User:RM395/Course/Edit wars/Kiev

In the Kiev Wikipedia article, there has been a longstanding debate over whether to use the Russian (Kiev) or Ukrainian (Kyiv) spelling of the capital city in Ukraine. To avoid distractions and shifting focus away from general improvements the article as a whole, an entire subpage to the Kiev talkpage was created for the naming debate. Arguments have raged over the subpage since as early as 2008, which was evident in the subpage archives. In the archives, there was a user who claimed that the debate has gone on since 2004.

The Debate

Although the article is currently stable, the name debate has not ended. Editors have been unable to reach a total consensus. There have been short exchanges on the talkpage from January of this year. One recent argument cited Ukrainian law (the law states how the state language must be used on official transcriptions) as an authority in favor of the Kyiv spelling.

One major side of the argument in favor of Kiev is that the article in on the English Wikipedia and as such the article should cater to and orient towards English speakers. Narratives of World War II in English frequently use the Kiev spelling. The Kiev variant is the common name in English and is used more more than the Kyiv spelling in English sources. The naming conventions policy would give some support for the Kiev spelling in this instance: “article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize.”

On the subpage archive, one user summed up his support for the Ukrainian spelling: “...Kyiv is now an established and recognized spelling in the English world. Only dispute is how much weight to allocate to the preferences of various groups of users. Moving the name would be in keeping with the naming policies and good encyclopedia editing.”

Infobox

There has been quite a lengthy discussion about how to express the names on the just the infobox itself. Some have argued for using articles for other Ukrainian cities as a model for the infobox. Others tried to use other cities as a model. Consensus is an important factor in this part of the debate. According to the article talkpage, there was an established consensus in the articles for central and eastern Ukrainian cities to have both the Russian and Ukrainian variants in the infoboxes.

One part of this infobox discussion in particular was unique. Some users were arguing for their favored spelling variants to be moved into different parts of the infobox. The “native_name” part of the code was under a large amount of fire. The outcome in the infobox was just a difference in font size, but some editors argued fervently, believing the code would make a statement.

Policy and Heated Debate

Policy shows up again when some editors were warned about going against the consensus of the article and therefore against Wikipedia's consensus policy. There was a large warning to caution users against editing the archive links. The editing would cause dysfunctional links when changed from “Kiev” to “Kyiv”. The warning also mentioned that edits of this nature would become vandalism as they violate Wikipedia policy (“Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point”).

As expected with any passionate debate, some threats and heated arguing did occur. Nothing was found to be anything particularly too impolite or offensive in the discussion, however. There was one exception with “rage deletion”. One user deleted the naming subpage because they disagreed with some of the arguments.

Compromise

While the article naming debate has not ended up completely favoring of one side, some compromises have been made to the article. The current version of the infobox includes both the Russian and Ukrainian spellings in their Cyrillic alphabets. Another addition is the Etymology section, which goes over history and Ukrainian naming of city in detail.

Personal Thoughts

The section of the debate over just the code of the infobox was surprising to me personally. The code that they debating over with the “native_name” is not even visible when viewing the page normally. One lesson that we can take away from this debate is that Wikipedia Policy is king. Editors are very aware of established policy and enforcement happens naturally and vigorously in arguments in an edit war. Overall the argument went on in a rather civil manner, especially for anonymous debate over the internet. From what I saw, no matter how heated the debate got, the threats and arguing did not get extreme or petty. I only encountered a handful of cases of threats or vandalism.

As for my stance on debate, I agree with common name side. If the name of the article can only be either Kiev or Kyiv, then it should be the more easily recognizable of the two, Kiev. However, I do find the compromises taken on the infobox and Etymology section to ultimately be the best solution to the debate and they make the article more comprehensive as a result.--Jeflicki (talk) 02:33, 18 March 2013 (UTC)