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Including "Australia" after "Western Australia" in an article

For Blockbuster LLC article, I added ", Australia" after "Morley, Western Australia" (this and this) twice to the lead section of that article, and this has been undone. I did that because United States has been added after Bend, Oregon to pinpoint as a part of the U.S. Following an undoing of such an addition, I created new discussion at Talk:Blockbuster LLC § "Morley, Western Australia" in the lead section and claimed that Western Australia is actually a state/territory of Australia. While Morley, Western Australia, Australia was fine in the article, another editor has disagreed, and following his second undoing, he replied to my thread in the discussion, citing "Oregon is fairly obscure if you're not a U.S. citizen" and "the fact that Western Australia is the western part of Australia is extremely self-evident and it looks wrong/redundant to state the similarly named country after the territory in that case". Despite frequent omission of Australia in many Australian-based articles, including Morley, Western Australia, about things in South Australia and Western Australia in the English Wikipedia, the article on Blockbuster LLC is a U.S.-based article. There is only one Blockbuster store of Bend, Oregon, in the U.S.; while another, which is scheduled to close at the end of March this year, is in Australia. That named country is omitted in the article's lead section (as seen in the current version). Having just Western Australia in there makes it look read like a country, even though the term is technically not. It would make sense to include the country, but why not? At the time of this posting, I have not heard from the same editor who previously posted on the article's talk page several hours ago. Because I was told to get consensus first, I need some feedback from different editors who are watching this talk page. --AnhDucYang (talk) 01:39, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

  • If I am referring to a place where the name is repeated I still include it, for example see Commons:Category:Whittington (the Staffordshire ones) although Staffordshire is the equivalent of Western Australia. This is because its usual to state the parish, district, county and country in articles and on DAB pages, although the 1st 2 aren't often needed on DAB pages since there are considerably less cases of multiple places in a parish of district that county. So yes I'd include it even though it may seen a bit redundant. Crouch, Swale (talk) 09:45, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
  • It seems to me that this is a false argument, obsessive following of a rule that does not exist but is just an elaboration of the US rule that "thou shalt always give the state after city". Bend, Oregon does not need "USA" appending. Bend, Georgia does, because it is still (potentially) ambiguous. Bend, Western Australia definitely does not further clarification. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:20, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
  • This report from Australian daily newspaper The West Australian just mentions Bend, Oregon. So I am wondering whether we have consensus that United States shall be omitted after the location of the sole U.S. Blockbuster video retail chain in the Blockbuster LLC article. --AnhDucYang (talk) 16:39, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
Mnmh. "Someplace, Victoria, Australia" looks and sounds fine. "Someplace, Western Australia, Australia" looks and sounds silly. That's just how language works. That's why references to what is done with Bend, Oregon etc. don't much matter for the Australian case. Doing silly things for the sake of consistency is not necessary. If you want to make a rule to the effect of "if the name a country is included as part of a the name of a top-level sub-national political subdivision, as a general rule don't include the name of the country when referring to the political subdivision", OK I guess. "Don't write stuff that sounds queer" is a more encompassing rule, and is already in effect, really: when I come across passages that read as though written by a non native English speaker, I will sometimes correct. Herostratus (talk) 12:55, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Capitalizing Indian subdivision terms (tehsil/taluk/taluka/mandal) when part of a name?

Hi,

There are many articles about specific Indian tehsils, taluks, talukas, and mandals (small political subdivisions, roughly equivalent to a U.S. county). I've noticed that these are inconsistent in capitalizing the term as part of the name, e.g., Raisinghnagar Tehsil, but Rishabhdeo tehsil. I would think the term should be capitalized, as is done with U.S. counties (e.g., Orange County) and the examples at WP:NCCS. However, it looks like a majority of the articles in Category:Tehsils of India do not use a capital letter. As someone who frequently edits these articles for the Guild of Copy Editors, it would be helpful to me if there was a consistent rule I could point to. What do others think? Thanks, Tdslk (talk) 21:15, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

I am pleased this is up for discussion, thank you @Tdslk:. Before offering any substantive points in response to the question, may I ask, what is the criteria we must consider when discussing whether a standard exists or what it should be? I.e., are we looking internally at what most editors do, or externally to ""do what English does"?Deccantrap (talk)
Good questions, Deccantrap! There's not an existing Wiki guideline I'm aware of that 100% addresses my questions, although MOS:POLITICALUNITS would seem to imply that "tehsil", etc., should be capitalized when part of a name. I think most style guides would agree with that, although if it's not a convention in Indian English that would win out per MOS:ENGVAR. As to whether to have a standard at all, I do think it would be helpful given how many of these articles there are and how likely it is that references to multiple places would appear together (e.g., "The road goes from Raisinghnagar Tehsil to Rishabhdeo tehsil" looks awkward to me). Tdslk (talk) 23:39, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
I agree that under MOS:POLITICALUNITS, tehsil and taluka should be spelt 'Tehsil' and 'Taluka', unless there is a convention otherwise. As to convention in Indian English: Being that administrative sub-divisions are purely animals of statutory/administrative origin, I though looking at what conventions various arms of Government of India follow would provide some insight, as well as what the Times of India uses. It appears there is no convention. For example, the Census of India uses 'tehsil', the Gazette of India uses 'Tehsil', the Supreme Court of India uses 'taluk', and the Times of India uses 'tehsil'. Because the Gazette is a quintessential voice of the Government of India, the sampling result of 3 (not capitalized) to 1 (capitalized) doesn't quite mean a preference for the former. Being that there doesn't appear to be a convention in Indian English, would it be safe to fall back on Tehsil/Taluka as per MOS:POLITICALUNITS?
At some point in the past there was a discussion about this at WT:INB in relation to capitalisation of District. I am fairly sure the consensus was to use lower-case but it looks a bit weird to me. - Sitush (talk) 13:45, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
And here is the discussion. I'm surprised that I can remember that far back. - Sitush (talk) 13:48, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
Agree with Sitush, the district, mandals/tehsil/taluka (as they are known with respect to their state) is the correct format.--Vin09 (talk) 02:46, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Proposal: Remove WP:USPLACE from subpages

I am proposing that subpages of places not in the AP Stylebook to use a title in the format History of Albuquerque rather than History of Albuquerque, New Mexico or Timeline of Austin rather than Timeline of Austin, Texas. This is not a proposal to remove USPLACE from everything, like removing it from the main article Albuquerque, New Mexico or Austin, Texas. The reason why I think this proposal is good is because it is concise and unambiguous. I am not proposing this just for Albuquerque or Austin, this is for all US places that redirect from a concise title to a more lengthy one. Please indicate your comments below. Mstrojny (talk) 11:08, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

  • For consistency I would prefer to stick to the same convention as in WP:USPLACE, and omit the state only from those cities specifically listed. --David Biddulph (talk) 11:13, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
  • David has it right... here the goals of consistency, Recognizanility, and precision out weigh the goal of conciseness. Finally, the state is often needed in the title for disambiguation (for example, there are multiple towns in the US with the name “Austin”). Blueboar (talk) 11:34, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
  • The premise is not entirely correct. USPLACE applies to article titles about the cities and towns themselves, but does not automatically apply to articles that simply have the place as part of the article title. In those cases the normal rules of WP:PRECISE and WP:CONCISE apply. There have been discussions about this regarding "List of tallest buildings in ...", county courthouse articles and transit station articles, where some editors thought USPLACE should apply but there was no consensus that it does. We already have articles like History of Charleston where the title is not ambiguous or is the primary topic, although I'm not aware of any discussion about those in particular. Station1 (talk) 00:02, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
I have moved the page History of Charleston to History of Charleston, South Carolina because there is also a Charleston in West Virginia. Mstrojny (talk) 11:02, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
Not to mention all the other “Charleston”s in other states... or in other countries. Charleston rivals “Springfield” for most repeated town name. Blueboar (talk) 12:04, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
@Blueboar: In this article here, Washington is the most common city name in the US. Springfield is number 2. Charleston isn't in the top 10. Mstrojny (talk) 20:57, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
I don't get that. It's exactly analogous to your Timeline of Austin proposal. There are other Austins too. I was just pointing out that your proposal is already in effect. It doesn't matter if there are other Austins or Charlestons if there are no other History of Charleston or Timeline of Austin articles (or if those are primary topics). Most people recognize which Charleston is referred to in the title without adding the state, so the more concise title is preferred, as correctly stated by the editor who originally moved it there. Station1 (talk) 06:37, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Support. Both the examples given (Austin and Albuquerque) have pretty clear cut primary topics, so the longer name shouldn't be necessary per WP:CONCISE. Calidum 22:23, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
    Personally, I think there's a huge difference between Albuquerque (pretty much universally recognized as a city in New Mexico) and Austin (the name of dozens of cities, towns, schools, and people). Accepting this proposal would just put more incentive on making primary-topic grabs on ambiguous names like Austin (and Charleston, which currently does not have a primary topic). The state name should be included whenever it helps the name to be recognized as a city name, or disambiguates to a particular city. Dicklyon (talk) 23:09, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Already the case. USPLACE only refers to the actual articles about the cities. It has never automatically applied to other articles, and indeed some guidelines explicitly say not to use it, for example the metro area guideline (Jacksonville metropolitan area etc.) If Austin is the onlu city named that way then the state namd should be eligible for removal from the time line article without changing any Guidelines. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 23:05, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
    There are lots of Austins. The proposal is to ignore that and go with primary-topic status. Dicklyon (talk) 23:09, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
@Dicklyon: If Austin is ambiguous, why does Austin redirect to Austin, Texas and not the disambiguation page? Should I propose an RM requesting that Austin go to the disambiguation page and not redirect to the city in Texas? Mstrojny (talk) 19:52, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
No RM is needed, as no title changes; just fix the redirect. But first see if it's being used to go directly to the city, as you'd have to fix those links, too. Dicklyon (talk) 20:22, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
Actually, that is not quite correct. If a redirect change is controversial it should go through WP:RFD. Personally I would say Austin should redirect to the Texas city, although perhaps the old British car brand would be a contender too. Dicklyon I take your point about primary topic rather than being the only one. So yes, the point still applies. Name the article Timelime of Austin  — Amakuru (talk) 22:07, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
RM would be a slightly better venue since redirecting "Austin" to "Austin (disambiguation)" would create a WP:MALPLACED DAB page and RM has more editors familiar with primary topics than RFD, though both venues would work. Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:13, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
I stand corrected. One would want an RM to move Austin (disambiguation) to Austin. I doubt that it would win, but I'd be in favor. My point stands, that just because a city name has primarytopic status doesn't mean it's not highly ambiguous. Dicklyon (talk) 22:21, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
True, good point Crouch.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:23, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
@Amakuru: Did you mean Timeline of Austin? You spelt it wrong. Mstrojny (talk) 20:14, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
@Mstrojny: indeed. It was a typo. Although a timelime does sound interesting. A fruity clock perhaps.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:39, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

RfC

CONSENSUS AGAINST
There is a clear consensus against this proposal. Closed per request at WP:ANRFC - if you have any questions please ask me. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 19:42, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion 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.

