Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Macedonia/main articles/Archive 1

Discussion of Proposal [A]

[A] also applies to Mongolia. No discussion there.  Andreas  ^(T) 21:18, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I've added that comparison. -- ChrisO (talk) 21:46, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Citing MOSMAC2 for the dictionaries as giving out a primary meaning is wrong. A) because the order in the dictionaries do not necessarily indicate what is the primary meaning and B) In the dictionaries of MOSMAC2 the order of the meanings is mixed, some put the country first, some put the region first, some put the kingdom first. About the other reference works I have already commented below.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 17:04, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

The naming policy cannot be used as is in cases where disambiguation is needed. In those cases WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is the critical policy. Of course we can use the common English name for Germany but Germany has a single primary meaning: it's the country. Apparently that is not the case for Macedonia.

While "Compliant with WP:DAB's requirement to use the term indicated as the primary topic for the title of the article on that topic" is true the claim that the country is the primary topic for the word is contested. Therefore this "compliance" could be null since there is no primary topic. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 00:40, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

See the time savings argument that supports Proposal A here (Taivo (talk) 19:19, 16 June 2009 (UTC))

I originally didn't support the move here and said so back when the case was young. I've since changed my mind, largely due to the clear results of the sources compiled to demonstrate that this is the primary topic. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 08:59, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Discussion of Arguments against proposal A

About "ethnic Macedonian POV", Wikipedia describes what entities call themselves - i.e. it cares, to an extent, that the country and its people call it "Republic of Macedonia" (or "Macedonia"). It does not go against NPOV by "siding" with the ethnic Macedonians there, because it is merely reflecting what they call their own country. Wikipedia also cares (more so) about common English usage, which generally, and in this case, follows the self-identification. What it doesn't care about is the politics of Greece (and therefore Greek nationalists) because a) neither Greece nor Greek Macedonia are the self-identifying entity in question, therefore they have no say in what the country and its people call it, and b) they have not affected common English usage, probably because they don't have a say in it. If, as you say, Greece contests a statement such as, "Republic of Macedonia is the primary meaning of the word Macedonia", then that is Greece's (political) problem, and naturally, we at Wikipedia don't care. The fact that English usage "sides with the ethnic Macedonian POV" is no reason to discount English usage, it just means that we should give even less weight to the Greek POV (currently zero). BalkanFever 07:27, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Discussion of Proposal [B]

Added the America disambiguation example. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 09:00, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Someone added Georgia as an example to proposal B. That's clearly wrong, since the Georgia article isn't called "Republic of Georgia" (though I think it may have been at one time). I think it was supposed to go in proposal C, so I've added an amended version of that comparison to that proposal.

The argument that time spent at the disambiguation page would be minimal is a misdirection. If 5000 people are seeking the country and 500 people are seeking the ancient kingdom and 50 people are seeking the other "Macedonias" in a given day, and each spends 10 seconds at the disambiguation page finding where they want to go, then that requires 55,500 seconds of reader time a day, or, in other words, 15.42 hours a day of looking at the disambiguation page. If all readers go to the country page first, then we can subtract 50,000 seconds from that time (the readers who are actually looking for the country). Users who want the ancient kingdom (via the current hat note) then go straight to the ancient kingdom (no net gain or loss of seconds). Only readers who want something besides the modern country or the ancient kingdom are inconvenienced by a further visit to the disambiguation page, adding 500 seconds to the total. Thus, with the current setup, readers (only those seeking the ancient kingdom or something else) spend just 6,000 seconds of time getting to the page they want, or 1.67 hours a day. Thus, the current setup saves readers a total of 13.75 hours a day based on these rough figures. As long as the country is the major destination for readers, the overall savings in reader time favors the current arrangement and disfavors any other naming arrangement. (Taivo (talk) 19:17, 16 June 2009 (UTC))

Any way you add the time lost by users it is still just adding 10 seconds to any individual user's time (on average) when having to go to through dab page to find the country. Why should we add them up? It's the individual time --"the user"-- that we care for.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 05:24, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

But why inconvenience 5000 users and waste 10 seconds of their time just so that the 50 users aren't inconvenienced for an extra 10 seconds? Users looking for the ancient kingdom aren't inconvenienced at all since they go to a page and click on a hatlink, so they use 10 seconds whether they go to a disambiguation page or to the country page first. The only users who are inconvenienced by going to the country page first are the very, very small number of people who are looking for something besides the country or the ancient kingdom. Inconveniencing 5000 users for the sake of 50 users doesn't make any sense. Aggregate time wasted is a completely valid measure of productivity and wasted time. Companies measure aggregate wasted time all the time when evaluating efficiency. Using these numbers as an example, having a disambiguation page wastes about ten times more time than having "Macedonia" go to the country. (Taivo (talk) 05:37, 17 June 2009 (UTC))

While I agree with Taivo in principle, I'll just put the figures right: it's c.1,000 per day, not 5,000. Somewhere between 900–1,200 per day is the number of people who come through the plain "Macedonia" title, i.e. those who come through a wiki search. Only for them is the disambiguation problem an issue at all. Of these, less than a hundred use the hatnote to navigate back to the dab page, indicating they weren't happy with where they got. The remaining 3,000–4,000 per day, including those who come from Google searches and those coming from internal wikilinks, are led safely to their target page anyway (mostly still through the "Republic of" redirect). Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:57, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec) It's not just 50 users that are unconvinienced. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} Even if we add the users like you do still the current status quo helps the ones looking for the country but does put the extra burden to all the other readers. Looking up the hits of May at http://stats.grok.se very roughly:

• M (Republic): 4000/day
• M (Alexander's): 750/day
• M (Gr.): 400/day
• M (region): 200/day
• M (Rome): 50/day
• M (food): 50/day
• M (Byzantine): 20/day
• M (Ohio): 20/day

therefore its 4000 hits for the country vs 1500 hits for the rest (not including all the minor ones). Remember these are not unique visitors but page hits however lets pretend every hit is one user. Why should we care for the sum of the time lost by the 4000 "users" more than the sum of the time lost by the other 1500 ones? Just because they are 2.66 times more of them?Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 06:01, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

As I said in the section above, for assessing "inconvenience" you need to discount those readers who come through unambiguous direct target links, either internally or from google. For them, the disambiguation problem isn't an issue. The only figures that are relevant here are: 1,000 readers coming through the wikisearch on plain "Macedonia"; of these, c.60–80 navigate back to the dab page; the remaining >900 are apparently happy to remain at the country article. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:07, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

P.S. There is another interesting observation about Republic of Macedonia hits that I will post on a new section. Future Perfect beat me to that observation.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 06:02, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the better numbers, Future. Shadowmorph, you have to subtract all users who are looking for the ancient kingdom from your "inconvenience measure" since they are one click away under both Proposals A and B--the effect on them is neutral. The only people inconvenienced under the status quo are those who are looking for neither the ancient kingdom nor the country and that is a very small number compared to the much larger number of users who are not inconvenienced at all by going right to where they want to be--the country page--without an extra click. And, yes, the convenience of the (using your numbers) 4000 users a day who go to the country right away without an extra click outnumber the 740 users a day who want to go somewhere besides the ancient kingdom or the country. (Taivo (talk) 06:10, 17 June 2009 (UTC))

So using the better numbers, the ratio between country seekers who don't have to click an extra time and the users who are looking elsewhere and have to click again is even greater--9 to 1 approximately. So that means 920 (1000 minus 80) readers a day who would waste 10 seconds apiece navigating through a disambiguation page first--9200 seconds or 2.56 hours of wasted time a day with Proposal B compared to Proposal A. (Taivo (talk) 06:12, 17 June 2009 (UTC))

@Fut.Perf: ChrisO has said that there are "many wikilinks that lead to Macedonia meaning the country". Are you in for cleaning those wikilinks up and substituing with pipe links using [Republic of Macedonia|Macedonia]? Only then we can truly see how many of the ones that arrive throught the search box are happy to stay at the article. My guess is that many of the 900 hits come through "Macedonia" links in other articles. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 06:24, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I was actually doing that, in the days immediately after the page move, but I didn't get them all. Almost all of them were in minor out-of-the-way articles with little readership. In better-watched articles, they wouldn't have survived that long, at a time when each of them was technically an error. The very fact that nobody ever bothered to correct them proves that they weren't much used. Neither removing such links (as I did) nor adding new ones (as a few others have done since) has shown any significant effect on the number of people ending up at the "M." title. I believe their contribution is pretty negligible. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:36, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

And it is just as likely that many of the 100 hits on the other "Macedonias" also come through links in other articles. Your argument, Shadowmorph, is just as valid for hits on all the other Macedonias as it is for the country. Indeed, it is far more likely for someone to type simply "Macedonia" in the search box and navigate from wherever they land than it is for someone to type "Macedonia (ancient kingdom)" (which requires much more typing than just a simple "Macedonia" and then a click on a link). Clicking on links for the other targets of Macedonia is therefore more likely than navigating to the country from clicking on a link. (Taivo (talk) 06:31, 17 June 2009 (UTC))

No its not. All the Macedonia Wikipedia links are all included with intention to point to the country. See pages linking to Macedonia. Even if there is one or two Macedonia links in an article that point to Macedon that is not "many of the" 100 ones. However some high profile and highly read articles like Coca-Cola link to Macedonia meaning the country. By statistics alone several of the hits of Macedonia are coming from the Coca cola page and the other high profile pages found in the "what links here".Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 06:45, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

LOL, the Coca Cola one was inserted just yesterday [1]. Let's see how much it drives up the page hits. I'm sure we'll see an unprecedented peak. NOT. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:29, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Lol, Sorry I didn't see that it was recent. Anyway there are other examples too, I don't think they are negligible but I don't really know. We can see. ...I wonder what Coca-cola related event happened in May 8th that caused that tremendous spike in hits.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 07:44, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Page hits and redirects

Right now many Republic of Macedonia links increase the readership of the country article as shown by Future's observation. Aristotle has no links to Macedon at all and Aristotle has a 5000/hits per day average. Lets say we included one link that was left out by editorial error. How will that affect the readership of Macedonia (ancient kingdom) comparable to the other Macedonias? Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 06:14, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you go and find out? Do you expect a single article link will boost the readership of the ancient M. article from its current 600 or so to anywhere more comparable to 4,000? And even if it did, that wouldn't affect our considerations of "convenience", because that affects only the wiki-searchers, not the users of direct wiki links. (Weren't you going to try and avoid arguing red herrings, or did I mishear something?) Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:20, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

The only people who are more inconvenienced with Proposal A over Proposal B are those who are searching for neither the country nor the ancient kingdom, so your experiment at Aristotle is pointless. (Taivo (talk) 06:24, 17 June 2009 (UTC))

Come on this was not a red herring, I thought it is relevant. Macedon readership in Wikipedia is biased downwards, that's all I tried to say.

Ok I am glad we cleared this up.

However let's see how many of the Macedonia 1000 hits are through the search box since ChrisO said there are many of Macedonia links in articles that use the links (by mistake, those previously led to the dab page, now they have been auto-"fixed"). See above section. Closing this thread now so that I don't elaborate on something you consider a red herring (the wikilinks to Macedon). Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 06:32, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

About primary topic in contemporary English

In the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, : "Macedonia" has 3 meanings, the country, the province, the ancient country. Other geographic names in that dictionary of contemporary English give only a single meaning in cases one can argue it is the primary topic, obviously this is not the case for Macedonia. Check out: "China" entry: only the country, "Ireland" entry: only the island.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 16:25, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Dictionaries, being about defining terms, have the responsibility to give many meanings for words. That a dictionary gives more than one definition is far from enough to establish that there is no primary topic. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 10:50, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Dictionaries generally yes but not this specific dictionary. This dictionary has a purpose, it deliberately omits some meanings when they can be omitted. Check out any entry you like and compare it to Websters. Any entry at all. Having three meanings under Macedonia was an editorial decision of that reliable source. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 10:53, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

At any rate, one dictionary is not going to be enough to establish standard English usage. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 10:55, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, and even in their choice of sequential order in presenting the alternatives, dictionaries may be following any number of different sets of criteria, which may or may not have anything to do with our criterion of primacy in usage. The mere fact that this particular dictionary reports several meanings is trivial: well, of course it does, how could it not do so? We've all known that this ambiguity exists, so what is this example supposed to show us? Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:56, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

The second part of my comment. The treatment of other geographic names that are equally ambiguous in this dictionary, if there is a primary topic that resource gives out only one meaning. Check them out. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 11:02, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

We can use Longman's to figure out other polysemous words too. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 11:04, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, whatever it is that made them choose to not present the country of Ireland among the meanings of "Ireland" at all, it can hardly have been a concern about "primary topics" in our sense. And if it was, then the only conclusion we can draw is that they give the country of Macedonia a higher profile in claiming primacy of topics than the country of Ireland. But in any case, it's hardly a very good source for us anyway. For instance, where it says that "Macedonia" is only the "informal" name of the country, and that its "official name" is "Former Yugoslav...", we all know it is over-simplifying to a point bordering dangerously on becomeing just plain wrong. Which isn't a big problem, because these issues are not among that work's central tasks. Explaining facts about countries is something an encyclopedia does, not something a dictionary does. Dictionaries are about words, they are only very very marginally about proper names, and even less so about the things proper names refer to. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:11, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes but most if not all printed encyclopedias are in alphabetical order (just like many dictionaries e.g. Webster's),so Wikipedia's notion of primary topic is not applicable in them. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 11:23, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

So what? Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:26, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Focusing overmuch on one source in contrast to the great majority of sources is not useful. There will always be exceptions to every generalization that can be made in this matter. Atlases published by Hammonds use "FYROM", but that is not significant since all the other atlas publishers use "Macedonia". The generalization is still true that common English usage is "Macedonia" for the country. It's a question of preponderance of reliable evidence. (Taivo (talk) 11:46, 15 June 2009 (UTC))

The majority of generic sources do not help us in our question. Dictionaries just note the ambiguity and generic encyclopedias have articles on more than two entities while not providing us with a primary topic since they are alphabetical. Some other resources (like Atlases) are just lists of countries so no ambiguity there. It would be nice if we could find some reliable source that actually says "the most common meaning of the word Macedonia in English is ..." or "the name Macedonia has no single definitive meaning in English". I think the second is infered in Longman's treatment but I guess a source that explicitely say that would be needed. Right now we don't have a source like that. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 11:59, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Shadowmorph, the very fact that the preponderance of reliable sources use "Macedonia" as the primary name of the country is equivalent to the statement "the most common meaning of 'Macedonia' in English is the country". This fact has been very well-established with the evidence gathered by Future Perfect and ChrisO at MOSMAC2. Further discussion about it is really unnecessary. (Taivo (talk) 12:07, 15 June 2009 (UTC))

No, it is a different thing to say the common name of the A is N than to say the common meaning of N is A. The equivelance you say is the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. Example: it is a fact that the preponderance of reliable sources use "Mercury" as the primary name of the planet nearest to the sun. That sentence says nothing about the common meaning of Mercury and of course is not equivalent to any assertion about it. I hope it is clear as I put it.

When the discussion returns to the same fallacy I am afraid that discussion cannot be unnecessary.Shadowmorph ^{^"^}

(left) About User:Future Perfect at Sunrise/MOSMAC2, I have made some criticism that I think is founded. I'll try to summarize my arguments here too:

• The Corpus of American Contemporary English survey used is one single source and is also subject to interpretations since it is actually just a web tool to search selected texts. The texts included seem to be biased to recent (or fictional) events regarding proper names. The corpus might be a better source to discuss contemporary American usage for words that are not proper names. Also there is British and Australian contemporary usage that it doesn't cover.
• The page view statistics of grok.se is not a reliable source for disambiguation discussions. It also has not been found useful to redirect America to the United States even though it overwhelms Americas as a meaning by a factor of 100. (for comparison in Macedonia the page hits are more for the country than for the other primary meanings by a mere factor of 3). That is because intellectual metrics have to come to mind about which is the primary topic
• I have in the past argumented on how the wikilinks are biased towards sovereign countries because of the plethora of minor and recentist topics (e.g. many articles for different years football championships and cups) that wikilink to a country where an ancient kingdom has much fewer wikilinks (Aristotle doesn't even contain one wikilink to Macedon). Even so the wikilinks don't actually favor the country so much over the rest of the meanings.

In other words: Wikipedia has an overrepresented coverage of topics related to sovereign countries than provinces or antiquity. That is natural considering the open nature of Wikipedia and the scarcity of antiquity experts among the general article drafters. So Wikipedia's internal wikilink system is not a reliable source of disambiguation discussions.(not in MOSMAC2.Shadowmorph ^{^"^})

• The account of reference works in MOSMAC2 mixes apples with oranges by giving dictionaries and encyclopedias amongst non generic atlases and lists of countries. All of the reference works that are generic cover the other meanings too. The printed generic sources do not have any inherent mechanism for finding what is the primary topic among those (notably Britannica)
• Therefore I don't find it factual that primary topic has been established. So far there has been no reliable source that explicitly says that the country is the most prominent meaning of the word Macedonia in generic English usage. Of course such a source is unlikely to exist since Macedonia is too ambiguous with no clear single primary definition.
• MOSMAC2 is however good if you want to support the argument to use "Macedonia" in any article that contains an enumeration of countries.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 17:23, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

"Incoming wikilinks"? Our page cites no claims about wikilinks at all. Another red herring. (I actually agree with your point about why they wouldn't be particularly useful, up to a point.) As for the other searches: this is not the first "primary topic" discussion that's been done in Wikipedia. We don't need to reinvent the wheel here. We have a set of standard tests that can be used, all with the appropriate amount of common sense. I've seen many such debates, and in none of them have these tests been done and scrutinised as thoroughly as here. And hardly anywhere else have the results been so unambiguous. This is as straightforward a case as there's ever been any (as far as present-day usage is concerned), and the only reason you keep bickering and nitpicking over it is the fact that you don't like the result.

For me, the only legitimate debate that's still to be had here is the question on how to weigh present-day usage against older usage. In the former, it is plain obvious that there is a clear primary topic; in the latter, it's just as obvious that there isn't (see google-books searches). Prioritising between these is indeed a legitimate and somehow tricky question, and I'm honestly completely open to discussion about that. But until we get there, please spare us the red herrings. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:42, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about the wikilinks commentary. Please accept my apology because I honestly was confused that I thought that some tables in MOSMAC2 were about wikilinks. Striking that. However a plethora of incoming wikilinks also affect the hits of any page._{(by the way could you kindly provide a translation of "red herring" to Greek because I am a bit confused about that term)}

I accept what you say that I might represent a minority view regarding the validity of the measuring methods cited in WP:PRIMARYTOPIC (the ones that "may" help). Honestly I would use the same scrutiny if it was any other topic at hand and while I might be driven by some sensitivity I try to present a rational criticism. I also believe some principles about Wikipedia should be held in higher regard than a subsection of a guideline.

By using my common sense, Macedonia is too ambiguous for any claim of primary topic to be founded.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 17:59, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I just put a bit more Google statistics on the page, using an .edu domain search. Of 150 pages, I get 104 for the country, 12 for ancient, 6 for region, 5 for Greece, 5 for indistinct or undiscernable, 5 for "meta"-usage, and 10 others (US places, people called M., etc.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:26, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and, a "red herring" is an irrelevant argument "which takes your attention away from the main subject or problem", according to my dictionary. Sorry I can't think of a Greek term. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:29, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Consider what contexts would be the top results in the edu search. What edu sites would be the most linked? My guess would be Law & Politics

See the "Macedonia site:.edu" search (lang:EN) suggested related searches at the bottom

• 'cia world factbook macedonia', 'skopje macedonia', 'macedonia macedonians', macedonia yugoslavia, 'ministry of foreign affairs macedonia'...

Compare it with the generic "Macedonia" internet search suggested related searches

• 'ancient macedonia', 'alexander the great', 'albania yugoslavia', 'macedonia greece' ...

That illustrates bias in .edu domain results. Note:Google suggests related searches based on popularity. In the generic search all meanings of Macedonia have increased popularity. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 05:54, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Wait, are we talking Google searches again? Those are not a reliable source of information about proper English usage. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 05:58, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

True, you are right; it is just an indication of what pages are more popular in the internet. It is especially not reliable if restricted in biased domains.

That is why in the past I focused on the popularity of search terms (as opposed to search results), search keywords used in English speaking countries. That is quite a different thing. If English speakers most commonly search for "macedonia ohio" that shows some prevalence of that meaning. However as people pointed out they might be searching for cinemas. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 06:03, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Google searches are one standard component of "primary usage" investigations on Wikipedia. The trouble about generic Google search for just "Macedonia" is that a huge proportion of the top results are taken up by pages that are themselves part of the conflict, i.e. propaganda material arguing the naming dispute. What we need is evidence what people who don't have an obvious bee in their bonnet about the conflict do when they use the name as a matter of routine. The .edu domain is generally agreed to have a lower percentage of junk content than other domains. If those results show a "bias" towards the country, then, well, yes, that's it. That's not a factor distorting the statistics, that's the result of the statistics. People out there who write quality content about the world are more often dealing with the modern country than with the ancient kingdom. This reflects the distribution of where and how our readers are likely to come across the name, and the distribution of what their likely interests will be when coming here. Quod erat demonstrandum. As for the question of google results statistics versus google search term use statistics, the latter is not suitable because it's fraught with too much incertainty, and you have not yet found a way how to read and interpret them correctly. Stop bandying about that silly meme about "English speakers most commonly search for ohio"; you are misreading the material, it's simply not true. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:15, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

1) What you say is true about generic Google search but its better than restricted Google search which is worse.

2) Unfortunately the .edu domain is biased because Law & Politics .edu sites have too much coverage of the naming dispute where "Macedonia" would come up as a meaning for the country. Just like in the weather channel transcripts "pressure" predominadely refers to atmospheric pressure (I am only giving this as an example - not an argument, not as a red herring - to illustrate that we must use generic searches)

3) I am not responsible for the "meme" about Macedonia ohio. Goole is. I am reading it clearly: "macedonia ohio" is the top related search phrase in the US. If we disagree then Ok, but its my right to read that evidence as shown. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 06:44, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

@2: The .edu search results have a far lower proportion of pages covering the naming dispute than generic google, that's precisely why they are more useful. Not more than a handful in those 150 I counted.

@3: I'll try once more explaining this. Hypothetical (simplified) scenario: We have 1000 Google searchers. Of these, say, 30 are searching for Macedonia, Ohio, the other 970 are searching for the country. The 30 will all use the search terms "Macedonia Ohio" in combination, that's the only way for them to get the result they want. The 970 will use "Macedonia" alone, or combined with any of a myriad other individual search terms. Few of those myriad other topic search terms will have significant clustering. This means that statistically, the 30 "Macedonia Ohio" combinations will stick out as one of the most prominent search term clusters. That's what your google page shows. It dosn't mean that searches combined with "Ohio" are particularly frequent compared to those which are not; it just means that the other searches don't cluster to the same degree. The finding is perfectly compatible with Ohio searchers being a small minority. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:57, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Other "clusters" ("macedonia greece", "macedonia skopje") also appear in that data. That's because using "Macedonia" alone together with specific other term will not work that well. Besides Ohioans would also use a myriad of topic search terms too. However you have a point that Google doesn't cover the clustering effect so well. Anyway let's end this thread here because I really didn't have any intention of talking about so much. I didn't mention Ohio as a red herring. I get carried away (I guess that's why I am being misunderstood as trying to derail the conversation). Ohio is really not the important issue, sure.

