Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archives/2012/March

First-level administrative subdivisions for countries

What's the deal with the current state of names for first-level administrative subdivisions of countries? There's a proposal here to change the format for the Argentine provinces back to "PROVINCE, Argentina", and it seems to be broadly supported by reference to these guidelines, but in practice most of the articles for other countries uses a "SUBDIVISION (COUNTRY)" format, as with Victoria (Australia), Colón Department (Honduras)‎, Centre Region (Burkina Faso), Gangwon Province (South Korea), La Paz Department (Honduras)‎, Santa Rosa Department (Guatemala)‎, Western Region (Ghana)‎, North-East District (Botswana), and several dozen others. This is clearly the predominant format.

So is this just a case of the guidelines not being followed, or do the guidelines not apply to first-level administrative subdivisions in the same way? Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:22, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Just a case of the guidelines not being followed. Those are neglected articles, hardly ever edited, just see their histories. Try to nominate "Colón Department (Honduras)" to "Colón Department, Honduras" and let's see if someone opposes it. Let's see if someone specifically interested in articles about Honduras (and not in requested move candidates) appears at all... Cambalachero (talk) 21:04, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Victoria (Australia) is "hardly ever edited"? Wha? ... I think that may be a more logical one to start with if these are ever going to be changed to conform with the guideline. That will give a good baseline measure of how much support or opposition there is to the guideline being applied to first-level administrative subdivisions, I think. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 00:25, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Unless something like Colón Department needs disambiguation, why disambiguate it? SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

It does need disambiguation. See Colón Department, which has four entries. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 00:58, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

My query was unclear. Is this a proposal to require disambiguation on subnational divisions regardless of necessity, or is it a proposal on the format of disambiguation where it is necessary? SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

Just a question about the form when it does need disambiguation. The guideline seems to suggest "NAME, Country", but most of the articles use "NAME (Country)". I was just asking if this has been observed before, if there was a reason for it, or if it's just a matter of an unapplied guideline. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:51, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

It wouldn't surprise me if several wikiprojects for countries have their own guideline (which this should override, but.) SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

I think you're probably right. Wikiprojects do seem to get their own systems going, which inevitably leads to balkanization of naming formats. I think I will try suggesting a rename of Victoria (Australia) to Victoria, Australia. The Australian WikiProject is pretty lively, so it should be a good discussion. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 04:00, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

History shows that the chances of passing a move request on that page are slim. You could try the Australian Wikipedians' noticeboard for preliminary opinions and also see what people think at WikiProject U.S. about having Georgia (U.S. state) at Georgia, United States. Personally, I don't really like the comma format for federated polities and I can probably see the arguments for not having administrative divisions like Colón Department, Honduras the same format as towns like La Esperanza, Honduras (although when you see titles like Trujillo, Colón you see inconsistencies there also). Nightw 04:36, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks—good suggestions. My personal bias on the matter is probably similar to yours, though I'm just looking for some consistency or at least the limits of this guideline as it is written and applied. You may be interested in this discussion, where some users are arguing that this guideline should apply to all administrative divisions in addition to cities/towns, etc. (Incidentally, I don't think "Georgia, United States" would work in any case since there are several towns/communities in the U.S. that go by that name: see Georgia.) Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 10:42, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I've commented. The current guidelines only address settlements and geographic features. I agree about consistency. If current practice is to use parentheses, then instead of moving a few we should be moving all, and we should get a consensus for where it should be applied (to me, it doesn't make sense to have some countries one way and others another). Nightw 09:41, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