{{rfc|hist}}

I would like to request more input in my proposal above (which is titled Proposal: Remove WP:USPLACE from subpages). RfC relisted by Cunard (talk) at 23:46, 21 April 2019 (UTC). Mstrojny (talk) 01:26, 10 March 2019 (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.

Commas in the middle of titles

More general discussion opened at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Matching commas on attributive nouns in titles. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:58, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion 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.

I want to raise an issue which has come up quite a bit lately. The above discussion merely deals with a matter of personal preference: History of Sacramento vs. History of Sacramento, California, with no one calling for it to be named Sacramento history or Sacramento, California history. However, that is not the case for events, which are typically structured as YEAR CITY EVENT_TYPE, such as 2018 Anchorage earthquake (note: the year is optional if unambiguous). There have now been multiple shootings in some place called Aurora, two of them in Aurora, Colorado and one in Aurora, Illinois. Multiple WP:RMs have dealt with or are dealing with this issue:

I suggest reviewing the content of the discussions before proceeding further. Currently, the de facto status quo is that, in unambiguous situations, WP:USPLACE is already disregarded on any subpage where the natural position of the place name is not at the end of the title. I think that makes sense and does not need revisiting. What we should codify is how to insert the state name when required for disambiguation. I think there are four general schools of thought:

  1. This is not a problem at all; "City, State" is always a valid drop-in replacement for "City". If "Aurora shooting" would be the preferred title if there were no ambiguity, then "Aurora, Illinois shooting" would also be the preferred title.
  2. This is a violation of grammatical rules (MOS:GEOCOMMA), so a closing comma should be used: "Aurora, Illinois, shooting".
  3. The first is a violation of grammatical rules, and the second looks weird, so in most cases such articles should be retitled to place the "City, State" at the end: "Shooting in Aurora, Illinois".
  4. Same objections to the first two, but if the year makes it unambiguous, then "2019 Aurora shooting" is perfectly OK.

I think it would be good to cover this special scenario somewhere in our guidelines, such as WP:NCE, WP:USPLACE, and/or MOS:GEOCOMMA, so that we're not always arguing over an adhoc solution that breaks one rule to save another. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:32, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

King, as you've seen in the discussions, the "drop-in" idea needs another comma to terminate the offsetting of the state, per all English grammar and usage guides. The unbalanced comma makes no sense. The impression that all these commas makes it "bumpy" is why Garner recommends avoiding such constructions, by omitting the state or by not putting the city and state before a noun. There are a handful of editors who are OK with the agrammatical construction (as you can see most recently in the Sandy attack discussion that's open), but the majority in recent discussions were not OK with that. I doubt that we need to cover this in guidelines, as it comes up only rarely, but it would be nice to get to a resolution that's not just momentum with a majority opposing it as in the most recent Aurora discussion that closed with "no consensus", and that's not in conflict with all outside English grammar guides. Thanks for bringing this here. Dicklyon (talk) 03:40, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
I thought about it some more, and realized that there is more to it. If City, State is being used as a noun adjunct, as in the examples above, it looks really weird to have a matching comma, because we don't normally put commas between adjectives and nouns. On the other hand, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in the American Civil War (the example given in WP:USPLACE) looks totally OK, because prepositional phrases are frequently preceded by commas. So basically we only need to worry about the noun adjunct case; all options on the table are not ideal but we have to pick something. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:56, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't see any need to change any of these examples. —⁠烏⁠Γ (kaw) │ 01:03, 03 May 2019 (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.

Matching commas on attributive nouns in titles

Followers of this page may be interested in WT:MOS#Matching commas on attributive nouns in titles. --Izno (talk) 12:02, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

The Falkland Islands and The Malvinas

There is a discussion about these names here [2] if anybody is interested. The guidelines on this main page are mentioned. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 23:55, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

City Names in India

Interesting debate going on regarding changing the name of Bengalore to Bengaluru. Talk:Bangalore#Move_to_Bengaluru My research into "Disinterested, authoritative reference works" shows a strong shift to the new name. Given this, and if further research showed a similar change on other India city pages, is there a way to have a policy that these official government name changes in English speaking countries, or just India, are considered en mass rather than having to have this argument over and over on several dozen pages? I feel disappointed that there is significant resistance to recognizing these names, it does feel like a colonial holdover, though to be fair there may be similar instances where in US/UK/CAN/AUS/NS names were officially changed and wikipedia lagged behind for years. My only reference is my home town of Halifax, Nova Scotia where the moment the name was officially changed wikipedia changed, even though many protested that Halifax Regional Municipality was still being used. WayeMason (talk) 11:17, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

  • Our policy for how to deal with name changes is simple... follow the sources. We don’t necessarily use the “official” name... instead we use whatever name is most recognizable. Recognizability is determined by seeing what name the majority of reliable sources that are independent of the subject use (giving more weight to sources written after the change occurred). Now, the most recognizable name may also be the “official” name... but not always. Blueboar (talk) 12:19, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
I recognize that is how it is supposed to work... but there is tremendous resistance to renaming Bengalore and, I think, other Indian cities, that should be a cause for concern. I do not think that the policy is being equally applied... I am not saying why, you can draw your own conclusions... WayeMason (talk) 20:35, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

UK naming convention and requested moves

Euanjohnb has proposed a number of moves that contradict what is written in these naming conventions:

Is there a need to revisit the naming conventions for UK places? Or should we stay with the current conventions and not what's been separately proposed in these requested moves? —C.Fred (talk) 18:42, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Proposal to move Orlando, Florida to Orlando

A proposal to move Orlando, Florida to Orlando is being discussed at Talk:Orlando, Florida#Requested move 5 November 2019. - Donald Albury 22:59, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

So are we going to discuss it here or there? IMO it should be here, not on the talk page of one city. -- MelanieN (talk) 23:34, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
If the proposal is to change the WP:USPLACE policy, then we should discuss it here. If the proposal is simply to move one article, then we should discuss it on the article talk page via WP:RM. Blueboar (talk) 23:50, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
Moving that one article would violate USPLACE - and open the floodgates to constant arguing about other city names. The beauty of USPLACE is that it is a simple, Reliably Sourced bright line. -- MelanieN (talk) 00:16, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
So... you agree with the current policy, and don’t think it should change? Thank you for sharing. Blueboar (talk) 02:32, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
By posting it here, you've suddenly flooded the Orlando, Florida discussion page with the people from here. Not complaining, but it does seem like it's disrupting previous consensus -- Rockstonetalk to me! 02:56, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Move of Sioux City, South Dakota to Sioux City

User:TaerkastUA (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has moved Sioux City, South Dakota to Sioux City. There was no discussion of such a move on Talk:Sioux Falls, South Dakota since 2016. - Donald Albury 23:39, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

  • Oops! I was in a hurry because I had to leave the house, and messed up. Thanks for taking care of that. I would have moved it back myself, but figured the moves, if done carefully and correctly, would have taken more time than I had. - Donald Albury 16:16, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

US-centric USPLACE continues to cause confusion

Years after the great debate was supposedly settled, the uninitiated, apparently unaware of the US-centric special case in the USPLACE guideline, continue to make proposals to remove the unnecessary state name from US city titles, in accordance with WP:CRITERIA. Just in the last few months we've had at least these:

  1. Fort Lauderdale, Florida → Fort Lauderdale SEE: Talk:Fort_Lauderdale,_Florida#Requested_move_26_July_2019
  2. Tacoma, Washington → Tacoma SEE: Talk:Tacoma,_Washington#Requested_move_25_September_2019
  3. Orlando, Florida → Orlando SEE: Talk:Orlando,_Florida#Requested_move_5_November_2019

I suspect there is no consensus at this time to bring USPLACE in line with WP:CRITERIA and how we title all of our other articles, including articles about cities outside of the US, but I just wanted to point out that the confusion persists, and it will continue as long as we keep getting new editors who understandably try to apply the same guidelines to US city articles that they see us apply to all of our other article titles.

