we'll go with the world. To do otherwise is to adopt your POV and quite likely to fail to communicate at all with those who call you something else.
• But your choice is a notable fact, and if verifiable, should be mentioned in the article. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:57, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

But the issue lies in the fact that we're not dealing with Western subjects. Let me give you a couple of examples. Miki Shin'ichirō (三木眞一郎) and Mizuki Ichirō (水木一郎) are commonly known in the English speaking Internet as "Shinichiro Miki" and "Ichiro Mizuki". However, both have official websites where their names are parsed in English as "Shin-ichiro Miki" and "Ichirou Mizuki" which is where their articles are located currently. According to this policy, we should use the names that are used in English media, when the other forms are more common, but incorrect. Why should we use the more common inaccurate name when there are less common more accurate names?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 21:22, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Because the standard for accuracy in English is common usage; there is no other. Similarly, if you set up a website declaring yourself the Emperor Ryulong, that would be "official". But we don't do official; we call Bangkok Bangkok, not its interminable official name. Nor do we call Petrarch Francesco Petrarca. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:52, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Those comparisons make no sense. They don't have names in a language with a Roman alphabet. If they give us a name for themselves in the Roman alphabet why shouldn't we use it over any other name in the Roman alphabet that is out there?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:27, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, they do; exactly as much as Bangkok does.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:45, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the page consists at present of the firmly held views of User:Ryulong and nobody else - here or on its talk page. We have a name for pages like that; we call them {{essay}}s.

But essays should not be part of the Manual of Style; suggestions for a new name are welcome. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:45, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

What the hell are you doing to the manual of style?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:02, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

PMA and Ryu, stop edit-warring the MOS page, please. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:11, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Hyphens, tildes and interpuncts

Any opinions on the permissibility of hyphens (-), tildes (~), and interpuncts (·) in English Wikipedia article titles? Some examples "W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~", "m.c.A·T". Jpatokal (talk) 06:03, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Jpatokal, the issue is more complex than "are these characters allowed", which is why the discussion is fairly long, and only really concerns certain subjects.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 06:58, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually no, it's not, since article titles are governed by this Wikipedia-wide policy. And the reason I'm asking here is specifically because I'd be interested in the opinions of people who are familiar with Wikipedia conventions on the subject, yet are not emotionally invested in the intricacies of Japanese romanization. Jpatokal (talk) 10:53, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

So you are basically seeking a way to quash a discussion on whether or not an exception could be made to the general practice, if such a practice exists?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 11:40, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

No. Jpatokal (talk) 22:11, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Where else should such articles as John Lennard-Jones be? A. di M. (talk) 18:19, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

To clarify, I'm interested in the treatment of hyphens in places where they would not normally be used in English, as in the "W-B-X" of the example. Jpatokal (talk) 21:02, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

How do reliable sources written in English refer to that thing? A. di M. (talk) 23:55, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

There aren't any English language reliable sources regarding the song "W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~".—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:12, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

So why needs it its own article? A. di M. (talk) 01:10, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Because it's a notable song in Japan and it can be covered on the English Wikipedia as it already is at an incorrect title because of the various manuals of style.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:07, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Assuming it does pass the notability guidelines (which sounds quite unlikely to me if you can only find reliable sources about it in one language), I'd keep the original title per the second paragraph of WP:UE. A. di M. (talk) 15:19, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Coverage on the English Wikipedia does not rely entirely on English language reliable sources. And I am assuming that by "the original title" you mean the title as it is known in Japan ("W-B-X ~W-Boiled Extreme~") rather than the title it has been moved to on the English Wikipedia ("WBX (W-Boiled Extreme)"). If that is true, then this issue is most definitely a project-level one and Jpatokal should not have necessarily brought it to this talk page.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:27, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Foreign names

If there are too few English-language sources to constitute an established usage, follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject (German for German politicians, Portuguese for Brazilian towns, and so on).

Maybe here we should remember people to check the notability guidelines, as if you can't find reliable sources in English for something, odds are that it wouldn't pass them. A. di M. (talk) 15:22, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

While English language sources are preferred, they are not required to determine the notability of subjects on the English Wikipedia. If a band in Germany tops the charts in Germany, then they are notable for coverage on this project, regardless if no one writes about them in English. The general notability guideline states that "Sources may encompass published works in all forms and media, and in any language" (emphasis mine).—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:24, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and in fact many many people, places and other topics which are well covered by sources in local languages, and uncontroversially meet Wikipedia's inclusion standards, are found to have little or no coverage in English-language sources (just as many of the American/British/etc. topics we write about probably have little coverage in Spanish or Chinese). If Wikipedia really were to be made free of pro-Anglophone geographical bias (which realistically will never happen, of course), then I suspect that the vast majority of articles would be on topics which had no significant English-language coverage.--Kotniski (talk) 11:50, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Google Books Ngram Viewer

