Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ireland Collaboration

Poll on extending ArbCom resolution for two years

Should the ArbCom binding resolution on the appropriate names for Ireland and related articles be extended for a further two years? (10:50, 18 September 2011 (UTC) sign for the rfc bot)

The Binding resolution reads: Once the procedures discussed in Remedy #1 (and, if necessary, Remedy #2) are implemented, no further page moves discussions related to these articles shall be initiated for a period of 2 years.

The procedures discussed in Remedy #1 and Remedy #2 were deemed to have been implemented on 18 September 2009. The result was: no page move for Ireland, Republic of Ireland or Ireland (disambiguation).

Survey

Please indicate support or oppose below. Please keep any comments brief, and do not respond to other participants' comments below their !vote. General discussion should be confined to the "Discussion" section below.

Support extending the resolution

1. Support, unless it emerges from the discussion that consensus has changed. --Scolaire (talk) 10:08, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
2. Support From what I can see nothing material has changed. Mtking ^(edits) 10:52, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
3. Support TBH, the usage of the pipe-link (adopted during the 2-yr ban) seems the best solution of all. GoodDay (talk) 13:29, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
4. Support No need to change it. It works fine as it is. If it ain't broke, don't fix it and all that. The C of E. God Save The Queen! (talk) 15:02, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
5. Support Why drag up the same old arguments that never lead to a consensus to change anything? It wastes time from constructive editing and angers many. It works as it is even if it is not ideal and there will likely never be an ideal solution. ww2censor (talk) 15:49, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
6. Support. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. JonC^Talk 18:44, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
7. See, when an authority just says "this is how it is", then there's no more fighting and wasting of time. If we lift the ban, then we go back to wasting time arguing and whatnot. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 19:13, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
8. Support. As nothing has changed to the situation. Keith D (talk) 20:36, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
9. Support. Can't see any different outcome emerging than the status quo. Mooretwin (talk) 22:16, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
10. Support. No reason why we should change. Mabuska ^(talk) 11:59, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
11. Support. The facts have not changed, so why would I change my mind? Djegan (talk) 18:43, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
12. Support. Nothing has changed. Pipelinking works. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 21:31, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
13. Support per Fetchcomms. — Kudu ^~I/O~ 21:49, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
14. Support. Status quo is fine. Nightw 14:07, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
15. Support. For the reasons I have already given in the poll below, I believe that the status quo is the best solution. Whatever we decide should be binding for a longish period of time. And if we can get a majority for the status quo right now without further discussion, then there is very little chance that one of the proposed alternatives will win and we can save us further excitement. Hans Adler 14:26, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
16. Support. Stable solution seems to be working well. Ivor Stoughton (talk) 02:27, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
17. Support. ~Asarlaí 04:54, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
18. Support - Nothing has changed since the last time this was extensively debated and a very large poll was conducted which included many people who had not been involved in the dispute before, the poll came to a very clear conclusion. This matter has now been stable for two years compared to the mess that existed before and continuing with that stability is the best option rather than rehashing old arguments. The only time this matter needs to be reopened is if there is a constitutional change to the current makeup of the island of Ireland. BritishWatcher (talk) 12:42, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
19. Support. There is no indication that there has been a significant change in the real world. Dingo1729 (talk) 02:14, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
20. Support. Nothing has changed. Kittybrewster ☎ 12:59, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
21. Support. The situation is the same as previously. --Kwekubo (talk) 14:50, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
22. Support because 1. the situation is, as Kwekubo says, the same as previously, and 2. prolonging the prohibition is possibly the simplest way of dealing with the issue, and presumably will not itself be agreed to if consensus on the substantial issue has changed in the meantime. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 00:35, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Oppose extending the resolution

1. Oppose - there was an implication in the original resolution that the limit of the ban would be 2 years. The WP way is to then discuss the problem, not to WP:VOTE. I don't believe that the wider community would choose a vote by default. This issue needs discussion. It can be time-limited. I have suggested 6 weeks (including a binding poll at the end). It seems to me that is a very reasonable expectation. Extending the ban will only mask the issue. Discussion may actually find a lasting solution. Fmph (talk) 10:29, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
2. Oppose. Whilst I accept that this will bring on all the usual battle-ground warriors to trot out their positions, it nevertheless remains a blatant example of avoiding a global en-commonname for an important UN-recognised nation-state and EU member in order (apparently) to satisfy a mixture of the POVs of extremely small minority opinions over-represented in Wikipedia arguments about the subject and confusion about how to handle article names in a situation where a commonname is spread across a number of possible article locations but is dominantly used in one prime context. It is plausible that sufficient active Wikipedians with a realisation of this will choose to involve themselves this time to sort the problem out. Then, hey-ho, on to China! Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 12:18, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
3. Oppose, as I oppose the need for any sort of gag restriction on project participants. Discussion of the naming of the two articles and disambiguation page should be open and free, or in other words unrestricted in perpetuity. This ban on discussion has served the purpose of exposing a severe level of immaturity in the way the en.wikipedia.org project handles contentious naming issues. The now-expired restrictions on discussion should die and not ever be reconsidered, they are in a word, silly. Consideration of any time limit on discussion is similarly described. Adopting the outright suppression of opinion as a rule never solves anything in the real world and certainly fails here; it amounts to officially pretending away differing perspectives. Sswonk (talk) 14:45, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

   Actually, they have already died. Its 2 years +1 day now. Fmph (talk) 20:03, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

4. Oppose, as this isn't the poll that the community !voted on a mere 10 days ago. In fact, this wasn't even a choice. The choice selected didn't have a time period of 2 years, and was to test whether to retain the status quo, or not. --HighKing (talk) 23:13, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
5. Oppose - For two reasons: (1) Two years is ample time for an embargo. The WP process is to have open discussions, even if they are lively. Continuing to ban discussions is contrary to the WP way. (2) The China article is not about the country of China, and there was an RfC on it a month ago, and I was going to use Ireland as an example of why China should be moved, but I could not, because the current status of the Ireland article undermined my argument. I was surprised to see that Ireland was not an article about the country. So, although I am impartial on Irish politics, the current status of the Ireland article is setting a bad precedent for other WP decisions. --Noleander (talk) 00:00, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
6. Oppose. The ban has expired! We should be doing RMs and discussing article title options. Instead, we are discussing whether we can vote on a proposal, that, if rejected, might allow us to discuss these issues, provided that Arbcom concurs, following further discussion, of course. I suggest a three option-RM for Republic of Ireland (RoI, Ireland, Ireland (state)). Editors can give their first and second choices. There would be a separate RM on the Ireland article in the same form (Island of Ireland, Ireland (island), Ireland). In the unlikely event that both articles are approved for the lemma "Ireland", then we'd need a tiebreaker. After that, the ban on page moves can be restored, since without one many editors seem to get anxious. Kauffner (talk) 00:50, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
7. Oppose. With the ban expired it is probably time to consider options, maybe now there is consensus in support of one of those options, who knows, the only way to find out is through discussion (and straw polls). Consensus may have changed, and it seems most in line with WP policies to discuss the matter, try to build consensus, and go from there. Having the community vote to extend the ban seems like leap-frogging to me. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 02:23, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
8. Oppose It needs a structured discussion, ideally mediated through Arbcom --Snowded ^TALK 05:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
9. Oppose, any such discussion will probably require hands-on mediation, but I don't see any reason to suppress the topic.--Kotniski (talk) 06:53, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
10. Oppose seems worthy of a structured discussion similar to that conducted on Talk:China over the last few weeks/months. I suggest listing the arguments for the different options in a table and listing what sources use the term "Ireland" to refer to. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:00, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
11. Oppose This issue needs to be resolved, there is no need for an extension. Tebibyte (talk) 10:46, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
12. Oppose - very reluctantly. I agree wholeheartedly with the key "support" arguments: the status quo works reasonably well, the same old issues are going to be brought to the fore again, whatever discussion takes place will be ludicrously heated, divisive, and probably result in no consensus, and it will be a horrific waste of time that would be much better spent contributing to Wikipedia in more constructive ways. BUT as a supporter of free speech if people really want to waste their time in that way then they should be allowed to - but only for a time limited period. I would also suggest that whatever decision is made at the end of that period is binding for 5-10 years or more unless the community agrees that something significant has changed in the meantime; the last two years seem to have gone by very quickly indeed and repeating this every two years is too frequent. waggers (talk) 11:45, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
13. Oppose. We should just see whether people can deal with this in the standard fashion now before going back to Arbcom. If it is still disruptive in a couple of months then this can be reconsidered. Personally I'd first ask for any disruptive people to be topic banned. Dmcq (talk) 15:41, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
14. Oppose Further banning discussion would be completely against the basic ideals of wikipedia. 89.100.150.198 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:19, 20 September 2011 (UTC).