Anyway, Let's stick to my main argument which is: The country is not the primary topic in the most prominent domains of knowledge that are related to Macedonia. That's what I am trying to show just below by looking at books (better than the internet). Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 08:06, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

But your main argument is not well-sourced and is contradicted by Future Perfect's superior references and data. You are wrong, Shadowmorph, sorry. The country is the primary topic in nearly all domains of English usage. (Taivo (talk) 09:32, 16 June 2009 (UTC))

(by the way someone should start an article on the notable Macedonia Baptist Church, I am going to give it a try for a stub).Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 06:59, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

(<) Google Books search for "Macedonia" (lang=EN) Tip: always use '"Macedonia"' (with quotes) as your search term otherwise you will count results about the adjective too

• Refine results for "Macedonia":

1. History / Europe / Greece
2. History / Europe / Eastern
3. Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations

Those are the three dominant categories. Unfortunately it doesn't say what exact meaning of "Macedonia" actually is the primary topic is but it suggests that history of Greece has a comparably high coverage. I would kindly ask anyone to please try to give credit to my arguments and have an open mind as Future does. This tool is not irrelevant because it is direct evidence in favor of history of modern Macedonia (Greece) being the primary topic. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 06:32, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't see that "refine results" bit on my Google page. Where is it? – Anyway, we have already established that Google Books has a very different distribution from Google web content, so what's your point? Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:39, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

(It's right down the bottom. Maybe if you switch your preferences to Google.com if you are using Google.de or Google.co.uk ; You can do that by goind to google.com and click on the "go to" link. I never use any locale Google, they are biased.)

My point is that since we have a better respect on printed sources than online ones we should reflect the primary topic of books, which is history-related and does not seem to lean toward any specific meaning. That is evidence somewhat towards Esem0's outine proposal (F).Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 06:49, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

But your point is wrong, Shadowmorph, sorry. The primary topic of books is not "history". There are thousands of books on other topics that reference Macedonia--it is not just the topic of history books. When one looks at the body of books published since 1995 (books published before that date were generally "in the pipeline" before Macedonia's independence), then "Macedonia" is the usage. Especially when you look at atlases and encyclopedias. Your overly complicated arguments based on subtleties of Google searches are worthless, sorry. Future Perfect's evidence of usage at MOSMAC2 is clear, concise, and requires no sophistry to interpret. It shows conclusively that the country is the primary topic for "Macedonia" in common English usage. (Taivo (talk) 09:38, 16 June 2009 (UTC))

For example, Ronald M. Nowak, 1999, Walker's Mammals of the World (Johns Hopkins) uses "Macedonia" exclusively (and unambiguously) as at the entry for Dinaromys, Vol 2, pg. 1464. Since few species occur only within Macedonia, it is usually lumped in the term "Balkans", but when a species does occur in a limited range as Dinaromys bogdanovi does, then "Macedonia" is the term. In Ethnologue, 15th edition, "Macedonia" is also used throughout unambiguously. You must look at all fields of academic writing, not just in the history section, Shadowmorph. (Taivo (talk) 10:29, 16 June 2009 (UTC))

Your criticism is welcome however I stand to many of my points about MOSMAC2. That is because I agree with you that we must look at all fields of academic writing. But that is difficult for all of them. Can we agree on which are the more important ones related to Macedonia? Which domains of human knowledge should concern us the most in searching for a primary topic? Social sciences should not be the only one, like you said biology would be a topic. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 10:41, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

You are working from a false assumption in trying to focus on particular realms of academic writing. All realms are relevant and when taken as a whole, "Macedonia" means the country. You are trying to prop up your contention that there is some significant level of ambiguity and you are picking and choosing which data to use in order to prop up your preconceived result. The data, however, do not support your conclusion since the majority of scholarly writing means the country unambiguously when using the term "Macedonia". You cannot limit your analysis to this and that realm of science or humanities in order to prove a significant level of ambiguity. You must use all the data available. And that data unambiguously point to "Macedonia" meaning the country in most cases. (Taivo (talk) 10:48, 16 June 2009 (UTC))

But we agree about searching all realms! That is what I am trying to do too! The dictionary of contemporary English cover all realms. I searched for "Macedonia" in all books, it's not my fault that Google things that history is more prominent. I am trying to figure out the meaning of Macedonia in English in "all realms" at once. Every effort I have done was towards the same thing you are saying. As I said I appreciate Fut. and ChrisO's effort to do that in MOSMAC2 but many of the reference works they used are bound to only speak abuot the contry. If one sees the trend of the sources that cover all realms of knowledge (dictionaries and generic encyclopedias) everywere one looks Macedonia has three or four entries. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 11:05, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

You are not understanding, Shadowmorph. The Dictionary of Contemporary English (DCE) is only one source--it is not the same as using a variety of sources. The DCE's usage must be compared to the wide range of dictionaries and encyclopedias that list the country as the primary (and, in some cases, only) meaning. Your whole premise is misguided, Shadowmorph, sorry. You are working from the premise that since the list of resources that Future and ChrisO have gathered point unambiguously at the country as the primary meaning of "Macedonia", they must be using the wrong tool to measure or the wrong sources to examine. Your preconceived notion is that there is demonstrable major ambiguity between the country and any other meaning of "Macedonia", so that is what you are looking to prove. However, you are not finding the proof so you continue to insist on finding other permutations of the data set to prove your point. You are not looking at all the data, you are looking for specific pieces of the data so that you can use only that piece to prove your point of ambiguity. But the ease with which I found two major reference works within two different fields of study (biology and linguistics) beyond the evidence of atlases and encyclopedias that unambiguously use "Macedonia" to refer only to the country, shows how fruitless your search will turn out to be. Sure, if you restrict your search to "ancient Greek history", you might find a range of academia where the modern country is not the primary meaning of "Macedonia", but the very fact that the range of sources is so limited in scope proves how widespread and unambiguous in English is the meaning of "country" for the word "Macedonia". (Taivo (talk) 14:04, 16 June 2009 (UTC))

I believe that the sentence "a wide range of dictionaries and encyclopedias list the country as the primary (and, in some cases, only) meaning" is false. Every dictionary I opened lists many meanings. All generic encyclopedias also list many meanings. If you say that I should open a non generic encyclopedia (hypothetical example: "Music of the countries of the World") and browse to the volume titled "Macedonia" in its enumeration of countries then I don't see why that hypotherical encyclopedia would cover music in Alexander's Macedonia or why it wouldn't list music in Macedonia region of Greece under the volume "Greece". If I had the resources to do that I suspect that many of the specific encyclopedias in MOSMAC2 user "Macedonia" to refer to the ancient kingdom, the region part of it that lies in Greece, inside their texts under the volume about Greece. Unfortunately I can't check those texts out right now. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 09:24, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

An opinion

I've no idea where among all these pages to express an opinion on main article titles: if it's wrong here, please move it. I'm a historian and linguist, not linked with any particular country in the region. I support proposal B (but would also regard C as acceptable). Here’s why:

• Research on the primary meaning of the English word Macedonia will ultimately be inconclusive. Some dictionaries will hedge for marketing reasons; others were last edited thoroughly twenty years ago or more, when there was no country called Macedonia; others will make an infobox-assumption that a country having this name must override other meanings of the name. Some texts and sites will be talking mainly about countries, and there is only one country with this name; some will be talking about earlier periods of history, and it will not be possible to distinguish properly between our four current meanings of the name. The only really reliable guide would be the usage of other general encyclopedias, but they are not appropriate sources for Wikipedia. We have to make our own decision.
• A decision based on statistical estimates of the current primary meaning of the word will ultimately remain divisive. It will not solve any problem. This is because the country Macedonia covers only a part of the region to which the name Macedonia is locally agreed to apply: there is also a large traditional province of Greece with this name and a large region of Bulgaria with this name. No one disputes this, and no one seriously argues that those regions are wrongly named. In addition, all the countries concerned are not quite ready yet to live and let live: the name is a source of dispute. Therefore, whatever the statistics tell us, and however well we apply our rules, if the title of the country article is Macedonia we will appear to favour one country and we will appear to exclude those other regions. Thus we will invite continuing argument and disruption.
• Since the modern geographical region called Macedonia has no clear boundaries, and since older political units with this name have had extremely different boundaries, and since references to all these are limited in number and historical, it will not be useful to call any of these 'Macedonia' without a following explanatory term. It's admittedly true that a majority of users who type the name in a search box will be looking for the country Macedonia.
• For these reasons I support a disambiguation page Macedonia on which the first listed item is the country article Republic of Macedonia (or 'Macedonia (country)'). Andrew Dalby 14:13, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I like how you make your points, I wish everybody would discuss like you. Just one (more or less rhetorical) questions though, why make "Macedonia" a disambiguation page, if 90% of the people who type "Macedonia" want to see the info about the republic? I can see using "Republic of Macedonia" as the page name (for clarity sake), but I still think that "Macedonia" should redirect to Republic of Macedonia and have a separate Macedonia (disambiguation) page. I think my preference tends towards Proposal E because of 1. traffic reasons and 2. some disabiguation in title. But any solution E, A, B, or C works for me, I'm totally against Proposal D and F. man with one red shoe 18:46, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Andrew, thanks for your input; it's always good to hear from an uninvolved editor. As I've done a lot of research on usage (which you'll find here and below), I think I can offer some feedback on your comments.

1) There's nothing inconclusive about the naming in the reference works that I've surveyed. The country gets far more coverage than either the wider geographic region or the Greek region, and is referred to as plain "Macedonia" by the great majority of works. The works were all published within the last 15 years and I think I'm right in saying that most were published within the last few years (i.e. post-2000), so they clearly represent the current state of affairs. You're right that Macedonia is a fairly new country but don't forget that it existed as a Yugoslav republic - the Socialist Republic of Macedonia - from 1946 to 1992. I haven't attempted to do a detailed chronological survey of usage, but some initial research using the archives of the New York Times and the Times of London suggest that plain "Macedonia" has been used to refer to the republic for at least sixty years. I don't understand your statement that "other general encyclopedias ... are not appropriate sources for Wikipedia" and that "We have to make our own decision." On the contrary, WP:NPOV#Article naming requires us to use "common English language name as found in verifiable reliable sources".

2) The personal preferences of editors and national groups are irrelevant. We don't take a "sympathetic point of view". WP:NPOV bars us from adopting names based on personal preferences: "Wikipedia takes a descriptive rather than prescriptive approach", in other words we reflect the name that is in common use, rather adopting or rejecting a name on the basis that we (or someone) thinks it is "right" or "wrong". I'm sure Greeks would be unhappy if the article uses plain "Macedonia", but our approach isn't dictated by one party's political objections. This isn't a new issue - Arabs hate the name Persian Gulf, but we use it because that's the commonest term in English, not because we're pro-Iranian.

3) It's true that Macedonia has had blurry historical boundaries. However, the fact is that 90% of those who look for "Macedonia" on Wikipedia go to the country article, which is linked from more Wikipedia articles than any other Macedonia-related article, and our analyses of external usage show that the term is used more often to refer to the country than any other meaning. This clearly satisfies the criteria of Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Is there a primary topic?.

4) Disambiguation pages should be used as the primary page for a term if there is no primary topic for that term. Since this is not the case here, there is no need to have a disambiguation page at Macedonia, as the term so clearly refers primarily to the country. Additionally, the use of full formal names is deprecated (see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)#Rationale and below). The Arbitration Committee upheld both of these principles in its recent ruling on this issue. -- ChrisO (talk)

Thanks to you both for those reactions. To man with one red shoe: yes, I could accept proposal E. I feel it's my third choice, because although it would be nice for the majority of users who want the country of Macedonia, it would hinder the others. A dab page called Macedonia means that everyone gets where they want to be in two steps. A redirect to Republic of Macedonia means that a significant minority have to make 3 steps, and while looking for the link to the redirect page they are thinking "I don't agree that Macedonia should redirect here".

To ChrisO: You cite policies appositely: I deliberately didn't cite any, because I suspect that our policies by themselves aren't going to cool this particular dispute ... but I could be wrong :) I was aware that Republic of Macedonia might fall foul of our naming conventions, and that's why I listed proposal C with Macedonia (country) as my next choice.

I can see a lot of work's been done on the use of "Macedonia" in English (and considering the importance of context in such research, it's very difficult and time-consuming). From the link you give, I cite, no doubt quite unfairly, the very last line of text: In general encyclopedias, multiple meanings of the term "Macedonia" are employed. However, in most cases the country is called simply "Macedonia". It's because multiple meanings of the term "Macedonia" are employed in works comparable to ours that starting from a dab page Macedonia is legitimate. I accept that because in most cases the country is called simply "Macedonia" we might prefer Macedonia (country) rather than Republic of Macedonia as title for the country article. Andrew Dalby 21:33, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Addendum: on the question of using other encyclopedias, we don't disagree, I believe. I meant that Wikipedia sets a standard for naming, as much as, or more than, any other encyclopedia sets it. But in investigating usage, yes, of course, we consider their usage along with other reliable sources. Andrew Dalby 21:45, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Again, though, it comes down to what the primary topic for the term "Macedonia" is. The evidence there is indisputable. In the works that I surveyed, the Greek region and the wider region are far less widely or comprehensively covered than the modern country, and the ancient kingdom of the same name is more often than not referred to as "Macedon", not Macedonia. Macedonia is also not the only country to have a name that overlaps with some other entity. The most obvious point of comparison is Luxembourg (see Luxembourg (disambiguation)). The only country in the world for which we use "(country)" as a post-nominal disambiguator is Georgia, and then only because the US state has an equal level of prominence with the country in reliable sources - as I recall, it was determined that coverage was about 50:50 for the two Georgias. This is not a situation like Georgia where there is a genuine question of which meaning is the most prominent in English-language sources. Out of a sample of 600 sources researched by Future Perfect at Sunrise, 519 - over 86% - used the term "Macedonia" to refer to the country rather than any other meaning (see User:Future Perfect at Sunrise/MOSMAC2#Corpus searches).

Let's face it, this is a political dispute. This discussion would not be happening in the first place if it were not for the fact that some Greeks have a political objection to the use of the term "Macedonia" to refer to their northern neighbour. If I may say so without wishing to be rude, we seem to be approaching this from different angles. You talk about "cooling the dispute", by which you seem to be envisaging a compromise solution that keeps our resident Greeks happy (or at least not too unhappy). I'm looking at this from the point of view of (a) what best meets the expectations of the readers, the great majority of whom appear to associate the term with the country; and (b) what satisfies our naming policies. We're not in the business of "setting standards for naming" - unlike other encyclopedias, we are not supposed to commission or publish original content (hence Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Verifiability). That being so, we have to reflect what other sources say. We're supposed to be a mirror, not a trend-setter. Above all, we're supposed to be neutral - that is the principle behind the rule (in Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Article naming) that we are descriptive about names and not prescriptive. That means we do not adopt or reject names simply because someone likes them or hates them - we use names solely because they are the ones in general use. We do not endorse names simply by using them - we don't, for instance, use the name Falkland Islands because we're pro-British, we do so because that's the standard name in English for that territory. -- ChrisO (talk) 23:31, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

It's true that this is a political dispute, and it's true that Greek politics is extremely prickly on the subject of Greece's neighbours. So what? The only helpful way that I see is to stop focusing on that, and start focusing on having titles and articles that will be subject to fewer edit wars. Whether we have more Greeks or Macedonians among our editors I have no idea. Andrew Dalby 09:06, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate your intention of avoiding edit wars, but the whole point of this exercise is that whatever we decide here will be binding, and no more edit warring will be tolerated anyway. So no, "stop focusing on the politics" does not mean to "focus on what will produce fewer edit wars". Quite to the contrary: Perhaps for the first time in the history of this project we can actually afford to say: let's "stop focusing on the politics" exactly by ignoring the political prickliness, let's not appease the edit-warriors by choosing a compromise that will be less objectionable to them, but let's go purely and simply by what is best encyclopedic practice. We should not waste this opportunity; it's an important matter of principle and has the potential of setting a signal project-wide about how political conflicts should be dealt with. (Note that I'm still totally open to being convinced for options B or C; just not with the argument of appeasing the political objections.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:50, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Andrew I agree with you on your points. It happens that the current interpretation of NPOV reflected in WP naming conventions agrees 100% with the side of the Republic of Macedonia about what the name of their country should be. Luxembourg is obviously a red herring since there is no dispute there (no one disputes the name of the country of Luxembourg or the legitimacy of its affiliation to the region). In other cases where conflicts exist there is a treatment similar to the one you suggest. Republic of Macedonia, after it declared independence is now the "Macedonia" that is most discussed in the news, just like all the independent countries are. Paradoxically while Wikipedia strives to be NPOV, some ethnic Macedonian ultra-nationalists right now can cite Wikipedia to support their position about "Macedonia", which is that their country is a synonym of "Macedonia", the region as opposed to being a homonym of it. Of course it was the Yugoslavs choice to make that entity a homonym of the region and Greece objected to that since the 1950s, the Roosevelt administration sided with the Greeks on that part. There is something inherently controversial about having WP choose a primary topic between meanings of a proper noun, especially geographical ones that are tied to long standing conflicts. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 10:10, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

No, the comparison with Luxembourg is not a red herring, because Luxembourg is precisely parallel to our case. The only difference between the cases that you cite, the existence of the political dispute, is exactly the one factor that according to our policies we must ignore. You are again bringing back those "but it's politically contentious!" arguments. When will you ever learn that those simply don't count? Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:19, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Shadowmorph, your last sentence is important. It is really hard to decide what is the "primary topic" of an English place name for a non-English-speaking part of the world (myself I would say that the archaic kingdom of Macedonia before Philip II's conquests would be the primary topic! -- but I'm not advocating that here-and-now). No one should imagine that statistics can do it alone, and Wikipedia:Disambiguation specifically says that statistical and other tools are not determining factors in themselves. Notice the get-out clause on that same page: If there is extended discussion about which article truly is the primary topic, that may be a sign that there is in fact no primary topic. Would Wikipedia's discussions on the present topic count as "extended"? I think so!

Fut.Perf., by going all out for brevity I failed to make my real point. So, allow me to extend my sentence above: "start focusing on having titles and articles that will be subject to fewer edit wars because they not only are neutral, but also look neutral." It's difficult to achieve, but worth trying, I think. Andrew Dalby 13:07, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, to my taste, there's still a bit too much of that "placating political anxieties" component in there. Practically, it's a moot point, because as I said, there won't be any edit wars anyway. Not about the page title. Because whatever gets decided here will be binding, and the page will just be kept move-protected. Actual disruption in the form of edit wars can only occur over references in other articles, but those are unavoidable anyway, unless we went all the way back and gave the Greeks full "FYROM" throughout. As for the "get-out clause": that clause is of course not a carte blanche for mere filibustering, where a political faction just needs to make enough "but-we-don't-like-it" noise for enough time so it can then point to its own noise as evidence in support of its own demand. Sure, we may yet come to the conclusion that the primacy is not strong enough, but no, I would not accept the previous discussion as evidence for that, because it has never (yet) been held on a rational basis. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:36, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

A tiny variation of proposal B

I would like to support a tiny variation of proposal B. I don't want to draft a new letter proposal. Can I just add a B1 option of this proposal within B? Perhaps, I would follow the BRD cycle and just make some changes. Please feel free to modify what I am doing or revert me if you see the need to. My ultimate aim is to make things more clear. Dc76\^talk 16:52, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Go ahead. BalkanFever 16:53, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

For your information the proposals are now a subject of voting (here) as to which ones will continue to the next step, a wider community review. Several editors have already voted before seeing the variation you want to add. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 17:16, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, both of you! I just did edit.

So quickly, already voting!?!

In fact I edited a bit more proposal B. Please feel free to undo my edits in case you see that I changed something too much. The only thing I am asking from you (or anybody) before you undo me is to read carefully what I did and make sure you do want to revert.

P.S. When editting Macedonia-related article and pages, pls don't be afraid to ever revert me. With a couple other editors I (we) have a "gentlemen" convention (when editing political, historical articles): they can revert me 1000 times provided they did give it a thought when reverting, i.e. they can not "earn" 3RR for reverting me. In a sense, we push BRD cycles to the limit. Well, in practice we almost always narrow and solve the problems in 2-3 cycles, i.e. we don't even get to more, but anyway, it's a safety feature. If some admin would step in to want to issue a 3RR warning, I can step in and point to the previously explicitly said that "I might not agree with this editor on some political issue, but I know him as a editor for a quite a while and trust his judgement, so please allow him to revert me as much as he wants, because he does give it a thought. BRD cycles help us quickly solve issues." Dc76\^talk 17:57, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Discussion of Proposal [C]

Only thing is that Macedonia (ancient kingdom) was also a country (an ancient one and unrelated to the modern); (state) would be more unambiguous. However that might not be too important Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 13:25, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

See the time argument here that disfavors this option. (Taivo (talk) 19:35, 16 June 2009 (UTC))

Discussion of Proposal [D]

[D] applies also to Micronesia.  Andreas  ^(T) 18:33, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the addition. BTW, would you personally be sympathetic to that proposal? Because I'm actually not; I'm open for the other three but rather opposed to this one. If you want to write a convincing rationale for [D], please feel free to edit it, it's all yours. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:48, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I extended rationale for [D] without prejudice.  Andreas  ^(T) 20:58, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

there are more examples somewhat related but deffinately geographical and ethnic conflict areas, should I add them? I'll give them in this talk first to pick the ones more related. Nagorno-Karabakh is one I think.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 09:00, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I can live with any other proposal, but this one is horrible. Macedonia region is not important enough to deserve the direct link from Macedonia. All the examples used are bad. Irland and Taiwan are islands which are clearly important geographical items, Macedonia is not. Nagorno-Karabakh is a region is not a recognized republic that's why the article talks about the region. I don't get the Micronezia example. China is an example of "Other crap exists on Wikipedia" in my opinion it should be changed, but I'm not here on this page to argue that case.

I propose if more people agree with me to remove this red-herring proposal. man with one red shoe 19:52, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

No, I'd say leave it where it is. It's a bad proposal, but it deserves to be aired.