This page is not intended to override Wikiprojects; most of what it contains is links to what the Wikiprojects decide. If there is unhappiness at what the Wikiproject recommends, discuss it there - including pointing out that it is done otherwise for other countries; if the Wikiproject is wrong, change it there and here. But remember that idiom does vary from country to country. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:00, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the issue of idiom variation is relevant to this issue. All we are discussing is the issue of whether to use a comma format or a parentheses format for disambiguating administrative subdivisions. That should be something that could be standardized across all countries; it makes little sense for each Wikiproject to have it's own guideline on that very narrow issue. If the last sentence I wrote is untrue, then there probably is no hope for WP to ever have any sort of unified style in these minor matters. But I don't think that's the case. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 08:51, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Idiom variation is the chief reason our recommandations differ; some countries find their equivalent of Victoria, Australia natural, others find it bizarre. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 10:30, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

But do any countries not find it bizarre? Where is the comma convention applied for subdivisions and do they have articles which require disambiguation in the first place? Would "in most cases, use parentheses" not be in line with most countries? At the moment we have a guideline that is being cited as the reason for moving Argentine province articles, so what I (and I think Good Ol is suggesting too) is that we remove "administrative divisions" from the line below, as it doesn't appear to be in line with reality.

With the names of cities, towns, villages and other settlements, as well as administrative divisions, the tag is normally preceded by a comma. Nightw 04:29, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

When I said that those are neglected articles, I talked about them as a group. Yes, Victoria is edited regulary, but the others are not. You talked about a "predominant" format, cited 8 examples, but when we check article histories, it happens that only a single article goes against the guideline with many users passing near it. Or two articles, but that's still too few. By the way, the Georgia article is influenced by the naming dispute between the state and the country, unrelated here Cambalachero (talk) 13:45, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• The use of parentheses is the predominant format, if you go through them all. We're not talking about one or two articles alone. It's not 100% universal among the first-level administrative subdivision articles, but just looking at a rough estimate I'm guessing it is currently about 5 or 6 to 1, meaning that probably over 80% use the parentheses format. If we want a full inventory of them, perhaps a list could be compiled. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 05:22, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Please dont bother - we have been through it all before... (viz. Wikiprojects do seem to get their own systems going, which inevitably leads to balkanization of naming formats. I think I will try suggesting a rename of Victoria (Australia) to Victoria, Australia) . - it seems that there are cycles of this stuff - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Australian_Wikipedians%27_notice_board/Archive_21#Victoria for an archived example of an earlier attempt at unparenthesizing and the subsequent keeping of the parenthised version for the Australian variety anyways - bah balkanization? nah - Australian project insisting on its own internal consistency of usage SatuSuro 10:39, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Frankly, I wouldn't really care if the proposal to rename Victoria (Australia) to Victoria, Australia were rejected or resulted in a no consensus decision. That would really only prove the point that there is no real consensus that this guideline should apply to administrative subdivisions. One of the points to such a nomination would be to assess how much support full implementation of the guideline has or does not have. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 03:52, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

But there is/was a consensus and guideline. Cities, towns and suburbs were at Town, State, whilst states and geological features were at Feature (State) or State (Country). To me, if you regularly state the place as a single phrase then it should use a comma, if you rarely say it as a phrase, but there is a need to disambiguate it here in WikiLand, then use parenthesis. People rarely call the State of Victoria, "Victoria, Australia", so the parenthesis makes more sense.

That makes sense, and is consensus for North America. It probably makes sense for all anglophone countries, and if somebody wants to install it for Australia and South Africa, I am not sure anybody will argue. But for Germany, see WP:GERCON; parentheses are the modern form in German for towns, gradually replacing the traditional Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and are more or less customary in English. (And note that it is disambiguated by the river, not Bavaria, or Germany.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:48, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

If you read this guideline in full, it appears to contradict what you claim is the consensus and the guideline. Users in this discussion are basing the move rationale entirely upon this guideline, and they are proposing a province be moved to the "PROVINCE, COUNTRY" format. User:Night_w pointed this out above: it says "With the names of cities, towns, villages and other settlements, as well as administrative divisions, the tag is normally preceded by a comma." I'm suggesting that perhaps the "administrative divisions" part of this guideline does not reflect current consensus. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 18:05, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

It makes no difference to me what we do with Argentine provinces; have the Argentine WikiProject, who are likely to care, been notified? This page should reflect the general consensus.