    Should we be allowing votes from unregisterd users? ~Asarlaí 12:35, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

15. Oppose. The non-partisan consensus on China is that it should be the article for the People's Republic. That precedent is clearly applicable in this case. In a similar vein, I note that the article for the French Republic is France despite the hexagon containing two states and the article for the Italian Republic is Italy despite the boot containing three states. Arbcom should be invited to determine whether this discussion is being dominated by UK Wikipedians and whether the discussion and decision should be left to non-partisan wikipedians. --Red King (talk) 15:07, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
16. Oppose. Wiki naming decisions in relation to Ireland and "British" Isles are becoming increasingly archaic and at variance with common acceptable usage. The current naming is supported for political reasons that have no place in an encyclopaedia. (And literally don't have any place in most encyclopaedias) Sarah777 (talk) 00:29, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
17. Oppose. The status quo was not satisfactory two years ago, and it isn't satisfactory now. -- Evertype·✆ 17:21, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
18. Oppose. Its worth another shot at a time-limited discussion (especially as a number of the most intransigent editors appear to have moved on). Once that is complete, whatever the outcome, then is the time to reimpose the resolution. Rockpocket 21:46, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
19. Oppose. I had hoped to avoid this dispute, but it cannot be ignored forever. The objective reality is that on this issue Wikipedia is wrong. Irrespective of what the majority here say. To vote is a most inappropriate method of settling this dispute, it is simply mob rule. It does not become an encyclopaedia. The ‘status quo’ is wrong; therefore to retain the status quo is wrong. Just as the arbitration to impose the status quo two years ago was wrong. I am not optimistic that this error will now be reversed. One can but hope. If you fail then try again and if you fail, fail better. Lugnad (talk) 23:26, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
20. Oppose. We will only discover whether consensus has changed or not through discussion. Continuing the gagging order is plain wrong. Daicaregos (talk) 13:16, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
21. Oppose Why continue a status quo when the title Republic of Ireland clearly does not find favour with everybody? We need another debate on the issue.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 14:02, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
22. Oppose I think the options should be discussed again. I for one was not involved in the discussions two years ago, I am sure that are many others like me. A novel option would be to do a couple switch for another two years and then discuss which works best! I also believe that options such as discussed [Talk:Republic_of_Ireland#Display_title here] might be a solution to the problem. Bjmullan (talk) 16:27, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
23. Oppose talk about it first. Bogger (talk) 16:53, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
24. I prefer the status quo to Ireland and Ireland (island). It would therefore be easy for me to support this to achieve my preference. But while I think it is correct to set boundaries on the frequency at which we have this discussion, to extend a gagging order in perpetuity would undermine the legitimacy of the current solution. Let's talk about it, hopefully reach consensus, and then consider how long we should leave it before we discuss the matter again. —WFC— 15:46, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
25. Oppose - kicking the can down the road is pointless. Snappy (talk) 19:55, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
26. Oppose - it's a total, absolute, utter, insulting, mind-boggling farce that Ireland isn't under its proper name. Dickdock (talk) 07:55, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
27. From a procedural point of view only. The resolution was for 2 years, so a discussion on whether consensus still exists should at least take place first. I don't look forward to the discussion and think it will get pretty ugly (It might end up at ArbCom again, I really would't be surprised) but the discussion should at least happen. Steven Zhang ^{The clock is ticking....} 20:22, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
28. Oppose. I don't plan to get involved in the naming dispute, but clearly Wikipedia should not employ the Ostrich effect forever. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 01:13, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

All reasonable discussion is welcomed, but simple re-hashing of old arguments is discouraged. Participants are reminded not to engage in incivility or other disruptive behaviour.

• I would consider Option G above to be a non-starter. Although the phrase "island of Ireland" is not uncommonly used, nobody lives in "island of Ireland", nobody visits "island of Ireland" and nobody's forbears came from "island of Ireland". Ghits do not determine common name, and "island of Ireland" is not a common name for the country (and yes, as many participants will know, I consider the island of Ireland to be a country). Scolaire (talk) 10:23, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

  AgreeMtking ^(edits) 10:55, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Very much agree with Scolaire on this. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 01:03, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - this 'poll' needs to be widely advertised across the project in order to achieve real consensus. I'd suggest the same venues that were used in the last poll plus any appropriate projects or community venues which have appeared in the last 2 years or so. I don't have any in mind but maybe there are some that others would like added. Should we create a list somewhere and split the workload between us? Fmph (talk) 10:39, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

  I agree about notifying people. Somewhere in the discussion preceding the previous poll there is a list of talk pages/projects notified. If you can find a diff I would be willing to post to some of them. Scolaire (talk) 10:45, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

  Have added the RFC tags as a starter. Mtking ^(edits) 10:55, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

  Found it - here - but it's crazy long! I have notified IMOS, WikiProject Ireland, WikiProject Northern Ireland, Talk:British Isles, Talk:Ireland, Talk:Republic of Ireland and Talk:Ireland (disambiguation). That's as much as I'm doing. Scolaire (talk) 11:24, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

  I've added it to WP:CENT also. --RA (talk) 11:39, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I've done everything on that list except the last one - Wikipedia:WikiProject_Ireland_Collaboration#Member_list - if someone else could take that on I'd appreciate it. We wouldn't want any "I didn't know!" issues later. Fmph (talk) 20:39, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

OK. I've finished those up as well. Thats pretty full notification AFAIC. Fmph (talk) 21:53, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

• Leaving the 3 articles-in-question in their current name & continuing with the pipe-link usage throughout the 'pedia, seems the least dramatic route. GoodDay (talk) 14:50, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

• Northern. Find it. What are the most significant things about Ireland? I have two answers. Where is the reflection of that? If there is no interest in reflecting that, we have an excellent indication of flaw and inadequacy. If you can make it your business to keep ignoring that, this discussion and any outcome from it will lack basic validity all the way through, and I will always be right. ~ R.T.G 18:03, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
• Rather than closing the door - which I would vote for if the current options were the only ones - perhaps *brand new* solutions should be allowed and even encouraged? And Scolaire is right about Plan G. Angus McLellan (Talk) 20:47, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
• Comment - I find it difficult to believe that this poll was opened in Good Faith, as it wasn't even an option on the community poll held 10 days ago. It's an example of a certain group of editors (or editor) acting in the same way we've seen 2 years ago - it causes division and ups the ante on disruption - which is exactly the disruption that Arbcom is most likely to sanction. --HighKing (talk) 23:17, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

• Consensus cannot stop discussions - A Talk page poll cannot ban subsequent discussions & proposals. Only the Arbcom can do that. Even if 50 editors here were to unanimously agree to ban Move discussions for a further two years, another editor can pop up a couple of months from now and sucessfully challenge that ban (see WP:Consensus can change). Consensus cannot override WP policy, and WP policy is that editors can discuss renaming articles. If editors wish to extend the ban, the best avenue would be to ask the Arbcom to extend it: then it would have some teeth. --Noleander (talk) 01:25, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

seconded Take it to ArbCom is you want an extension, a community consensus cannot ban a regular process.--Cerejota (talk) 01:51, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

It was, see here, ArbCom sent it back here. Mtking ^(edits) 01:58, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

They said they are watching and seeing, not that the result will be law. There is a difference...--Cerejota (talk) 02:03, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

[edit conflict] Hmmm. That Arbcom clarification request is rather vague. It does not say "Arbcom will extend ban 2 years"; nor does it say "Arbcom will extend 2 years, provided the extension gets a majority vote in a poll on the Talk". In fact, that clarification request does not even focus on extending the ban, it just vaguely asks "what happens now that the first two year period is over?". The Arbcom, in reply, says: "Discuss it on the Talk page, and the Arbcom will monitor that and perhaps decide to do something (or not)". So this Talk page discussion is really about providing more input to Arbcom so they can decide to extend the ban, or not. Bottom line: it is still true that only Arbcom can extend the ban. --Noleander (talk) 02:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't see what is wrong, if consensus here is that Arbcom make an extension then what is wrong with Arbcom being asked to do that. Mtking ^(edits) 02:23, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

In hindsight, I believe we asked the wrong quetion. To those who followed the rather desultory discussion on this page the question made perfect sense; to anybody coming cold from the RfC or Centralized discussion page it will make no sense at all. Why just ban discussion on something for no obvious reason? I would have no problem with this RfC being closed early and the project members (minus me this time) working on an alternative. Scolaire (talk) 07:50, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

It's obvious that Northern Ireland has been overlooked in what has already become page after page of tirade. If people don't think it significant they must be idiots. Sorry. I'm absolutely right here. It doesn't seem to have been even thought about and shows not only a vast gulf in culture and awareness, but faliure to rcognise that gulf as significant. Ireland is a place where you will find Northern Ireland. It shouldn't matter if people percieve themselves as Irish. In the time since the last discussions on this point I have watched numerous documentaries and studies, some broadcast on RTE showing us that people of Ireland and Britain are more closely related through genetics than they are to any other groups. That goes for Irelands Catelonian genetic heritage and Britains non-celtic heritage. It's there. The people are one of it. I am not talking about hunting down the Northern Irish for their *opinions*. No consideration is given at all here or before to the fact that they and it are woven in to this fabric. There are sufficient sources to debate what is right or wrong. This is not politics. We do not need people who make the best noise. We need research and development. Anything short of that is farcical. I want to see the opinions, but they will count for naught with me without proper examination. Every person with something strong to say should roll in on this or they should roll on. There is an elephant in the room and he wants TWO sugars, without any trouble, please. ~ R.T.G 12:29, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Closure

can I suggest that this poll should be closed now with no consensus. That would leave the second poll and other discussions still active below. Just a bit of obvious housekeeping IMHO. This is not going anywhere now. Fmph (talk) 19:37, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Close it. GoodDay (talk) 19:42, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree with closing it, and not necessarily as "no consensus". On the strength of the arguments it may well be considered a win for "oppose". Scolaire (talk) 23:37, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Majority doesn't equal WP:Consensus. Fmph (talk) 06:15, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Exactly, which is why I said the opposes won it on the strength of the arguments. Maybe you misunderstood me. I am saying that it would be equally valid to say "the result was no extension of the resolution" as "no consensus to extend". Scolaire (talk) 21:18, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Agree this should be closed as No consensus to extend the ban. Mtking ^(edits) 08:30, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I have asked here for an admin to come and have a look. Mtking ^(edits) 08:34, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

There's no consensus to extend the gag order. GoodDay (talk) 17:14, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Poll to see if people want to retain the status quo.