Why we insist on letting this exception to our naming conventions fester makes no sense to me. --В²C ☎ 20:59, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Ping users quoted above: @TrailBlzr:, @Sangdeboeuf:, @Rockstone35: --В²C ☎ 18:14, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Rockstone: Out of more than 30,000 US place articles, the existence of just two or three (failed or withdrawn) RMs shows there's remarkably little confusion, and demonstrates the success and stability of the convention. USPLACE remains the standard because it best meets our CRITERIA, for reasons already well explored. In the absence of any new or compelling opposing arguments, it seems likely to remain. ╠╣uw [talk] 15:21, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
    • Alternatively, people have just given up on trying to change the convention; that's all. I know that I don't intend to make such a proposed move unless the convention changes, and unfortunately, it feels like that won't happen -- Rockstonetalk to me! 20:16, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
  • The convention at USPLACE is actually in alignment with CRITERIA... what sometimes causes confusion is that this is one of the instances where we favor the criteria of RECOGNIZABILITY over the other criteria (such as conciseness). Simply put... so many places in the US need disambiguation, that it is common practice to include the state name... even when a disambiguator isn’t actually needed. Our readers expect it, and are surprised when it isn’t included. Fort Lauderdale, Florida is simply more recognizable than the simpler Fort Lauderdale. Blueboar (talk) 15:43, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
But that's the point. Almost any title can be made more recognizable by adding more information to the title. This can be demonstrated with any six clicks on SPECIAL:RANDOM. Here's one sample (try it with your own):
  1. Sunyani Airport would be more recognizable at Sunyani Airport, Brong Ahafo, Ghana.
  2. Subdistricts of Lampung would be more recognizable at Subdistricts of Lampung, Indonesia
  3. St Thomas of Canterbury Church, Newport, Isle of Wight would be more recognizable at St Thomas of Canterbury Church, Newport, Isle of Wight, UK
  4. Ukkali would be more recognizable at Ukkali, Karnataka, India
  5. SV River Plate Aruba would be more recognizable at SV River Plate Aruba (Aruban football club based in Madiki, Oranjestad)
  6. Víctor Coello would be more recognizable at Víctor Coello (Honduran footballer)
Yet we interpret CRITERIA to prefer the more concise (yet less recognizable) titles in these and just about every other title that is not a US city.
I disagree our readers are surprised when they don't see the state. There is no evidence for that. Evidence against this notion is that (AFAIK) no one has proposed an RM for any of the US city articles that are at the plain names in years, like San Francisco or New Orleans. I'm sorry, but the argument that Fort Lauderdale, Tacoma or Orlando would be surprising or problematic in any way when St. Louis, San Diego, Seattle and Miami are not, doesn't seem logical. I think each one should be decided on a case-by-case basis based on CRITERIA, like every other article title is, not by creating exceptions like this with a special guideline that inexplicably gives recognizability higher priority in ways that we don't do with any other titles.
Application of special guidelines like USPLACE should be limited to areas where CRITERIA falls short, or providing guidance when disambiguation is necessary. This practice to give recognizability higher priority for US city article titles also sets an odd precedent that I believe spreads confusion about CRITERIA relative priorities and interpretation to other articles. —В²C ☎ 18:07, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
The objective of good naming guidelines in general (and of USPLACE in particular) is not to maximize recognizability, it's to weigh all the goals of recognizability, naturalness, preciseness, conciseness, and consistency in order produce a stable and efficacious system of article titles. The system that does this best for US places is — as the community has repeatedly affirmed — USPLACE, for reasons already well explored. ╠╣uw [talk] 20:06, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
No, Blueboar got it right: we favor recognizability over conciseness for US city article titles, and, as far as I can tell, for US city article titles alone. And why this exception is justified has not been explained. Why it is not justified has been explained. —В²C ☎ 20:36, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
No, the fact that titles are not maximally concise does not mean that recognizability is favored. It simply means that conciseness is just one of multiple goals and is balanced against others, per WP:CRITERIA. USPLACE does this successfully, again as the community has repeatedly affirmed and as robust title stability demonstrates. Justifications are elaborated in the archived discussions above, and recapped succinctly at PERENNIAL. ╠╣uw [talk] 21:02, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
A footnote in the guideline tries to explain: Using disambiguation by state in cases where it is not necessary has the advantage of providing consistent article titles for United States places (a majority of which are ambiguous and so require disambiguation anyway), but the disadvantage of inconsistency with titles used for articles on places in most other countries (where redundant disambiguation is not used), as well as a loss of conciseness. Why this advantage is seen to outweigh the disadvantage is not explained. At best, you have a wash with the gain of consistency within a subset of US city articles at the cost of losing consistency with the set of all articles, including with all other city articles. But that supposed gain of consistency is marginal given the inconsistency with what are arguably the most popular US city articles, and this marginal gain of consistency is dwarfed by the inconsistency with the much larger set of all other articles. And, on top of that, there is the loss of conciseness. --В²C ☎ 20:48, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

I think there should be an exception to the [City], [State] rule when there are case where there is literally no other city or settlement with that name. This is part of the argument I made with regard to Fort Lauderdale. There is no other place in the world named "Fort Lauderdale" and it is fairly uncommon to refer the city as "Fort Lauderdale, Florida". In Canada, we have adopted this rule to an extent. Cities like Moose Jaw, Saskatoon, and Chicoutimi, while they are small, they don't require disambiguation because there is no other "Saskatoon" to confuse Saskatoon, Saskatchewan with. TrailBlzr (talk) 18:30, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

TrailBlzr, here is the portion of USPLACE relevant to city names:
Articles on populated places in the United States are typically titled Placename, State (the "comma convention"); most in U.S. territories are titled Placename, Territory. A placename that needs additional disambiguation should include its county or parish (e.g., Elgin, Lancaster County, South Carolina, and Elgin, Kershaw County, South Carolina). If more than one place within the same county has the same name, specify the type of local government unit in parentheses before the comma, for any article that is not the primary topic (e.g., Callicoon (CDP), New York, and Callicoon (town), New York, but not "Callicoon, New York (CDP)"). A small number of unincorporated communities bear two states' names due to their peculiar locations across state lines (e.g., Glenrio, New Mexico and Texas).
Cities listed in the AP Stylebook as not requiring the state modifier in newspaper articles have their articles named City unless they are not the primary topic for that name. In other cases, this guideline recommends following the "comma convention" as described above.
Articles in the "city, state" format should have the city name redirected to the full name. In most cases, such as for Paris, Texas, that will be impossible, because the base name may have other uses, in which case a DAB entry or hatnote should be used. When weighing a U.S. city against other possible primary topics, the U.S. city should never be considered a partial title match if the base name of the city is the same as the term being considered.
How would you modify it? —В²C ☎ 19:50, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
I know I'm not the one you're asking, but I would say Articles on populated places in the United States are titled Placename, State (the "comma convention"); most in U.S. territories are titled Placename, Territory, unless there is little or no likelihood that the city name will be confused for another place or topic.-- Rockstonetalk to me! 20:16, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
That calls for psychoanalysis of hypothetical in-your-imagination readers, and disregards CONSISTENCY. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:29, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
Doesn't literally every pagename require that? Nearly any topic can be confused for something else if you stretch it far enough. -- Rockstonetalk to me! 20:14, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
  • USPLACE matches the five CRITERIA very well, plus the overlying COMMONNAME. RECOGNIZABILITY & CONSISTENCY and most obviously better met than what the tenacious title minimalists are hell bent on pushing. CONCISE is better met, except by a few minimalists who do not accept that cutting information is not improving concision. Brevity is not concision. In the US, it is extremely common, overwhelmingly, for people, and for quality sources, to introduce towns by state name, if the state name is not already abundantly in context. Repeated use drops the state name because the minimal context is established. Wikipedia titles exist out of state context. The same is true in the other old country’s former colonies. It is not true in the old country, where town names predate the language. It is less true in NZ and SA, where local language names are possibly more common than towns named after old country names. It is very true in Canada and Australia, where a huge number of towns across states/provinces are named after old country towns or people (people who never even visited the town), and these towns are frequently used in multiple states/provinces making Town, State mandatory in those cases. Looking at the categories, you might not get that picture, but that is because a very small number of editors engaged in surreptitious unilateral moves, a disruptive effort to undermine consensus for consistent recognisable COMMONNAME comma disambiguated town names. USPLACE is not confusing in least, but is the one thing the prevents a descent into town name title battles over a perverse ideology that titles should be as short as possible, despite that helping no one ever. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:42, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
    • Concise means "brief yet comprehensive". Since it's unique, Fort Lauderdale is just as comprehensive as Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and it's clearly more brief. Therefore it's more concise. This applies to primary topics too, like Orlando vs. Orlando, Florida, which are as comprehensive (and more brief, therefore more concise) for all intents and purposes here. --В²C ☎ 22:40, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
    • Even better, per WP:CONCISE (and no, I didn't write this): The goal of conciseness is to balance brevity with sufficient information to identify the topic to a person familiar with the general subject area. Fort Lauderdale alone is "sufficient information to identify the topic to a person familiar with the general subject area". Why do you contend that adding the state name makes it more concise, when it's already unique (or the primary topic) without the state name (which is the only titles we're talking about)? --В²C ☎ 01:57, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
    • One more point. SmokeyJoe wrote: "In the US, it is extremely common, overwhelmingly, for people, and for quality sources, to introduce towns by state name, if the state name is not already abundantly in context. Repeated use drops the state name because the minimal context is established. Wikipedia titles exist out of state context." Yes, WP titles exist out of state context. But WP titles exist out of all contexts. As noted below, when most non-US cities are introduced in reliable sources, they are introduced by country name, if the country name is not already abundantly in context. Thus we have Nice, France, St Andrews, Scotland and Harbin, China. But on WP, we have Nice, St Andrews and Harbin. That follows the convention, despite the lack of context, unless disambiguation is required. So, despite seeing non-US cities introduced by country name in reliable sources, we don't add the country name to the titles of the articles about non-US cities, unless needed for disambiguation. So why should seeing US cities introduced by US state name in reliable sources be a reason to include the state name in the titles of those articles? And we follow this principle for all articles, not just non-US cities. Films, books, people, companies, plants, etc., etc., are all titled by name without contextual information in the title, regardless of the context in which they're normally introduced in reliable sources, unless it's needed for disambiguation. Why should US city articles be treated differently? This different treatment of only this group of articles is inherently confusing, and the three RM proposals linked above are evidence of the confusion it causes. Read the rationales provided in each one. In each case they are applying the same reasoning that they see applied to all other titles. --В²C ☎ 23:33, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