But this discussion seems to be only a reflection of the discussion there. Please take it there, and argue the facts on the ground; if you change people's minds, then consensus has indeed changed. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:32, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

That discussion prompted this discussion, and it is being discussed there. This is a discussion of a more general nature. The purpose of this discussion is that the consensus you say exists is not reflected in the guideline, so we're trying to discuss why and what if anything to do about it. You can participate or not, but it doesn't help to just say it's already settled because currently there is a difference between what you say is settled and what the guideline says. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:20, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I've notified the project. Nightw 15:09, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I have come rather late to this discussion and the whole topic seems to have moved on but if we were to look for consistency in disambiguation rather than renaming Victoria (Australia) to Victoria, Australua we should instead be renaming Perth, Western Australia to Perth (Western Australia) and so on for all cities, towns, villages etc. The use of a comma rather than the standard method of disambiguation using parentheses seems to imply that the disambiguation term ("Western Australia") is somehow part of the formal, official name of the place (or at least more so than using parentheses). Using parentheses makes it clearer that the term, for example "Ontario" in London (Ontario) is not part of the name of the place (the place is simply called "London", no?) but is simply a convenient disambigation term. The use of comma for disambiguation is much more ambiguous in this regard IMO. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 02:45, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Synopsis

The comma format for disambiguated place names is an exception to the normal disambiguation rule, and is the most common way of disambiguating places. The requested move at Talk:Córdoba Province (Argentina) is discussing whether to enforce an exception to this exception, by insisting that Argentine provinces comply to the overall default disambiguation using parentheses instead.

The justification given for this exception to the normal exception is that the local rule does not explicitly mention the province level. The reason (at the risk of being personal) appears to be the desire to enforce greater uniformity in Wikipedia naming conventions, and reduce the perceived Balkanization of current practice which allows loose groupings of users (including but not just formal WikiProjects) to enforce a local naming standard on a small subject area.

I confess I feel some sympathy for this, it's been my immediate reaction to many requested moves too. But on consideration of some wider and rather philosophical issues, I generally come back to thinking that the constitutional anarchy we have has a lot to recommend it. Andrewa (talk) 00:58, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

The reason for beginning the discussion is because some editors have said that this guideline applies to administrative subdivisions, but it is not widely applied to administrative subdivisions in practice. Ultimately, the purpose of the discussion is to determine if it should be made clear that either the guideline does or does not apply to these administrative subdivisions. No one is going to solve the "balkanization" issue in this discussion; the purpose of this discussion and the reason for beginning it are much more narrow that this broader issue.

My only other comment is that I would challenge your statement that the comma method is "the most common way of disambiguating places", as long as the place we are talking about is an administrative subdivision as opposed to a city, town, or municipality, etc. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:27, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Place names with multiple spellings

[1]

What should be done with place names that are having more than one common spellings, such as Macau/Macao? Does Wikipedia have any policy to standardize cases as such with either spelling? Or would the same rule for color/colour apply? (In the case of Macau, the FCO,[2][3][4] the Macau Government[5][6]  and the Hong Kong Government[7][8] spell it as Macao in English.) 116.48.165.183 (talk) 12:31, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Macau has no official English spelling preferring either end vowel. This was discussed several years ago on the article talk page. Fairly equal representation from Macau, PRC, and global usage went either way. It was decided to consistently use the 'u' spelling unless the proper name of a subject used the 'o'.

In your diff, I reverted an editor who rather pointedly changed the spelling in an earlier edit. This behavior is generally not productive and it's rather curious that yet another HK IP is highlighting the issue. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

That's because English isn't one of the official languages of the territory. But it's spelt with an o in English on the cover page of its passport, on visitors entry forms, which are trilingual, to name a few. And in many pages it was you who first initiated the changes or changed the titles 110.4.16.158 (talk) 13:42, 13 January 2012 (UTC)