This is a poll, as agreed above, to test consensus to retain the status quo on the naming of the Ireland and Republic of Ireland articles, for another yet-to-be-agreed period of time, or to consider other options. People are free to change their minds during the poll. I suggest the poll closes on midnight 30th September, or when 24hours pass with no further !votes made, whichever is soonest. Please do not comment in the support or oppose sections - use the comment section further down. --HighKing (talk) 09:24, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Support retaining the status quo

1. Support retaining the status quo. I don't see a consensus to change yet although Option G above has some merit. --HighKing (talk) 23:31, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
2. Support retaining the status quo. Mtking ^(edits) 02:00, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
3. Support It satisfies Wikipedia:Article titles and Wikipedia:Disambiguation. In particular, see disambiguating broad concepts. In this instance, Ireland is the broad concept. The Republic of Ireland (and Northern Ireland) flow from that and only occupies a small subset of that topic. There is a tendency to see states and politics as definitive in these topics areas. It is not. This is a general encyclopedia, topics such as the arts, history, geography, religion, culutre, and so on are as just as definitive. The distinction between Ireland/Republic of Ireland is also a natural one. Its use in the MOS has consensus and makes sense. Ultimately though, the current system works. It developed naturally from the original Ireland article in 2002. Any new proposal is asking us to accept a pig in a poke. It's an unknown, whereas the current arrangement works, even if some editors are (for whatever reason) grated upon by the title Republic of Ireland. --RA (talk) 08:19, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

   Thanks for taking the time to mention the north Ranphairti. ~ R.T.G 14:18, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

4. Support Current system works best at the moment in my opinion. Mabuska ^(talk) 11:29, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
5. Support, again. JonC^Talk 11:32, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
6. Support, let the pipe-links do the job. GoodDay (talk) 12:29, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

   I looked at your vote from 2009 and I noticed that Option F, AKA "the status quo", was your fourth choice. What have they done to you? Kauffner (talk) 13:35, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

   Yeah, I'm no longer on the pro-movement side. The usage of the pipe-link, has won me over. RA's display idea also seems workable. Being 40, changes your life. GoodDay (talk) 14:39, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

7. Support, I don't see the sense in implying Northern Ireland to be within the republic when it is not, and a few other things. I didn't say I wouldn't like Northern Ireland to be part of the republic or something like that. It's extremely important to watch that the "something like that" option remains apparent. There will always be significant relations between the north and south in this regard bar some currently inconsequential or hypothetical occurence. We have all voted our sovereignty away (or had it manipulated and extracted if you don't like the wool). In any case, the sovereign state should not gain creedence for being a sovereign state and nothing more if there are other considerations. The sovereign state, like the bible, is not God, or Jesus, or the Holy Roman Empire. We need to be able to know that. That's not a bad reflection on the state, it's a GOOD REFLECTION UPON THAT WHICH BEARS ITS WEIGHT. Please, reflect kindly on us all. I find it as important as anything else. ~ R.T.G 12:41, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
8. Support. Incredibly, RTG has said something that I agree with! The "sovereign state" should not be the primary meaning by virtue of the fact that it is a sovereign state and nothing more. There are other considerations. Scolaire (talk) 13:13, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

   Thanks for reading through it, Scolaire. Sovereignty was a significant point of debate the last time. ~ R.T.G 14:18, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

9. Support. I haven't seen a better solution. Also I suspect most people who type in Ireland are more interested in their holidays or the island as a whole as where their ancestors came from rather than the politics, and if they are interested in the politics that'll be more about Northern Ireland than the differences between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. I guess a lot might also type 'economy Ireland' unfortunately but that wouldn't go to one of these either. Dmcq (talk) 15:55, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

   There are differences between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael? Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 21:41, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

   I'm shocked, shocked. Dev would turn in his grave. I think of it as more a city versus country thing myself. Dmcq (talk) 08:05, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

10. Support. The facts have not changed, so why would I change my mind? Djegan (talk) 18:45, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
11. Support. Nothing has changed. Pipelinking works. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 21:38, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
12. Support. Not because I am not keen on another discussion, but because I think the status quo is the best solution. (1) The island is the more general concept, of which the two countries can be regarded as subtopics. (2) "Republic of Ireland" is a much more natural disambiguator than "Island of Ireland" or "Ireland (island)", and it's the one used in the real world. (3) The state's name "Ireland" expresses a claim to the entire island. The only way to consider "Republic of Ireland" to be defensive would be if you support this claim. Per NPOV, that's not the kind of position we should go out of our way to support. Hans Adler 21:50, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
13. Support. Nothing has changed in the last couple of years. While I´ve no objection to an Ireland (state) article, I believe ROI to be the best dab. Valenciano (talk) 15:09, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
14. Support retaining the staus quo. Ivor Stoughton (talk) 02:33, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
15. Support. ~Asarlaí 04:55, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
16. Support. Have we not already had this poll above? Mooretwin (talk) 11:23, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
17. Support The status quo is the fairest and most stable option. There are no new arguments to justify a change. BritishWatcher (talk) 12:47, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
18. Support On the two key questions I haven't seen anything convincing that the state is overwhelmingly meant over the island when someone says "Ireland" - most usage does not stop to specify or need to - and a natural disambiguator is preferable to parenthesis, especially when it's one used by the state itself and the main objections to using it put forward last time boiled down to "Some Wikpedia editors don't like it". Timrollpickering (talk) 10:46, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

    While I agree with almost everything else you've said, I dont think its fair to characterise those that oppose the use of RoI of just not liking it. Opposition is much more fundamental than that. It really fails WP:POVTITLE and WP:NDESC in many people's eyes, and WP:AGF really requires us to accept the legitimacy of the POV.Fmph (talk) 11:28, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

    During the poll two years ago the precise question was put and the answers given were rooted precisely in some editors being opposed to using the term. This contemporary comment (from an Irish editor) sums it up well:
    I have yet to see a simple and clear statement from any of the opponents of RoI which plausibly explains why it is so unacceptable. There are subsidiary arguments, such as the fact the 1948 Act makes RoI the description, not the name ... but that's a technical point which evades the core problem of RoI-opponents, viz. that they find it offensive. This has puzzled me throughout, and it has been the elephant in the room throughout the process: the central question which has never been adequately addressed. If those opposed to RoI had addressed this directly instead of shielding behind technical arguments, we might have gotten a deeper understanding of each other's positions. But that didn't happen, so we are where we are...
    Now there are other arguments about but frankly those were not really put and/or they weren't addressing the counter points (mainly use by the government of the state). When the main argument put forward on this specific point was rooted in preventing disruption it naturally did not sway editors who might otherwise have been persuaded to switch their support. Timrollpickering (talk) 12:21, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

    I read the same arguments and discussions (on both sides) and I understood why some people found it offensive. It was only recently that I understood that WP allows for this in both WP:POVTITLE and WP:NDESC. I wasn't aware of that last time. That doesn't mean that those editors who found it offensive, but were unaware of WP:POVTITLE and WP:NDESC were making invalid points. They weren't. They just did not know their way around WP sufficiently to be aware of these 2 guideline points. They found it offensive then, They find it offensive now. That is acceptable and is allowed for under those two guidelines. It's not because they just don't like it.Fmph (talk) 14:24, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

19. Support. Status quo is fine. Nightw 12:11, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
20. Support. Status quo is fine. Kittybrewster ☎ 13:05, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
21. Support - We are not required to use the strict, legal title when naming articles; hence South Korea, for example. "Republic of Ireland" is a good natural disambiguator, and is widely used by Irish people and by the Irish government whenever it is necessary to distinguish between the state and the island. I really don't think there's any controversy about it other than on Wikipedia. Iota (talk) 11:08, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
22. Some support. I support the status quo as regards Ireland but I'm otherwise agnostic as regards the naming of the article currently at Republic of Ireland. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:28, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
23. Partly because the alternative name of Ireland would be to use Ireland (island) or Island of Ireland. Partly because the Irish constitution recognises as a second choice and international usage tends to favour Republic of Ireland. Notwithstanding that, surely those who regard or would like the entire island to be one country would want Ireland to discuss the history, demographics etc of the entire island? For those reasons, I think the status quo comes as close to balancing the conflicting views as we are likely to come. —WFC— 16:26, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
24. Support. But how and when do we agree on the period of time involved? Oh, and in deference to the instructions above, I have placed my lengthy and eloquent comments down below those other comments forcibly moved down from the votes of those not deferring to the instructions, although I am not sure whether anyone will see them there. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 01:07, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Oppose retaining the status quo

1. Given that we're generously told that we're allowed to change our minds, I'll state my starting preference: Ireland (island) and Ireland (country). With Ireland itself redirected to whichever of them turns out to be the more popular article (but with links to that title being repaired as if it were a dab page). [And with the possibility of these articles being a standard-bearer for the idea, once floated before, of treating disambiguators as subtitles rather than a full part of the title, i.e. displaying them in smaller type next to or beneath the actual title.]--Kotniski (talk) 07:06, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
2. Oppose I am here to officially and cheerfully oppose the continuation of the current naming scheme or "status quo". I will continue the good feeling with thoughts in the "Comments" section below; there, I will offer a detailed explanation of why I feel the name, or title, of the article about the nation which became independent in 1922 and adopted its present constitution in 1937 should be Ireland and the title of the article about the geographical physical body of land should be the one with the disambiguation added, as Ireland (island). This was known as option B when a vote was taken here in 2009, and it polled fourth in that STV-system poll. But, I feel it will prevail in time. (addendum) Ireland should always be the title of an article, be it the island or the state; Ireland (state) is my preference if the island retains the concise title. Sswonk (talk) 03:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC), statement revised 03:04, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
3. Oppose I recommend articles titles of Ireland (island) and Ireland (republic). The term Ireland would initially be a DAB and would be retargeted when relevant page view stats became available. Two problems with the current setup: Titling the island article as simply "Ireland" goes against the practice of other reference books and causes readers who are seeking the article about the Republic to selected a sub-optimal article. Titling the article about the Republic as "Republic of Ireland" misleads readers into thinking that this is a long-form official name. Kauffner (talk) 07:27, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
4. Oppose. The status quo on China is about to/has change(d) and exactly the same arguments apply here. --Red King (talk) 15:12, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
5. Oppose. The current naming policies are re Ireland and "British" Isles are increasingly a situation supported by a pov which, thought a majority on En Wiki (where so many Irish editors previously engaged on the topic have left or been banned) is, in fact, a tiny out-of-touch minority in the real world. Sarah777 (talk) 00:35, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
6. Oppose. The article at Ireland should be abut the island, the article about the state should be at Ireland (state), and Ireland (disambiguation) should remain unchanged. In fact, why not re-run the whole poll? -- Evertype·✆ 17:28, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
7. Oppose. My preference would be something along the lines of Ireland and Ireland (island), details of which could be decided at the end of the discussion. ★KEYS★ ^(talk) 22:49, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