And here we all are again. Hello, Mr. Bond, we’ve been expecting you. As I have pointed out before, there are two main reasons why USPLACE is used here and why it is in full compliance with Wikipedia guidelines. The first guideline is WP:Reliable sources: we are following a style set by an influential arbiter on how to style U.S. place names. That gives us a clear, authoritative rule to follow and eliminates what would otherwise be constant arguing. The second guideline is WP:ENGVAR: saying “City, State” is a regional habit of language in the U.S. Regional language variations are something that Wikipedia specifically allows for (honor; license; November 13, 2019). Americans almost always name the city and state together. Generally people will say something like “I am from Tacoma, Washington”. If they just say “I am from Missoula”, the other person is likely to respond “Missoula, Montana?” There are reasons for this: the size of the country is such that we can’t know every city, but we know every state; and the states are a very important part of our identity, even reflected in our name. Residents of most other countries don't have this habit; we do. That's why we have a different naming convention from most other countries. -- MelanieN (talk) 02:18, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Well said, I concur. Herostratus (talk) 04:56, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
MelanieN: Exactly right. When it comes to good titles, one size does not fit all, and I see no reason we should force it to. ╠╣uw [talk] 12:05, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
I also agree with what MelanieN said. My opinion on this issue is essentially the same as the last few times we've had this discussion, so feel free to read the archives if you want me to elaborate on that. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 14:09, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
  • MelanieN, nice to hear from you. Truly! As I'm sure you know, reliable sources often do not qualify the US city names we're talking about with a state, including the three explicitly mentioned here: Fort Lauderdale (Forbes), Tacoma (NY Times), Orlando (NY Times). The argument that following usage in reliable sources indicates we should include the state in the title per COMMONNAME does not hold. Trying to apply ENGVAR in this context is quite a stretch; I'll just note ENGVAR is not one of the WP:CRITERIA, and not even mentioned on WP:AT. I will add that of course the state is sometimes added for context, just like sometimes the country a city is in is added for context (notice in this article the AP refers to NICE, France, adding in ", France" for context just like you support adding in ", Florida" for context, but our article is never-the-less at Nice, per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CRITERIA), but such addition of surrounding political entity for context should never be misconstrued to be part of the name of the city. The name of the Florida city, for example, is Fort Lauderdale, not Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Granted it's not going to happen, but, hypothetically, if the name of the state changed, the names of the cities within it would not, because the state they are in is no more part of their name than is the country a city is in. The creativity employed in the defense for USPLACE is impressive; I'll give you all that. However, each time, the guideline is ultimately shown to be an unjustified exception to CRITERIA. --В²C ☎ 19:13, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
Well, I didn’t think either of us would change the other’s mind. 0;-D I know that, to you, WP:CRITERIA is the be-all and end-all - just the five bullet points, ignoring the part that says "These should be seen as goals, not as rules" - and no other considerations apply. To me, other considerations do apply. Thus, all we can do here is to state our case, not in hopes of influencing the other, but as part of the overall discussion. As someone once said, when I argue with someone on line, I am not trying to convince them; I am trying to convince the onlookers. -- MelanieN (talk) 19:55, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
Indeed. And I think it should be pretty obvious to said onlookers that we agree that USPLACE contradicts CRITERIA. So there's that. As to the significance, I don't think the statement that says they're "goals, not rules" means we should just wad them up, toss them in the can, and make title decisions based on some other criteria we make up to fit whatever we feel should be the title. I think the onlookers can see that too. --В²C ☎ 20:57, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
No, I don't agree that it contradicts CRITERIA. I just don't choose to argue with you on the Five Bullet Points, because they can be interpreted in various ways. And because, whether you like it or not, the CRITERIA page itself says the bullet points are not ironclad rules. -- MelanieN (talk) 21:29, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
B2C: Oh dear — I see for Tacoma you chose to cite an extract from an archived 1988 NYT issue... but did you happen to check how the original article begins?
  • "TACOMA, Wash., April 3 - Mayor Doug Sutherland..."[6]
It leads with City, State, and that remains the standard. Some others from this year alone:
  • "TACOMA, Wash. — It was Megan Rapinoe’s first time on a soccer field..."[7]
  • "Tacoma, Wash., saw the largest when measured this way..."[8]
  • "The couple met in 2014 through work both were involved in on kindergarten-readiness, in Tacoma, Wash."[9]
  • "...an immigration detention center in Tacoma, Wash."[10]
The state clarifier isn't always included, as when the geographical context is already established[11][12], but the convention is unquestionably common in this and many other reliable sources. If even your own examples don't back your claim to the contrary, then I'd gently suggest easing up on the remarks about fantastic rationalizations. ╠╣uw [talk] 21:22, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
Huwmanbeing, thanks for paying attention and finding that. Sorry. But even if they always did it, it wouldn't matter. Again, the AP also includes the country in the city, country comma format for all but the best-known cities outside of the US. I gave the Nice, France example above. Here's one for St. Andrews, Scotland. It's basically the same convention they use for US cities: except for a certain number of cities very well-known by their names alone, include the country separated by a comma from the city name. But that's no reason for us to include the country in the titles of our articles about those cities. So, it's a great basis for deciding on how to disambiguate, when disambiguation is required. But it's no basis for establishing the title when disambiguation is not required. --В²C ☎ 21:50, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
Yes the state (equivalent of) is only included when necessary as can be seen from Category:Towns in Fife (Kincardine-on-Forth is naturally disambiguated) but not only is it not regarded as convention in Scotland but the "state" of many places in Scotland probably isn't even known by many. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:56, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
Yes, but my point is the country (Scotland) is well known, and used by the AP very similarly for Scotland cities to how the US state is used by the AP for most US cities, but we don't follow the AP comma convention for countries; only the state comma convention for US cities. Why, if we see no need to add the country (and I'm certainly not suggesting that there is a need) when disambiguation is not necessary, despite the AP comma convention to include the country, do we add the US state when it's equally unnecessary, ostensibly due to the AP convention to include? --В²C ☎ 23:09, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
Because it's not unnecessary, for reasons already given above. ╠╣uw [talk] 00:26, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but I don't see any reasons above that explain how including the state for Fort Lauderdale, Tacoma, and Orlando (as well as for other US cities with unique names or names for which they are primary topics) is necessary. What did I miss? (note: for sake of argument I'm presuming whenever the base city name is a primary redirect to the article about the city, the city is the primary topic for that base name). --В²C ☎ 01:07, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
Primary redirects are easily made by anyone with little attention, a bad redirect does little harm, existence of a primary redirect is poor evidence for it being a better title. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:58, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
Redirects to a non-primary topic are not easily made when the community recognizes some alternative use as the primary topic. But, yes, when there is no primary topic for an ambiguous term, a redirect from the term to one of the disambiguated uses is relatively harmless. Still, for any redirect, odds are in favor of the redirect’s target being the primary topic for that term. Perhaps not in your opinion, but in the community’s opinion. There are exceptions, of course, but they’re just that, exceptions. A redirect at a term remains a reasonable basis on which to presume the target is the primary topic for that term. —В²C ☎ 17:06, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
B2C: What you miss is that good titles don't maximize only conciseness, or only recognizability, or any other single goal. Instead we consider and weigh them all to reach a compromise that's successful and stable — and in this case that's USPLACE. As for reasons, I think the problem is not that you don't see them (since they've been given repeatedly), it's that you don't accept them, and I can't help you with that. ╠╣uw [talk] 11:48, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
No, I’m not missing that. I’m not suggesting any criteria be maximized. I’m suggesting the criteria be evaluated similarly for all titles. Because Nice is RECOGNIZABLE and CONCISE, we choose it for the title over Nice, France despite the latter being more recognizable, and how the topic is usually introduced in sources where the context is not already established. We apply the same reasoning exemplified by Nice for virtually all titles on WP, except for US city article titles. What I’m missing is any reason given anywhere for why including the state for Fort Lauderdale, Tacoma, and Orlando (as well as for other US cities with unique names or names for which they are primary topics) is ”not unnecessary”, reasons for which you claimed have been provided above. —В²C ☎ 16:28, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
I'm not completely convinced that the city in France is primary for "Nice" given Kindness but its probably not a likely encyclopedic term given that "nice" as an adjective has a far broader meaning. However if indeed the city is primary for "Nice" it should be at "Nice" and not "Nice, France" per WP:PRECISION. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:49, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
Maybe Nice is not the best example because some may question its primacy, but, you're right, "if indeed the city is primary for 'Nice' it should be at 'Nice' and not 'Nice, France' per WP:PRECISION" (and WP:CONCISE). And my point is: "Since, for example, the city is unquestionably primary for 'Fort Lauderdale' it should be at 'Fort Lauderdale' and not 'Fort Lauderdale, Florida' per WP:PRECISION" (and WP:CONCISE). And the fact that USPLACE indicates otherwise it is contradictory to CRITERIA and that creates confusion. Hence this whole section. --В²C ☎ 17:06, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
  • At this point, We are just repeating arguments we have all made before... and it is clear that nothing B2C says is changing minds (nor is anything we say changing B2C’s mind). Essentially B2C does not agree with established consensus. That is OK. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.
However, it is clear from repeated RMs and RFCs that the guidance given at USPLACE does indeed reflect consensus, and it is clear from THIS discussion that consensus has NOT changed (despite B2C’s best efforts to convince us to change). Further discussion is pointless. Blueboar (talk) 17:06, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
I think PRECISE and CONCESE do favour removing the state but ENGVAR and common usage says its preferred, if I had my way I'd remove the states but as I'm English I don't know enough about the US to say what's best and many Americans do indeed argue that the state isn't disambiguation so we'd probably be best leaving it as is. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:49, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
I think CONCISE does not favour removing the state. Consider Flagstaff, Arizona. Is Flagstaff more CONCISE? No, as in mu, that is not a valid comparison, because the two contain different amounts of information. Concise is the opppose of wordy. City of Flagstaff is not concise; Flagstaff, Great State of Arizona is not concise. The broad value that modern writers have for concision is reflected in the non-concise terms not being COMMONNAMEs.
But give RECOGNIZABILITY and CONSISTENCY a go. The non-English English-speaking world has a lot of re-used names for place names. Thus, to make place names recognizable, ", State" is added.
CONSISTENCY? Consistency matters from the perspective of the reader. Does the reader see consistency in placenames? Compare: Flagstaff, Arizona, Flagstaff, Eastern Cape, Flagstaff, Victoria. Compare: Flagstaff, Arizona & Fresno, California. Pretty consistent? Consistency helps recognizability. Wordy, no.
A small few editors have sabotaged CONSISTENCY in other places. It's largely complete for The Philippines. Maybe that's OK, because Philippine cities are not so much names using pre-exiting English words or names. I protested about it regarding Australian cities and towns, where the few minimalists made it a mess.
What I don't understand is why B2C is driven to shorten titles. What set him on that mission? What is the reader benefit. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:45, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Lot of people have a hobbyhorse. Doesn't necessarily make them wrong. However... User:Born2cycle says