Apart from the problems that you mention, the biggest problem with this proposal is that it completely ignores what we know about user behaviour regarding the Macedonia articles. Page view statistics show that the vast majority of readers looking for articles about Macedonia go to the country article. The usage of the region article is less than 10% of that of the country article. This has always been the case, even before the page moves in April. This solution would make things more difficult for the majority of our users, as they would have to navigate from the region page to the disambiguation page and then to the country article, or (assuming a hatnote) from the region page to the country page via the hatnote - two or three steps where there is only one at the moment. I note that in Andreas' rationale he hasn't provided any explanation of how this is supposed to benefit the readers. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:37, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't want to censor it, I just want us to focus on viable alternatives not on things that can't reach consensus. But if this is seen as too polemic we can leave it where it is unless the poster realizes too its value and remove it himself. man with one red shoe 23:05, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it was me who posted it, but only for the sake of completeness. Andreas expanded the rationale a bit, but he didn't say if he'd ultimately be in favour of it. My own thoughts about it have been at User:Future Perfect at Sunrise/MOSMAC3. If nobody comes forward to actually make it his own, we can at some point just cross it out and mark its deprecation among the "resolved" bits. Fut.Perf. ☼ 23:10, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I understand the completeness issue, but see my post about principles, I think this violates a clear disambiguation principle and if we build consensus on this we should cross it out and explain why it was crossed out. man with one red shoe 23:21, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

FYI: "The Federated States of Micronesia are located in the region known as Micronesia, which consists of hundreds of small islands divided in eight territories. The term Micronesia may refer to the Federated States or to the region as a whole."" (quoted from Federated States of Micronesia.  Andreas  ^(T) 01:38, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

What's the primary use of "Micronesia"? If an English speaker says "Micronesia" what does he refers to? man with one red shoe 01:42, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the same range of reference works that I used to compile this list, it would appear that there is no consistent naming - Micronesia is used by some works to refer primarily to the archipelago of which the country is a part, while others list the country (generally as "Micronesia, Federated States of") as the primary meaning. I think this is probably a case where English-language usage is not yet settled, unlike Macedonia, where the term is almost always used to refer primarily to the country (which is usually called simply "Macedonia"). -- ChrisO (talk) 08:40, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the numbers for Micronesia but in the list you linked it's (28%) use "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". What is the threshold for "consistent naming"? Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 12:11, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

This proposal (D) is perfectly good, viable, was used once, and is consistent with the treatment of many other topics. For example consider asking yourselves what is the primary topic for China, what does the "average English speaker" think when he encounters the word? What does the corpora say about "China". Considering that the great majority of sources used in the corpora were news sources I bet the corpora will say that China is a country. The corpora argument is flawed. With all do respect to the work you've done, please ChrisO and Future don't treat that argument as the ultimate truth. The Republic of Macedonia may be the primary topic for news sources because they're biased towards international politics over historical and geographical information. That doesn't mean that the country is the primary topic in all contexts. Remember this is an encyclopedia, not a newspaper. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 12:20, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

And yet the majority of encyclopedias do treat the country as the primary topic for the term Macedonia. Not just that, but as Fut. Perf's analysis of English-language sources shows, the country is overwhelmingly the primary topic for the term in general. There are certainly certain contexts in which the ancient kingdom will be the primary topic for the term - for example, ancient history. Not so much geography though; as the analysis of reference works shows, most encyclopedias do not even have an article on the region. The country has far more coverage in reference works than the region or the ancient kingdom (which is predominately called "Macedon" by these reference works). In the vast majority of everyday contexts - politics, international relations, sport, military, economics, current events in general - the term is used to refer to the country, as a glance at Google News shows. -- ChrisO (talk) 12:30, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Three points: first, the China case cannot act as a precedent; it's been itself the subject of no less politically motivated POV pushing and pulling than this case here, so there's no reason to assume it represents a more rational application of Wikipedia policy than whatever we come up with. Second, when talking about primacy, please always remember to distinguish the two perspectives: (a) "which thing X is most frequently meant when somebody uses name Y?" and (b) "which name Y is most frequently used when somebody wants to refer to thing X?" – My corpus survey answers to question (a); ChrisO's reference works survey answers to question (b); both sets of numbers are not immediately comparable. Third, it is not true that news sources were strongly over-represented in the American Corpus I used. As you can see here, it contains news sources and academic journals in the exact same proportion, plus a lot of other material. However, the relative frequency of references to any of the Macedonias is higher in the news sources than elsewhere, so news sources are more strongly represented among the set of references found. But that only reflects the likelihoods of where and how our readers would naturally come across such references in real life, so it's an appropriate reflection of what "common usage" is, rather than constituting a distoring factor that we'd have to factor out again. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:44, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Let's not forget that China is not fundamentally a naming conflict; it's a territorial conflict. Neither the PRC nor Taiwan disputes that the other party has a legitimate right to use the name "China"; the crux of that dispute is that the two sides each claim to be the rightful government of the whole of China, including Taiwan. This is quite different from Macedonia, where the dispute is purely over who has the right to use the name "Macedonia" and not over who is the rightful ruler of the whole territory. The disposition of the China article reflects that difference as well as (obviously) the POV agendas that Fut. Perf. alludes to. -- ChrisO (talk) 13:04, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

The China situation is complicated, but FutPerf and ChrisO have it reasonably well-summarized. In the past, I've supported the status quo there, in recent times, I've begun to move away from it (but am not proposing any changes for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I haven't quite firmed up my idea for what the best solution would be). The status quo there is contentious, with no real consensus behind it, which is another reason it really can't be used as an example. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 07:46, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) From the point of view of the reader, this is both the friendliest and most "presentable" solution. The user will not be directed through a dab page, which editors may be used to, but remain fairly disconcerting to non-editors (especially when they are relatively complex). The first article they see will likely not be the article they seek, but will include background of interest, no matter which article they were ultimately searching for. And links to the article they actually want will be immediately and clearly available. Jd2718 (talk) 16:29, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Why on earth would we want to send a reader first to a page that is "likely not be the article they seek"? If they are on a page that isn't the one they seek, the only legitimate issue is how to help them get away from it as quickly as possible. That can't happen if they first have to wade through a whole article that isn't the one they came for. I'm honestly mystified how anybody could find that more user-friendly than a short, brisk dab page. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:22, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Because we will never, this way, send a user to "the wrong" topic. The majority who want the country get the region the country is part of, seems right, but they want more specific, which is one click forward. The group who would like the Greek province get the region the province is part of... etc. Every other proposal sends a minority to "the wrong" topic. Never happens here. Most will need a second click, but will not perceive it as a problem with the encyclopedia. Jd2718 (talk) 00:18, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I like this proposal, and have advocated for it before (during ARBMAC2, on the Macedonia talk page). There comes a point when we have to look beyond the sources and think of a solution that will also be preferable to the majority of our readership too; remember, writing an encyclopedia requires a little bit of common sense, and arguing about which entity is used in more sources loses focus of the big picture. By moving the region to the undisambiguated page, we standardise Macedonia with the other articles in which a country shares its name with a region it doesn't have full control over, e.g. China instead of the Republic of China or the People's Republic of China (who assert sovereignty over the others' territory), Korea (and Korean Peninsula instead of North Korea and South Korea (likewise), Palestine (which is broken up into primarily Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories), Ireland (in which the state occupies the majority of the region), and Micronesia (likewise). The two Congoes would probably count towards my argument too. I know Ireland is in flux right now, but it seems more focused on whether it should be preceded by "Republic of" rather than moving the country to the undisambiguated page. By taking this proposal, I think that we'll see a lot less bickering over what goes where than the others (oh, and I support "Republic of Macedonia", not "Macedonia (country)"). Sceptre ^(talk) 17:56, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

What is your evidence that the readers are primarily interested in the wider region? Page view statistics show that the great majority are going to the country. The region article gets less user interest than the country, the ancient kingdom and the modern Greek region. Don't forget we're not operating in a vacuum here - any solution that makes it more difficult for the majority of readers to get to where they want to go isn't going to be viable. Creating "a lot less bickering" isn't why we're here; we're supposed to be writing an encyclopedia for the general public, not trying to keep politically disputatious editors happy. -- ChrisO (talk) 18:12, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not saying that they're primarily interested in the wider region; I'm saying that the majority of people would find it as an adequate solution to a tricky problem. Obviously the current solution is problematic because of the arbitration case is spawned. I know that there will be some subset of people complaining about RoM/M(c), but not as many as there are now. And I don't think it'll make it difficult for people to find their way to the country at all; we'll have hatnotes and links in the lead section which make it rather simple. That, and someone who knows that Macedonia is also a region/ancient kingdom would probably go strait to RoM anyway. Sceptre ^(talk) 18:20, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

The only reason some people find the current solution problematic is because politically they don't like it. That should not be an issue of any consideration for us at all, as a matter of principle. We must not cave in to such pressures. Other than that, if you don't like option A, then I'm still puzzled how you can find the option of sending people to wade through an article that's irrelevant to what they are looking for more palatable than sending them through the obvious standard solution, the dab page. I honestly don't get that. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:27, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

It's not a matter of caving into political pressure; it's more of avoiding it all together. And we're not wading through an article at all; the RoM links in Macedonia (region) are quite prominent. Sceptre ^(talk) 18:57, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Again I ask - how does this benefit the readers? The solution is patently aimed at dealing with a political dispute among editors, not at benefiting the readers. -- ChrisO (talk) 18:58, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Sceptre, if you don't expect the reader to "wade through" the article, but only to skim the intro until they find the links, why would you want to send them there in the first place? How would navigating onwards to the other target articles be easier and quicker from here than from here? (Not even mentioning the fact that it's a very poorly written article.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:02, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Sceptre, you said "I'm saying that the majority of people would find it as an adequate solution to a tricky problem". The majority of people don't know about the "tricky problem", which is only a political problem outside the bounds of Wikipedia. In common English usage, there is no "tricky problem"--"Macedonia" refers to the country first and foremost as the majority of page hits demonstrates and as all the evidence collected at MOSMAC2 demonstrates. (Taivo (talk) 19:19, 14 June 2009 (UTC))

See the time argument here that disfavors this option. (Taivo (talk) 19:36, 16 June 2009 (UTC))

Criticism of MOSMAC2 evidence

In MOSMAC2, the dictionaries (the most reliable source to cite when we talk about meanings of words) say that "Macedonia" has many meanings. So how does one say the country is the primary one?

Also do you count as encyclopedias that "don't have an article about the region" the various Atlases in your ("your" goes to both of you) analysis? Because I had the impression that an Atlas only has entries that are sovereign countries. e.g. "A Guide to Countries of the World". Any single reference work that doesn't have the other entries is simply because it actually is composed of only entries about the countries. The generic encyclopedias in the MOSMAC2 analysis all have entries about the kingdom at least (sometimes merged in one entry together with the Greek region) and the wider region in the more complete ones. Wikipedia is a generic encyclopedia. To cite Britannica about what topics deserve encyclopedic coverage, it has four "Macedonia" entries just like it was expected, since there are four primary meanings. That is evidence of the non-existence of a primary topic. I ask again is there a concrete way to find what is the primary meaning, in a truly generic encyclopedia? Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 14:01, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

You are quite right in pointing out that reference works which have both different disambiguation needs and different disambiguation methods from ours are not good models for determining how we should handle our disambiguation needs. The same, incidentally, also goes for the Library of Congress classification system and similar things. The only point these examples can serve as evidence for is that it is generally legitimate and in keeping with common usage to call the country plain "Macedonia". They tell us nothing about how to handle the disambiguation technicalities. For the question of "primary topic", the only criteria are usage frequency (which is where the corpus surveys come in) and page view frequencies. On both counts, the country wins hands down. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:07, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

About the corpus surveys, you say 1019 occurences. You have admitted that the news sources in the survey actually have multiple occurences from the same news source. Since this whole discussion always revolves around your MOSMAC2, could you please give a link to the actual corpus/web tools etc. that you used, so that my criticism can be better? Judging only from what you have said it seems to me that the 1019 occurrences actually come from, I don't know, 100 sources? Wouldn't it be possible to count the sources and not the number of occurrences of the word?

A sidenote, you understand the complexities of making a scientific survey to answer the question "What is the primary meaning of the word Macedonia in common English speaking?". I really appreciate the effort but it has flaws and it is not transparent enough for others to review it. Wouldn't it be better if we could find an outside reliable sources that could say something in the likes of "Macedonia most commonly refers to the geographic and historic region spreading 2500 years from ancient Macedon to today". If for example some scientific sources make some points about that wouldn't it be better than the analysis of some Wikipedia editors? (no offense) Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 14:28, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

The web interface for the CCAE is here. Back then, I also started doing the same with the British National Corpus, but I think I didn't finish counting those (can't remember, actually), but what I saw must have been pretty much along the same lines. You could of course try counting unique texts rather than individual tokens, but then you'd need a method of how to deal with texts that contain the word in more than one meaning. My personal guess is that this way of counting would, if anything, further reduce the weight of the "ancient" meaning, because the contexts where that turned up seemed to be specialised academic articles on ancient warfare, where the clustering effect would have been especially strong. In any case, I also began a google search of .edu domain web documents, counting only the first occurrence of the word in each unique page, and the overall distribution seems similar. We now have so many different statistics from different domains, and they all support each other's finding that the country is far ahead of the other, that we really can stop bothering about how reliable they are. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:41, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

About your final point: I don't think such studies are likely to exist. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:42, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Found it: http://www.americancorpus.org/. Let me see... Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 14:39, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Initial observations: The sources are categorized to news, fiction, academic etc. First noticable inclusion: the script of the movie "The Dark Year" set in 1914 where the meaning of Macedonia is anachronistic and better refers to the now divided former Ottoman region.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 14:46, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Here is another one hit from the survey: a movie magazine commentary quoting excerpts from the Dust (film) by known ethnic Macedonian director and propagandist, one who popularized the fictional "Macedonian genocide" claim (in the Shadows (2007 film)). Are those the "reliable sources" about common Engish usage?

I'll try to make a more NPOV analysis of the corpus survey but it will take time which unfortunately we don't have since we are under a WP:deadline of one month, while you were not under any when you compiled MOSMAC2.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 15:02, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Check out Time Magazine Corpus: http://corpus.byu.edu/time/, the results seem very different.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 15:04, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

The Time Corpus contains texts from 1923 to the present, so the large majority of those texts would obviously no longer reflect current usage. As for individual tokens in the CCAE or any similar corpora, the whole point about such collections is that they are totally random, so of course they don't just consist of texts whose actual contents are high quality. Such corpora are supposed to be representative of what the "man on the street" actually says and hears – and that includes some portion of bullshit, obviously. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:11, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Apparently WP:BLP isn't limited to article space, Shadowmorph. I don't go around insulting all the Greek morons I can think of. BalkanFever 15:10, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about that comment about the director, still he is not a reliable source by WP standards. Talk pages are not censored, that is my opinion and "propagandist" is not an insult but a description of his work (just see the movie). I didn't include that in any article.

Future, by checking other corpus like http://corpus.byu.edu/oed/ it seems like they all include anachronistic references. That is because they are trying to figure out common English usage now but that is definetely not determined solely by looking at texts after 1992 as any middle aged man will tell you. If that was the case then Madonna would be about Madonna (entertainer). If those older texts were irrelevant then why did they include it in the first place, huh? Why are you picking out from them, by what standard? The research includes all the texts it includes, we didn't do it. And the tools help you focus on various contexts. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 15:22, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Conveniently, from the related surveys found here: http://corpus.byu.edu/ only the corpus that Future used included only post-1990 texts. Are the other ones wrong? The British National corpus also gives different results and it is based on post-1980's texts which are contemporary related. The choice of 1990 as a threshold for what is "contemporary" and what is not is arbitrary while critical to the outcome of the survey about Macedonia for reasons too apparent.

And by the way that survey while handy is the work of one person: Mark Davies so it counts only as one single reliable source on the matter of common English usage. There could be other surveys we don't know of yet. So do we have to base our decisions on the work of one person and the assessment of that work by two involved Wikipedia editors? Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 15:42, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, this has now reached the point where I will again pull the emergency brake and stop responding. Feel free to go on amusing yourself with your wikilawyerish ramblings. This part of the discussion is over; I have nothing to respond on this intellectual level. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:51, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Is it wikilawyerish to say we should look into other reliable sources too? I have given out another source about contemporary English usage of the word Macedonia that is different from the corpus survey. It's under the [B] proposal discussion.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 16:47, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Comment by man with one red shoe

moved from project page - Jd2718 (talk) 03:01, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

• The region is the least common meaning of "Macedonia" after Rep. of Macedonia, Macedonia region of Greece, and Ancient Macedonia. Landing people on an article about the region is least likely to give them the info they are looking for without having to go to another link. man with one red shoe

I moved this comment here because I thought the project page was for positive proposals, and that criticisms would fall to Talk. I may have been mistaken. Jd2718 (talk) 03:11, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

In any event, the region lands people on the wrong article, right topic, more than any of the other proposals. for what its worth. Jd2718 (talk) 03:11, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Don't know how to post these comments, these are relevant issues, if we only mention the rosy items like "This is the only proposal that is unlikely to leave any readers believing Wikipedia has misdirected them." the argument becomes very misleading. We should make a consensus wording, but that's very far from consensus that's why I felt the need to add my comment, I'm wary of editing the rosy comments of other people but at least I need to mention drawbacks... man with one red shoe 03:23, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

At the main discussion it looked like they were encouraging drawback discussion on Talk - but we'll see how others weigh in. In any event, the discussion is appropriate, and I am comfortable with it being here and summarized on the project page, if that's what others decide is best. And the problem you describe would be real, I don't mean to dispute that (though I would question how big a problem it is, if the readers don't perceive it as one.) Jd2718 (talk) 03:30, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

That was my proposal too, but I thought we'd try to reach a common language, not a rosy description of the proposals, because of such imbalance I don't see any other way than adding a section "Arguments against", I guess Fut. Perf. was right in suggesting it after all... man with one red shoe 04:04, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

(out) We should rethink the point that includes "therefore it doesn't deserve the main focus" - that treads on dangerous territory as we begin to look at pluses and minuses of other proposals. Note, I am not trying to censor criticism - I know I've supported a very leaky proposal. I am hoping we can model behavior for other, perhaps more contentious parts of this discussion. Jd2718 (talk) 04:00, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it needs to be reworded a bit, but that's the main point. Who made the proposal made an argument that doesn't apply in my view, Islands like Ireland and Taiwan are main geographic features that do "deserve" specific treatement, non-geographic (political feature) doesn't deserve more than the political parts that gave its name. Do you get the point? Can you reword my sentence in a more neutral tone? man with one red shoe 04:04, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Re-worded. Better? man with one red shoe 04:13, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Definitely, thank you. I may rework on my own a bit. And, on the other foot, so to speak, feel free if you are able, to make the pro- points sharper. Jd2718 (talk) 05:06, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with others who've said this is a poor proposal in that it puts the least common use of the term in first. If not sending people to the "wrong" article is a primary concern, that's a reason to put the disambig page at Macedonia, not to put the region there. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 07:35, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

It's worth asking what value placing the disambig page at Macedonia would add, considering that the great majority of readers are going to the country page anyway. It seems apparent that it would only add an unnecessary step for most readers. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:45, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Discussion of Proposal [E]

Proposal [E] is off-topic for this discussion. Note the very first line of the page - "This page is for centralised discussion of the page titles of the six principal pages relating to Macedonia". Now compare proposal [E] - "the title of the article about the country is not addressed by this proposal". I've taken the liberty of moving it to Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Macedonia/other articles, which deals with how Macedonia is to be referred to in other articles (without addressing the page titles issue). -- ChrisO (talk) 09:19, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, I'd prefer to keep it where it was. It's clearly one in the set of alternatives about what to do with the main page titles, especially since it affects the issue of what content is placed at "Macedonia". Placing that proposal here made good sense to me. (Actually, I don't find it such a terribly bad proposal either.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:23, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I thought this discussion was supposed to be about the titles of the six main pages? It doesn't address that at all - it only addresses how the state should be referred to in the body text of other articles. -- ChrisO (talk) 09:30, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Uhm, no, the way I read it, it's mainly about what should be at the page title "Macedonia" (i.e., a redirect to the country article, but not the country article itself). Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:40, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I can add all the possible names for the country if it is an issue. I thought I shouldn't flood the page with E.1 E.2 E.3 and all the redirect related solutions. The proposal D also has two proposals because D actually doesn't adress the title of the country article either. It is fine now I think.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 12:30, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Principles?

Resolved

 – There will be no striking down of proposals. WP:IAR has limited applicability in this context Fritzpoll (talk) 09:45, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

I think we started with the wrong foot here by providing proposed solutions ignoring the principles that we need to follow. For example Proposal D ignores a clear principle that a solution should follow:

• In case of ambiguity, the subject should be the most common use (not a secondary or tertiary one) for that word, or a most common use cannot be determined from the presented evidence, it should be a disambiguation page.