   Oppose. My preference is Ireland (island) and Ireland (republic). Malke 2010 (talk) 02:42, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

8. Oppose. Nobody from Ireland, when asked his or her place of origin, ever answers Republic of Ireland. Just plain, unadorned Ireland is the normal response that is given. The article which is currently saddled with the cumbersome ROI should be renamed Ireland (country). State might confuse readers. --Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 07:17, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

   If you were in a position where you needed to make the distinction that you were from the republic, that is the term you would use, not "I'm from Ireland, but not the north. (or island)" You'd say, "I am from the Republic of Ireland," or "The South," or something that matches. Obviously you are not familiar with such a situation. How do you reason the same opinion without claiming you have no care or requisite to distinguish, and if that be the case, if you do not need to distinguish, aren't you claiming to be from the island when you answer "from Ireland"? It is not for me to detract from a wish to be distinguished as from the republic. It is for me to detract when a claim of a northerner being from Ireland is made less clear than I assume it naturally should be. I find refusal to acknowledge this to be selfish and witholding in respect to Irelands northerners. I've read your user page a long time ago as I recall, and don't recall attributing you as such so I'd even fancy bringing this to your attention to see what you might say because the northerner should have every chance to be from "plain, unadorned Ireland" in my view and no quarter should be given to any person from any state to cast a shadow of doubt upon that for any reason. It's what we call a birthright. It amazes me that this debate does not provoke outrage from many northerners, but their silence here cannot cast doubt on the fact that the large number of people in the north who find it important to identify as Irish rightfully, and harmlessly, are given every... what's the word? It's protected by our laws no matter what part of the island you are from. It's a fact of life Miss and I do not see how you, or anyone, can justify denying that. Again, I'd like you to try including the relevance of the northerners birthright, even by claiming it to be irrelevant. ~ R.T.G 22:51, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

   I agree with Jeanne Boleyne that, in general, "[n]obody from Ireland, when asked his or her place of origin, ever answers Republic of Ireland", but some do answer Northern Ireland and those who don't often immediately get asked whether they are from 'northern Ireland or southern Ireland'. At least the latter is my experience, and I can't say I like it given that I'm a proud native of eastern Ireland. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 02:49, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

9. Oppose. Agree w/Jeanne Boleyn. I'm amending my preference to Ireland (island) and Ireland (country). Malke 2010 (talk) 16:53, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
10. Oppose. The internationally accepted name of the state named Ireland is Ireland. This is an indisputable fact, no matter how many British people falsely claim that the state is named the "Irish Republic". It is only the prejudices of British people which is refusing to recognise or accept this. This is patently an absurd situation that such people can determine the name of this article on Wikipedia. If we are to seek a fair solution to all it would be something like 'Ireland (state)' and 'Ireland (country)'. 109.77.9.3 (talk) 20:02, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

    Nobody here, is suggesting the country article title be moved to Irish Republic. Also, I'm in favour of the status-quo & I'm not British. GoodDay (talk) 20:15, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

    From the number of times the British media refer to the internationally recognised state named Ireland as "Irish Republic", I would not be surprised if they wanted to institutionalise their ignorance and name the state properly called Ireland as the "Irish Republic". As for the country of Ireland, even they cannot claim that to be synonymous with "Irish Republic", considering they are still ruling 6 of the 32 counties of the country named Ireland. Also, for somebody who's not British you seem to have a very unhealthy love affair going on with Britain and defending British names for places beyond Britain regardless of the feelings of the indigenous population - "British Isles"? 109.77.9.3 (talk) 22:02, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

TLDR. GoodDay (talk) 18:38, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

What is TLDR GoodDay? 41.153.202.105 (talk) 19:56, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Too Long, Didn't Read. GoodDay (talk) 20:13, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Interesting contradictions. You appear to be acknowleding that the country of Ireland is more than 26 counties, yet are supporting the designation of those 26 counties as "Ireland". Mooretwin (talk) 08:52, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

The British Isles are named after the indigenous (Celtic) Britons, not the British state which has only existed since 1707. JonC^Talk 10:02, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Comments

• Comments - I'm starting the poll that was actually agreed to as "Option 5" above, rather than the version above which wasn't even an option. --HighKing (talk) 23:31, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Isn't this poll redundant with the RfC immediately above? Or is there some subtle difference I'm missing? I ask because uninvolved editors (such as myself) that monitor RfCs are likely to repsond to the RfC above, but may not see this poll. --Noleander (talk) 00:05, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Good question. If you scroll up to about here you'll see that the community discussed what to do on Sept 18th, and the agreed next step was to have a simple poll to see if there was a consensus to change - i.e. Retail the status quo. There was a suggestion to introduce a time period or to extend the Arbcom ban, but this isn't what was selected as a choice. It seems now that there's a group of pro-status-quo editors who want to shut down any discussions or options, and introduce another 2 year ban. There's absolutely no reason for it. I find it amusing though, that republicans and loyalists have at least found something they agree on, even if its for wildly different reasons. But as a tactic, it's poor form and doesn't serve the project. Hopefully the wider community will see this tactic for what it is. --HighKing (talk) 00:16, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I see that the RfC to extend the moratorium is slightly different from the poll, which is simply asking to leave things as-is (or not). But what good is such a poll? Even if the poll !votes to retain the status quo, after a month goes by, anyone can suggest a new proposal, relying on the WP dictum that "consensus can change". The only way the poll's results could have some longevity is if it contains a duration of some sorts, which is what the RfC includes. Anyway, I guess there is no problem with having both the poll and RfC, but it seems a bit confusing. --Noleander (talk)

As far as I was aware, the idea was to formulate an extremely light-weight and quick way to test consensus rather than rehash the discussions which most of the older participants are already very familiar with. If consensus is tested, and status quo remains, then the community could decide to desist from discussing name changes for a period of time (which I wouldn't imagine would be for 2 years), and to even create a page containing the "arguments" for each "option" so that editors wouldn't have to rehash the same stuff over and over, but could simply consider new arguments. Then, if consensus changes, we discuss options. --HighKing (talk) 00:42, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. It would be sensible, assuming it does come back for more "discussion", for people to put effort into neatly summarising the main alternatives and their pros and cons in table form and if this work has already been done, recovering it from the archives, rather than numerous pointless rehashes of the debate in unstructured ways. The table of pros and cons at Talk:China#Pro-Con_table is a good example of how to manage it better. Then people can look at a definitive list of the alternates. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 11:25, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Since maintaining the status quo is always the default, conducting a poll to maintain the status quo is confusing, illogical, and not productive. I recommend this poll be collapsed. After reading HighKing's response to Noleander above, I think I understand the purpose of the poll better. It is clear to me that this process needs strong moderation currently. I do not have a position on article naming but would just like to see a process which is orderly enough that outsiders have a fighting chance of understanding what is going on and participating. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 02:05, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

It is always humbling to see someone say something with 1/4 the number of words I used :-) --Noleander (talk) 02:09, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

This has become confusing. That's 2 Polls within hours of each other. GoodDay (talk) 03:20, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Did you read the explanation above? Still confused? --HighKing (talk) 11:05, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I didn't find this actual page confusing, but I found GoodDay's comment confused me. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 11:19, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Fully awake this morning, so it's clearer to me. GoodDay (talk) 12:30, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

• comment - I neither support nor oppose retaining the status quo, so long as doing so is a result of reasonable and full discussions. Fmph (talk) 10:26, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

The format whereby everybody lays into a single thread, banging on with the same pros and cons, doesn't work. The issue is far too complex and some editors move faster with discussions than others, etc, so it ends up a mess. Far better, I believe, if separate pages somewhere are created where the arguments for and against can be distilled and sharpened. Editors can add pros and cons to each idea - whatever works. I'd say that one "side" keeps away from the other "side" - they can develop counter arguments on their own "page". New ideas can end up at each page - so for example, your Option G could get kicked around, or RA's suggestion. If, as a result, consensus gets retested and the poll to retain the status quo fails, full discussions can take place based on the arguments presented and distilled - perhaps heavily moderated. Like the way your Option G was created, sometimes some peace and quiet is needed, and not the yammering masses trying to out-shout one another. This way, the "sides" are kept apart so that everybody can have their say, and arguments can be easily weighed by anyone not familiar with the topic. --HighKing (talk) 13:14, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

How about a peer reviewed examination of the whole issue, High King? What's the point in giving everyone a voice if we don't sum up ?? ~ R.T.G 13:23, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Commentary moved from poll section above

• Given that we're generously told that we're allowed to change our minds, I'll state my starting preference: Ireland (island) and Ireland (country). With Ireland itself redirected to whichever of them turns out to be the more popular article (but with links to that title being repaired as if it were a dab page). [And with the possibility of these articles being a standard-bearer for the idea, once floated before, of treating disambiguators as subtitles rather than a full part of the title, i.e. displaying them in smaller type next to or beneath the actual title.]--Kotniski (talk) 07:06, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

  This doesn't address the nub of what you propose (which isn't bad) but, on a pedantic point, which Ireland is the "country"? Both Ireland's are, even in the present tense, called a country. One being a country like the UK is a country, the other being a country like Scotland is a country. And from many perspectives - historically, of course, but also ethnic and cultural perspectives - only one is definitively the country. --RA (talk) 08:03, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