"I’m not suggesting any criteria be maximized"

and if that's true, it'd be the first time, because User:Born2cycle likes article titles to be a short as humanly possible, even at the cost of being able to figure what the article is about when you see it in a list or when you first open the article. I have seen this. He's entitled to his opinion, and he can't be proven wrong, but he's being disingenuous here when he says "I’m not suggesting any criteria be maximized", and that colors my evaluation of his entire argument. If User:Born2cycle were to say "Well, look; I just believe that bullet point #4 -- Conciseness -- is somewhat more important than the other four bullet points; I just do, is all. And I tend strongly to define 'conciseness' as meaning 'as short as possible' in most cases", that'd be more straightforward.
Them we could move on to "And you believe this helps the reader (which is the point of all this) because ________; fill in the blank please." There are arguments that could go in the blank -- after all, it takes longer to read "Tacoma, Washington" than to read just "Tacoma". That's the only argument I can think of, but I don't find that one compelling, because the fraction of a second it takes everyone to read "Washington" is more than made up for by the cognitive effort required to perceive "Tacoma" alone as referring to the the Dusty Old Jewel In The South Puget Sound on the part of some number of readers, which cognitive effort would probably take an appreciable fraction of a second; and for some people, even a whole second or more. We can't know, but that's my best guess.
But maybe there are other, better ones. Let's hear them, because for my part that is what matters: whatever is best for the readers, as a net experience overall. Herostratus (talk) 11:17, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
My views are no secret. See User:Born2cycle/Concision_razor where I make the context clear:
  • Conciseness favors the shorter title to convey the subject. If two titles are equally good at identifying the subject, then the shorter one is preferred, and
  • While WP:CONCISION is often a consideration in title decisions, the concision razor reasoning is meant to be used specifically when neither of two titles is favored by criteria other than concision.
My whole point here is that Fort Lauderdale (for example) is "equally good" at identifying the city as is Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the same way that the community recognizes that Cannes is "equally good" at identifying the city as is Cannes, France. That's because the WP standard for determining what is "identifiable" is to consider the perspective of someone who is already familiar with the topic. I understand why it might seem to you that I think conciseness means "as short as humanly possible", but my record, if viewed carefully, demonstrates that that is not the case. For example, consider the position I recently took at Talk:List_of_human_stampedes_and_crushes#Requested_move_21_October_2019. But, yes, it's true that the community (not just me) generally prefers shorter titles "even at the cost of being able to figure what the article is about when you see it in a list or when you first open the article". That's the standard demonstrated by almost every single article we have, including most city articles like Cannes, Grasse, etc. And it's not just city articles. Consider the list of titles I found by clicking on SPECIAL:RANDOM above:
  1. Sunyani Airport at the cost of the more identifiable Sunyani Airport, Brong Ahafo, Ghana.
  2. Subdistricts of Lampung at the cost of the more identifiable Subdistricts of Lampung, Indonesia
  3. St Thomas of Canterbury Church, Newport, Isle of Wight at the cost of the more identifiable St Thomas of Canterbury Church, Newport, Isle of Wight, UK
  4. Ukkali at the cost of the more identifiable Ukkali, Karnataka, India
  5. SV River Plate Aruba at the cost of the more identifiable SV River Plate Aruba (Aruban football club based in Madiki, Oranjestad)
  6. Víctor Coello at the cost of the more identifiable Víctor Coello (Honduran footballer)
In fact, unless the title is disambiguated, has no name (is descriptive like "List of ..." articles), is a USPLACE, or the topic is especially and widely well-known, I challenge you to find any examples of titles of topics that have shorter and longer names that all meet COMMONNAME, including every city outside of the US, where the community has NOT chosen the shorter name as the title, "even at the cost of being able to figure what the article is about when you see it in a list or when you first open the article". That's how titles have been selected on WP since long before I started editing here. So that they are identifiable to a person already familiar with the topic. And yet you ascribe that preference to me personally. That's not fair. Don't shoot the messenger. It's precisely the community's preference for shorter titles that makes USPLACE confusing, as demonstrated by the three recent RMs listed at the top of this sections, because it's the one big exception to this community preference. --В²C ☎ 17:36, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
You're not getting it; please desist. ╠╣uw [talk] 10:59, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
Blueboar, the topic of this section is not USPLACE in general, but simply pointing out that the guideline continues to confuse. That cause of confusion is not in and of itself a reason to change the guideline, but may be one element of an argument to do so, some time in the future. --В²C ☎ 20:13, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
But there's no evidence that it does confuse: two or three RMs across ~30k US place articles is much quieter than the average RM rate across all Wikipedia articles. (And threads like this are increasingly uncommon.) I understand there are parts that you dislike, but beyond that I see no problem to solve. ╠╣uw [talk] 21:33, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
That's fine, we can agree to disagree ab out whether three RMs like this in 6 months is enough evidence to demonstrate it causes confusion. However, I would like to ask if you or anyone else can identify any other RMs in the last 6 months caused by ignorance of some other guideline. I don't recall any others like that. --В²C ☎ 21:59, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Whither Recognizability

The history of B2C's campaign to demote and devalue recognizability is chronicled at my page User:Dicklyon/Whither Recognizability? that I made quite a few years ago. Sad to see it coming back. Dicklyon (talk) 22:01, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

I never intended to "devalue" recognizability with any of my edits. But I guess you can certainly cherry-pick my edits to make it look that way. My intent was to bring clarity and consistency to the policy. Also that was a long time ago and I have since switched to mostly trying to verify and/or develop consensus on talk before editing. --В²C ☎ 00:26, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
That original edit is interesting:
  • Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize with the minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.
Two points:
  1. "with minimum of ambiguity" (not "without ambiguity"). This implies primary topics.
  2. "making linking to those articles easy and second nature". This is why Cannes; not Cannes, France. It's also where I think USPLACE has gone off the rails with, for example, Baton Rouge, Louisiana rather than the "easy and second nature" Baton Rouge (not to mention to be consistent with every other uniquely named city on WP, except those in the US). --В²C ☎ 00:36, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
  • “USPLACE causes confusion” is absurd. Just read it at face value. B2C’s title minimalist philosophy, which he cannot state with any concision, would in practice be far more confusing. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:34, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
It’s not my philosophy. It’s the philosophy that underlies the titles of the vast majority of our titles. Minimalist titling applies to probably 99 out of 100 randomly selected titles, not counting US cities, those that require disambiguation, and those with descriptive titles because they don’t have COMMONNAMEs (e.g. “list of...” articles). Go ahead, hit SPECIAL:RANDOM repeatedly and see how many non-minimalist titles you can find that are not among the exceptions I just identified. Good luck. Don’t shoot the messenger. —В²C ☎ 07:44, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
About 98 of those 100 have no potential controversy about whether to use a more precise or recognizable title. So they don't provide any evidence about what the relevant underlying philosophy might be. Dicklyon (talk) 04:57, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
No, the only reason there is no controversy about them is because title minimalism dominates. Consider any relatively obscure person, like the randomly selected Kristen Fløgstad. The only reason to not make that title more recognizable, with, say (Norwegian athlete), is title minimalism. There is no reason the arguments used for making any controversial title more recognizable to be "more helpful for users" should not apply to this one, and the myriads like it. Consider also Item Building. Same thing. Etc., etc., etc. --В²C ☎ 18:35, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
No. Your one eyed obsession with concise really skews your perspective. Kristen Fløgstad and Item Building are not undisambiguated due to CONCISE, but due to NATURAlNESS (no case to add parenthetical disambiguation), RECOGNIZABILITY (no similar mis-recognisable titles), and of course COMMONNAME. Concise does not mean short. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:46, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
If not for the title minimalism which dominates WP title decision-making there would be a recognizability case to add the parenthetical description. --В²C ☎ 22:57, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
So, you don’t understand CONCISE, RECOGNIZABILITY, or NATURALNESS. WP:NOTTHERAPY. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:00, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
I understand them perfectly well, in the same way for USPLACE articles as I do for non-USPLACE articles. --В²C ☎ 18:13, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
There is one other major example, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (UK Parliament constituencies) (see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (UK Parliament constituencies)) which should probably change. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:26, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

More examples of the confusion

Yes, it looks like an editor was unfamiliar with the WP:USPLACE convention and moved the page without discussion. Not to worry, someone else has now moved the page to back to the more appropriate title. No big deal. Blueboar (talk) 19:03, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
The point is not that it's a big deal, but that moves like this, and the RMs listed above, demonstrate that USPLACE is contrary to the conventions that govern titles for all of our other articles, and thus USPLACE creates confusion, unnecessarily. --В²C ☎ 20:30, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
B2C: Your views are known. Please consider giving it a rest. ╠╣uw [talk] 20:49, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
When people stop denying that USPLACE contradicts CRITERIA and creates confusion, contrary to clear evidence like this, I'll consider giving it a rest. --В²C ☎ 21:50, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
That move is not evidence of confusion, but an unjustifiable bold move by an editor who had not previously edited that page. AKA provocative disruption. Contrary to policy. Your statement amounts to a declaration of intent to continue to disrupt, and will be evidence submitted for your next BLOCK. To be sure, you are not acting here to improve the encyclopedia. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:21, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
I'm puzzled as to why you brought attention to the fact that the user had not edited the article before. There is no requirement to have edited an article before moving it. Assuming good faith, the user in question made the bold move totally in compliance with policy as they understood it. They would have to know about the USPLACE convention/exception to know their move was contrary to that guideline. Similar moves of other articles per the same reasoning are made all the time without question. That's why moves like this one demonstrate the confusion that USPLACE causes, as Dohn joe affirms below. --В²C ☎ 17:41, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
  • B2C - your arguments are falling on deaf ears here, and no one new has joined the discussion this time around. Maybe it is time for a break. Everyone else - B2C's view had the plurality of !votes the last time USPLACE alternatives were put up for discussion, which most of you should be aware of - so cut B2C (or at least their position) some slack. B2C is correct that as long as USPLACE is generally an exception to our titling conventions (and it is an exception, which is fine as long as that's the WP consensus), people will post RMs and move pages to "fix" things. We've decided thus far that those perennial moves are an acceptable byproduct of the USPLACE consensus - but it's always been a narrow consensus. B2C (and other editors) have every right to revisit that consensus periodically with new evidence or arguments (or even with old evidence or arguments). WP is full of long-standing battles like this - sometimes they resolve more or less permanently, sometimes they pop back up. This is just one of those unresolved ones. Dohn joe (talk) 16:43, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
    • Thanks. My target audience here is not the few regulars who are responding with heels dug in, but the lurkers who are surely reading, and will be reading in the weeks to come. I suppose I could compile these examples of USPLACE-caused-confusion on my own page, but I thought it was appropriate to do it here. When users like SmokeyJoe continue to deny that USPLACE is causing confusion despite the plain evidence of these examples, that is demonstrative in and of itself. But I do understand and respect those who acknowledge the confusion, but find it acceptable and nevertheless continue to support USPLACE. Note that I'm not proposing a change here; just bringing attention to the examples of confusion, in case everyone is not aware. The outright denial of the confusion USPLACE obviously causes, despite these examples, is what is so confounding. --В²C ☎ 17:41, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
      • Lurking can go both ways. I have supported the current USPLACE convention in the past, and still do, but somehow this page was no longer on my watch list. Well, not to worry, I've put it on my watch list and will be lurking, and commenting as appropriate. - Donald Albury 18:25, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Oswestry - Welsh names for English towns

If anyone is interested, there is a discussion on the Oswestry talk page about the use of the Welsh name in a prominent position at the start of the lead, and in the infobox. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 20:47, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Capitalized letter or non-capitalized letter for all geographical objects?