No matter what we debate what's the common use and if we need a dab page one thing is clear: the most common use for Macedonia is not "Macedonia (region)". Since this solution violates this completely we should simply remove it since there's no reason to waste time on a solution that clearly violates principles that we need to follow. man with one red shoe 23:18, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Can we achieve a consensus on this principle and then move forward? man with one red shoe 23:18, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I quite agree. We needn't be too quick about the removal though. Fut.Perf. ☼ 23:30, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

OK, I won't remove it, but I want to make sure we build proposals on bases of clear principles. Things are murky usually, but I think this is a clear-cut case. Should we add this principle to the list of principles in disambiguation section in the main page or is it implied by "When there is a well-known primary topic for an ambiguous term, name or phrase ... then that term or phrase should either be used for the title of the article on that topic or redirect to that article."? man with one red shoe 23:35, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

"Cannot be determined" is somewhat ambiguous phrase. Do you mean "cannot be shown in evidence" or "cannot be agreed by editors"? If it's the latter, then I'm afraid it's just going to invite more stonewalling and deadlock. -- ChrisO (talk) 23:46, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Evidence (changed the wording, better?). I mean if we have about 50% use for Macedonia for Greece region, and 50% for the country then the subject cannot be clearly determined and we should use a disambiguation page and use other solution for the country, either "Macedonia (country)" as in case for Georgia (country) or "Republic of Macedonia" and have Macedonia a dab page. man with one red shoe 00:41, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Guys, agree with this principle? We'd strike down two proposals with one principle :D man with one red shoe 14:18, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

No striking down of proposals please.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 16:31, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I though the proposals will have to rely on existing policies and no extra drafted principles. The rationales will be evaluated but not by us.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 16:34, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

But it is an existing policy. This is what WP:DAB says. The simple page title goes either to the dab page or to the primary topic. Simple. Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:44, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I got confused by the discussion to change the wording and because I couldn't find the wording cited as a principle in the bullet at the top of this section. There are other relevant policies and the discussion about the validity of the arguments about each proposal would be evaluated later and not by us, so there is no reason to censor proposals. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 17:47, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

It's not about censorship, it's about eliminating proposals that are clearly not viable so we won't waste time on them. This proposal is clearly against Wikipedia disambiguation polices (and common sense), man with one red shoe 21:35, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

censor, eliminate, "exterminate", what's the difference :) ? Noone's forced to waste his time on anything. I am still trying to figure out the basis in WP policy for the main topic at China, there has to be some. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 21:58, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

What makes you think that China is an example of good practice on Wikipedia? Or do you claim that any instance on Wikipedia complies with logic and policies? Frankly I'm getting tired of this kind of debate... man with one red shoe 22:12, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Found the one for Taiwan, it's WP:NC-TW, seems like it's based on consensus, no idea how it was formed. Maybe its because WP:IAR is also a policy: so no deletion of anyone's proposal is going to happen here. China is not just any instance and there are others too. The purpose is to find a consensus on the naming - not to blindly follow the policies. If a proposal is better and has some basis in other policies (while not all) then it's not any worse than any other one here. Wikipedia wasn't supposed to have any strict rules but most of the arguments here forget it. And they call on me for wikilaweyring. The macedonia naming dispute is unique and I am not sure we can find one single text in policies or guidelines to explicitly tell as what to do with that. Our primary concern should be to improve Wikipedia. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 22:32, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

IAR means to ignore rules in order to create a better encyclopedia. It does not mean ignore rules to make things more palatable to somebody's national POV. We will apply Wikipedia policy here, and there will be not one iota of compromise about that. I have seen no other motivation for this proposal yet than the desire to de-emphasize the country article and make access to it less direct. That's simply not acceptable. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:41, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't care what is the reason behind this proposal what I care is that this is completely against Wikipedia's principles. Take for example the "least surprise" principle when comes to choosing names, Wikipedia should use names and redirects that don't surprise people, linking directly to a third use is totally against this principle, any other two choices who are more popular are better. More importantly, if we are losing time on this clear-cut decision how we'll get to any meaningful decision when things are not so clear cut, Shadow, let me be direct, why do you waste our time supporting a solution that is against clear principles and policies of Wikipedia? (this really bothers me) man with one red shoe 23:23, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I haven't said I support only that solution, I support its right to be here. I support other solutions primarily. While you say that it is clearly against WP policies and principles it seems to me that it is according to WP's purpose as an encyclopedia and WP has no strict rules to restrict us. The region article is of more encyclopedic importance since it promotes historical and geographical knowledge (in WP, and the internet in general) rather than the wikiality that English-speaking POVish news sources have agreed too to be politically correct towards a country where English-speaking nations happen to have a geopolitical interest. I would support the region solutions for all the contemporary conflict areas (oh wait a minute, all the contemporary conflict areas already have the region as the primary topic, including notably China). That my friend is the reality, and that is what bothers me.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 00:48, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

People who have problems with the reality end up bad... *grin* China article at a quick examination is not about a region. it's about Chinese culture (Chinese civilization) which in my opinion is a horrible solution. But keep bring it up even though I don't give a rat's tail what is it about, This is certainly not the first time you invoke crap and basically say "why don't we crapify this too...". But let me explain it one more time: Macedonia region is not an important geographical feature -- it's just a random region that got it's name from the ancient Macedon and from the people that inhabited that place (and for other geo-political reasons) I'm sorry, but it doesn't deserve to be a main article to which "Macedonia" should direct when there's a country with the same name and there's a region of Greece with that name, both much more important (and most importantly much more often referred as "Macedonia" than the region). If you take a random book or newspaper and find "Macedonia" what is that book likely to talk about? It's either Rep. of Macedonia, Macedonia (Greece), or ancient Macedonia (depending of context) the least likely subject would be the region. Same for Wikipedia users, they would be least likely to search for info about the region when they type in "Macedonia". I'm one step from assuming bad faith if you refuse to understand these basic facts. Do you claim that "Macedonia" refers mainly to the region? Yes, no? If no, how can you possible request that something that is the forth in usage be the main subject of Macedonia? Please come clear about this, or stop filibustering with irrelevant examples. man with one red shoe 01:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Please do not assume my bad faith. I don't know how much clearer I can get. I have already answered. Answering again: I think this proposal is deserving and I believe it follows at least one basic WP policy, that is WP:IAR. It is also possible that it doesn't violate some of the other policies mentioned since the region includes the parts that therefore all have their place in the primary topic (only summarized). Furthermore the assessment of the compliance should be done at a later stage and by the 3 moderators/evaluators. I also believe that the region treatment would be more encyclopedic than any of the articles about the components of the region and thus following the first pillar of Wikipedia. Also don't bet on the region being the least likely candidate if you check out some dictionaries and reference works (the ones that don't only cover countries in a list of countries), the region is given equal weight to the other meanings. I also said it is not my first choice (I didn't draft the proposal either). Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 04:30, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

If you don't stop I will invoke IAR and delete all your comments, Wikipedia will be much better for that. Got the point? man with one red shoe 05:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

(undent) Yeah, IAR can be a convenient policy for anybody. ChrisO invoked IAR to make the move from Republic of Macedonia to Macedonia, and Wikipedia readers are in fact better off for it. Apparently IAR has its merits for this proposal too (not sure if I agree). Apparently also for what Shoe just said. BalkanFever 06:05, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Discussion of Proposal F

Question to Esem0: with your "backbone" or "central" article, do you mean that this should be a totally new article, or that it should be combined with the existing "region" article? If the first, I'd be strongly opposed: one thing we definitely don't need is yet another Macedonia article attracting a permanent danger of growing into a POV fork of whatever else. If the second, your proposal is basically identical to Proposal D. I can imagine it might be feasible to re-structure the region article into something that can act as a somehow beefed-up de facto disambiguation page, although it would be a highly non-standard solution, and I think for many readers the simple disambiguation page is much quicker, because they can choose the disambiguation target they want without first reading through the outline of an entire article. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:13, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't see either how this proposal adds anything useful. It's either the same as D (which is the worst proposal till now) or basically a beefed-up disambiguation which is worse than a simple disambiguation. man with one red shoe 07:59, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure I got the proposal right but it seems to me its proposing to put something like an introduction to the topic of Macedonia under the title Macedonia in the likes of introduction to Evolution. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 12:07, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

It's true that our article about the region is very long and confusing but maybe we should fix that one better.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 12:24, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Explanation: Macedonia will be in lieu of current Macedonia (disambiguation), so that we do not create yet an additional new article. It will be something between the current Macedonia (region) and Macedonia (disambiguation) which will be expanded expeditiously to make it a concise yet informative article and a "de facto" (per FP above) disambiguation page. I proposed one historical outline (historical sections) but they can be chosen and tailored to satisfy possible disagreements. The historical order of the sections could even be reversed to allow a faster access to the country article link (near the top), for those who might worry about the country being pushed towards the bottom. Ideally, it should stay in ascending chronology, if we want to be strictly encyclopedic. Thus the reader will be guided via the natural course of the existence and evolution of Macedonia (otherwise one is hit with an arbitrary map of an entity at the top, which is different from its historical origins). If "beefed-up" is used as a negative trigger word, I would like to ask that this be re-considered from the content of the proposal and not from the trigger word. I envisage a concise article skilfully written to address the main problems discussed. It is a somehow flexible proposal (hence a bit unclear). Esem0 (talk) 13:34, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but in this case you'll find me adamantly opposed. Upgrading the dab page to an article means creating a new article, and this new article will be a POV fork of those we already have. And we have too many Macedonia articles already anyway. Disambiguation pages need to be quick and short, so that readers spend as little time as possible on them. Your version, in contrast, seems to imply that readers first have to find their way through a whole article before they even find the link to the country page. That's unacceptable. They are mere navigation aids, not articles. Also, there's no way you can justify this on the basis of our existing policies and guidelines. The WP:DAB guideline is quite clear: the simple title must lead either to the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, or to a standard-conformant dab page. There's no legitimate guideline-conformant third option. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:53, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Yea Esem, Future is right. However you might want to pick an article of the existing ones and explicitly mention in that proposal because merging the dab page with an other article is out of the question. One likely candidate to update your proposal would be the region. Another one could be the Macedonia (terminology). That is because writing a new article that it is actually an introduction to Macedonia might be a burden to an already complicated series of articles. However to construct that article is not against policy if it has genuinely new treatment that is deserving to its title; but still you will have to convincingly pose it in a way that it is cannot be considered a WP:POVFORK. For what you say you mean a very short article. And then there has to be some argument that the "introduction" article is the primary topic, that is that people would want to read that at first. I am afraid Evolution does not redirect to introduction to Evolution either Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 14:15, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

All of above comments are fine by me. If you think the proposal is good by picking one of the existing articles, then my proposal includes that too. If the "dab" page can be nothing else, then let it stay as "dab". Picking one of the articles means that some material should be shifted around to other articles, or as, you say, write a new article. I am not persisting in any way, but it may trigger some alternative thoughts around. Thanks. Esem0 (talk) 14:32, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

See the time argument here that disfavors this option. (Taivo (talk) 19:36, 16 June 2009 (UTC))

Assessing the bigger picture

I'm concerned that some editors appear to be missing the big picture in this discussion, and perhaps misunderstanding what we're trying to do here. We're not operating in a vacuum. We already have a set of articles with a working status quo, in daily use by large numbers of readers. We have a responsibility to ensure that we don't make it unnecessarily difficult for them to find what they are looking for. Our decision also has to be based on policy - a consensus to violate policy is by definition inoperative. In particular, we're not trying to find some way of meeting editors' political concerns. What we need to do here is to find a solution that:

• Directs readers with the minimum of difficulty to the most demanded article(s);
• Meets policy requirements;
• (Potentially) Improves on the status quo.

These issues have been ignored or overlooked in much of the discussion so far - several proponents have not addressed these issues. To refocus discussion on those requirements, I suggest adding under the rationale in each proposal three new subheadings to address these issues, i.e.:

• Envisaged impact on readers
• Compliance with Wikipedia policy
• Explanation of why this is better than the status quo.

I've taken the liberty of adding these to the page and filling them in for Proposal A. I suggest that people should complete them for the other proposals to explain how those proposals are intended to benefit readers, what policies they are supposed to comply with, and why they are better than the status quo. -- ChrisO (talk) 23:28, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Until now the structure of this page has been determined by Future's preferences and he was polite enough to ask for consensus and Future has initiated discussions on the proposed structure. Your proposals have not been discussed yet. Are you sure the additions to the structure are not adding extra workload on any other good faithers? Just think of the time it has taken you to construct that reasoning for compliance with policy (you and Fut. had to draft two MOSMACs MOSMAC2 and MOSMAC3) just to be able to say that proposal A is justified. Any editor should be able to file a proposal without having to know all the policies by heart. Let's leave the assessment of compliance to the 3 evaluators in due time and not to the proposal drafting editors. A rationale is one thing, A list of wikilawyering bullets is a different thing. Please revert those additions on the other proposals and discuss it further here at least about the structure. Yea I know if it is just me and Dr.K that will not agree then you can call a consensus-among-the non-Greeks to add that extra structure like it is always done here. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 00:28, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

You can't simply ignore the effect these proposals will have on the readers, ignore the policy basis or refuse to explain why your proposals should be preferred to the status quo. If you're not prepared to explain any of those, why should anyone take your proposals seriously? If you don't know the policies then why are you bothering to propose things in the first place, since anything that violates policy will have to be excluded? And even if you don't know the policies, then what is the problem with explaining how you think your proposals will benefit the readers or why they are an improvement? -- ChrisO (talk) 00:32, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

The rationales explain enough. You can always cite policies there. Including extra structure is just another step in dismembering the opposing side. The first one was that all proposal drafters should better declare their ethnicity so as no assumptions can be made about them. Soon enough you will be deleting proposals too. Is this centralized discussion or is this someone's userspace to do what he wants with it after all?Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 00:56, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Would you like it if I included "Envisaged impact in Wikipedia's stability and edit wars" or "Envisaged impact in Wikipedia's NPOV reputation" in all the proposals??? Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 00:58, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

The point of breaking out these issues is that the rationales don't address them, as I said above. And AGF please - if you're going to spend your time ranting, nobody is going to bother dealing with you. I don't think behaving disruptively in the immediate aftermath of an Arbcom case is a sensible thing to do. If you continue in this vein, you're likely to end up with someone asking for you to be excluded from this discussion. Please contribute productively or not at all. I would appreciate it if you could answer my question about why you see a problem with explaining how you think your proposals will benefit the readers or why they are an improvement. Or if you don't want to answer this question here, please feel free to add your assessment below the proposal(s) you favour. -- ChrisO (talk) 01:00, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Jd2718, for responding positively and constructively to this request. [2] -- ChrisO (talk) 01:03, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I already answered that I think it is putting too much burden on the drafters of the proposals.

I thought that criticism of the proposals had to happen in the talk pages.

Since consensus about the structure is not needed I will start making some edits to the structure too.

So I was under the false impression that we don't include cons in other people's proposals. Ok then I will constructively start to point out all the negative aspects in the other proposals. But right not now, goodnight.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 01:10, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

P.S. I haven't disrupted anything. Talking in the talk page, objecting and criticizing is not a disruption. Talk pages are not censored.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 01:16, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

No, but you are expected to be constructive and positive. The structure I've added provides a space for editors to highlight why they think their proposals will be beneficial - it helps to explain the reasoning behind the proposals. Objections and disagreements should be addressed on the talk page, since that allows for threaded discussions. -- ChrisO (talk) 01:21, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I have been nothing but positive from the start _{(even offered virtual free Beer)}. I have seen others being negative to the proposals they don't like. In one case a proposal (the Redirect proposal) was moved temporarily. In another case one proposal was suggested to be deleted without even allowing some time (it is not like it can "accidentally" pass). Voting has also been frowed upon but no alternative was found as to how we can pick one proposal. Also it was already suggested not to invite other editors in the discussion by linking here because they would first have to be experts in policy. Also from the start a voluntary list of nationalities was proposed to be compiled ...with the extra note that whoever doesn't participate in that assumptions will be made about him. I strongly disagreed to that but still I participated and yet still nobody yet sees my stance as a positive one. I have been the subject of so many wp:Personal attacks (including sustained attacks against the nation I declare to belong to) that I cannot even begin to count them but still I am the one thought of beeing disrupting. Why?

I never once regarded anyone's sense of humor as incivility and I am sorry if there are hard feelings that go back to the ARBCOM case about some 24h blocks that I didn't ask for (but where probably deserving). I never made assumptions about Americans and British editors, regardless their national agendas on the Balkan issues (including bombing) because they editors are not the ones to blame. Everyone here has complained about how Greek nationalists use "Fyromian" and "Skopjan" and while I don't use them I am still seen as the bad guy and "Greek nationalist". By the way if I self declared as e.g. Finnish wouldn't you have to assume my good faith and that I don't lie about that as you do now with anyone else? So please nobody assume bad faith by me and lets move on to the naming issues.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 04:58, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Application of NPOV in page titles

So what is the meaning of the WP:NPOV policy? It is that Wikipedia shall not side with a Point of View of anyone in a dispute, right? That would be Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View (not a "No Point of View"). However one can make it mean that Wikipedia has to side with one party in a dispute because "it just has to follow its strict policy on the naming of articles" (how strict? WP:IAR?). Policies are also editable and fluid. They have always been that way. Of course some policies have to be followed but how often is that so much more important than Wikipedia maintaining its neutrality? When one is focused obsessively on the correct application of policies, word for word, that is usually called wikilawyering. I am saying that using the naming conventions ignoring the existence of a naming dispute is wikilawyering and hurting Wikipedia's neutrality.

This paragraph[3] was added by ChrisO in the WP:NPOV text back in 2007. (some history for the uninvolved ones amongst us, ChrisO is the same former administrator that moved Republic of Macedonia to Macedonia)

It may come as a surprise to you all but I am not attacking ChrisO for that addition. That paragraph was included because it probably represented the consensus of the editors who draft the policies (at that time). What I am saying is that if we arrive to a consensus on how to deal with the geographic names at hand we could also edit the policies too, rather than the other way around: that policies should dictate us what to do.

I could openly call for that paragraph in the policy to be ignored but I won't do that. I won't do that because I actually respect what is hinted to us within the policies. However there is one word there that is crucial, it is the word "generally" (the most common name in English-language publications is generally used). That means that there is room for not using the common English name too. That's what the paragraph says and I didn't write it. In many other places policy hints us that we shouldn't be absolutists about using the common name or anything else for that matter. After all that paragraph is just a summary to point to the Naming conflict guideline but there are policies that are above that guideline too. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 23:34, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

As we are striving to make use of the policies they are changing before us. Just some days ago WP:PRIMARYTOPIC said one thing, now it says something else:[4].Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 23:41, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

It's an accepted and implemented part of NPOV and has been part of the policy for a long time. Before then, it was the central principle of the naming conflict guidelines. I strongly advise that you don't attempt to unpick NPOV to further your point of view on this issue, since it's settled policy (and you would be asking for trouble if you tried to do so, since NPOV is probably the most heavily scrutinised policy on Wikipedia). On the substantive issue that you've raised, we don't "side" with one party in a dispute - we simply ignore the dispute. The current title of a page does not imply a preference for that name. It simply reflects the criteria set out in WP:COMMONNAME (i.e. use "most common name of the person or thing that is the subject of the article") and WP:V, i.e. base the name chosen on verifiable reliable sources. In other words, we don't express any preferences or endorse any names, we simply use the name that the majority of reliable sources use, just as we don't endorse viewpoints but simply reflect them. -- ChrisO (talk) 23:48, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Correction that paragraph was revised[5] to its current meaning that is not using the self-identification rationale. I don't understand what you mean by "attempt to unpick NPOV", if you mean about me editing policies, I don't do that. I am the least qualified to do that.

My point was about the fluidity of the policies generally.

About the issue, it's true that Wikipedia does not endorse any names but it is also true that quote:"A neutral article title is very important" and that "encyclopedic article titles are expected to exhibit the highest degree of neutrality" (from WP:NPOV). As I understand it the current title of the article about Republic of Macedonia is in no way exhibiting any neutrality on the issue of the naming dispute.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 23:56, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

The ethnic Macedonian POV is that the country doesn't have to disambiguate its name while the Greek POV is not that the country shouldn't use the word but that it should disambiguate it with a geographic qualifier so as to not monopolize it. While ignoring the dispute and using "Macedonia" as the title of that article there is a point. A choice of not disambiguating the title of the article like using at least Republic of Macedonia then Wikipedia's NPOV policy definitely comes into play. Of course Macedonia can be used when it is not ambiguous like in lists of countries. But the very title of the article about the country should convey some neutrality I think.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 00:01, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

And definately WP doesn't seem to ignore the dispute in many other places. e.g. Republic of Kosovo doesn't even has an article of its own (it's merged with the region) even though it is a notable unrecognized political entity. WP should have two articles, one about the region, one about the political entity. Right? Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 00:06, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

First off, the idea of NPOV is that all significant viewpoints receive due recognition. As such, its primary application is to the text of articles, where we can reflect multiple points of view (in our article about whatever-this-country-is-called, for example, we should mention its own government policies and Greek policy on it). In titles, we inevitably end up settling on one, and as such the primary principle is to use the most commonly used term in English, regardless of whose perspective it suits or offends. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 08:37, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Please read User:Future Perfect at Sunrise/MOSMAC3#Applicable principles for the detailed rationale. Your argument assumes that our use of a term equals endorsement - a common misunderstanding. It would indeed be a violation of neutrality if we used terms for political reasons. But we don't. We use terms solely because they are the common English-language terms as found in reliable verifiable sources, without making any political judgments of any sort. This has been policy for a long time, so there is absolutely no point in disputing it here. If you object to it, go to the WP:NPOV talk page and raise it there. I don't propose to continue this discussion any further, since it's out of scope for this discussion and it's fundamentally pointless anyway, since you're not going to overturn a basic principle of NPOV and this isn't the appropriate forum for such a discussion. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:06, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, but a final note: Other than that WP:NPOV points us to use the general Wikipedia:Naming conventions (that are drafted in accordance to NPOV I guess). In a nutshell that policy says (bolding by me):

There's nothing ambiguous about a term that has a clearly defined primary topic associated with it. Overlaps between names are commonplace (think Paris versus Paris), which is why we link to disambiguation pages via hatnotes at the top of the primary topic's article. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:20, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

My main point is that there is no primary topic for Macedonia. I have reliable sources to support that. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 00:30, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

We're going to need you to show them, then. Or if you already have, please link to where you have. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 08:37, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

It's here, look above. It was also in the "Arguments against A" before my edits there got censored (you asked for calling things by their name).Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 10:09, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Right under the editing box in which I am writing this reply, it says: If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here. BalkanFever 10:39, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

What belongs and doesn't belong on the main page is off-topic for this section, though I believe there's one below where we could discuss this. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 10:42, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I understand that, however if it was me doing it would be called disruption. Anyway I'll leave it at rest as I want to trust Future's good faith censorship and see what will happen. However I reserve the right to use some of those arguments of in the talk pages.

I do have a problem with the language. Some arguments use wording like "is" "established" while the other side is filled with "may". It would be better if the same NPOV language was used all around the text, that doesn't hold some claims as facts. I am especially talking about the supposedly established primary topic. (feel free to move this discussion to the appropriate thread) Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 10:50, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Envisaged Impact on Readers

I deleted a negative impact that another editor put forward (and am copying to the Proposal D talk section) as I was under the impression that each section would contain arguments in favor, not against. Was I wrong? (and if so, can the first editor replying to this revert me?) Thanks. Jd2718 (talk) 02:58, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Posted a more generic question about how to edit proposals in the next section. man with one red shoe 03:29, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Isn't this envisaged impact a kind of crystalballing? We only have data for the proposals that were implemented, should we make conjectures about the ones we haven't? Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 04:21, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

About comparing proposals to current status quo

Given the circumstances that the current status quo was imposed and the fact that there never was any assessment of any consensus to impose it I say that comparing anything to the current status quo is a logical fallacy. Other than to promote the current status quo what is the reason for making such comparisons?

Proposal A should also address the question of why it represents a better status quo than its status quo ante

I say we change the question to '"Why is this proposal better than the other proposals?" or compare any proposal to the status quo ante that was the proven stable one. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 04:20, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

How to edit proposals?