  I suspect that, at least in an encyclopedic register, "country" would be understood by everyone to have the first meaning. (But as I say, I'm willing to change my mind if persuaded.)--Kotniski (talk) 08:53, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

  Ireland (state) was a flyer before. I don't necessarily oppose an Ireland / Ireland (state) arrangement. That keeps the broad concept arrangement for disambiguation, which is what I believe is important to maintain. --RA (talk) 09:33, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

  Also has merit. I don't oppose giving "primacy" to the island, I just oppose the actual name of the current article. --HighKing (talk) 11:03, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Fails Recognisability, Naturalness and Conciseness, IMHO. Fmph (talk) 11:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Certainly for "naturalness" (in my opinion), which is why I prefer Ireland / Republic of Ireland. --RA (talk) 11:55, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

To me, the problem with the current setup is the island article has a title that confuses readers into thinking that it is about the Republic. We should always put the reader before politics, especially political views that are now outside the mainstream, both in Ireland and in Britain. Kauffner (talk) 12:22, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

The island article is about Ireland. Your confusion arises from the misconception that any reference to a place is political by default. The reader that you're rightly concerned about is interested in the place called Ireland. Those who want to know about politics, law, institutions etc. in the 26 counties go to the Republic of Ireland article, which is usually (and conveniently) pipelinked to "Ireland". Or, if by mischance they find themselves at the Ireland (well-known place) article, they follow the hat-note at the top of the page. Scolaire (talk) 13:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, we don't really know what topic any given reader is interested in (and often, neither does the reader). I don't really have a lot of objection to the current setup, but I understood the problem was that it implies that "Republic of Ireland" is the real name of the country (state, whatever), whereas in fact it's only a disambiguated form used decreasingly often in the real world.--Kotniski (talk) 13:23, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

In the world of diplomatic dispatches, maybe. In the real world, it appears in guide books, in politically-neutral articles and on cereal packets as often or more often than ever. And in the real world, nobody minds! Scolaire (talk) 13:32, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

No one is disputing that RoI is used. What Kotniski has said is that it is decreasingly used. For a start HMG don't use it as much now as they used to. So that is a measurable decrease. Decreasing usage is v accurate IMHO. Fmph (talk) 13:34, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

And what I said is that it is used as often or more often than ever. And what HMG uses just isn't up there in any list of criteria. Scolaire (talk) 13:39, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Given that HMG were a major user and now aren't, that is a significant point amongst the criteria for selection an article name, because it shows that usage is decreasing. Can you show me where usage is increasing, i.e. somehwere (other than WP) which didn't use RoI previously and now does? Fmph (talk) 13:56, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

No. Can you show me evidence of decreasing use in the real world other than government, diplomacy and politics? Scolaire (talk) 15:38, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Don't know how relevant it is, but I noticed in the recent BBC reports on the McGuinness standing for Irish president story, that they seemed to avoid using "Republic of Ireland", even though there was a clear potential for ambiguity (with him being a Northern Irish politician and all).--Kotniski (talk) 16:52, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

BBC says "Irish Republic" here. CNN and the Telegraph both use "Republic of Ireland". But actually the point I was making is that outside politics ROI is as much used as ever e.g. "ROI customers write to this address..." on the cereal packet. And nobody ever boycotts Kellogg's for saying that. Scolaire (talk) 17:11, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I presume we have higher aspirations than to imitate cereal packets ;) But my preference against RoI isn't based on any political motivation - it just seems to me that we should take a more rigorous approach to our article titles: if Ireland is both the common and the official name for the state, then we risk misinforming people if we decline to use that name (or that name followed by what is obviously a disambiguating tag) as the title for its article. RoI is aesthetically more pleasing, as it avoids the ugly brackets; but as an encyclopedia, we ought to be putting information before beauty.--Kotniski (talk) 06:07, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I was looking at the voting patterns from 2009 and my sense is that this is a side issue. The central issue is the primary topic for the term Ireland, i.e. should this term lead to the island, a DAB, or the Republic? Kauffner (talk) 16:31, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

When there are only two main subjects to disambiguate, it often doesn't matter that much if we choose a topic as primary when technically it might not ought to be. (A dab page will ensure that no-one gets to the article they want straight away; while making whichever article primary still gets about half the people to the right place, while providing a hatnote for the others that isn't any more of an inconvenience than a dab page would be.)--Kotniski (talk) 16:52, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I can't understand (well, I can really but AGF won't permit me to say it) why some people insist that "Republic of Ireland" is the *only* article title allowed for the article on the state.... --HighKing (talk) 13:27, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Some people quietly re-affirm that "Republic of Ireland" is an okay title for the article, and can't understand why other people insist it is the only title not allowed. Scolaire (talk) 13:36, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

It's this particular title that appears to be the root of most of the debate. I could be wrong. It's not that the title is not allowed, it's that a lot object to it. I can't speak for anybody else, but I don't have a problem using Republic of Ireland in situations described in the IMOS. It's not usage I see as the main issue, just the title. There's going to be problems with any title for sure, but a lot of the other titles *may* be less problematic. I'd like to see an alternative title - perhaps it would a good compromise. And perhaps not. I think until we have a consensus to change (review) the status quo though, there's not a lot of point in discussing. --HighKing (talk) 14:23, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

"To me, the problem with the current setup is the island article has a title that confuses readers into thinking that it is about the Republic." - In fairness, if either of the two, it is the Republic that has a name that (deliberately in 1937) confuses readers into thinking that it extends across the whole island. This is not chicken or egg. The island came before the state and is by far the broader concept invovled. Subset to that is Geography of Ireland, History of Ireland, Culture of Ireland, Architecture of Ireland, Music of Ireland ... and yes, Republic of Ireland. --RA (talk) 13:48, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

That argument is one of the reasons why the article on the state shouldn't be at "Ireland". It doesn't lend itself to the argument of putting the article at "Republic of Ireland" though. Anyway :-) you can probably write the next 10 responses of arguments and rebuttals as well as I. --HighKing (talk) 14:23, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I wont' because I think that is the nub of the issue. There are two questions here that are conflated:

1. Is there a primary topic or a broad-concept article? (I say, yes, the broad concept article is currently at Ireland.)
2. If so, what title should we use to disambiguate another article from it (the one to do with the state of the same name as the broad concept)? (I think Republic of Ireland is natural disambiguator, but it is an open question.) --RA (talk) 16:08, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

@RA Am I to understand that the Dublin government was called something other than "Ireland" prior to 1937? I don't think so. Here's some headlines: "Ireland takes her place among nations of earth", Dec. 6, 1922. "Threat of Arms Keeps Ireland Within Empire, says De Valera", Dec. 8, 1933. People automatically started calling the state "Ireland" from the moment it was created. Kauffner (talk) 15:51, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Between 1922 and 1937 the name of the state was the Irish Free State. In 1937, a new constitution was adopted and the name of the was changed to Ireland. In 1949, the state unilaterally declared itself a republic and declared that "the description of the State shall be the Republic of Ireland". The UK government refused to accept the 1937 name of Ireland (for obvious reasons) and called the state by its (official) Irish-language (minus the fada): Eire. In 1949, the UK government accepted the unilateral declaration of the republic and changed it's accepted name of the state to Republic of Ireland. Initially, the UK was not alone in it's rejection of the use of the name Ireland by the state but by the 1960's was alone. Since the mid-1990s, and the entente between the two states, the UK has apparently accepted the name Ireland. Regardless of all this, the term Republic of Ireland is used uncontroversially in Ireland as well as elsewhere (see my postage stamp conundrum above).

All of this is beside the point, however, and only muddies the water. Nobody is disputing that the common name of the state is Ireland. Are you disputing that the common name of the island is Ireland? The question is disambiguation and my point is about broad concept articles and disambiguation. --RA (talk) 16:08, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Other encyclopedias typically have an article entitled "Ireland" (Britannica, Encarta) or "Ireland, Republic of" (Columbia) that corresponds to our "Republic of Ireland" article. Yet our "Ireland" article is about something else. My proposal is simply that the title be changed to something that makes the topic immediately clear to reader: "Ireland (island)", "Island of Ireland", "Ireland (broad concept)" etc. I like the title "Republic of Ireland" and I am not proposing to change it. But if the Irish want another title, I do not tell them what the name of their country is. Kauffner (talk) 00:35, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't know about Encarta, but Britannica has only one article - for the land and the state - which is called "Ireland". It's like Cyprus on Wikipedia. Climate, people, culture etc. in that article is pretty well applicable to the whole country, and the history section deals with the whole country (taking in e.g. the Orange Order). If people wanted to merge the two articles on WP I would be all in favour of that; in fact I argued for it two years ago. I can't see it winning a consensus, though. By the way, I am one of several Irish (as in from-the-south Irish) Wikipedians who don't want another title, so thank you for not telling me what the name of my country is. Scolaire (talk) 10:03, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the "broad concept" concept is applicable here - that's for terms whose primary meaning is a broad, rather vague concept, not something specific like an island (that's from my reading of WP:DABCONCEPT and what I believe it was supposed to apply to). Just because the island is a "broader concept" than the state doesn't mean it has to be treated as primary.--Kotniski (talk) 16:58, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I think a large part of the perceptual problem comes from this insistence on using the word "island", as though Ireland-the-Island was some small patch of land somewhere off the coast of Ireland-the-state. Ireland is the broad concept. It's not just a collection of mountains and rivers; it's an age-old land with an age-old civilization that happens to be partitioned for less than 90 years of its thousands of years of history. Is Newgrange primarily notable for the fact that it is in the part of Ireland that is currently governed by a Fine Gael - Labour coalition? Scolaire (talk) 21:14, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

On that kind of timescale, "Ireland" is a modern concept, just as "Britain" is - and it was divided into many small kingdoms and kingdomlets through much of recorded history and probably well into prehistory. This debate hinges on our assumptions about what best reflects the most widely used contemporary commonname word "Ireland" in the global community mind - is it the "island", the "state", or some nebulous concept of "Irelandness"? Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 21:36, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