I haven't find guideline how should be named geographical objects, like:

  • Aruküla Caves or Aruküla caves
  • Puise Peninsula or Puise peninsula
  • Malusi Islands or Malusi islands
  • Suurejõe Stream or Suurejõe stream
  • Abruka Nature Reserve or Abruka nature reserve
  • Voose Cape or Voose cape

--Estopedist1 (talk) 05:43, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Absent a specific naming convention (Category:Wikipedia naming conventions), Wikipedia:Article titles#Common names should apply, including the sub-section WP:DIFFCAPS. In general, capitalization should follow common usage in reliable sources, if not explicitly overruled by a currently accepted guideline or naming convention. - Donald Albury 12:21, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
I don't believe there's any guidance on this. A couple-few years back there was a long conversation at Peshtigo Fire re the naming of fires generally (e.g., "Peshtigo Fire" vs "Peshtigo fire"). It's at Talk:Peshtigo fire#Capitalization, where there was no consensus, but then it was decapitalized laster anyway (Talk:Peshtigo fire#Requested move 13 February 2019) and so forth. Probably it will be capitalized again someday, and then back, I suppose.
My take on the question generally is that you are never going to get people to agree on these things. This is why we have "Bel Air Fire" but "Peshtigo fire" etc. with no real consistency. This doesn't much bother me, personally. A glorious inconsistency in these matters is an ornament of the chaotic good side of this rather unusual project of ours. However, it does bother other people a lot. Don't be one of those people would be my counsel. =)
My advice generally would be to maybe look at a sample of existing articles on the subject and do what most of them do. That's not going to win you any points if a capitalization warrior or de-capitalization warrior finds you. So another valid approach would be "do what you think best, but leave alone what others have decided is best", which we could use more of that attitude around here generally, maybe. Herostratus (talk) 15:18, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Subtopics of places with ambiguous names

Currently there is no guideline on whether parenthetical disambiguators for place names (e.g. Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia (country), and New York (state)) should be maintained in subtopics of the location. Call our two entities A and B, and suppose that an article exists for a subtopic of A but not for B. There are several questions to answer here:

  1. Should we preemptively disambiguate when the topic can only reasonably exist for A, such as President of Georgia?
  2. Should we preemptively disambiguate when no article currently exists for B, but one could theoretically be created, such as Law of Georgia (U.S. state)?
  3. When B is geographically part of A, should we preemptively disambiguate when no article currently exists for B, but one could theoretically be created, such as List of beaches in New York? Does it matter if the subtopic is a list or a regular article? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:30, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

My answers:

  1. No, it is obvious from context what the article is referring to.
  2. Yes, otherwise the title would not be sufficiently WP:RECOGNIZABLE for readers to tell whether it is referring to A or B.
  3. Not sure. I closed an RM as no consensus on this issue.

I welcome any comments as well as suggestions for other cases to be considered. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:30, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

I have added an RFC tag so we can get broader input from other editors as well. Interstellarity (talk) 17:43, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the ping. I think that:
  • I agree with Epicgenius per WP:CONPRIME. For 2 we could have a DAB at the base name even if there's only article and the other is a red link or maybe the base name would just redirect to the qualified title, see Talk:Film industry in Georgia (U.S. state)#Requested move 22 November 2019 for example. I thought about the beaches RM but wasn't sure so didn't participate. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:28, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
    For 2, what I find happening most in practice is the temporary creation of a redirect at the base title with the understanding that it should be changed to a disambiguation page as soon as the other article is created. I think this makes sense. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:40, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
  • There is currently a guideline about this at WP:D: "Disambiguation is required whenever, for a given word or phrase on which a reader might search, there is more than one existing Wikipedia article to which that word or phrase might be expected to lead" [emphasis added]. We should never "preemptively" disambiguate article titles, which is also contrary to policy at WP:AT, and there's nothing really special about these types of titles that would call for an exception. We should also bear in mind that even if there actually are two existing topics on WP that could bear the same title, WP:PRIMARYTOPIC still applies. For instance, History of communism in Georgia could theoretically apply to two articles, but two are unlikely, and even if there were two, one would be primary; similarly for History of peaches in Georgia. - Station1 (talk) 21:01, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
    Per WP:PRIMARYRED there is no requirement that the article actually currently exists as long as it could currently exist, in addition to what CONPRIME says anyway. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:09, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
    PRIMARYRED is talking about dab pages, not article titles. I think the above quote from WP:D is more relevant. CONPRIME is not a guideline and is very obscure. Station1 (talk) 21:25, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
    WP:CONPRIME is, however, part of Wikipedia:Consistency in article titles, which collects numerous examples from past discussions where consensus was reached with respect to the titling issues involved. BD2412 T 01:25, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
    It should be possible to tell what an article is discussing just from its title. There could be a topic that is equally important for Georgia the country and Georgia the state, but because one of them gets created first just by chance. We shouldn't have it occupy the base title just because someone got to it first. Preemptive disambiguation in this case improves recognizability, precision, and consistency, three of the naming criteria, while being worse in only conciseness (you could make a case for either being more natural depending on what aspect you focus on, so I put that one as neutral). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:44, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
    There are huge numbers of articles where we can't tell what is being discussed just from the title, but it's not a problem. Does George Washington discuss the baseball player, the trombonist, the horse, or someone else? What is Hunnselva about? If there is a topic that is equally important to Georgia the country and the state, there will likely be two articles, but until then there's no reason to disambiguate the title, because whoever is looking for that other topic has nowhere to go (yet). It does not automatically improve recognizability or precision; Law of Georgia is recognizable and precisely defines the topic of the article and is not ambiguous with any other title unless and until an article about law in the other Georgia is written. And it actually makes it less consistent, since most of the hundreds of articles with the word Georgia in their titles do not have any unnecessary parenthetical disambiguation. Station1 (talk) 22:23, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
    Most of Wikipedia's literature on determining the primary topic presumes that there is some canonical (i.e. externally attested) title that multiple topics are competing for; it does not talk about descriptive titles, which the vast majority of subtopics will be. Immediately there are many problems with trying to determine the primary topic of a descriptive title. For example, because the term was made up by Wikipedians, it may not be the most common term in reliable sources, and there might be sources that discuss the topic without ever once mentioning it in a string that could plausibly serve as a title. As such, quantitative methods such as Google Ngrams/Books/Scholar may not provide an accurate picture of which topic is primary, so we lose one of the key tools in our toolset.
    And having to determine a primary topic for each subtopic is highly disruptive. During the debates over whether Georgia (country) was the primary topic of "Georgia", there were arguments on one side that it's a country with a 5,000-year history and that a country is more important than a U.S. state, while the other side argued that the state had a higher population and economy; the RM continued for pages and pages. We really don't want to rehash this argument on every subtopic, e.g. supporters of the country might say that History of Georgia should be the country, giving more weight to its 5,000-year history, and supporters of the state might say that Capital punishment in Georgia should be the state, because it is much more well-known for capital punishment.
    While getting the primary topic "right" is a good principle in theory, 1) it is much harder to do in the case of descriptive titles, and 2) there is a real cost to having these arguments in terms of editors' time, so better to just argue it once for the main topic and have it apply downstream. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:14, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
    I mostly agree with your first paragraph but it is largely irrelevant because we can use pageviews to help determine whether or not there is a primary topic between two identically titled existing topics (or two topics that could reasonably be titled identically even if they aren't). I disagree that discussions are disruptive (or at least not more so than primary topic discussions generally). You happen to have given two very clear examples. Pageviews for articles titled History of Georgia clearly show that there is no primary topic and both articles need to be disambiguated. Conversely, pageviews for articles titled Capital punishment in Georgia show the large majority of readers are interested in the state (even discounting the huge spike in May), which confirms your observation that the state is more well known for capital punishment. But let's not forget this RfC is not even talking about cases like these. We're talking about cases where only one article exists and whether to "preemptively disambiguate" titles that are not yet ambiguous and may never be. Should someone decide to write History of peaches in Georgia, there would be no good reason to add a qualifier. Station1 (talk) 00:42, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
    Pageviews are not definitive, because the majority of Wikipedia traffic is via internal links. It doesn't really matter much to readers where an article is located if they are merely following an internal link. If a page is linked to from more pages (or from more popular pages), it is likely to be clicked on more, which does not necessarily mean that the reader is more likely to want that topic. For example, pageviews between Monosodium glutamate and Madison Square Garden are similar, suggesting disambiguation for "MSG", but as I successfully argued at Talk:MSG (disambiguation)#Requested move 2 May 2019, people who arrive at the disambiguation page overwhelmingly prefer the chemical, so MSG is now a primary redirect.
    The other two major sources are internal search and Google search. Again, internal search is what I was talking about in the MSG example. Because linking to a disambiguation page from an article is considered a mistake, nearly all traffic to disambiguation pages is from search, so if we create special-purpose redirects for the top choices then we can measure where people prefer to go after reaching the disambiguation page. Meanwhile, Google search favors specificity as the disambiguating term is present right there in the title; we have no control over the snippet that Google selects from the article so it might not give sufficient context to tell.
    Discussing primary topics and disambiguation is unavoidable in most cases, because no general rule can be written to solve the issue once and for all. But here, we have a simple rule: "Where a topic has been determined to be the primary topic of a term, subtopics should follow that primary topic determination." These discussions are more disruptive in such cases because it is eschewing a working alternative when none exists in the general case.
    There can be latent psychological effects too. When the first person to create a subtopic article claims the base title, it may deter editors from creating the other page; there's no way a new editor would know that the correct procedure is to write a new article at the other disambiguated title, move the existing page to the disambiguated title, and turn the base page into a disambiguation. Readers who see a topic occupying the base title could also view this as evidence of bias rather than being simply because the other article happens to not exist. In short, I don't think creating an article at a location that knowingly will be moved as soon as the other article is created is a good idea. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:05, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
    I'm surprised that you say most traffic comes from internal links. Is there any basis for that? I would think the large majority of traffic comes from Google and other external links, secondly from internal searches, and only a usually small minority from wikilinks. Station1 (talk) 13:15, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
    Actually, let me qualify my statement a bit; certainly, many pages (especially on popular topics) get most of their traffic from search (whether external or internal). However, I've seen statistics before and after a page was moved, and often the original title (which became a redirect) continued to hold most of the pageviews. So it really varies depending on the situation. I would expect subtopics of geographic entities in particular to have relatively low traffic from internal search, as it is difficult to guess a descriptive title. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 13:55, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Query—we have List of Interstate Highways in Georgia (U.S. state), List of U.S. Highways in Georgia (but Category:U.S. Highways in Georgia (U.S. state)), List of state routes in Georgia (U.S. state), so I wonder what is "correct". I'll note that individual highways article titles lack disambiguation, so Interstate 75 in Georgia, U.S. Route 1 in Georgia and Georgia State Route 2. Highways in the country are named like S1 highway (Georgia). Imzadi 1979 → 00:07, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
    I would not include (U.S. state) here, as there is no such thing as an Interstate Highway outside of the United States. S1 highway (Georgia) is not directly comparable and outside the scope of this RfC because Georgia is not part of the title; disambiguators should always be as simple as possible and follow a different set of rules from ordinary article naming. For example, "Chopin" is the correct disambiguator in Nocturnes (Chopin) even though we would never have an article at Chopin. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:23, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
    @King of Hearts: I included the S1 for contrast with the highways in the US state, not to suggest it needs changing. Imzadi 1979 → 01:28, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
  • No, no, no. Do not preemptively disambiguate, period. Every article has a title that meets WP:AT regardless of other titles. Precision is really out of its jurisdiction at AT; it’s a disambiguation consideration. It only exists because we can’t give two articles the same title. That is, articles and books in the real world don’t disambiguate. They refer to Georgia, for example, as Georgia, whether it’s the country or US state. The only reason we introduce “precision” is because of the unique title constraint which is unique to Wikipedia. But there is no reason to disambiguate anything if the title as a whole is already unique relative to other existing article titles. —В²C ☎ 08:02, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
The unique title constraint is not the only reason to disambiguate. If Mediawiki somehow did away with that limitation and made it possible for any number of articles to share the same title, Wikipedia would almost certainly continue to disambiguate the titles of like-named articles.
For example, if all of the articles on subjects named Mercury were simply titled "Mercury", then a user entering the term into the search input would be met with a list of suggested articles all confusingly shown just as "Mercury", rendering the feature nearly useless. Or consider categories: without disambiguation, the contents of the category Sherlock Holmes films would contain at least five identical entries entitled "Sherlock Holmes", and 11 identical entries entitled "The Hound of the Baskervilles", all indistinguishable from each other in that context. There are a variety of reasons beyond the purely technical why clarifying ambiguous titles is beneficial, and why not doing so could be confusing and detrimental. ╠╣uw [talk] 13:45, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
@Huwmanbeing: although largely tangential to this RFC and speculative in nature, I do not agree with your assesment. The other popular and feasible way to disambiguate to readers than titles that is already in use in some Wikimedia projects is through short descriptions. We use them and Wikidata uses them too. You can see how disambiguating through them works by going to Wikidata and typing "Mercury" in the search box. In fact, an obvious upside of disambiguating this way is that one does not have to determine a primary topic, which saves everybody's time by eliminating discussions like this one. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:51, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
  • I would be OK with "May preemptively disambiguate" but not with "Should preemptively disambiguate". We shouldn't assume someone who knows about one side of a disambiguation also knows about the other side. As for peaches in Georgia, for a global perspective, most worldwide production is in China. Obviously in this case, Georgia the country has been growing peaches for thousands of years before peaches were ever grown in North America. Georgia the state may have a contemporary North American reputation for peaches, but Wikipedia is intended for a global audience. ϢereSpielChequers 08:52, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Interesting points. I tend to agree with you on the first two questions for the reasons you've given above: no, we should not further clarify a title strictly for the purposes of disambiguation when the title could reasonably apply only to a single subject; and yes, we should clarify a title when it could reasonably apply to one or more other subjects, even if the others do not yet have articles. As for question 3, I'm not sure it's entirely clear because some of those cases would seem to fall under scenario 1 and others under scenario 2, but I'll give it some thought. I will say that in general I lean toward using the same form in the titles of related/child articles as in the parent, even if that form is disambiguated. ╠╣uw [talk] 14:15, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