Resolved

 – Some guidance now exists at Wikipedia_talk:Centralized_discussion/Macedonia#Some_rules_regarding_the_presentation_and_discussion_of_proposals Fritzpoll (talk) 09:38, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

I started to see rosy claims like "This is the only proposal that is unlikely to leave any readers believing Wikipedia has misdirected them." (that in the context of puting in Macedonia the forth least common meaning of the word) I thought the idea was to word proposals in a neutral tone and achieve a consensus about advantages/drawbacks, but I think this is going the wrong direction. How should we edit proposals made by other people? Can we remove claims that we don't agree with? Can I add a counter-argument? man with one red shoe 03:28, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Decided to make an "Arguements against the proposal" to group such arguments because of the rosy and incorrect (in my view) arguments for... man with one red shoe 03:40, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I have respected what seemed to be followed from the start and Future's initial drafting. No counterarguments shall be included in the proposals sections. The criticism should be in the talk page. ChrisO agreed to that adding that it allows for threaded discussions. I too have some arguments against some statements that are taken for granted.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 04:14, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Initially I supported that idea, I don't support it anymore, don't remove my edits. Thanks. man with one red shoe 05:52, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest that if we have "arguments against" statements in the proposals, they should be strictly limited in size, avoid duplication of what is already stated as "argument in favour" on the competing proposals, and definitely be shorter than the pro-statements. I'd something like max. 250 words. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:51, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

That is why I thought that criticism should better be in the talk pages. every argument against spawns a new argument to counter it and so on... that can better be in a talk page thread. You understand that it is impossible to criticize something in fewer words than the ones used to state something right? For instance, how many words would one need to criticise the statement "Republic of Macedonia is the primary topic for Macedonia as MOSMAC2 indicates". Because MOSMAC2 is 1000 words and has, I don't know, 50 hours of work from 2 editors to compile it? Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 08:05, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Or perhaps any argument against can be succinctly covered in the reader impact, policy compliance or status quo sections in a "does not..." format, like what I did here. I'm sure supporters of different proposals can agree that the one they each support may have a drawback in it while another may have a benefit. I think we can probably collectively agree on both benefits and drawbacks for each proposal. Anything that we don't agree on should be up for discussion, not on the proposal page. BalkanFever 08:08, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

don't you think you need some words to rationally explain why it doesn't comply to the reader? (I am not saying it does).Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 08:10, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

It would be really great to have a neutral clerk or something to keep the main page's length under control. No idea where we're going to find an uninvolved user willing to be diligent enough for that, though. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 10:53, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

In case you haven't seen it: Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Macedonia#Macedonia referee appointments. BalkanFever 11:00, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Propose to ban Shadowmorph from this case

Resolved

 – Spleens vented, issues aired - let's move on productively :) Fritzpoll (talk) 09:36, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

I hope an admin would take a look at the pattern of his edits and ban him from this discussion. (don't bother to request the same thing for me, I'm out of this discussion). man with one red shoe 07:58, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. On what basis?Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 08:02, 15 June 2009 (UTC).

I will just add this to my collection of WP:Personal attacks and assumptions of bad faith regarding me or the nation I self-declared to belong to.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 08:07, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Shadowmorph, I do not support your banning from this discussion. For that reason, will you listen if I tell you why I think this proposal that I don't support has come up?

I think a big part of it is your post here. It is chock full of insinuation that NPOV is being manipulated and wikilawyered by others to get their POV. In particular, while you say that you are not attacking ChrisO, your bothering to bring up his edits has the effect of insinuating wrongdoing on his part. There are a few similar insinuations elsewhere, such as the comment "Just think of the time it has taken you to construct that reasoning for compliance with policy (you and Fut. had to draft two MOSMACs MOSMAC2 and MOSMAC3) just to be able to say that proposal A is justified," which sounds rather like you're saying people are cooking up reasons for their POV. These sorts of insinuations, in particular when directed at a specific editor, as you have to ChrisO, are highly bothersome and wear people down.

If you have something against someone, come out and say it. Don't imply things people have done wrong; state them clearly. I'd much rather someone accused me of wrongdoing than insinuated it, and I think others here would agree. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 09:00, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

The other reason why this proposal has been put forward is the tendentious nature of your edits. Your edits tend to be interminable and not always on topic. You also spend a lot of time writing about the trivial as if it were the important. Be concise and on topic, otherwise people will naturally stop reading your contributions and you will be ignored. (Taivo (talk) 11:16, 15 June 2009 (UTC))

Thanks for the comments, I'll try.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 11:25, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Let me apologize for this request. Both Heimstern and Taivo explained some of the origins of my frustration, but the main point that we are here to collaborate, and I didn't feel like I got this from you. Also, by nitpicking everything I was saying you provoked a contrary reaction, instead of focusing on our common interests we focus on points that the other is not getting (or pretend of not getting): E.g., I might support solutions like "Macedonia (country)" or even "Republic of Macedonia" more than "Macedonia" which seems to be your preference too, but if you come with some endless arguments (and pull a WP:IAR out of the hat too: "it follows at least one basic WP policy, that is WP:IAR") then we might end up engaging in endless discussions about those arguments instead of focusing on what are the common things that we support. You keep invoking AGF, try to apply it too, and find the common things before you jump to comment on what you disagree with. man with one red shoe 18:34, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

No need to apologize (but thanks anyway), from the beggining of this discussion it seemed that frustration would exist so you are justified (thus the reason for serving virtual alcohol or sodas for cooling down) and I might have given you a reason for your furstration. I am sorry too. I am very willing to collaborate here and I have gone along with adding "arguments against" sections in the project page even though I thought that criticism should better be in the talk page. I just had to raise my shields at some point and I apologize if I have given the impression that I don't apply WP:AGF to you or anyone else. About WP:IAR I am still as confused as anyone else here about the status of that policy so you are right we should better refrain using it. Still an argument in support of one proposal not having to comply with WP:DAB (which is a guideline) is a valid argument even without IAR, since the 5th pillar of Wikipedia is that it doesn't have strict rules.

So let's all grab a refreshment and continue our efforts so that I can at sometime put this thing behind me and start writing articles (been consumed here since ARBMAC2 - I still have plans to throw SPA-status off me sometime soon).Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 05:07, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

P.S. I would be very happy if I started seeing some outside editors coming here at some time.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 05:07, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

P.S.2 if sometimes i make multiple (numerous) edits to the project pages please don't see it as disruption. Multiple small edits are easier undo-able for anyone who wants to undo them. Also I probably have to take some kind of medication to help me use the bloody preview button! :) Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 05:10, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

If you make two edits to the same sentence (or perhaps even paragraph) the first cannot be undone without the second. Just FYI. BalkanFever 00:51, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Status quo note

I am not going to edit war about the note[6]. If you find it appropriate that we should not inform any third parties about how the current status quo has been established then be my guest. Oh, and my note didn't have anything "tendentious", it was just a recap of the ARBMAC2 findings i.e: pages were moved without consensus and further moves were prohibited since. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 10:26, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I'll try and think of a more unobtrusive and neutral way of including some info there. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:29, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 10:29, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

It serves no useful purpose at all. We're here to discuss what we do next, not rehash how we got here in the first place. It's tendentious point-scoring. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:45, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

In that line of argument I don't see how even mentioning the status quo is relevant so I have suggested to not do so. I also never consented with adding the comparison to status quo sections ("How is this proposal better than the status quo?") the existence of which seem to me as an attempt to downplay the other proposals against the status quo (or negative point-scoring if you'd like). Anyway I do anything I can to go by the waters so I will leave that too and follow along like I did before. I am in for looking ahead too. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 04:45, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

More usage data

Following the assertions by Shadowmorph about how the term "Macedonia" is used off-wiki, I have compiled a further set of usage data which you can see at User:Future Perfect at Sunrise/MOSMAC2#Analysis of usage by topic area. The key conclusions are:

• In most fields, a substantial majority of works used the term "Macedonia" to refer only to the country and not to any other meaning.
• A meaning other than the country was predominant in only one field - religion - where the predominant meaning related to the Roman province rather than the ancient kingdom. Even in history, a plurality of works used the term "Macedonia" to refer only to the country. Many (most?) works dealing with the ancient kingdom appear to call it "Macedon", not "Macedonia".
• In general encyclopedias, multiple meanings of the term "Macedonia" are employed. However, in most cases the country is called simply "Macedonia".

I recommend that editors have a look at the breakdown of usage by topic area; the trends are quite clear for most topic areas. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:48, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

By your research, regardless of topic area, 65 of 107 (61%) are meaning only the country by the term "Macedonia". 61% is not an overwhelming majority. Your research suggests that the country is not the primary topic since there is a 60-40 balance between the country and the other meanings (while WP readership is not that balanced, usage in reference works appears to be). So if someone said that "English reference works use Macedonia to refer to the country alone" then in 40% of the cases that sentence will be false. I bet the other general encyclopedias realized that that's why in every general encyclopedia Macedonia has various meanings and there is no clear trend. I don't see why Wikipedia should not follow that.

Your research is useful in establishing "Macedonia" as the common name of the country, not as the primary topic of the word as I see it. The Macedonia (country) solution is conforming to that too. However we might want to choose the "Republic of Macedonia" better for other reasons.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 07:26, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

It's actually 78/132 = 57% if you count all unique references, including those occurring in works with multiple meanings, with the next frequent following at 35/132 = 27%. That's still more than double the next most frequent. Our criteria for "primary" don't actually define a quantitative cutoff point. WP:DAB only says "much more used than any other topic" and "significantly more commonly searched for and read". 57% of the total (with the remaining 42% split among three others and the next most frequent trailing at 27%) is certainly still "much more used", and the page readership (75% of the total, with the next most frequent trailing at 12%) is "significantly more" by any criterion. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:47, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

On the top of WP:DAB it reads: (my emphasis) "It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense and the occasional exception". From the very start it is evident that Macedonia is too ambiguous and too complex a subject matter (as presented in our terminology article) that we should not follow the guideline literally and/or in an absolutist manner. That is my approach rather than attempting to so put a quantitative measure (threshold) to the words "much more" and "significantly more". Take a step back and look at that argument, and tell me if you would describe it as wikilawyering. Reminder: the primary topic is a subsection in a guideline.

From what I have seen so far common sense (at least my own) suggests Wikipedia should not use the primary topic treatment for the case of the historical and geographical region of Macedonia.

By another common sense interpretation of NPOV, Wikipedia (even if it ignores the sensitivities of the Greeks) should at least respect the complexities --relating to an unsettled naming dispute-- of the geopolitical context and the unsettled common usage. For that last thing see how the situation was as reported in 1997 just 12 years ago (see below). Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 09:00, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Furthermore some subject topics seem to be overrepresented than others. If any subject topic should be covered more it should be the generic encyclopedias not e.g. the social sciences. However I appreciate the good faith effort I cannot except that evidence as a way of measuring English usage more than I would trust one reliable scientific source to answer that question for us. The question as I see it is this: "What is the prominent meaning, in English, of the proper noun Macedonia when used in the collection of reliable sources in all domains of human knowledge". So far I have only found the Loring M. Danforth source that (in 1997 when it was published) said that the word Macedonia most usually does not mean the country[7]. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 07:37, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Removing arguments

Resolved

 – Move the contested statement as a supporting argument to the relevant proposal(s), and remove it from the "arguments against" section. Do not forget the D of WP:BRD Fritzpoll (talk) 09:48, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

There has been an attempt to delete my arguments from the project page following what I consider non-pertinent reasonings. I suggest that we let the referees decide if an argument for or against a proposal is valid or not. Or at least, discuss about it first, before deleting it.El-greco (talk) 07:12, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Your argument [8] mixes two unrelated things: Whether "Macedonia" is official/unofficial in its self-identifying use in the same sense as "France", "Germany", "Hungary" is one thing; whether it's "disputed" or "ambiguous" is an entirely different thing. You can't use the second issue as an argument about the first, as you did in your last edit summary. The argument as you originally stated it in the page itself is ostensibly purely about the first issue, and with respect to that issue it happens to be wrong. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:25, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

In relation to El-greco's latest complaints about the use of the term "Macedonia" by the country itself, I suggest that editors should have a look at http://www.vlada.mk/?q=frontpage (select the English option) to see how the country's government uses the term. Examples:

• Macedonia to make utmost efforts for name talks progress - Macedonia's top officials are prepared at the forthcoming fresh round of talks to make utmost efforts in order to make a step forward in the dialogue led with Greece under the mediation of Ambassador Matthew Nimetz, stated Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Milososki after Tuesday's coordination meeting between state officials on the course of the talks aimed to settle Athens' issue with the constitutional name of Macedonia.
• Decision on visa liberalisation for Macedonia verifies its progress - The positive political decision reached by the EU Council of Ministers in terms of visa liberalisation for Macedonia verified the done work, the progress made in implementing reforms defined by the roadmap for visa liberalisation and Macedonia is on its way towards full Euro-Atlantic integration.
• Draft strategy for energy development in Macedonia presented - The Ministry of Economy presented Monday a draft-text of the Energy Development Strategy in Macedonia for the period between 2009-2020 with a vision up to 2030, which was prepared by the Macedonian Academy of Science and Art (MANU).

There are many other examples. So it seems very clear from this that plain "Macedonia" is frequently used as the self-identifying term for the country. Of course, "Republic of Macedonia" is also often used in formal contexts (as one would expect), but it's certainly not the case that the full formal name is exclusively used. -- ChrisO (talk) 08:04, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

@Future Perfect at Sunrise: Still, you don't explain how it is wrong. Check [9]. In every paragraph of the constitution the country is named Republic of Macedonia, not Macedonia. Thus my argument is not wrong. On the other hand, even if we assume that Macedonia is the official english common name of the Republic of Macedonia (because it is an assumption, since the country calls officially itself "Republic of Macedonia" in its constitution and in other treaties, except when it is called F.Y.R.O.M.), it happens that this common name (Macedonia) is an ambiguous and disputed name, thus the wikipedia naming conflict policy applies. The policy does not apply to France, Germany etc.. because these are not ambiguous or disputed names. I hope I made my reasoning more clear to you now. El-greco (talk) 08:09, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

@ChrisO: News articles do not indicate the official name of the country, and Macedonian is not the country's name but the demonym.

Also since you refused to acknowledge my request to let the referees decide on the validity of arguments, reverted my contribution, and then warned me with the 3 revert rule notice [10] (I thought you were resigned as an administrator), I will have to file a complaint to referees and to any other relevant person.El-greco (talk) 08:28, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

The fact that is disputed and ambiguous name is a different issue than the "not official" red herring. Since Wikipedia doesn't give a damn about official names when it comes to country name this shouldn't even be mentioned. Moreover, this is an accepted short form of the official name, it's not like an invented name... man with one red shoe 08:29, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

BTW, it's really annoying to bring red herrings to discussion, the "not official" or "not UN or EU accepted" name was discussed over and over and over and over in all the pages about this issue. This is a clear red herring, in Wikipedian we don't use official names for countries. If you want to use the "disputed and ambiguous name" is fine, but that has nothing to do with official status, nor the official status matter to Wikipedia. man with one red shoe 08:33, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Clearly "Republic of Macedonia" is the official formal name of the country. Nobody is disputing that. But El-greco seem to be denying that "Macedonia" is the official short form of the country. That makes no sense at all, since it clearly is used that way by the country's government. It's no different to how it works for any other country - "Republic of France" formally, "France" informally; "Republic of Slovenia" formally, "Slovenia" informally; and so on. The argument that the constitutional name of the country is the only official name is just plain wrong. The country clearly self-identifies as both "Republic of Macedonia" (in formal and legal contexts) and as plain "Macedonia", the common name, in everyday contexts such as news releases and public statements. -- ChrisO (talk) 08:34, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Well, I'll give el-greco this: The wording of WP:NCON does at some point make a distinction between normal "self-identifying" names, and "official" self-identifying names formally codified in a constitution. "Macedonia" is the first of these, but not the second. If it was both, that would be an extra point in its favour; but the absence of that status is hardly an argument against it, since other parts of our guidelines are quite explicit that "commonly used" (informal) short names are actually preferred for use in titles, over official/formal long variants. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:36, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

It's a red herring to be honest - as far as I'm aware, constitutions don't generally use short-form names, since they're legal texts. On the argument that El-greco is presenting, we would have to abandon the use of short names all over Wikipedia because those aren't the "constitutional" names of the countries involved. Maybe we could start with moving Greece to "Hellenic Republic" and turn Greece into a disambiguation page? ;-) -- ChrisO (talk) 08:39, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

The wording in that particular section of WP:NCON could probably afford to be improved. As it is, it can easily be read as endorsing long-form names, which conflicts with our existing practices and WP:COMMONNAME, both of which are clearly against long-form names. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 08:47, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Note in particular that it potentially contradicts WP:NPOV's instruction to use "common English language names". It's also worth noting that the Arbcom specifically endorsed both this principle here and stated that full formal names are deprecated here. -- ChrisO (talk) 08:56, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry, are we really discussing about changing the policies here? Because when I raised some issues about other policies I was requested to take them to the appropriate forums.

As a matter of fact it is also my opinion that Wikipedia's collection of policies guidelines and conventions are subject to different interpretations and need a serious rethinking. The whole page title selection scheme and especially the vague "primary topic" text and some others are seriously flawed imho.

Anyhow, since El Greco's argument is justified by a convention I don't see how it is should be disregarded. However I think its place is not in the "arguments against" but only to say why "Republic of Macedonia" is acceptable in proposal B.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 09:17, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Shadow, our policy texts aren't drafted by lawyers, and they are not to be read like treaties. They are amateur efforts of describing collectively established best practice. So it is always important to read them for their spirit, not for nitpicky points about their letter. In the present case, the perceived contradiction is alleviated if you take into account that an "official" name need not always been a "long-form" name. They often are, especially with countries, but that's not necessarily the case. What NCON means to say is that if a name has fully codified official status, that's a plus for it in principle; still, if there's a choice between a commonly used short form and an officialese long form, we will go for simplicity. A name form that is (a) short, (b) common usage in English, and (c) self-identifying is close to the ideal case. El-greco's argument is misleading, because the absence of official status means just the lack of an additional argument in favour, but doesn't really constitute an argument against. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:27, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

BTW, I agree about your last point. It's a valid argument for B, but not really an argument against A. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:00, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec) I agree that's why I said that El'greco's argument belongs in the pros of proposal b as an argument that the official name can also be used (amongst other choices of disambiguators) rather that in the cons of A as an argument that the official name should be used.agreement established during edit-conflict :)

Curiously WP:PRIMARYTOPIC which was upgraded to a cornerstone issue here also stems from a Wikipedian guideline, so "amateur efforts of describing collectively established best practice." also applies to that section of WP:DAB I believe. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 10:05, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Note: I never contested the fact that "Macedonia" is (unfortunately for the Greeks) the most common English term to refer to the country (although English speakers would also likely encounter some variations of f.Y.R.o.M. too). My main argument has always been about "primary topic".Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 10:08, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

What I understand is that too many assumptions are made and wikipedia policies are invoked 'sur mesure'. Policies are discussed and applied selectively, whereas other policies 'are contradicting themselves'. I will explain it one more time. The NCON policy states that one of the criteria for naming a disputed article is whereas the name is official. Official names are official, not semi-official. I am quoting from France: "France, officially the French Republic", Germany: Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece: Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic etc... Short, Common, Simple or whatever you call them are not official names. Names in news articles does not constitute official documents. Republic of Macedonia is the official name of the country as it self-identifies itself and it is the only name that satisfies the official name criterion. Note that this criteria does not endorse official names for all countries; just for those whom name is disputed (the policy is called "naming conflict")

Now I am not a lawyer, nor I want to be one but you have driven the project this way. Proposals are supported by arguments based on specific policies. This is not my fault. I do my best to defend my position, just like all of you do. Reading policies by the spirit has clearly demonstrated that does not lead anywhere, thus you stick with "common language names" policy. It seems that the move of the article based on this policy is also disputed, thus this project. If the term Macedonia was not disputed, we wouldn't be here, and there would be no need to invoke the NCON policy.

Furthermore, I got involved in this mess, only because I judged that this project works based on bad faith, and I would not allow that only one side of this would be heard. All people that are involved in this, have already made their minds. ARBMAC2 has clearly demonstrated that. I am not an objective participant, but almost noone is, and that's clear to me.

Finally, I ask the referees (see beginning of the thread) whether they believe that Macedonia is the official name of the country. If they believe it is the official name, case closed, the argument is not valid and will not appear in the proposal structure. If they believe it is not, then the argument must be placed again where I had put it (and maybe describe it better), and I ask that ChrisO is warned for abuse of his administrative powers, having reverted the page twice, while I asked for referees opinion and then warned me with 3 revert rule notice [11].El-greco (talk) 10:20, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Excuse me. Does this User talk:ChrisO#European Union / Republic of Macedonia relate to this thread? Esem0 (talk) 10:47, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Not to this thread particularly, as far as I can see. The relevant issues are at the "international organisations" sub-page. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:54, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I am not going to speak for my colleagues on whether any name is official or not. Place the argument relating to the constitutionally formal name of the country into as a positive endorsement in the relevant proposal (the one that proposes using said name), and allow it to be removed from the "arguments against" column. I also remind everyone (both sides) that per WP:BRD, adding, reverting and then discussing to achieve consensus is the way forward - note that last point. On reversion, go and discuss before restoring material. Fritzpoll (talk) 11:52, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Comments by Yannismarou

This talk page is already such a mess that I really don't know where to place my arguments! I tried to follow the 6 proposals' section, but it is vain! There is no coherence and no continuity in the dialogue. Thus, I articulate here my proposals, and, if the co-ordinating sysops think so, they can put them somewhere else, in case this serves better the discussion. These are my proposals/opinions in a form of bulletpoints:

• My personal preference is "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". Unfortunately, the Community does not accept this proposal; so we strike it, and continue!
• I still believe that what did ChrisO was not only arbitrary but, most importantly, deeply uncyclopedic. Yesterday, I was in a bookshop in Brussels and, out of curiosity (and wiki-obsession!), I found a Larousse Encyclopedic Lexicon, and went to the article "Macedoine". Yes, I admit that the term "Macedoine" was used throughout for the country, but the article start with the region and not with the country! The country's sub-article was coming later. I don't have a printed Britannica, but if you go to Britannica online and type "Macedonia" you get this [12]! Brit asks you: where do you want to go my friend and I'll guide you! Well, here Chris decided that readers need no guidance and they should go straight away to the country! A solution that none of the above encyclopedias adopt, and which is wrong IMO for the following reasons:

• As I think Sept said once, the country is not the primary use of the term.
• The reader gets a wrong idea about the history, the meaning, the broadness and the various aspects of the term. If he/she goes outright to the country, he has already lost the overall picture.
• There is a legitimate reason to disambiguate here. Yes, "Macedonia" is the prevailing country's English, but there is a strong case of disambiguation, because there are also other many important "Macedonias", which feel marginalized! By giving the prevalence to the country's article, we disturb the necessary balance between these two "goods".