"Ireland-ness" is not a nebulous concept. It is a concrete thing that forms the basis of articles as diverse as Provinces of Ireland, Church of Ireland, Music of Ireland, Fauna of Ireland, Climate of Ireland, Banknotes of Ireland, Culture of Ireland, Grand Lodge of Ireland and on and on and on... It is a contemporary and firmly understood broad concept from which other concepts stem (including Republic of Ireland). --RA (talk) 22:15, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, yes, I didn't mean to imply that "Irelandness" is in some way minor or trivial, I was referencing the non-spatialness of "Irelandness" as presumably you agree with in that in many of those examples there will be material from other countries, places and times, just as there would be in the concept of "Britain-ness". Probably misusing the word "nebulous", I meant "non-specifically geo-located". Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 10:05, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

The Irish annals from the year dot use expressions such as "never before seen in Ireland", "the best in all Ireland" and of course "king of Ireland" (whether said king could justify his claim or not). Ireland had one language and one legal system for all of recorded history until the Normans came. And the said Normans didn't set out to conquer the kingdom of the Uí Ceinnselaig, or the kingdom of Dublin, but Ireland, just as the Romans a thousand years earlier set their sights on "Hibernia", not some coastal kingdom. The mere fact that there wasn't, or mostly wasn't, a unified kingdom says nothing; there was still a (well-known) land of Ireland, just as there was a land called France in the 11th century when the king had no effective power outside his own rather small demesne. Ireland pre-1542 is no more a "non-specifically geo-located" concept that it is a "nebulous" one. Scolaire (talk) 10:36, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Not that recently, no, but the Irish Annals don't go back to the "year dot", they, like recorded history in Britain, extend back to a mythic Celtic past onto which later writers almost certainly overlaid the mores and concepts of their own early medieval times. Also I didn't claim there wasn't an ancient Irish identity, just that it has little to do with the modern identities, which in the case of all of the identities of these islands are largely inventions of the Early Modern and Modern periods written backwards in time by Antiquarians and Mystics. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 11:12, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Britain is also thousands of years old. There is a modern concept of it related to the Anglicans and the British Empire. I hate to draw negativity, but we are emerging a pattern here related to the quality of knowledge possessed by those following one approach or another. That may seem personally insulting to some, but what should I call it when everything is mixed up after I was calling out, "Wait! People will mix this stuff up!". I am crying out for the evaluation page of relevant facts. All complex debate should have one required. Anything less results in multiple cases of nonsense without point of reference. We are not all chess grand masters. We can't be expected to watch ten moves at once. We need them one at a time, one after the other. Order born out of chaos. Let's make something beneficial out of all this bandwidth we've been spending. Even if it doesn't solve everything for everyone, it will make stuff easier. ~ R.T.G 22:06, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I want to note something for those who proposed once that Republic of Ireland somehow equates to a British approach. In Britain, Britain is now the state and Great Britain is now the island. So it would follow that if in Ireland, Ireland was now the state and Blahdyblah Ireland were now the island, that would be a strictly British style approach without complex arguement to *ex-plain* why not. ~ R.T.G 22:10, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

James, seriously, it's a bit far fetched to say that "Ireland-ness" is unrelated to space or is "non-specifically geo-located". Hint: Ireland is the name of an island. When we are talking about the Culture of Ireland, we are talking about the culture of that island. When we are talking about the Climate of Ireland, we are talking about the climate of that island. When we are talking about the Banknotes of Ireland, we are talking about the banknotes of that island. And when we talk about Ireland, as a broad concept, unsurprisingly, we are talking about that island. --RA (talk) 12:05, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Well the sands of this thread keep shifting about, but I think I was thinking in terms of this debate about the suggestion that we should treat "Ireland" as meaning the "island" because it has a long history as such - I was arguing that historically, "Ireland" has been a moving feast and that it may not have meant the same thing it does now and that therefore the argument that Ireland must mean the island (if based on historic or psuedo-historic grounds) does not stand up well - that arguments like that belong to a near-metaphysical view of "Irelandness" which is not always the same as anything current. In historic times for example, Irish Kings sometimes ruled over slices of what are now Scotland and Wales - did they think of those as "Ireland"? Perhaps. Could they be included in articles about "Ireland"? Perhaps. It's a complex subject. My argument is that we should focus on contemporary accepted usages and not assume primacy for past ones. I don't think in general that historic territories or conceptual territories should have primacy in article names. The same arises with China - to most modern audiences, China the contemporary state and China the place are the same thing. That's different with Ireland, I agree, but it's also close. To most modern audiences, Ireland means Ireland the country and they don't think too much about the fact that NI sits within the same concept, or if they do, they kind of conflate it with "Ireland", so that Ireland-the-island and Ireland-the-state kind of run together. As the modern state has that name and we are a modern cyclopedia, I think we should go with the modern usage. On your point itself, I do think that long-running historic places have a conceptual side to them ("Persian-ness", "China-ness") that is something different to the modern actuality, but I won't get bogged down by arguing over it as it isn't a critical point. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 12:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

The place-ness of a place has a conceptual side that is independent of modern de iure or de facto boundaries. Poland has only one article despite the fact that its boundaries have changed many many times, and there were times when it officially didn't exist. Because there's always been a place called Poland. And somebody like Casimir Markievicz was known to be "from Poland" even if it was then called the Russian empire and his estate was in what is now Ukraine. Likewise there was always a place called Ireland. But it was always in the same place! No shifting borders (till the 20th century), no official extinction. You're right that to modern readers Ireland means Ireland the country. But the country is not the state. Millions of people know of Ireland but don't even realise that it is partitioned. How many people are aware that Belfast is in Ireland and don't realise it is part of the UK? Quite a few. How many people are aware that Belfast is in the UK and believe it's not in Ireland or anything to do with Ireland? Precious few, I would imagine. Scolaire (talk) 13:07, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

James, all the above presumes that Ireland, in any other sense than the state that occupies part of Ireland, is a historical subject. I can promise you it is not. I'm standing on it. Partition may have divided it between two jurisdiction but you cannot partition dance, music, weather, sport, religion, or any number of the topics that are subsidiary to Ireland.

What I have am been attempting to do is to show you how Ireland is a broad modern subject. Matters to do with the state that occupies a portion of Ireland is only a small subset of that - and is not terribly important. It is entirely possible to discuss topics relating to Ireland in great detail without every troubling oneself with the political arrangements to do with the topic.

You write above how when people think of Ireland, they conflate Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. That is no surprise to me. Ireland is a broad concept, for the purposes of this encyclopedia. Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are only small portions of it and not of definitive importance to most matters to do with that subject. --RA (talk) 13:46, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Okay I have to chime in. Jamesinderbyshire, what you say about "Irish Kings" is misleading. You have, or give, the impression that Ireland had a particular lineage of royalty which would foray into other places to impose the identity and define what Ireland is or was. Negative. That is a foreign principle or custom. The most common denominator between Irish kings, after the fact that they were Irish and kings, men whatever, might be the fact that they were *not* King of Ireland. We didn't have barbarian lands where we imposed our identity on the natives. We ARE the barbarians, along with whoever else we may have become since that time. When the Vikings invaded Ireland they/we were somewhat industrious and benign. The next major invasion, was it 1000 years? It was a long time and, while water was still the main highway of the world, Ireland was naturally a major area of multi culture in Europe. Ireland was never a tyrant. No king is synonymous with what Ireland is, though many have marked it quite severely. The Irish republic is not deemed neutral because we can't find anyone who wants to fight. That would be some sort of blessing. No. It's because we were never a part of your struggle for divine blood and infinite power. We actually *are* a *neutral* culture. Kings from here with aspirations overseas were purely isolated and insignificant. You are trying to compare them to your own culture where such exploit was the major significance. It's the major thing you have going for you in that respect, just as with what we have, which is different. Invaders had a tendency to push the natives back and then assimilate with them over time. In my view it is natural development. It's in the geography and weather. We have no shortage of psychos in the mix, but we've no megalomanics. The ground just doesn't spawn them. All lines of conquest roll inwards toward a knot. I'd say the only place in Ireland where you could see straight across for ten miles is Lough Neigh. They cut a new motorway between Waterford and Dublin over the last lot of years. They cut almost a third of the distance of only about 150 miles. If you wanted two large armies to meet each other you'd nearly have to make an appointment. Indeed, when some French allies were defeated in County Cork, they'd got lost on the way to the battle. Is that not cooler than the conquest buzz? Yup yup :). ~ R.T.G 11:25, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

• Comment not moved from the poll section above: I think we should recognize that the real problem we are facing here, and only Fmph seems to advert to it, is that computer databases are incapable of accurately representing the real world. Given that there are in fact two possible encyclopaedic subjects both legitimately open to being called Ireland, doing so would seem to be the ideal option, and I therefore propose as a simple and elegant solution that we request the developers to modify Wikipedia so as to ensure that more than one page can have the same name (admittedly this may take some time and effort on their part, but look at how much time and effort has been spent on this issue already, and may continue to be so spent ad infinitum short of dealing with this technical problem by means of a technical solution). Pending the successful implementation of such a technical fix, we could follow the example of print dictionaries and other encyclopaedias mentioned by Fmph and place our articles at 'Ireland (1)' and 'Ireland (2)'.
• I am quite happy with the status quo, and I still don't understand why a term for the Irish state which is stated by legislation of a sovereign Irish parliament to be the 'description of the state' can be regarded as demeaning or offensive to that state by some of its citizens, yet if I have understood it correctly Irish Wikipedians who find the term objectionable on that basis seem to be one of the main forces behind requests to move both pages. Surely if the legislative status quo is so unbearable, these citizens ought to place more emphasis on engaging in political campaigning to have the Republic of Ireland Act, 1948 amended, rather than in Wikipedia campaigning to change the name of the article on the state legally so described?
• Personally, I regard Ireland as my country, not the Republic of Ireland, and find the idea of an article on the Republic that describes it as 'Ireland (country)' objectionable as well as confusing. I can readily accept that calling the article on Ireland 'Ireland (country)' may be validly objected to on the same grounds, and if bracketed addition(s) to page title(s) are required (I hope not) I strongly support using the accurate and precise legal and political term 'state'.ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 01:38, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Expansion