A new Google tool (NYT article) allows users to graph the frequency of words in Google's entire corpus of scanned English language books (probably not periodicals) up to 2008. Here are the graphs for some of Wikipedia's favorite name wars:

• Burma vs. Myanmar
• Danzig vs. Gdansk
• Kiev vs. Kyiv
• Bolzano vs. Bozen
• Marseille vs. Marseilles

Wouldn't it be useful to link to that page as an additional tool to help determine which is the most common English-language name for whatever?  Sandstein  16:29, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I guess there's some bug preventing it to match strings with diacritics or non-letters, as L'Aquila or Gdańsk giving zero hits seems unlikely. A. di M. (talk) 19:37, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

This is a old and significant problem with Google's search results that should be brought to wider attention of editors - see below. Knepflerle (talk) 12:20, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Encouraging the use of this tool should only occur with a very, very clear note about never using this for any word involving letters with diacritics.

The calculated corpus frequencies are based on Google's optical character recognition (OCR) of the scanned texts, but this OCR is wildly inaccurate at reading pretty much any letter with a diacritic: for example, ö can be read as o, 0, O, ô, ō, 6, 8, e or even skipped entirely. Here's some evidence of this which I contributed to a previous discussion:.

Sigh. As I've pointed out many, many times before, Google Scholar and Google Books are absolutely useless for deciding these sorts of matters - the optical character recognition is not up to the job whatsoever. Note this which I managed to have included in WP:UE -

"modified letters have the additional difficulties that some search engines will not distinguish between the original and modified forms, and others fail to recognize the modified letter because of optical character recognition errors."

Look at your second result for "Deravica" from Google Scholar. The summary quote on the results page says "Deravica" - but if you click on the link you see the text actually contained Đeravica!

Not only does their optical-character recognition perform annoying but accountable mistakes such as reading Đ as D; lots of results may be being overlooked by Đ being read as something completely unexpected. I wrote this at WT:UE a while ago:

"In any search there are so many false positives and omissions that any numerical comparisons are spurious.

For example PBS's search to pick out cases of Soren and excluding Søren. Of the first five results we can see the text of, four use Søren on the title (Y, Y, Y, Y, N). OK, so maybe the OCR doesn't work on the title (never mind that this is the spelling people might actually remember most), but it even happens in the text - Søren gets Googlified as S0ren, Søren OCR'ed as Seren, text says Søren, OCR says Soren, OCR gives and f1nally SAren Kierkegaard - sometimes it even struggles with English! The 148 results for University of D0sseldorf tells us nothing about English usage and likewise neither do the above searches for Kierkegaard.

You can clean up your results to be meaningful: you must first go through the results weeding out the false positives (and these are not rare - in my check they were the majority of results above) and then secondly try and perform an exhaustive search for all combinations Google might have OCR'ed the diacritic as (eg for ł try t, 1, l, k...) to avoid missing out large numbers of cases where an English writer did use the diacritic but Google has morphed it into something that you might not search for. However, it might be better to just admit Google is not up to the job on this one and try a more reliable method."

In my experience Đ can be read as D, B, @ (honestly), O, 0, &, omitted as a space ... and those are just examples I've seen and remember. If you don't believe the algorithm is that bad, any guesses what "A8-SI02TOBS TO BIHXS HAKTTVACTTTBXNG-' COMPAHY" means? Answer here. Sorry, but the tool you're using is not up to the job, especially when there's little numerical difference between results. The numbers are meaningless and the conclusions invalid.

In short, any word including a diacritic (even commonly seen ones such as ç or ö) will be woefully undercounted, and the results mean absolutely nothing whatsoever. Knepflerle (talk) 12:20, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

None of these examples include diacritics. But we should certainly accompany it by a warning on the matter; although Knepferle exaggerates the extent of the problem. We should also add that Google's datings are not always right. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:59, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

As I have said many times before... the various Google search engines (of whatever stripe) are useful tools ... but they do have problems. I support allowing editors to use these tools to help them determine the best titles... but I don't support explicitly pointing editors to it in the policy, which can give the impression that such tools are the "approved" way to determine usage. Blueboar (talk) 02:34, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Yep. The biggest problem I see is the inability to distinguish between contexts. Uses of 'Calcutta' in the phrase 'Black Hole of Calcutta' should not count when it comes to assessing 'Calcutta' against 'Kolkata' as the name of a place. Hesperian 03:18, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh? Why should that usage not count? Blueboar (talk) 15:15, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Presumably because it's not the present city. If the history were to be divided at 1947 or even 1911, calling the earlier article Calcutta would be reasonable - indeed almost mandatory. One of our problems is people who insist on anachronistic forms like Black Hole of Kolkata; fortunately, in this case, the Indian nationalists prefer to argue that the Black Hole never happened rather than wanting to rename it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:37, 22 December 2010 (UTC)