My answers:

  1. Agree with KoH: No, it is obvious from context what the article is referring to.
  2. Agree with KoH: Yes, otherwise the title would not be sufficiently WP:RECOGNIZABLE for readers to tell whether it is referring to A or B.
  3. Fascinating that this has come up in an article relating to New York. Should we just create a separate NewYorkPedia rather than risk another eleven year fiasco? No, I think that, like that diiscussion, it reveals that there are some widely believed myths regarding ambiguous article titles, nothing specific about NY. I see exactly the same myths cited above. I'd been giving it a rest, but another essay is probably due. Andrewa (talk) 01:19, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
  • They should be retained when needed for disambiguation (WP:PRECISE); drop them when not needed (WP:CONCISE). Use plain English: prefer natural disambiguation when feasible, especially when the result is a normal English phrase; e.g., a large number of articles named in "Foo of/in/from New York (state)" format should be mass-moved to "Foo of/in/from New York state", because New York state is the normal way to refer to this place in distinction from New York City. Adding the parentheses makes it more awkward, and less WP:CONCISE, while serving not actual purpose for readers. Same goes for "Washington state" and various other cases. (By contrast, virtually no one says "Georgia state"; the idiomatic phrase is "the state of Georgia", but this is not very concise, so "(state)" will work in that case.) Using "New York (state)" when "New York state" is clearly the better choice is simply counter-productive and counter-intuitive. It's "reader-hateful", if I may adapt an old joke about "user-hateful" being the failure of user interface to be "user-friendly". Remember that WP:CONSISTENT is very low-priority on the WP:CRITERIA list, and things should not be forced into an artificial consistency of unnecessary or unhelpful disambiguation nitpicking just for the sake of doing it (cf. WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY). This is not brackets.wikipedia.org, but wiki.riteme.site, so use regular English at every opportunity.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:41, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Place names in France

Regarding Rennes_(disambiguation), when describing a place (commune) in France, should I use the name of the region where it is located or the name of the department or both? The Naming conventions principles seem to indicate that the department should be used. However, there are nearly 100 departments in mainland France and most English speakers would not know where any of them are. There are only 13 regions and many of them (e.g. Brittany, Normandy) would be familiar to anyone who has traveled to France. Should I add the general location (e.g., southern France)? Comments, please? PS I am a newbie and just trying things out.CMtemCA (talk) 00:45, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

US Place and primary topics

Hi everyone. We've had a fairly stable situation for a bit where US cities are pretty much all titled at City, State. But we also have a pretty clear consensus that this does not mean US cities should not be considered potential primary topics for the base name (and the flip side of that, other cities should be considered a primary topic because the U.S. cities have states included). This pretty much lines up with the consensus in individual move discussions, such as Talk:Danbury (disambiguation).

Until recently, our US Place policy had a pretty clear sentence on this: "When weighing a U.S. city against other possible primary topics, the U.S. city should never be considered a partial title match if the base name of the city is the same as the term being considered." A user, User:Crouch, Swale, is a pretty strong advocate against this concept, arguing that because people are used to seeing US cities alongside their state names they should not play a role in determining primary topics.

The user has made a number of changes to this page in order to reflect that view. My hope is that we can come to some sort of consensus on what is proper here. User:Crouch, Swale, I'm not looking to do this secretly or anything, so I'm tagging you to make sure you can weigh in. My concerns, in italics, are below.

  • I have reverted this for the time being.
  • In November, the user added a footnote to that sentence about not considering US cities as partial matches when determining a primary topic, saying: "However for the same reason as WP:PLURALPT because readers and editors are used to seeing US settlements with the state included, they can be expected to search/link to them with the state more often."
  • While harmless in a general context, this sentence is specifically added to modify the one about primary topics. I don't love the idea of a clear statement having a footnote that is basically "here is how to argue the oppposite." As far as I can tell, this rationale has only been used in move discussions by this specific user to argue against the sentence it is attached to -- essentially, that US cities can be considered partial matches for the purpose of determining a primary topic or lack thereof. I also think this is misleading in the specific context of determining primary topics -- sure, outside of Connecticut one might say Danbury, Connecticut. But that is not unique for the US. To use super obvious examples, yes, our guidelines have us disambiguate Orlando and Nashville but not North Battleford or Pucklechurch, I guarantee if you go to a person in, say, Tokyo and mention each of those places without disambiguation, they are far more likely to recognize the first two. Again, while common in the U.S., in this specific case about determining primary topics it does not feel proper.
  • Finally, the user changed the bold word in this sentence, which previously said some. In most cases, such as for Paris, Texas, that will be impossible, because the base name may have other uses, in which case a DAB entry or hatnote should be used.
  • Again, I don't think the U.S. is unique in this case. There are US cities that share titles, as there are Canadian or Australian or British. The US does have this a lot, so I'm less concerned about this point, and to be honest my concern is that it seems the only reason this is being specified is to argue against US cities being potential primary topics (or preventing other cities from being primary topics) in move discussions.