• Expansion on my vote in opposition above I certainly would like to have awakened, and seen that one of my fellow editors such as RA, or Bastun, or Scolaire without-the-Fada had suddenly gone through an incredible, amazing transformation of thought and discovered what a simple thing it would be to change the article now under the title Republic of Ireland to Ireland. Then, I would look around the room for the bottle with the "DRINK ME" label attached or a hat with a price tag of ten shillings and sixpence nearby. This is for Arbcom, who I hope gain some moments of humour here: folks I don't say this often, but I really could see writing this while having ingested psilocybin, as I think many elements of it would become much clearer under the mushroom's influence. But, I am not one to ask much of people who arbitrate, that is tough business and the real reason I am here is to ask them to let this discussion go free. It deserves a long period of continued discussion and thinking, since there appears to be entrenchment far and wide. Don't lock it down, I mean no one but an administrator can move these articles, and we trust them to not wheel war over it, so just let the words flow and let people continue to get to know each other. Don't go back to the way it was before 18 September, with a tacit ban on discussion. And let the talk go on everywhere, not just in one spot where some might gain hegemony, it is after all just pixels on a screen. It isn't even loud. And no one is spilling a drink on anyone, are they? For what it takes here, to let Wikipedia find the way to conclude this, is having that conversation, not zipping it.
  I thought as I was reading these pages in the weeks prior to this day that the IECOLL project, of which I am still listed as a member, had become the SQEOD project. Yes, that stands for "Status quo, end of discussion". Really looks like that is all that's left here to a large degree. If Mabuska, or R.T.G., or GoodDay one day start agreeing with me, and at that time I don't turn back to see the Cheshire Cat grinning away, it certainly will be because of continued free discussions that Wikipedia should promote and not quash.
  I have been asked by someone here not to re-hash and all that. So I won't. I disagree certainly that the Ireland that calls itself that all over every page of its official website at the world representative forum called the United Nations has done so to "(express) a claim to the entire island." Certainly Mississippi does not claim the entire river, nor Australia the continent. They are just names, but the names by which those polities are known commonly both to themselves and the world. Germany and Poland, to name two, are places that have survived various stretches in different shapes and sizes, but those names are also the titles of the articles, in spite of the varied and intertwined histories, because that is how they are known to the world, at the UN and in the news. Is there some need to disambiguate previously shaped Germany from what it is now by calling the article there Federal Republic of Germany? Of course there isn't. Yes, from time to time CNN and the Telegraph have used "Republic of Ireland", and you can find links to those, but you can if you look on many other pages on those same sites, CNN and the Telegraph, find the single name Ireland used for the sovereign state. You can listen to speeches of Elizabeth II talking, and accounts of her visit last spring, with the official name used: Ireland. Ireland, just like France, Greece, Spain, other EU countries. Very simply, that is what Ireland is in 2011. The historic place, the island and other meanings can be just as gracefully handled with hatnotes and dab pages, and should be. The article with the infobox containing the harp and tricolor, with the infobox titled Ireland / Éire, should be titled Ireland. No need to re-hash beyond that, but there is also no need to be scared to discuss or contemplate that fact. The Queen certainly was able to see fit to use the proper name when she visited. It's not somehow granting the state dominion over a portion of your brain, as in a grandiose comparison to making the bible God. It is using the name as we do throughout the encyclopedia, as a name. Ireland is the proper name for the article, not Republic of Ireland. The burden of disambiguation is in the minds of some too great. I don't see it, and the vote of first preference in 2009, initially at 104 for "status quo" and 130 for something other than "status quo", shows many others can be found not to see it as well. Silencing or discouraging any opinion other than what who's left of IECOLL feels is consensus would be wrong. Thanks so much, sincerely, arbs and everyone participating, for taking the time to read this. Sswonk (talk) 05:01, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Too long, didn't read. --Scolaire (talk) 10:09, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Very good read... and I completely agree. Tebibyte (talk) 10:33, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree too, well explained. The article can be called Ireland without laying claim to NI or confusing readers about the island of Ireland, historical Ireland, etc. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 12:39, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

• International Money and law as upheld by government. We are all coming out of the grinder. You know what I am talking about. Session and recession. I've got my feet on the ground. If you don't see what I am picking at, maybe you will. Names of Germany, every country has one. I see, "gracefully handled". The "status quo" is exactly what we have avoided here in the past. I can point that out and I can say that it is okay. Blow away state. We still remain. I am not one for utter dissent. Ireland is an island. It is there that we might find particular states. ~ R.T.G 07:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I've moved this lot out of the poll section into the commentary section. You say it was an expansion of your vote in opposition - I couldn't find a vote anywhere. If you have !voted in the poll, please add it back in above and accept my apologies. --HighKing (talk) 09:31, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Closure of page titles poll

HighKing, I am requesting that we go for closure on your poll here as well as the one above. The voting is lopsided and not likely to change much in the coming days. I don't consider it in any way binding, that is it does not end all discussion, it is informative however. The consensus would be that a majority favor no change to titles. From there, I think continued open and free discussion of these issues should be available for all here at this project, not least those who visit here for the first time after seeing a talk page notice. As part of a closure, there should be a general discouragement of future statements to the effect that it is "unproductive" or a "waste" for people to express their well-considered views. The appearance of several statements to that end here reflects poorly on those who made the remarks. Sswonk (talk) 08:10, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

The voting is lopsided and not likely to change, interesting way to describe a ~70%+ majority in favour of the status quo. The issue with continued discussions now is that only the die-hard's from both camnps will hang about now, I for one have lost interest in the rest of the discussions they are just WP:TLDR. Mtking ^(edits) 11:00, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

In agreement, close it down. GoodDay (talk) 13:48, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I'd have to agree with the lopsided assessment. There are plenty of editors passing by and contributing to the first poll - which was notified widely cross the pedia - but not contributing to the second. I don't think it's safe to assume that everyone who arrives and votes in the first poll is necessarily aware of the second poll. Fmph (talk) 15:21, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Mabuska asked in a section below that the discussions be condensed. There is no need to keep the somewhat disorganized threads here active. I propose archiving this entire page as is, after closure of both polls, into a subpage link. For an example of how that has been done previously see Talk:Willis Tower/Move. The title "Move" is actually a redirect to an archive in numeric sequence so it does not get segregated from the other general archive pages. There is a note at the top of the page which I would be glad to compose. Trust me, I will not display bias in the note. Then, there is another note at the top of the Willis Tower article talk page that reads: The issue of the name of the building has been discussed at great length. Before starting a discussion relating to this, please ensure your point has not already been discussed. That method at once recognizes the issues and still "condenses" the previous statements through the link to the archive. I would also suggest linking to the 2009 poll and the many Statements. I might even add my own statement, say with a list of "2011 statements" link at the header of this proposed archive page. I agree, to avoid Mtking's scenario of "die-hard's from both camnps will hang about now", this should get super-closed. RMs would be fruitless as well, so basically there should be a notice saying we have got to the point of wanting to avoid votes and drama until there is any sort of bipartisan agreement. I can still oppose with vigor the article title "Republic of Ireland" without having to discuss it all the time, and there should not be any gag. RMs could probably be placed in limbo, I haven't worked out logically how they could be initiated. Everyone with an interest please comment on these suggestions. Sswonk (talk) 16:01, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

This talk page currently has 25 archives, of which the vast majority are concerned with page titles. I don't see why the current discussion should be treated differently to the previous ones. The separate "Statements" page was not the first such, or even the most exhaustive. This one here is fairly thin in comparison with the 2008-09 ones. Collating the arguments from all of the archives would be an interesting project, but not an easy one. Scolaire (talk) 21:32, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and don't forget the Ireland disambiguation task force and its talk page (and their archives). Scolaire (talk) 22:06, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I would like to see a prominent opening box on this page, alerting everyone who arrives here after being directed from the various article talk pages to the history you just wrote. There should be a Wikipedia explanation of why there is the "status quo". Sswonk (talk) 23:14, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

There's a consensus to keep the status quo, atleast for now. GoodDay (talk) 17:16, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this is just a matter of titles...

Titles are supposed to match the concept an article is about, but I think there's more than one way to slice the conceptspace of Ireland, and depending on which one is used, different title schemes will be more or less appropriate. If we divide the universe of stuff that can be said about Ireland into:

1. physical geography, natural history, prehistory, etc.;
2. pre-1922 history, politics, economics, demographics, culture, etc;
3. all-Ireland aspects of post-1922 history, politics, economics, demographics, culture, etc;
4. economics, demographics, culture, etc. of the RoI;
5. history and politics of the RoI;
6. economics, demographics, culture, etc. of NI;
7. history and politics of NI;

then I can envision at least three ways of splitting this stuff across articles (where discusses means ‘the most in-depth discussion of the matter, excluding sub-articles which no-one would link normally ever link to as Ireland’; brief mentions are possible in other articles too as needed for context; and I'm not assuming the ‘boundaries’ between a topic and another should be hard-and-fast):

• Article A discusses topics 1, 2, 3, and 4. Article B discusses topic 5. Article C discusses topic 6 and 7.
• Article A′ discusses topic 1. Article B′ discusses topics 2, 3, 4, and 5. Article C′ discusses topics 6 and 7.
• Article A″ discusses topic 1. Article B″ discusses topics 2, 3, 4, and 6. Article C″ discusses topic 5. Article D″ discusses topic 7.
• etc.