• For all these reasons, I believe that the encyclopedically best solution is to give the prevalence to either the disambiguation page or to a broad Macedonia article, which would constitute a new form of the current Macedonia (region) article (I don't think that we should touch the Macedonia (terminology) article). Both solutions are acceptable, but I personally have a slight preference for the disambiguation page which is closer to the Brit's "where do you want me to guide you" solution. It is simpler, concise, and gives a first short but quite comprehensive overview of the reader's alternatives.
• With respect to the country's article itself, since my personal preference is already rejected, comparing the current alternatives, I feel closer to a Macedonia (country) or Macedonia (modern state) (echoing Sept's objections about (country)). Why? 1) It is more consistent to the trend Macedonia (x), Macedonia (z) etc. 2) It serves in a balanced way both the principles of common English use ("Macedonia") and disambiguation (parenthesis). 3) Whether you believe it or not, I regard it more neutral than Republic of Macedonia, because the latter adopts the Republic's constitutional name, and makes Wikipedia take a position in the naming dispute! Hence, I do believe that Macedonia (country) is the more neutral solution after "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia".
• To summarize: 1) main article Macedonia (disambiguation) or (second choice) Macedonia, 2) Macedonia (country) (or something similar) as the title of the country's article; second (a bit distant maybe) choice Republic of Macedonia. Best,--Yannismarou (talk) 19:35, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Ahem, Yanni, you are aware that the Arbcom decision will force the reviewers here "to disregard any opinion which does not provide a clear and reasonable rationale explained by reference to the principles of naming conventions and of disambiguation", right? They'll have a hard time with you if the central piece of your argument is that the other Macedonias will "feel marginalized". We don't go by external groups' "feelings" here. And please, if you want to to contribute constructively, try to get up to the state of the debate and not to rehash matters that are already settled. We already know there are other "important" Macedonias. Nobody denies that. The question is just whether the one is technically the "primary topic" in the sense of the WP:DAB guideline, which asks for frequency of usage and level of reader interest as manifested in page views, google hits and other similar indicators. The only remaining question is whether the country's lead in these respects is large enough and consistent enough across functional domains of English to justify this treatment. If you have something constructive to contribute to that discussion, please let's hear it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:25, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Re "feelings", I believe Shadowmorph put the argument more concisely in this edit summary: "the single-word "Macedonia" as a name for the country is offensive to the group of Greek people as it is regarded by them as a monopolization". That's really what this is about, so kudos to Shadowmorph for being open about it. -- ChrisO (talk) 21:33, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, I've not seen a whole lot of evidence that any of the arguments against "Macedonia" for the state are based on policy or reliable sources, but rather just on feelings. Certainly the arguments come dressed in all the trappings of policy and RS, but this is typically done by cherry-picking lines from policy and guideline pages and taking them out the context of the corpus of policy as well as by choosing a few sources over the bulk of the rest of them. And why? Because those isolated lines of text and sources are the ones that agree with the feelings of those opposed to the use of the name "Macedonia", so they gravitate toward them. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 23:39, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia's policy is that when the subject matter that is offended by a name then a precise name is Ok (e.g. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). Of course people of Macedonia (Greece) are also the subject matter of the English proper noun Macedonia. Therefore if that group of people object in seeing another group monopolizing the name they use to describe themselves, then that is also relevant. If Wikipedia respects what subject matters call themselves it should also respect it when subject matters will object to the name they use for themselves being monopolized (by means of Wikipedia suggesting one topic is "primary" over the other). While the policy "descriptive not prescriptive" is easily understood, the policy "primary topic is only decided by statistics of usage - it has nothing to do with Wikipedia thinking it is in fact THE primary topic" is very easily misunderstood. Neutrality should be a better concern than facilitation of readers and I am in for applying it like it is already done for territorial conflicts and unrecognized states all over Wikipedia. e.g. What is the primary topic of "Kosovo", an independent state or a part of Serbia? Does WP really have a way of choosing the primary between the two that would not be deemed not neutral? No, so Kosovo is about the "disputed region".

Wikipedia's naming policy reflects one interpretation of neutrality (common name). United Nations practices reflect another one but that is POV by WP standards. Even though it is offensive to the Greeks, Yannis suggests to use "Macedonia (...)" and I am actually Ok with his proposal on the basis that NPOV is better interpreted as using the common English name than using the official name. However in other cases in WP the community found it better to use a full formal name and that says something too. I am actually unsettled about the two options.

I can see the NPOV argument that in using the name "Macedonia" for the country does not imply that Wikipedia endorses a view about the name, it just says it is commonly used in English.

However I don't see the reason saying that it is not POV to serve readers directly to the country solely based on statistical evidence of usage of the word or statistics of readership. I don't think that was the "intention of WP:DAB", i.e.: to say that we should use the "primary topic" scheme literally even in cases of controversy.

Now add Bulgarians (Pirin Macedonia) and the necessary encyclopedic coverage of Macedonia (ancient kingdom) to the above and you get a clear case of a word that needs to be either a disambiguation page or a page about the region. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 09:09, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, Shadowmorph, but your example of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is another red herring. "Mormon" is a nickname that is not preferred by the members themselves, so Wikipedia does not use that term for the sensibility of the people being described. "Macedonia" doesn't offend the people being described at all. It offends someone else who doesn't want them to have the name. That is a critical difference here, so the example is bogus. (Taivo (talk) 13:48, 18 June 2009 (UTC))

Hm, so if I understand it correctly, you have grudgingly accepted the "descriptive, not prescriptive" principle (meaning that somebody's political "offendedness" simply doesn't count as an argument) to apply to naming decisions as such, but now you want to bring in the "offendedness" issue back in through the backdoor, by applying it as an argument not about article naming in general but about disambiguation priorities? Won't fly. The "descriptive, not prescriptive" thing works on the level of assessing "primary usage" just the same as it works on the level of assessing "most commonly used name". Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:32, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

It would be nice if we had a method of assessing primary usage of the word in English (not American English) that is definite, accurate and not biased. A reliable source that makes explicit claim on that assertion, not some interpretation of the occurrences of the word in a biased text database (that was probably not created with the intention to help people find the common meaning of proper nouns but only other simple words) Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 10:23, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Of course it would be nice if we had even better methods. But these are the standard methods, and they work here just as well as in any other case ever discussed in this project. Don't keep asking for shrubberies just because you don't like the results. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:30, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I was responding to what Heimstern said that I am "choosing a few sources over the bulk of the rest of them". So far the Loring Danforth 1997 book is the only source explicitly speaking about the common meaning of the word Macedonia. The rest of the sources (e.g. Merriam Webster, or you-pick-one, do not say anything specific about what is the most common meaning of the word). The latest addition to MOSMAC2 suggested that generally (i.e. leaving the context out of the equation) Macedonia means the country 60% of the time. That addition followed a much more deserving process than the initial MOSMAC2. Still it is just a process. I'd like to see a similar statement found in a source about comparative linguistics.

The standard method may be flawed, and that is a critical thing in this discussion. WP:PRIMARYTOPIC does emphasize the word may.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 10:54, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Exactly what is wrong with the standard method? Provide specifics or your argument is pointless. And I question where you're going to be able to find fault with the standard methods. We're sampling English-language encyclopedias and geographical works, the most relevant types of works to a geographical naming dispute to determine standard English usage. What more do you want? I'm afraid I'm inclined toward an answer to my own question: "An answer that doesn't make the RoM the primary topic for 'Macedonia'." It seems pretty clear to me that you're willing to take any needed approach to stop that term from being used in a way you find offensive and to attack any approach that supports the term being used that way. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 11:37, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, Shadowmorph, but I have to agree with Heimstern. No matter what technique that we have brought forward to assess common English usage (and there have been many here), you object because it doesn't offer the result that you want. So you call it "biased". I am a linguist. I know a publisher. I know other linguists who would agree with my assessment and give a peer review. If I take Future Perfect's data and publish it in the next month with a summary statement, "The most common meaning among English speakers for the word 'Macedonia' is the country," then you would have a statement from a reliable source. Since that seems to be exactly (and only) what you want to see, must I go to that length to satisfy you? The fact is that there are many times in Wikipedia where the best sources do not make exact statements. WP:SYNTH is not a prohibition against any synthesis, it is a prohibition against inappropriate synthesis. Future Perfect's data has been appropriately gathered and synthesized and it is compelling. The primary meaning of "Macedonia" in contemporary English is the Republic. 90% of the people looking to Wikipedia for information about "Macedonia" are looking for the Republic. (Taivo (talk) 13:48, 18 June 2009 (UTC))

Wait! Wait! How do you make this 90%?! I went to stats.grok.se and tried all the alternatives and these are the results for May: Macedonia: 33,656; Macedonia (Greece): 11.488; Macedonia (ancient Kingdom): 4,423; Macedonia (region): 6,842. This is 59,66%. And if I add Macedon, then I have 18,617 more hits to the total! Macedon and Macedonia (Greece) alone are as high as Macedonia! Do you mean the 90% of the 33,656? I agree, because indeed, as the situation stands now, some of those who go to the country want another Macedonia.

Just an answer to Fut.Perf. and ChrisO. Who spoke about feelings?! Definitely not me! If the metaphoric wording I used in order to argue that the current situation does not offer a proper encyclopedic overview was interpreted as an appeal to sentimentalism, then the only thing I can do is to kindly ask you to use a bit more your imagination when reading my texts! Whatever I say is related to our policies (I thank Fut for reminding them to me, but I do know them), and to my encyclopedic "sensor". I do believe that by sending a reader to the country and not to disamb we do not guide him/her properly, and we neglect encyclopedic comprehensiveness. By the way, one of the criteria of DISAMB is to search google not only through the web, but also through book, scholar etc. Well, if you put "macedonia" to google.book you get a variety of results focused both to the country and the region. Finally, I thank Fut. for his evaluating the constructiveness of my contributions, but, as far as "constructiveness" is concerned, I may be allowed to rely mostly on other editors' opinions and not his. Thank you!--Yannismarou (talk) 20:37, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Just about the figures: one more time. There are two different questions here: (a) how many readers read each of our articles in total, and (b) how many of those readers who come through the wikisearch on "Macedonia" want to read each article? The figures in (b) would arguably be the more pertinent for the assessment of the disambiguation needs, and they are only part of those in (a). If you want the answer to (a), you go to stats.grok, but you need to add up the figures for all the redirects of each article (as you already did for the ancient kingdom article, but failed to do for the country.) If you add them all up, then for May you get: country 146,104; ancient 23,497; Greece 11,934; region 6,842; that's 78% for the country, trailed by 12% for the second runner-up. If you want the answer to (b), it's not measurable directly; the only thing we know is that we have ~1,000 per day coming in through the plain "Macedonia" wikisearch (i.e. registering at Macedonia simple); that's the same 1,000 who previously went through the dab page; of these, much fewer than 100 now choose to navigate back to the dab page through the hat note; which leads us to conclude that a remaining majority are happy with where they are (they might be >90%, but possibly fewer, because we can't measure how many readers navigate onwards to their target articles through direct links rather than the dab page.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:18, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I used the 1000 wikisearches per day with fewer than 100 moving on directly for my 90% number. But even going with the other way of counting that Future Perfect has indicated, there are still more than 75% of users looking for the country instead of something else. That's still an overwhelming majority of users who like the way things are now (or, more accurately, are not inconvenienced by not getting to where they want to go in one click). (Taivo (talk) 21:44, 18 June 2009 (UTC))

And at the end of the day, this is the most important issue. We're here to provide the best service we can to our readers. Let's not disadvantage them for the dubious sake of keeping a few partisans happy. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:38, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Yannismarou wrote: "if you go to Britannica online and type "Macedonia" you get this [13]! Brit asks you: where do you want to go my friend and I'll guide you!"

And if you go and type "Greece" [14], it still asks where do you want to go my friend. Oh wait, what if you type "France" [15]? Or "Germany" [16]? Or "Belgium" [17]? Wow, it does the same thing for all. I guess we should put a big fat disambiguation page in front of all those articles then.

Just another thinly veiled attempt to push a hardline nationalist agenda under the guise of "objective and honest discussion about improving Wikipedia". — Grnch (talk) 04:38, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Wow, now if we (and by we I mean 'wp') implemented Britannica's system and have a dab page under the title of every country instead of an article on a nation, that would be a nationalist thing to do? Maybe its Wikipedia that is pushing nationalism by putting the modern nations over the other meanings (regions, ancient countries) by default. Have you considered that? In printed encyclopedias you are not obliged to be served one thing before going on to read about the thing you want. That way, printed Britannica does not put one set of readers (the majority) over another (the minority) I.e. Britannica does not "bring democracy to knowledge" but respects even the single reader who is searching for one obscure Macedonia unincorporated community in the US by treating him with the same respect as the one searching for the populous Balkan region. Online Brit just reflects that treatment.

Your unexplained comment about "veiled"-"hardline"-"nationalism" is disturbing and goes against the Wikipedia policy if avoiding personal attacks. What we're dealing with here is a total lack of respect to editors (Y. is also an admin) of Wikipedia simply on the premise of one happening to be a Greek person. Have you considered that maybe Yannismarou just happens to actually care for Wikipedia? If we drive off all the Greek users by attacking them that way who will be left to contribute to the articles about Greece with the same quality as that of Yannis' contributions to this ungrateful project? Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 05:21, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I know, snipy remarks don't help things. But it's very hard to assume good faith with arguments like the one above, where it was implied that Britannica somehow treats Macedonia specially, when in fact it's just the way Britannica works with most articles. It's also very hard to assume good faith with strawman arguments like yours. Where did I say it would be a nationalist thing if all countries had a dab page in front of them? That would be fine by me, if all countries were treated equally. However, it WOULD be nationalist of only one country was singled out for different treatment because of supposed controversy over the name, especially when this controversy is being generated primarily by a small but very vocal minority that shares an ethnic background. If there was no national motivation, why aren't you arguing like this on Germany/France/Belgium/etc. talk pages?

In any case, it is pretty obvious what you and some others are trying to accomplish with these long, convoluted and contrived arguments, there is no point in derailing this discussion any more than it already is. I only wanted to correct the blatant misrepresentation of truth about Britannica articles by Yannismarou. I have nothing further to add here. Carry on. Grnch (talk) 14:31, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Macedonia and the 5 pillars

Without cherry-picking I will attempt to make an argument for putting a dab page or the region under the "Macedonia" simple title based only on the 5 pillars.

1. Encyclopedic practice suggests Wikipedia has to cover all meanings of Macedonia and title all of them with their proper name (like Britannica does); unfortunately for technical reasons only one of the articles can occupy the non-disambiguated title (the one without parentheses).
2. All meanings of a proper noun should be viewed from a neutral point. Regarding choosing which one of competing meanings of the same geographic name should be at the non-disambiguated title, WP's neutrality might be significantly jeopardized regarding how a large amount of readers will view the choice. That goes both for users hailing the choice and users scorning the choice. In cases where disputes exists Wikipedia should not put one of the entities competing for a region under the simple name ("Macedonia") that is also the name of the region itself. That is so that it cannot be regarded by anyone as Wikipedia hinting (inadvertedly or not) the rightful owner of the region or the rightful carrier of the name of the region.
3. (irrelevant. only says that articles can be changed by anyone, that includes proper nouns in articles so I guess no single name can be fixed)
4. Finding consensus assuming good faith suggests that all competing parties in a naming dispute should consent to a name and so far only the Republic of Macedonia seemed to have the highest degree of consensus.
5. Wikipedia is not destroyed by not putting the most common meaning (if any) at the simple title. Providing a wider summary of information under the simple title by putting the region article there or by putting a dab page and let the reader decide where to go Wikipedia is enhanced towards the collection of readers who want to navigate to one of the meanings of Macedonia and the few ones who don't know squat about Macedonia (WP should have that minority as a first concern according to its purpose). On the downside it adds a "burden" of ten extra seconds and a click to the majority of the readers that are searching for the country.

• Finally common sense interpratation can suggest that the dab page solution that was stably implemented for years can be selected for this complex geopolitical issue.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 12:39, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, your argument completely ignores the Wikipedia policies which interpret the pillars--WP:NAME, WP:NCON, etc.--all of which point to Proposal A being the optimal solution. And the foundation upon which the pillars are built is usefulness for the readers. 90% of the users of Wikipedia want to go straight to the country--that's a consensus. (Taivo (talk) 13:56, 18 June 2009 (UTC))

Yup, it's true my argument above ignores the secondary rules (the interpratations). However in the second part you seem to be saying that the pillars themselves stand on meta-pillars (foundations) like "usefulness"? I doubt that.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 18:19, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Since you so often bring it up, I am going to say that I do not view any of the proposals as violating NPOV. Some of them violate other rules in my opinion, but not NPOV. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 18:21, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The pillars are means towards an objective, not an objective in themselves. -- ChrisO (talk) 18:45, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, indeed, Shadowmorph, there is a foundation without which the pillars are meaningless--usage. If not for users coming here to find information, why does Wikipedia exist? Unless you take the position that Wikipedia is, indeed, a giant MMORPG for the benefit of editors to score points and rise in power like some wizard learning a new spell, then Wikipedia only exists for the benefit of users. Usability does, indeed, underly all the pillars of Wikipedia. (Taivo (talk) 21:53, 18 June 2009 (UTC))

As important as the five pillars are, they're abstract enough that it's not hard to interpret them in whatever way is suitable for one's POV. I've no doubt I could write up an explanation of why the other solution is more consistent with the five pillars if I tried. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 00:22, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Sort of like using the same text of the New Testament to justify hundreds of different versions of Christianity. (Taivo (talk) 00:27, 19 June 2009 (UTC))

Eh, probably not good to get me going on that topic, really. :-) Heimstern Läufer (talk) 00:40, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Shadowmorph: As far as I can tell (although wading through this mass of text, I could easily have missed it) you have not once provided a reason based definitively and directly in policy to back up your position. I wish you would stop talking about "the way it was done". Here is how things were: Endless bickering, fighting, ad-hominem attacks, blatant vandalism, arguing, and shaky unstable truces only enforced under threats of blocks, massive pressure, page-protections, and ultimately sheer exhaustion and exasperation, dragging on for nearly seven years. Wikipedia does not rely on precedent (thank $deity), and I can assure you that I explicitly will not take into account the prior position of the articles at any point in time, other than for such things as page-view statistics, when I determine which solution or solutions I will support.

Making references to WP:NPOV, WP:AGF and WP:CONSENSUS is not helpful. These policies, as noted by Heimstern, are worded vaguely, and it is probably possible to support a myriad of solutions to this problem using those policies. Also unhelpful is making statements like "Wikipedia is not destroyed by not putting the most common meaning (if any) at the simple title.". I do not care if "Wikipedia would not be destroyed if foo and bar". If there is a better solution available, I do not want to settle for something that "works" just to make sure that a few people are not offended. In short, I want to implement a decision that provides the best possible solution to this problem while satisfying all applicable policies, and at the same time, making it as easy as possible for our readers to understand and use the navigation structure. I do not, at this point, know if this is even possible, but I sincerely hope that it is. In any case, if you wish to convince people that your position is the most correct, you must do so by showing clearly and concisely how the directly applicable policies, specifically WP:DAB and WP:NAME, are satisfied by your proposal. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 00:28, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The five pillars might be vague but they are firm. If one can use them to support another position be my guest. I have made several references to specific pollicies (my contributions to the "compliance" sections of proposals B,C,D,E,F). In some cases I was suggested that I was cherry picking so I resorted to using the pillars. Using NPOV AGF and CONSENSUS might not be helpful but it is important since to find consensus is what was the ARBMAC2 decision and the first two should be respected. WP:NAME says to not use ambiguous names for one and Macedonia (country) is still the common name ("Macedonia"). WP:DAB gives different scenarios of dab pages but does not dictate which scenario to choose. It makes some suggestion about how to find one (with vague wording that puts the burden on editors if you ask me). WP:DAB is a guideline that cannot override WP:CONSENSUS, so any proposal that is chosen to be the legitimate consensus of the community should override WP:DAB as a new convention.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 07:37, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Some examples of basing things on WP:NAME :

• Wikipedia:NAME#Controversial_names actually says that the page should not have been moved without prior discussion therefore proposing to put the page back where it was is a proposal based on WP:NAME. However I also believe that we should find new constructive reasons to decide which naming to keep for main Macedonia-related articles.
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names) suggests that United States Board on Geographic Names when "it has a conventional name field. Where it acknowledges a conventional name, it is evidence of widespread English usage". Querying it, there is a conventional name field: it says "Macedonia, Republic of (BGN Conventional)", "Macedonia (Short)" so I guess both names might be widely used but we may better chose the short one. Of course the rest of the policy suggests "Macedonia" to be used and I acknowledge that. That does not leave out "Macedonia (Republic)". Someone in ARBMAC2 said that Wikipedia's naming is not governed by others BUT it is legitimate to consult reliable sources about name conventions. Library of Congress uses "Macedonia (Republic)" and reserves the "Macedonia" label for the region. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 08:08, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

A wild idea...

okay, people from both sides will probably throw rotten tomatoes at me for this, but let me just think out aloud for a moment. The remaining problem of all our wikistatistics is that we don't have a direct measurement of how many readers who previously went to the dab page then did what. We have a good estimate that the large majority of them went to the country, but we don't know exactly how many. 60%? 70%? 80%? 90%?

Now, what if we did the following experiment. For a fixed period of, say, two weeks, the dab page is moved back to plain "Macedonia", reinstating the old status quo. During that time, all links from the dab page to the target pages are piped through a set of specially created unique redirects. Page view statistics for those redirects will register the precise amount of traffic from the dab page to each target. If after two weeks the country article leads by more than a previously agreed threshold (let's say, >66% of the total of the four main entries), we will assume "primary" status and move it back.

Of course, it could theoretically be gamed by people artificially inflating hits for their favourite entry, but the good thing is, we have enough statistics for other periods so that we would easily detect artificial spikes in an article's total readership, so we could probably identify and subtract such an effect. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:39, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

In theory, as a scientist, I like the idea. But I'm not sure I completely trust the Wikipedia environment for such an experiment. If there were some way to "silence" all participants in this discussion so that no alarm or call to arms was raised on either side, then it might work. (Taivo (talk) 22:04, 18 June 2009 (UTC))

I'm fine with this experiment as long as stats are watched for inflated numbers (remember, this is a public discussion, anybody can see it and then muster forces to direct people to favorite page). man with one red shoe 22:26, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that this would be too easy to manipulate - certain people have already been willing to recruit partisans off-wiki. I'm also not sure what it would achieve, since we already know what level of usage we were getting prior to the move, i.e. User:Future Perfect at Sunrise/MOSMAC2#Page view statistics. Wouldn't an experimental restoration of the status quo ante simply result in the same set of figures? -- ChrisO (talk) 22:34, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

No, we'd get new figures that we don't have so far: precise stats not just of total readership of each article, but specifically of those proportions that come from the dab page. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:24, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Let me join the chorus. Neat idea, but... A little tricky. A little gameable. And are we really that interested in the difference between 60% and 80%? I am not sure that I am, and less so when the numbers may be iffy. Jd2718 (talk) 01:01, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I think I'll join the circus too... and add: Yeah, go for it. Für Macedonia. 212.97.132.121 (talk) 03:19, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Wow... So I guess we are finally starting not to accept some things as facts now. Good.