I'd love if we can get some consensus on these areas, since at the moment all three seem to be undiscussed. While none (except the first bullet) are super harmful by themselves, I don't love the idea of changing a guideline with edits that solely seem to be to shift away from a consensus. That user has every right to make their points and have their own essays, but as those views have not been reflected in either consensus in this page or in move discussions we can't simply replace this guidance with those. And to be honest, besides the edits from this one user, it seemed like we actually had a consensus. My view on them is hopefully pretty clear. And I think the facts are certainly against them -- a quick Google search (or Google books search) for "Danbury is," for example, makes abundantly clear that, whether or not you include a state name, people are using Danbury overwhelmingly to refer to the Connecticut city. I also would love if this does not become another discussion about if putting the state name is proper -- there's debate to be had there, but that is beside the point of this case.--Yaksar (let's chat) 21:45, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Whenever we discuss naming, there are two questions: 1) Which titles are available to a subject, i.e. which titles is the subject the primary topic of? 2) Of the available titles, which one is the best? For me, WP:USPLACE applies only to question 2. Several landmark RMs have confirmed the paramount nature of WP:DETERMINEPRIMARY, cementing it as something that must be figured out before trying to move articles to their ideal titles. For example, the fact that New York City is at its ideal title does not mean that the state gets to occupy New York, and the fact that George Washington and Washington, D.C. are at their ideal titles does not mean that the state gets to occupy Washington. And regarding Sarah Jane Brown, when choosing between options that were either arguably sexist, a poor description of her, totally made up, or a violation of primary topic, there was only a small minority that chose Sarah Brown per IAR; the end result was to use the current made-up title, almost completely unattested prior to Wikipedia. The fact that such a bad option was chosen (not that the others were any better) just goes to show how important primary topic is. U.S. cities should be given equal consideration as other cities or anything else. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:34, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
  • User:King of Hearts, I think that's the general consensus. So it seems that, for the time being, we should certainly not remove the sentence saying so, "When weighing a U.S. city against other possible primary topics, the U.S. city should never be considered a partial title match if the base name of the city is the same as the term being considered." The follow up question, should that sentence have a footnote saying "However for the same reason as WP:PLURALPT because readers and editors are used to seeing US settlements with the state included, they can be expected to search/link to them with the state more often" ? In my view, we should not have footnotes that negate the consensus, or provide exceptions solely based on what seems to be an individual view.--Yaksar (let's chat) 18:29, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Yes that same logic applies to plural forms, yet people also argue that we should discount them because people are used to seeing article at the singular (which I agree with) but they're still full matches, for example the device is still a full match for "Parachutes" even though the title is Parachute similarly even though the article about dock workers etc is at Stevedore rather than Stevedores or Docker doesn't prevent that topic from being a contender for Dockers. Consider for example though people argued that people looking for the nut were much more likely to type Peanut than Peanuts was used to argue that the conic strip should be the primary topic even though the nut is more important and gets over twice the views. The same logic could be used for Worcester that people looking for the Massachusetts city are much more likely to use "Worcester, Massachusetts" or "Worcester, MA" than plain "Worcester". Except that unlike the nut it probably can't be argued that the MA city is more imprtant than the English one (which its named after). To be fair though the Peanuts discussion is one of the odd ones out and most similar cases have been moved, similarly Durham is now a DAB page. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:27, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
I would say either the statement about not being PTMs and the PLURALPT point should both be removed or they should both stay, I would prefer the latter. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:50, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
  • @Yaksar: I think you have missed/misunderstood several things:
The statement about US cities never being PTMs was added (also without discussion) on 23.7.2019, my addition of readers and editors being used to seeing US cities with the state was added just over 1 week later on 30.7.2019 where "some" was changed to "most" is already effectively stated by "a majority of which are ambiguous and so require disambiguation anyway" on the previous footnote and at Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Remove state from US placenames.
You're misunderstanding the difference between the quote from PLURALPT that I am using to argue that people are more likely to search with the state than without it, similar to the point that people are more likely to use singulars than plurals when searching. I do strongly agree with the point that US cities should never be treated as PTMs. There is a big difference between arguing people are more likely to use some other term than arguing a topic is a part title match. A PTM is when the unqualified term if unlikely to be used to refer to the topic in a generic context, for example New York is a PTM for "York". Note that although the argument doesn't appear to have been made since I added it this argument has been made in the past numerous times by others[14][15][16]. Similarly I did agree with you (at the Worcester discussion) that a Google Books search for Danbury does return all results for the Connecticut city.
The revert to the guideline was fine, its completely understandable that people would object to the guidance being in my user space, I just though that cluttering it up at the NC wasn't a good idea however we could include a small sub section titled "Primary topic" similar to PLURALPT saying that US cities should never be treated as PTMs but at the same time readers and editors are used to seeing them with the state.
As I've said in move discussions and on this page I don't really agree with USPLACE but I have noted that Americans treat it as common usage and part of American English/ENGVAR. This point does seem to support the point that readers and editors expect this. As someone who isn't American I should respect that even though in my country (England) this isn't the case even though we generally use the county (state equivalent) to identify where places are. Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:27, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
I'm confused -- why should that be a footnote of the point about primary topics then?--Yaksar (let's chat) 18:33, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) As a counter point about primary topics, similar to the fact that PLURALPT says that the normal situation is that the plural is a redirect to the singular title but it also says that readers and editors are used to seeing articles at the singular. Would it be better if that sentence was simply included after the previous one instead of being in a footnote? Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:50, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
No, I don't think there is a consensus that there should be a "counterpoint" at all. That Danbury is often described with the state included has no impact on if it should be considered the primary topic any more than the fact that people are used to seeing "Queen Elizabeth II" would mean there is no primary topic for just "Elizabeth II."--Yaksar (let's chat) 19:25, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
How so? as I noted this counter point was only added just over a week later so its no like the former has consensus but not the latter, both points are found in other guidelines (PLURALPT) and are based on logic and common sense and have been used in the past. Yes I agree with King of Hearts that a simpler title generally has a stronger claim than a longer one but the point does stand that if people think its common enough to have the state in the title despite the convention of AT and D then that does support the claim that readers and editors can expect it. As this indeed does appear to be the case then why should we ignore it in RM discussions as you appear to be suggesting? The point is that if readers are more likely to search with the state than not it might mean that we put the DAB at the base name even if a US city gets significantly more views than the other uses (because readers using the term without the state aren't much more likely to be looking for the US city) or have another topic at the base name even if the US city has similar views (because readers who search using the term without the state are much more likely to be looking for that topic) if this is the case then it does benefit readers and editors[17]. See the discussion at Talk:Cambridge/Archive 1#Requested move 2010 where this point was made many times. Its worth noting that the debate of AT (if the state should be in the title) and D (who much weight US cities should be given in primary topic debates) has come up again and again and again and again and again yet there has never been consensus to only use the state when needed again because Americans argue that its not for disambiguation. Crouch, Swale (talk) 08:23, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
I think the difference is that for the common legume, Peanut (uninflected) is the preferred title and "Peanuts" (inflected) is an alternative form. However, Worcester, Massachusetts (adorned) is the preferred title while "Worcester" (unadorned) is an alternative form. I feel like a modified title has a stronger claim to being the primary topic of its unmodified form than the other way around. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:45, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Just dropped by here hehe. Hope my insight is related to the discussion. For me, I go against the use of <cityname> for many US cities. For Worcester, there's Worcester, Massachusetts and Worcester, England. I assume majority of US cities aren't unique, so I still favor WP:USPLACE. But I'm leaning towards neutral (no oppose, no support) on cities that are mid-sized (e.g. Tacoma, Washington and Orlando, Florida, and a couple of others that are highlighted on early 1990s editionsof maps by Hammond Inc./C.S. Hammond and Co.), since the de facto and de jure standard is to use <cityname> only for large cities (esp. those listed on AP Stylebook). JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 18:57, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Hi User:JWilz12345 -- your views are definitely appreciated, but that is a separate topic. The question at hand here is whether US cities often being called by CITY, STATE should play a role in determining a primary topic. For example, because Danbury, Connecticut is commonly used, should that mean that there may not be a primary topic for Danbury because readers are more used to seeing Danbury with the state name attached?--Yaksar (let's chat) 19:22, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
  • I don't see the supposed similarity to WP:PLURALPT. With plurals, unless there is a primary topic distinct from the singular, as is the case with Peanut/Peanuts there is no reason to point the plural anywhere other than the singular. There might be relatively unusual cases where there is a primary topic for the singular and divided usage for the plural, resulting in a disambiguation page at the plural form. Or vice versa, there might be a primary topic for the plural form and a disambiguation page at the singular. I can't think of any examples off-hand, but there's no reason these situations might not arise. And the basis for these decision would be consensus on usage. I think appending the state name is a different kettle of fish entirely. Appending the state name for US city-type places is conventional, regardless of whether the place name is ambiguous. This is a Wikipedia naming convention. The City, State form is readily recognizable to most anyone in the US. While I question how recognizable some permutations of that form used for article titles are, the basic City, State form is widely recognizable. The convention has been strongly contested and is still often questioned, but it is the current naming convention for Wikipedia articles. But it is merely a Wikipedia-specific convention primarily for consistency in US place names. It says nothing whatsoever about whether the title "City" alone is a primary topic and it is a very incorrect assumption that a US place it more commonly known as "Place, State" rather than simply "Place". In various contexts any such place is known as simply "Place" and that should be taken into consideration in any discussion about primary topic. older ≠ wiser 17:57, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
  • @Yaksar: is there a reason why you've removed my quote but not the final sentence it was linked to? Yes we might not have much of a consensus on who much weight to give a US city compared to a plural but as far as I can see its still at least somewhat a valid argument since as noted many people do indeed treat the state as being part of the name. And as I noted the rest of the text was added only just over a week before so I'm not seeing why one is apparently considered consensus and one an opinion by a single editor. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:18, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
  • There seems to be a clear agreement that US cities should not be considered as partial title matches for the purposes of deciding primary topics. But, and I say this genuinely with all due respect, there is no indication that anyone outside of yourself agrees with, or even fully understands, the need for a counterpoint comparing it to our separate policy on plural titles. Indeed the closing admin at the recent decision at Talk:Worcester specifically cited it as unpersuasive, let alone backed by the consensus to fit into a guideline. If you'd prefer, we can make it as a more formal !vote to see what the best outcome would be.--Yaksar (let's chat) 20:23, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Yes I understand that in the last few years I can't recall anyone other than me using this argument but as I noted it certainly has been used in countless discussions in previous years. OK I'll leave it for now since you're correct that it hasn't had much support recently. Perhaps we need to say something alone the lines of that people looking for a countable noun are far more likely to use the singular than plural while with US cities they're about equally likely (which seems to be reflected in the Worcester RM and KOH/Bkonrad's comments above), obviously we don't know for sure but that might be a way ahead for this and a kind of wording that I'd be happy with but I don't think its something that can be completely dismissed. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:51, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

MPN questions re Soviet Union and member states

With regards to this diff, i dont find MPN to be paricularily clear. The article is about 1948, which would indicate Soviet Union, but during this time its place name was actually Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic. I think overall Soviet Union is too vague and TSSR is too obscure, leaving Turkmenistan as the clearer and most helpful label. (moved from MOS:ORGANISM) Thanks,L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 18:21, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

L3X1, I don't think using the name of the SSR it happened in would be too obscure -- after all, we would wikilink to it as well. I don't think Turkmenistan would be the best answer, as it didn't exist at the time (and certainly not as a country with that flag, which actually looks like would be lower down in this article).--Yaksar (let's chat) 19:32, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the info Thanks,L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 05:06, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
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