I have been saying since the first second that "it would be nice if we had disambiguation selection statistics before anyone moved any pages" but nobody has heard me. I share the concern that this experiment will be less reliable because people could inflate by means of canvassing that we cannot detect (disclaimer: I mean non-editors of Wikipedia, e.g. peoples in certain nationalist forums on both sides, I don't have to AGF about them). We are talking about page hits not unique visitors so it can take one bad individual to spoil it (e.g. someone who was banned from editing WP). However problematic the experiment would be it would at least be more relevant than any of the other hypothetical scenarios where 90% were selecting the country, hypothesis that is not based on any facts --it just conjectures that by users making a hit at the Macedonia that we serve them and then leave Wikipedia (no other hits elsewhere), they are happy about it??? Quick example about what we're doing right now: A reader from Bulgaria types in "Macedonia", he expects to see a dab page but doesn't --- then he DOES NOT click on the hat link but clicks on the "talk" link, complains about it and then leaves, shuts down his PC and never visits Wikipedia again --- We count that user as a "user who was happy to stay since he didn't click at the hat link". At least Future's experiment would be more deserving. Still it should have been done prior to the page moves at a random time period.. But you can still do it if you want to...

However I would like to say that I oppose in principle in using readership statistics to make a choice between one topic and a disambiguation page. I'm not crazy, others agree with me, namely Andrew Darby above and the WP editors involved in America which is still a dab page and not a redirect to United States even though the second has 1,000:1 more readers than Americas.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 05:00, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Just a note, finding statistics from before the move would be almost impossible, since according to our recent data, most people are looking for the country. Before the move, there would be no way to know if someone was visiting Republic of Macedonia from Macedonia (which was the disambig page), or if they were clicking one of the ~5000 incoming links pointed at RoM. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 05:11, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

"A reader from Bulgaria types in "Macedonia", he expects to see a dab page but doesn't" -- why would a user ever expect to see a dab page? You make all kind of claims that you don't back up with anything. Don't know what you try to do here with "America" example, but people mostly call it "United States" (maybe in Greece is different, but we don't follow Greek standards) as you notice the page is not called the official name (but you seem to use one argument when it's convenient and then you forget about it and use another when the first argument ceases to be useful) Also try to be shorter. man with one red shoe 05:15, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Shadowmorph, how many Bulgarians have typed in "Macedonia", found the country instead of a dab page, and then clicked on "Talk" to leave a negative comment? Zero. And are you seriously contending that a majority of 900 visitors a day to Macedonia (who don't move past the country) are unhappy with their destination? Come on, my friend, you keep stretching and stretching and stretching to try to make evidence and arguments somehow disfavor the country. You are loyal to your cause, that's for sure, even though there is no serious defense of it based on Wikipedia policy and solid facts. And your America example is another red herring. "America" is the name of two entire continents, not an inconsequential region in a corner of the Balkans. You can't compare an English speaker's knowledge of "America" (an entire hemisphere or the world's major superpower) with knowledge of "Macedonia" (a minor Balkan country or a slightly larger and even less well-known region that includes it). Comparing "Macedonia" to "America" is the biggest red herring you've thrown in the pot yet--blue whale sized. (Taivo (talk) 05:34, 19 June 2009 (UTC))

I am getting misunderstood, probably has to do with me not being short.

1. Macedonia was a dab page for years therefore it is logical that any returning visitor would expect to see that. That is just one basis.
2. Change "Bulgarian" to "Greek" if you want better. I don't say that's what always happens. I could find more plausible examples of why a user will "stay in the page" we serve them e.g.: "I saw that movie and wanted to know where that Macedonia is located. Oh so this is what Alexander's empire has evolved into, I don't really want to learn ancient history so I don't click on the hat link. I can now leave and read about World of Warcraft instead". Do I really have to cover all possible scenarios and you will nit pick each one of them? These are just random plausible counterexamples. Please understand that using the hits of a page does not indicate what users original preference would be in the case they were served a dab page instead.
3. In any case I disagree in principle with the statistical argument. I am not the only one.
4. I am not saying that United States is the most common name (even though it is incredibly common) I am saying that United States is the article that is mostly read from the two ones found in the America dab page. Therefore the America page should be a redirect to United States if we apply the same principle of readership. And that is the only comparison I am making. I have to conjecture that the status of the article at America must have been noticed by editors familiar with WP:DAB, so since it is not changed, it is reasonable to assume that putting in a dab page there is based on policy - even though it is not based on a literal interpretation of the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC guideline. And that is the connection to my main argument so its not a red herring. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 07:11, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Shadowmorph, it doesn't matter if you come up with ten different plausible scenarios why someone might be unhappy finding Macedonia at Macedonia, you cannot reasonably expect that all or even a majority of 900 users are unhappy enough that they don't move on to the article they are looking for. Perhaps you might reduce that 900 to 800 at the most. But that's still 80% of the users looking for "Macedonia" are happy when they find Macedonia there. And "America" is still a red herring because of the whole issue of scale. You cannot compare handling characteristics between a Peterbilt and a Mini Cooper. All you can compare between them is size. (Taivo (talk) 07:45, 19 June 2009 (UTC))

Let's put the "America" canard to bed once and for all. "America" is the common name of a major English-speaking country and a name applied to two continents, all three of which are heavily covered in English-language sources. In certain contexts - e.g. politics - the country name would predominate, but overall I don't think you could say that any of the three main meanings is a primary topic. This is quite different from Macedonia, where the evidence is clear that the term is used by a broad range of sources in a wide variety of contexts to refer predominately to the country. Shadowmorph has done absolutely nothing to refute the reams of evidence demonstrating this point. -- ChrisO (talk) 08:08, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree about America not having a primary topic and that really strengthens my disagreement on the principle of using hit statistics as a measurement of primary topic. America has no clear primary topic even though the readership of United States seems to indicate the opposite. Same for Macedonia.

Here is my point "About Macedonia: in certain contexts - e.g. politics - the country name would predominate, but overall I don't think you could say that any of the four main meanings is a primary topic". By your own numbers it seems that, generally, Macedonia means the country: 57% of the times, Macedonia means something else: 43% of the times (of those, Macedonia means the kingdom: 27% of the times).

My criticism about the "reams of evidence" is covered in other sections of this talk page. What I've done so far was to cite Longman's dictionary of contemporary English that found it wise to list Macedonia as polysemous (unlike other dictionaries it doesn't generally do that) and cite Loring Danforth that refutes the conclusions of MOSMAC2. That's one 1997 source so English usage can't have changed so much in 12 years. Sources that say the opposite? Zero. Find me one citation that says "Macedonia has a clear and precise meaning in contemporary English, it mostly means the country" Taivo suggested to publish MOSMAC2 and get it peer reviewed, maybe that is the way to go :)

Andrew Darby above, made some points about not surveying reference works to make a decision, I agree with him. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 09:08, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Shadowmorph, but you continue to look at a wall, pull out one brick and then say, "It's not a wall anymore". Listen to yourself: "Let's not survey reference works (because they don't support my position)", "Let's just look at one reference work (because it happens to support my position)", "Let's look at a quote on English usage that was written just a couple of years after Macedonia's independence 15 years ago and call that relevant to contemporary usage (because it supports my position)", "Let's look at a dissimilar case (because it supports my position)", "Let's ignore the clear statistics (because they don't support my position)", "Let's use these manipulated statistics (because I can twist them to support my position)", "Let's ignore the overall policies (because they don't support my position)", "Let's focus on the word may (because I can use it to support my position)", "Let's focus on the pillars (because I can construct an argument easier with vague statements)", "Let's ignore the users (because my position inconveniences most of them)". This is why there was never any consensus at Talk:Greece or Talk:Macedonia. Every time one of your arguments is demonstrated to be inadequate, you shift the argument to something else, but come back after a while to the previous inadequate argument as if it is something fresh. How many times have you been told that Wikipedia policies will be primary here? How many times have we shown that the Dictionary of Contemporary English is not an adequate reference by itself? How many times have you been instructed on the inadequacies of various statistical measures that you continue to use? How many times? I'm sorry for being so negative, Shadowmorph, but you seem to be going in circles. (Taivo (talk) 11:20, 19 June 2009 (UTC))

Wikipedia:Talk#Behavior that is unacceptable Do not misrepresent other people.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 13:03, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Shadowmorph, if others here think I am misrepresenting you, then I will accept the admonishment. But I honestly don't think any of my points are misrepresentations of your efforts here. Some of them are nearly direct quotes (except for the parenthetical material, obviously). It's frustrating to engage you in any kind of productive discussion because your "movement" on the issue is just in circles--from one repetitive point to another and back around to the first. And, Andrew, Future is correct about the stonewalling of the supporters of the Greek national POV--it is endless and unproductive, thus giving the impression of "ambiguity" where none truly exists. Of course, nearly every placename is ambiguous in an absolute sense because of Macedonia, Ohio; Athens, Georgia; Paris, Texas; London, Ontario; Moscow, Idaho; Moab, Utah; etc., but the real question is whether the "ambiguous" place is truly notable or is just a minor distraction. In the case of "Macedonia", the "ambiguous" meanings are far less well-known ("Macedon" is a more common term for ancient Macedonia). It is only the continued filibustering based on one political agenda here that gives the impression of true ambiguity ("true ambiguity" as in the case of two countries called "Congo"). (Taivo (talk) 14:01, 19 June 2009 (UTC))

Just a question then. If the most common term is so obvious to you, why isn't it the same for the ARBCOM? Why did the ARBCOM didn't enforce it? If Macedonia is only as ambiguous as Athens, Ohio, Paris, Texas etc.., why did ARBCOM find necessary to relaunch a discussion about it? This is an honest question, I am not really familiar with ARBCOM process.El-greco (talk) 00:09, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Because ArbCom does not decide on content. They set this separate process up in order to decide content. (Taivo (talk) 00:20, 20 June 2009 (UTC))

Future, I don't think that any new experiment to test user numbers will work. While many of us could look at the numbers objectively, the numbers, in the end would not convince the true believer(s) no matter how well-constructed the experiment or how careful the control. Instead, the results will be nit-picked to death until they are meaningless. At one point, I thought that consensus might be possible here, but I'm becoming convinced that it is not. The three kind administrators tasked with overseeing this discussion will, in the end, be forced to make the decisions that Wikipedia will follow. (Taivo (talk) 11:34, 19 June 2009 (UTC))

region or dab

pasted here by Shadowmorph ^{^"^}. (the page it was posted is about structure. This is the relevant talk page

China-->region
State of China-->region
Ireland-->region
Eire-->region
America-->region
Taiwan-->region
Formosa-->region
Britain-->dab
Great Britain-->region
Holland-->region
Korea-->region
Arabia-->region
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.202.68.254 (talk) 16:25, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Macedonia-->region or dab

it's that simple--87.202.69.105 (talk) 00:26, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Ireland, Eire, Taiwan, Formosa, Great Britain are islands, America is a continent -- Macedonia region is not an island or a continent it's just an ad-hoc region that doesn't even have clear borders. Formosa is not a name of a country. Korea is not a name of a country, the states are South Korea and North Korea. China is actually an article about Chinese civilization (which is a very bad decision in my opinion). What else? man with one red shoe 01:53, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

macedonia is a historic region, the United Kingdom was and still is widely known reffered to as Great Britain, Holland is a common name for the kingdom of Netherlands, Taiwan is the name by which the ROC is refered to by several states across the world, South Korea's constitutional name is Republic of Korea. what else?--87.202.68.254 (talk) 16:37, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Read a bit at Macedonia (region) you'll see that's a fairly recent invention that doesn't have clear geographic or ethnical delimitations. Taiwan is an island, Macedonia is not. man with one red shoe 17:18, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

"South Korea's constitutional name is Republic of Korea." -- So? What's your point? man with one red shoe 17:18, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Antithesis

I have been criticised here that I use arguments only to support my position. Yea like anyone else uses arguments in order to disgrace his (unmoved) position. Let me say that I represent here an antithesis to the thesis that has been writen in stone (MOSMAC2) and many participants here support. That thesis is pretty much that he should follow everything the MOSMAC2 essay suggests. While I can see the logic of some arguments based on MOSMAC2 (I'm not stupid, "I get it") it is also true that my arguments are being discarded off hand with ad-hominems. I use arguments to support my position, the other position . I repeat my request for Taivo to strike out his misrepresentation of me (do you need others to tell you to do that? If I say it that I (the subject) say that I am gravely misrepresented by that comment, isn't that enough?). This discussion does not have to be something like:

_{(hypothetical conversation of editors of China article:)}

We should follow this specific approach and as supported by my statistical survey, to exactly meet the strict policy dictations about names. Every other approach is for political reasons. China should be at China and Taiwan at Taiwan. We should not care less about politics. NPOV says that if naming conventions support one political position inadvertently we shouldn't care if a dispute exists. We should put our guidelines over any other policy including the five pillars. Let the Chinese bitch about it. We will just remove their comments from the talk pages.

Oh yes I totally agree

I Agree even more

No, please, it is me who is more supportive to that approach, not you.

What you say is wrong. I have a different position.Shadowmorph ^{^"^}

Where exactly does Wikipedia write in stone that we should follow one approach. I used the WP:5P and that was still though of as a kind of cherry picking. I cited reliable sources and that is still though as an inappropriate thing to do. What do I have to do? Become a linguistics professor in order to say that Wikipedia doesn't have to follow that approach. Many others agree with my position (Andrew Darby, Esem0, YannisMarou, Sceptre). If that approach was always had to be followed because one vague paragraph in a guideline that may or may not be used, dictates (?) that (by the authority vested in it by ...who exactly?). And that is not wikilawyering? (I've learned that w-slang word here).

Let me just say that I queried Oxford reference and it seems that in Oxford published sources kingdom vs country vs region there's is no prevalent meaning (more frequently used) and that illustrates ambiguity. Do I really have to loose several more days of my life to make a well structured page that includes my analysis ( OR whatever) of that findings?

Let me also say that the Oxford dictionary as well as Britannica uses Macedonia as the name of the kingdom. (with Macedon an alternate, not primary name).Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 08:13, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Discussion of soft redirect proposal

Proposal removed as an option

I have drafted this proposal in good faith and I believe that it does not violate any policy in any other way than methodology while it attempts to follow the spirit of WP:DAB and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC but in a different way. <start of short off-topic comment:> This proposal if is chosen to be implemented may also form a new standard in dealing with controversial choices of primary topic in other geopolitically complex cases throughout Wikipedia. For instance: create a seperate article for Republic of Kosovo (that is now merged) and soft redirect Kosovo to Kosovo (region) while including a hat link to the Republic of Kosovo in the soft redirect page soft redirect China to PRoC and Taiwan to RoC; rename current China article to China (region) and Taiwan to Taiwan (island); include hat links to those in the soft redirects soft redirect Ireland to Ireland (country); include hat links to Northern Ireland and Ireland (island) soft redirect America to United States; include hat link to Americas in the soft redirect page <end off-topic> Shadow, there is no such thing as a "soft redirect page that also contains a hatlink to other pages". A "soft redirect" contains only one single link, to its target page, and more or less the only regular reason for using that feature is if you need to link to other projects. It's virtually never used in main space. If the page contains a hat note with other, alternative links, it's essentially just an incorrectly formatted dab page. If you want a dab page, why don't you call it a dab page? Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:43, 23 June 2009 (UTC) It was my turn for a wild idea. As far as I can tell its technically possible and has some advantages over the normal dab page. It is less of an obstacle . Surely its the most but it I think itdoesn't violate NPOV & NAME but only DAB (altough not violating the spirit of DAB)Shadowmorph ^"^ 08:09, 23 June 2009 (UTC) And what, pray, is your idea of how and why it would be different from a normal dab page, apart from having some fancy nonstandard formatting? Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:11, 23 June 2009 (UTC) Seriously, why? There's no reason for soft redirects ever except when redirecting outside Wikipedia. If we're reasonably sure the visitor is most likely looking for X, it should be an ordinary redirect for X. If we think it could be X, Y or Z, with none clearly predominating over the others, it should be a disambig. This idea, though, is just silly. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 09:52, 23 June 2009 (UTC) Perhaps Shadow was somehow under the impression a "soft redirect" was technically some kind of special feature. Shadow, just in case you haven't worked this out in the meantime: it isn't. Technically, it's just a regular page with a regular link on it, and some fancy templated text around it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:05, 23 June 2009 (UTC) I know, however I didn't know that was the main reason for the existence of soft redirects. However since it exists why not put it into good use? If this proposal sounds silly please disregard it, but acknowledge that it was an attempt to find middle ground of the other proposals. In a sense it is both a dab page and a kind of "primary" topic is pointed out. Well it doesn't have all the visual clutter of a dab page. By this idea we will have only the links to the four primary meanings. With the soft redirect WP will acknowledge the fact that the country is the more likely meaning for lay readers (e.g. coming to WP after reading a news site). However we do it in a way that adheres more to NPOV in that it doesn't automatically directs any reader there even against their "will". The main difference from a dab page (that does the same thing) is that it is less obtrusive than the dab page for one part of the readers. By my calculation it would reduce the disadvantage of the readers looking for the country from 10 seconds and a click to 2 seconds and a click  :) The ones looking for one of the other primary meanings are also advantaged by not having to go through a full dab page. The hat link at the country page does not have to be lengthy too.Shadowmorph ^"^ 10:19, 23 June 2009 (UTC) If you want a dab page that highlights the primary topic more efficiently so that readers can go to it more quickly, there is a standard way of doing that: Put it in the first line and bold it. "Macedonia is a country in the Balkans." (see WP:DAB#Page style). That's standard for a dab page that includes a primary topic. We have style guides for a reason. If the Wikipedia community wishes to develop a format where such primary topic links are highlighted more strongly, e.g. by larger print or an arrow in front, it will develop such a standard. We don't need to reinvent the wheel here, and we most certainly shouldn't invent ad-hoc solutions by reusing features for purposes they aren't designed for. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:36, 23 June 2009 (UTC) P.S.: If you want to uphold this proposal, I suggest rewording it so that readers understand better what it really boils down to. Basically, I guess this amounts to: "Second disambiguation page": "Macedonia will be a second, slimmed-down disambiguation page optimised for accessing only the most frequent meanings, with a strong visual focus on the link to the country page (e.g. displayed at the top and in larger print). This page will serve to direct readers coming from the wiki search for "Macedonia" most efficiently to their most likely target location, acknowledging that the country page has the top rank. The traditional disambiguation page with the full set of meanings will remain at a separate page elsewhere, for those readers who wish to go to one of the minor meanings and for those seeking disambiguation on their way back from one of the main articles (i.e through the hat notes)." Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:57, 23 June 2009 (UTC) The "user impact" is wrong. This does not simulate the status quo since the status quo is that readers seeking the country do not have to make any further decisions or clicks to get there. This proposal requires another click. Why lie to us? It doesn't simulate the status quo. (Taivo (talk) 12:27, 23 June 2009 (UTC)) Thank you for the comments, I will have a try at rewording. The simulation part was copied from the other proposal and you are right the meaning is different here. Let me see.Shadowmorph ^"^ 12:42, 23 June 2009 (UTC) Aside from being (in my view) completely illogical, this proposal is in direct violation of applicable policy. I have removed it from the page. J.delanoygabsadds 18:35, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Comments about this page and "sending to the endorsers"

Gentlemen, this project page is a joke and it needs to be seriously reconsidered before opening it up for outside comment. EIGHT proposals grace its page and most of them are just subtle duplicates of others. H, for example, is nothing more than a duplicate and poorly-formatted version of B with an extra step for those looking for things that aren't the country. Why don't we focus on two very straightforward proposals? In essence, Shadowmorph is insisting on a dab page because he doesn't want to allow the majority of users to get to the country page where they are heading without knowing (or caring) that Greece objects to Macedonia's use of the name (WP:SPADE). So Proposal B is the fundamental version of the "Greek" version. The majority of the rest of us are in consensus that the majority of users (perhaps as many as 90% of users) don't want to be inconvenienced by having to travel through a dab page before they get to where they are going. So Proposal A is the fundamental version of the "broad consensus" version. Sure there are other more subtle reasons for and against both of these proposals, but that's the essence of them. All the other proposals are just fluff and smoke screen IMHO. Why make the outside readers wade through interminable, repetitive (read "boring), and only subtly different versions of these two positions? (Taivo (talk) 12:21, 23 June 2009 (UTC))

(I wrote this before I saw the discussion at the main page.) (Taivo (talk) 12:45, 23 June 2009 (UTC))

Nope, sorry, can't do... that's because I don't think that the other proposals are just fluff and smoke screen. --Radjenef (talk) 12:26, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I think we're going to have to leave it to what the referees think, since the two sides here are unlikely to be able to agree on this matter. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 12:30, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest reordering in a logical sequence:

1. Macedonia leads directly to country article (covers current A and D as variants)
2. Macedonia is a dab page, country article with a variant of its self-id name (covers current B, C and H)
3. Macedonia is a region/survey/outline page (covers current D and F)
4. country article at UN term (current G)

Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:41, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I think that would at least reduce the amount of "noise" here, but we must be careful to retain the lettered proposal "names" (A, B, C, etc.) because the Talk page comments are tied to them (but you already knew that). I just find this whole process a frustrating example on the part of one editor of WP:CPUSH. (No need for that editor to respond because I'm not going to debate about my feelings.) (Taivo (talk) 12:54, 23 June 2009 (UTC))

Not one, but two. BalkanFever 13:01, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Whoo, I like it when I am possibly referred to, without being mentioned by nickname. That kind of attitude towards me goes perfectly with my nickname. For the record I not have exhibited of the behaviors outlined in that essay; especially the fringe theory pushing or disgracing the undue weight policy - rather the opposite I've done. No need for anyone to debate about this response. It is solely a response for the record of it. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 13:50, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

(out) I left a proposal at the root talk page (the one with the beer), to partially collapse them. Only the top part of the proposals could be immediately visible.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 12:44, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I have put forward a new proposal on this issue at Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Macedonia#Winnowing proposals. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:09, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Political dispute and Academic consensus

329 Scholars sent a letter to President Barack Obama [18] I think more inline with a "9th Proposal "Whatever is the article about the country. Macedonia is the article about the ancient kingdom" ;-)--Vanakaris (talk) 12:32, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

So? 329 scholars do not an academic consensus make, nor do they necessarily reflect standard English usage. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 12:35, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok man. The link has some usefull sources.--Vanakaris (talk) 12:38, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

That was a Greek lobby effort and a good one too. A letter is not academic consensus I'm afraid nor relevant to the case here which is more Wikipedian in nature. Thanks for the input though, take care.Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 12:47, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Generic Encyclopedias

All printed generic encyclopedias have their entries alphabetically ordered. Show me one that is not. Not even online Britannica puts the country as primary since it gives you a "disambiguation page" for every kind of query including a query for "Macedonia". Also Brit uses the big bold title "Macedonia" for all the various meanings. Almost all generic dictionaries list many meanings under the entry "Macedonia". Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 06:28, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Future Perfect has already told you that this is false, Shadowmorph. Where is your evidence that this is the case? (Specific examples of "generic" encyclopedias with the details of their entries and structure.) (Taivo (talk) 06:31, 25 June 2009 (UTC))

(ec) Yes, but those "many meanings" are then not alphabetically ordered internally, are they? They could be ordered by any number of other criteria: importance, frequency, temporal order of first attestation, etc. As for Britannica, it has its standard disambig list with the country at the top and as the only entry without a disambiguating qualifier in the disambig list. That's the closest analogy to our "primary topic" pattern that you can get within the technical framework of Britannica. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:40, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Look. Two issues:

• First, online Britannica does not put any topic "primary" for any query (it always gives you a disambig list under the search box after you query it). The order of the entries there[19] is not any different than the order of the order of our entries in Macedonia (disambiguation). But Brittanica does not redirect you to the country as "primary" (you have to choose it). The important thing is the titling, where Britannica uses "Macedonia" for all "Macedonias"[20]. It does have explanatory subtitles for all of them but not in the student's edition.
• Second, you need examples for printed encyclopedias that are alphabetical? I thought all of them are like "John Smeth. A guy somewhere (next line->) John Smith. Australian football player... (next line->) John Smith. President of Foobar ; .... Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 06:53, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Of course the different entries are alphabetical "Mace", then "Macedon", then "Macedonia", but you imply that the different meanings within a single entry are alphabetical. You need to prove that with specific cases. (Taivo (talk) 07:03, 25 June 2009 (UTC))

Shadowmorph, I already dealt with this in the evidence in MOSMAC2. Online encyclopedias almost always list the country first. It's obviously not alphabetical sorting because the sort order for the subsequent entries varies - in fact, I found no two encyclopedias with the same sort order. There is clearly some weighting going on that places the country at the top of the search results for the term. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec) I'll try. But since we don't know how the order is decided within the entries we can not make assumptions. For one, I found that the Oxford English dictionary lists the meanings in chronological order (look it up), so it puts the kingdom first. A reverse chronological order (with the country first) is also a possibility. We cannot infer that the order suggests primary meanings, That is what MOSMAC2 implies without proving that assumption either. That is another assumption in a long list of assumptions MOSMAC2 makes. The other one involves implying that reference works in the likes of "Governments of the World" somehow put the country "priary" over over the region because they don't list the Greek region that doesn't have a goverment, or "primary" over the ancient kingdom (!)Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 07:15, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

"Microstructure" of entries explained[21], several possibilities exist. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 07:26, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Shadowmorph, there are two ways to order things in an encyclopedia: Randomly and with some reason. If randomly, then there would be an equal mix of region/country/kingdom/Greece in first place throughout the encyclopedias. Since there is not an equal mix, then there is some reasoning behind why the country is nearly always first. "First" = "primary", that's what "primary" means. The OED does, indeed, list meanings chronologically, but it states that explicitly since that is not the usual order that one finds. So if the majority of English encyclopedias lists the country meaning first, then that is the primary meaning of "Macedonia" in English. It doesn't matter how these encyclopedias determined "primary", it just matters that the majority of them consider the country to be the primary ("first") meaning. (Taivo (talk) 07:32, 25 June 2009 (UTC))

Taivo, what you say its true if we were trying to find what to list as primary ("first") in a list. We already list the country first inside our Macedonia (disambiguation) page in the sense you describe above. But "Primary topic" in Wikipedia is not about that but about redirecting the word to a single meaning. Therefore we cannot consult the Encyclopedias. The generic Encyclopedias actually tell us to do the opposite since they include all the meanings of Macedonia in one entry when they may not do that for Ireland or China (just a hunch). The encyclopedias suggest to as that Macedonia is polysemous. In that sense if we are to reflect the treatment of all other Encyclopedias for Macedonia then Macedonia should be a dab page and the half of them tell us where to put the country in our arrangement of the dab page (we already put it first). The other half tells us to put either the kingdom or the region first. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 07:52, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

They don't include all the meanings in one entry. The encyclopedias I looked at had multiple entries for the term "Macedonia" but in most cases listed the country entry as the primary/most definitive entry. A few did have a list of meanings, several listing the country as the primary meaning within the list, but the vast majority had individual entries. -- ChrisO (talk) 07:55, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Shadow, if other encyclopedias do not have a technical feature corresponding directly to our primary topic mechanism, then obviously none of them can serve as a model either way. The only way you could use these examples as evidence would be if (a) they had such a feature, (b) they had a policy of using it roughly along the same criteria as we use ours, but (c) they failed to use it for this particular case. And stop bandying about China and Ireland again; we dealt with that already; those examples are absolutely not analogous to this case, at least not in any way that would remotely support your position (the opposite in fact, if anything). Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:58, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

And you know, it would be nice if Shadow could make his argument on the basis of actual evidence rather than making assertions all the time. I spent a lot of time compiling the evidence at MOSMAC2, so it's more than a little annoying when someone makes arguments which are completely contradicted by the hard evidence. -- ChrisO (talk) 08:05, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Ok Fut, we agree on that but looking at MOSMAC2 the opposite is implied i.e. that the order is about primary=most-definitive but one has to prove the equality. I said and Taivo agreed that when there are different entries they are alphabetical. When there is a single entry its arguably complicated.

If the order used by Encyclopedias had to be consulted then you must also acknowledge that significant and respectable reference works put the region first. MOSMAC2 acknowledges that and speeks of the "majority" but looking at the table what I see is inconsistency in the choice of arrangement (region and kingdom appear 1st on many occasions). If any, the selection of generic reference works hints that there is no primary topic since the sources do not agree generally on the order. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 08:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

@ChrisO. Actual evidence: 1) Oxford uses chronological order, 2) "Governments of the World" has no reason to include entities that have no goverment so it doesn't tell us which one is primary among them. ChrisO, sorry but the burden of evidence should be on you because you seemed to infer that the order of entries always follows a specific method for all the works. It is not me who should prove the negative, it is you who should prove the affirmative for all the works surveyed. Like Future said the ordering is subject to many possibilities. I cited a lexicography book to source that if you noticed. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 08:14, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Terribly sorry to interject here, Shadow - but in my line of work, I have access to the full Oxford English Dictionary, including the draft in progress. What I don't see is an entry for "Macedonia" at all - I have "Macedon" followed by "Macedonian", the latter's etymology being naturally listed in chronological order because the OED is a historical work. I would appreciate clarification as to where you have found this definition of Macedonia in an Oxford text, because adjective usage cannot be compared to the usage of a proper noun. Fritzpoll (talk) 09:07, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Coming up... Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 09:24, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I trust from what you said that you can login to Oxford Reference. Link [22]. If you can't here is the text:

Macedonia /mas^d^n^^/

1. ( also Macedon /'masd()n/ ) an ancient country in SE Europe, at the northern end of the Greek peninsula. In classical times it was a kingdom which under Philip II and Alexander the Great became a world power. The region is now divided between Greece, Bulgaria, and the republic of Macedonia. 2. a region in the north-east of modern Greece; capital, Thessaloníki. 3. a landlocked republic in the Balkans; pop. 2,054,800 (est. 2002); official language, Macedonian; capital, Skopje. Formerly a constituent republic of Yugoslavia, Macedonia became independent after a referendum in 1991.

How to cite this entry: "Macedonia" The Oxford Dictionary of English (revised edition). Ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2005. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. 25 June 2009 <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t140.e45631>

Ah. Confusingly, the Oxford Dictionary of English (a single-volume general purpose dictionary [23]) is not the same as the Oxford English Dictionary, aka OED (a multi-volume scholarly dictionary of historical English usage [24]). Fritzpoll evidently assumed you were talking of the latter. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:32, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the distinction. Anyway i cited the source as is. I don't know how I end up being more efficient than you guys in finding that quotation since it is "your thing" better. Guess how I logged in ;-) Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 09:41, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Please don't call this lesser dictionary the "Oxford English Dictionary". That is something completely different and recognized by scholars as the premier dictionary of English usage through time. What you are using is just another English dictionary. (Taivo (talk) 10:00, 25 June 2009 (UTC))

So I guess my citation is about contemporary usage (unlike OED) so therefore much more relevant to this Wikipedian discussion. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 09:55, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Your "ODE" (not OED) still seems to be working by the OED's temporal criterion, so it tells us nothing about primacy or non-primacy either way. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:02, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

If we look at non-generic but specific-topic (that is terminography rather than lexicography) then we see Oxford Concise Dictionary of World Place-Names titling its entry: Macedonia (Makedonija), and Greece, USA[25].

Inside that the country is 1st, Greek region 2nd, kingdom 3rd. That one looks like reverse chronological because otherwise the Greek region would be 3rd, not 2nd. The important thing is that again three meanings appear rather than just one. So we have ambiguity in the more relevant categories: ambiguity in history (obvious, see next section) and ambiguity in place names (when you don't specify the context by using the word country or state). Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 09:38, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Why would any dictionary work in reverse temporal order?? Any evidence? A place names dictionary might of course make a general binary distinction between present-day names and historical names, but that's a different thing (and it would most likely still be ordering the entries within each of these groups by some criterion of "primacy", i.e. relevance, however defined.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:02, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

So far, you're only citing dictionaries, not encyclopedias. (Taivo (talk) 10:01, 25 June 2009 (UTC))

• in World history, which is rather the scope of Wikipedia (in contrast to contemporary World history) Oxford says Macedonia is[26]: An ancient country in south-east Europe, at the northern end of the Greek peninsula, including the coastal plain around Salonica and the mountain ranges behind. In classical times it was a kingdom, which under Philip II and Alexander the Great became a world power. The region is now divided between Greece, Bulgaria, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia .
• in the same work it also lists the country at Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia [27] probably because in the wider scope it needs to have a disambiguated title. But that is just the Oxford's way. Wikipedia can be original :P Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 10:09, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Man, we've been through this all, didn't you notice? Please check if that one is already included in ChrisO's systematic survey; I suppose it is. (Haven't got access to those Oxford Reference links.) Do you think you are telling anybody anything new? Please stop muddying the whole thing by chewing the same facts again and again as if they were new. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:22, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

It wasn't included. I am not in the habbit of attacks so I won't say it was because of cherry picking. And please don't collapse this discussion. We can't "hide" the facts. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 10:57, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Reference works titles vs real usage

Another thing is that we cannot infer usage of the word Macedonia simply by looking at section titles. The text is what we should look at. Looking at one work as a complete thing, the different usages of "Macedonia" illustrates that there is significant ambiguity. Here is a perfect example of that ambiguity in a history book:

• Macedonia used in text under the title "Classical Greece"[28] and also in the section titled "Alexander the Great"[29]
• Macedonia in the section titled "The Balkan Wars"[30]
• Macedonia in the section titled "Breakup of Yugoslavia"[31]

All and all Macedonia in that example book and in most history books doesn't mean one single thing primarily. That is surely the case in the texts of other works too. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 08:57, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh puh-leeeeeze. What are you trying to show now again? But of course it's used in this way. Has anybody ever claimed anything else? Man, I'm really trying to be patient. Of course all the Macedonias are called that, in their specific contexts. The point about primacy is the claim that the one is significantly more frequent in the totality of English discourse. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:42, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, in history Macedonia is of course ambiguous (I was asked to talk with evidence). That was one point, I thought I should clear it out to everynoe here just to be sure. However the same case might be in other books - that was an example in history, the same can happen in the text in other domains in the totality of English discourse. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 09:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the same is not likely in contexts outside of history. In biology and botany, for example, "Macedonia" will only mean the modern country since ranges of creatures will be listed in modern terms, not ancient ones. Same goes for the distribution of modern languages. So, for example, one encounters the distribution of Macedonian as being Macedonia and Greece. (Taivo (talk) 10:07, 25 June 2009 (UTC))

Are you sure? I took the initiative to check out biology since you mentioned it.

There are quotes regarding lists of countries[32],[33](small print on the right) or where you expect a place to be the meaning of the word like in "Cajon company, Macedonia, Ohio"[34]. You are right about those cases, but...

But there are also these examples of usage in biology books:

• Biology, By Joan Solomon...[35]
• Classification of Life, By Melissa Stewart:[36]
• A history of the life sciences, By Lois N. Magner:[37]

In the above, Macedonia means things other than the country. Therefore your assumption is false. I could reverse the assumption and say that since most biology sources will include a mention to the foundation of biology that was established by Aristotle in Macedonia, ancient Greece then that is the primary topic there.

So I did my homework and it says that Macedonia is ambiguous in biology books.

In archeology Macedonia primarily means the Greek territory or the kingdom of Alexander [38]

In reference works about religion & philosophy Macedonia primarily means the ancient kingdom or the Roman province [39]

so two can say that ... Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 10:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Uh, Shadowmorph, you are cherry-picking again and ignoring biology texts. Those passages are not about biology, but about the history of biology, and uniformly about Aristotle. So you are still using only history references. (Taivo (talk) 14:45, 25 June 2009 (UTC))

(out) Taivo, check out botany Books: they are full of Macedonia (Greece): [40]. Since I broke that example of yours so easily, I think I can do that for other examples about English usage from random domains. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 11:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Shadowmorph, you need to stop drinking so much caffeine. You have broken nothing. If you actually look at that list of botany references you will find that almost all of them predate 1995. So, of course, they will use "Macedonia" to refer to something other than the Republic. We have already determined that the only reliable academic sources for usage are those that date after 1995. Show me that the majority of biology books written after 1995 use "Macedonia" to refer to either the region as a whole or just the Greek part and you will have a case. You cannot do that, so your case falls. Check out the most recent edition of Walker's Mammals of the World, the standard reference work for mammal genera, for example, and you will find that it uses the word "Macedonia" only to refer to the country in distribution statements. Botany books are the same. (Taivo (talk) 15:12, 25 June 2009 (UTC))

Right, well, now that we've established that you're not using the Oxford English Dictionary, you have a new problem - I also have access to the reference library that you've linked to, and unfortunately it is an amalgam of different reference texts, so there are consequently multiple editorial teams that may make inconsistent editorial decisions because of the text. For example, you are citing the "quick definition", but the same collection has the Oxford Reference to Countries of the World defining Macedonia in accordance with proposal A (see [41]). I would humbly suggest from my refereeing seat that you need to justify your choice of one source over another from a website that consists of a collection of many, many sources of information on this topic. Fritzpoll (talk) 14:30, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

As another example, the website has an excerpt from another book called the Concise Dictionary of World Place Names that defines "Macedonia" first and foremost as a country name (see [42]) so The Oxford Reference Site can really tell you anything you like, and I will formally overturn any unqualified reference to it in the proposals as misleading. Fritzpoll (talk) 14:32, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Why would "Oxford Reference to Countries of the World" have a section about the ancient kingdom or the other meanings ???? Wikipedia is not a directory of countries. It's a generic Encyclopedia. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 15:15, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

And why would an ancient history book have a section about the modern country or the other modern meanings???? Wikipedia is not a history of ancient Greece. It's a generic encyclopedia. Thus, all your arguments and evidence about the usage of "Macedonia" for the ancient kingdom should also be discounted. (Taivo (talk) 15:20, 25 June 2009 (UTC))

Wikipedia is neither of the two but history (not just ancient Greece the whole of world history up from 400BC to 1950) and geography are as importand as any other context. In that sense there is no general primary topic. That's my point. I am not the one saying that the ancient kingdom of Macedonia should be the primary topic. I am saying we can't use directories to infer a general primary topic. Especially not by just looking at the section titles. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 15:25, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I chose that example as a counterexample. Obviously other works have other treatments. I never said that it wasn't the case. I chose that one only because it was the counterexample that disproves the thesis of MOSMAC2. My thesis is the same with yours: "that site can really tell you anything you like", thanks for agreeing to that. However I wasn't the one who originally used that site (MOSMAC2 did). I provided one counterexample (that was left out from MOSMAC2) to prove the same thing you say. That there is a variety of uses of the word. I am not looking to say that the region is the primary meaning. I want to say that in Oxford works there is inconsistency about what is the primary meaning, like you suggested. Please understand that up until now.

the evidence of MOSMAC2 was the one that originally stated that "Credo Reference, Oxford Reference Online and Gale Virtual Reference Library provide a large number of reference dictionaries and encyclopedias. The following trends are visible:". It didn't include that work and a couple of other reference works where Macedonia is not primarily the country. It did however include works like "Goverments of the World" where there wouldn't be a reason to mention any other Macedonia (that doesn't have a government). It also included many other ones that are biased to have sections titled after countries i.e: they have no separately titled sections for Macedonia (region), Macedonia (ancient kingdom) , Macedonia (Greece).

I am going to try to have access to Credo reference now to see if I can replicate other results of MOSMAC2. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 15:12, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Since you will "formally overturn any unqualified reference to it in the proposals as misleading" then Fritzpoll you please understand my point why I believe that the references to MOSMAC2 in the proposals are also loosing their strength as evidence because it used that site selectively. Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 15:20, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I said unqualified reference - you referred to the "Oxford Reference" and the "Oxford English Dictionary" as indicating a specific position when they don't. My point was you have to qualify it with the specific book/text you are looking at within the website, rather than labelling the entire site as holding a single opinion. From my brief overview, MOSMAC2 does not violate this principle in this manner of analysing individual texts from the site. Fritzpoll (talk) 17:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Britannica uses "Macedonia" to refer to the country

There are several attempts above to use Britannica as an argument for the side which maintains that "Macedonia" should not be used as the title for the country. I'm sorry, but this just isn't true, at least as far as the publicly accessible online version of Britannica is concerned. I am somewhat worried that the other editors don't seem to notice how Britannica is being grossly misrepresented here, so let's set the record straight.

If you search for "Macedonia" on Britannica, you are presented with a list of titles on various topics related to "Macedonia", such as:

• Macedonia - the top result, refers to the country with the formal name Republic of Macedonia
• Macedonia (region, Europe) - refers to the general historical area that is split among the above country, Greece, Bulgaria and Albania
• Macedonia (ancient kingdom, Europe) - refers to the ancient kingdom of Macedon
• Macedonia (region, Greece) - refers to the region in Greece that is called Macedonia
• ... etc.

Note that this listing of results is in no way specific to searches for Macedonia, it does the exact same thing if you search for Germany, France, etc. It's not the same as a disambiguation page in Wikipedia.

Now, if you actually click on those results to see the article text for each, you will see that Britannica uses the title "Macedonia" for all the topics above, but for the search results that had parenthesised clarifications it simply moves that clarification into a subtitle. So for example if you click on the "Macedonia (region, Europe)" result above, the article begins with:

Macedonia
region, Europe
Bulgarian Makedoniya, Modern Greek Makedhonía, Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian Makedonija
... etc.

Note how the "region, Europe" subtitle has been added. Compare this with the result for "Macedonia", it starts with:

Macedonia
Macedonian Makedonija, officially Republic of Macedonia, Macedonian Republika Makedonija
... etc.

As you can see, no subtitle is inserted this time, it starts directly with giving the name in different languages and so forth.

In essence, Britannica's handling of Macedonia is exactly what Wikipedia does now, i.e. it uses plain unadorned "Macedonia" with no additional clarifications to refer to the country, and parenthesised suffixes or subtitles for the other meanings. The only difference is stylistic, i.e. Wikipedia keeps the parenthesised clarification in the title of the article itself, whereas Britannica moves it into a subtitle.

Therefore, Britannica simply cannot be used as an argument for changing the article title. If anything, it clearly supports the opposite position that "Macedonia" should go directly to the article about the country. I apologise if I'm fueling the fire with this, but I simply cannot stand aside and watch these blatant misrepresentations of Britannica (bordering on lies) go uncorrected. --Grnch (talk) 12:11, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

"If anything, it clearly supports the opposite" -- this sounds like something I've encountered before, people using arguments that actually support the opposite... I'm getting tired of constant twisting of facts and of cherry picking. I wish at least they drop the issue once it was clearly demonstrated it supports the opposite, but I don't dare to hope that. man with one red shoe 12:44, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Man with red, sorry about that block in arbmac, I wouldn't have blocked you if it was my call.

@Grnch, I see your point but you are focusing on one bit of text in the subtitle and forgetting to see the whole picture:

• Britannica does not direct you to one single meaning.
• There is a subtitle for every article, including the country. That's because they want all 4 of their titles to be clear and unambiguous at the first glance. For the country there is no need for an extra bit of text because "Republic of" in the subtitle is good enough for them to give out that it is a country. Also you have to see it in conjunction to the other bit of text just under the "Overview": "country, Balkan peninsula, southeastern Europe". Why cherry pick?
• Wikipedia does not use subtitles, the only analogue is the lead section where we do include detailed information. I wish we did use subtitles in Wikipedia but we don't.
• This discussion is about titles, not subtitles. In the other case I could use that argument to say that we should use the official name (found in that subtitle too).
• The parenthesized text exists so that each entry would have a unique name in the combobox, that's not important. If we focused on technicalities I could use the reverse argument and point you to the urls where they don't disambiguate: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/354223/M/Macedonia (/Macedonia), http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/354250/Macedonia (/Macedonia)
• The student edition of Britannica does not have any subtitles at all:[43],[44],[45], that's another case where there is no primary topic treatment.
• The important thing is that in Britannica all four Macedonias have an article proving that Macedonia in common English usage is ambiguous enough that we cannot have the users be automatically transfered to the country page (if at least it is not unambiguously named).
• Therefore Britannica is much more different and better in Wikipedia for that part since it respects the totality of users rather than only the majority of them. Also its more neutral since it does not claim the name for one entity or "downplay" the other "Macedonias" while their country has a good enough disambiguating subtitle: "officially Republic of Macedonia".Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 14:34, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Here is what we could do to reflect what Britannica actually gives to the user with its subtitles: Macedonia (country, Balkan peninsula, southeastern Europe) or Macedonia (Macedonian Makedonija) or Macedonia (officially Republic of Macedonia). The other articles at Macedonia (region, Europe), Macedonia (region, Greece), Macedonia (ancient kingdom, Europe). Shadowmorph ^{^"^} 14:41, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Are we reading the same Britannica? There is no subtitle to every article. In the first example I pasted there is clearly a subtitle between the main title and the part where they show local language or alternative names. In the second example there clearly isn't. It is plain as day, even though your edits to my comment tried to obscure it and bury it. I ask that you do not edit my comments, people can click on the full links I provided and judge for themselves. If you must, copy the examples in your own section and extend them there, do not put words in my mouth.

You said that parentheses are used only for disambiguation. Well yeah, that's the whole point, but ask yourself why they chose only "Macedonia" as the disambiguation title for the country, instead of e.g. "Macedonia (country, Europe)" or whatever other variation? No amount of elaborate twisting can get around that simple fact: the country is refered to as only "Macedonia" in the search results, with no additional parentheses or subtitles, whereas the other meanings are additionally clarified.

If Britannica was afraid that using "Macedonia" alone for the country would be confusing and ambiguous for their readers, they would have certainly clarified it, especially on such an important entry point such as the search result list, which is probably the first thing most Britannica users see when they look for something. I'm sure Britannica wouldn't want their users clicking the wrong link in the search results. Clearly they didn't feel the meaning was ambiguous, so they didn't feel the need to add any clarification.

I suppose we could continue with these interminable point by point arguments indefinitely, but life is too short. I have made my argument regarding Britannica above, others can read it and decide on their own. I will only ask that you please leave my comments intact in their entirety. --Grnch (talk) 20:06, 25 June 2009 (UTC)