In each of these situations, I would prefer the titles:

• A = Ireland, B = Republic of Ireland, C = Northern Ireland;
• A′ = Ireland (island), B′ = Ireland, C′ = Northern Ireland;
• A″ = Ireland (island), B″ = Ireland, C″ = Republic of Ireland, D′ = Northern Ireland.

IOW, IMO, whichever article discusses topics 2 and 3 should be titled Ireland; the one which discusses topic 1, if not the same, should be titled Ireland (island); the one which discusses 5, if not the same, should be titled Republic of Ireland; and whichever one discusses 4 should bear the infobox-country for Ireland and be considered the ‘main’ one which should be linked ‘by default’ by {{flagcountry|IRE}}, sentences like “Galway is a city in Ireland”, and so on. (Does all of this make sense?)
― A. di M.​_plé​^dréachtaí 10:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

• The above points are very well taken. One of the primary things I disliked about the final RfC from 2009 (the only one I saw in time to be involved in) was that it gave a variety of options for dividing up the topic but used the clunky, IMO, Ireland (state), rather than the more natural Republic of Ireland for all choices except the status quo. While no solution will satisfy everyone, I think that another round of discussion followed by a new binding consensus is the best way forward. We don't need to rehash the same issues constantly but we can't know if consensus has changed unless we periodically test it. Eluchil404 (talk) 05:26, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation not necessary on several Wikis

The table links, in each case, to the article that held the title listed on 30 September 2011 in that language. The links are all to articles about the sovereign state, not the island or any broader concept. Of the top 20 Wikipedias when ranked by article count, 13 use the name of the state, 5 use "Republic of Ireland" and 2 use Ireland (country). This information is provided in support of continued discussion about the current title of the en.wikipedia.org article, and whether the purported "need to disambiguate" is not really a more local concern of Britain and Northern Ireland that has until now strongly influenced this project but is not a globally supported argument. The fact that the English Wikipedia uses "Republic of Ireland" and only 4 others on this list follow suit is telling. Sswonk (talk) 05:08, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Also telling is the fact that on the 30 September, the Irish wikipedia used ga:Poblacht na hÉireann, and has done so for the last seven years (except for 5 hours), which has generated about 5k of discussion compared to the megabytes of discussion it has here. DrKiernan (talk) 07:19, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Top 20 Wikipedia language sites by article count (source)

Rank	Language	Title of state article	In English (source)	Title of island article	In English	Dab Page or Redirect
1	English	Republic of Ireland	Republic of Ireland	Ireland	Ireland	No
2	German	Irland	Ireland	Irland (Insel)	Ireland (island)	No
3	French	Irlande (pays)	Ireland (country)	Irlande (île)	Ireland (island)	Dab page Irlande
4	Italian	Irlanda	Ireland	Irlanda (isola)	Ireland (island)	No
5	Polish	Irlandia	Ireland	Irlandia (wyspa)	Ireland (island)	No
6	Spanish	Irlanda	Ireland	Irlanda (isla)	Ireland (island)	No
7	Russian	Ирландия	Ireland	Ирландия (остров)	Ireland (island)	No
8	Japanese	アイルランド	Ireland	アイルランド島	Island of Ireland	No
9	Dutch	Ierland (land)	Ireland (country)	Ierland (eiland)	Ireland (island)	Dab Page Ierland
10	Portuguese	República da Irlanda	Republic of Ireland	Irlanda (ilha)	Ireland (island)	Redirects Irlanda to state article
11	Swedish	Irland	Ireland	Irland (ö)	Ireland (island)	No
12	Chinese	爱尔兰共和国	Republic of Ireland	爱尔兰岛	Ireland	No
13	Catalan	República d'Irlanda	Republic of Ireland	Irlanda (illa)	Ireland (island)	Redirects Irlanda to state article
14	Ukrainian	Ірландія	Ireland	Ірландія (острів)	Ireland (island)	No
15	Norwegian (Bokmål)	Irland	Ireland	Irland (øy)	Ireland (island)	No
16	Finnish	Irlanti	Ireland	Irlanti (saari)	Ireland (island)	No
17	Vietnamese	Cộng hòa Ireland	Republic of Ireland	Đảo Ireland	Island Ireland	Redirects Ireland to state article
18	Czech	Irsko	Ireland	Irsko (ostrov)	Ireland (island)	No
19	Hungarian	Írország	Ireland	Ír-sziget	Irish islands	No
20	Korean	아일랜드	Ireland	아일랜드 섬	Ireland Island	No

What name does those 19 non-english 'pedias call the island? GoodDay (talk) 11:34, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Table updated to show titles of island articles. Sswonk (talk) 13:57, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

There will always be differences between how different language wikipedias handle something. I note the Irish language wikipedia handles it the way we do. With Ireland being the island and the state being at Republic of Ireland. The fact it has been the case there for a long time, just goes to show our method is reasonable. BritishWatcher (talk) 13:16, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

A rather strong case for country article to be at Ireland & island article to be at Ireland (island). GoodDay (talk) 14:14, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

GoodDay - odd, a major - major - point continuously made in 2008/2009 by the anti status quo lobby was that it was distinctly unfair that those "foreigners" (who outnumber us poor Irish) would be telling us what to call the article on our state.

Indeed, most foreigners are apparently with the 'pro-movement' side of 2008/09. GoodDay (talk) 14:27, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Sswonk - what's the point of posting this? Really? Disambiguation is needed on all of those wikis, so your section heading is misleading. Just that some of them disambiguate on the state, some on the island. If it's an attempt to argue the case for using some other title than Republic of Ireland, it's not helpful (and it's been used already in the 2008/2009 discussions and didn't sway anyone). We're talking above about how to move on (or to decide not to move on) - not throwing out our various pro- and con- status quo arguments. Save them for if and when there's a RM or some other process. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 14:22, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

"Disambiguation not necessary on several Wikis" - First off, all of the examples above disambiguate between the two "Irelands". Some of them disambiguate using different terms and in different ways, but they all disambiguate.

Second, and more important, this is the English-language Wikipedia. I don't know what the Irish state is called in Japanese. I don't speak Korean. I cannot read Ukrainian. But, more to the point, I don't know what policies or naming conventions the Japanese, Korean or Ukrainian Wikipedias have. Whatever they are, they don't matter here except in an academic sense.

This encyclopedia is aimed at English-language speakers, through the medium of the English language. Not speakers of Czech or Hungarian. Not in Dutch or Portuguese. I have no idea what is appropriate for the naming of articles on those projects. They only Wikipedia projects I can contribute to are the English-language Wikipedia and the Irish-language Wikipedia. Both disambiguate between the two "Ireland" by placing the broad concept at Ireland (or Éire) and the state at Republic of Ireland (or Poblacht na hÉireann). I humbly suggest that that may be because that is what is appropriate for those languages. What is appropriate for other languages, I don't know. Possibly it may be whatever is in the table above. --RA (talk) 15:42, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

What I do see is that not one of the articles in the table use the constitutional name of the state, which is "Éire" in every language except English. Scolaire (talk) 17:14, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

It really doesn't seem necessary to repeat myself, yet the entire scene here does contain its share of circular self-referencing arguments. Brought to mind are (paraphrasing) "I choose the status quo because nothing has changed" and "we need to disambiguate the state because the state's name is ambiguous". See the article I have pointed out many times, begging the question, for a similar example which goes: "Opium induces sleep because it has a soporific quality". If it seems it is needed, here is something I wrote above, repeated: This information is provided in support of continued discussion about the current title of the en.wikipedia.org article, and whether the purported "need to disambiguate" is not really a more local concern of Britain and Northern Ireland that has until now strongly influenced this project but is not a globally supported argument. If that is not clear, it may be because the original table only included the various titles of the state article, until a question about the island was asked and I added two columns. "Disambiguation (of the single name Ireland as title of the state article) not necessary on several Wikis" was implied, so that is the meaning. I did not mean nor write that disambiguation itself is not necessary.

My statements are in support of further discussion and in opposition to the "status quo", the use of an incorrect title that confuses a description with an actual name. It is fact that the current title was until 1998 promoted outside of Ireland as an official name exclusively by the U.K., a rival government, making it less than ideal for use as a title in a neutral setting. It is also fact that the Government of Ireland itself on its UN mission website publishes the following sentence: "The Irish constitution provides that the name of the state is Éire or in the english language, Ireland." Several others have remarked here in the past week as we have discussed various remedies to the titling situation, and the table is offered as another perspective. My statement suggests that outside of the islands of the North Atlantic a different view of the "Republic of Ireland" title dominates.

Members of the Arbitration Committee are apparently reading these threads, and they may entertain the possibility of adding more time to the suppression of discussion. Arguments are being made that there is not a need for debate or discussion, everything is fine as it is and discussion is disruptive. Obviously or not, many serious editors have disagreed with that and are offering, especially in the past week, alternate visions to the "status quo" article names which have also been included in the summary tables further above this one. What happens outside of IECOLL and in the larger world should be welcomed as instructive. If the need for discussion is not made clear and "status quo" arguments are not continually rebutted here, then the possibility of even having an RM in which to offer points of debate is endangered. The table I added substantiates the argument I have made for several months that the "status quo" is myopic, and that a broader perspective should be taken, and that can only occur when discussions are held. Sswonk (talk) 04:06, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Discussions have been held on this page over the last few weeks, excessive debate covering the exact same points we went over for months 2 years ago and dozens of times previously. The poll above which is now meant to have closed clearly shows a majority support the status quo, there for no action is needed for the time being. We can come back and look at this in a few months time, but if it continues to come up and endless debate causes clear disruption, we should move for an extension of the ban. And lets not forget the poll organised 2 years ago gathered a huge number of views and opinions, not just advertising that poll on Ireland articles but it was posted on multiple other pages to get neutral, and uninvolved editors to contribute. No case has been made to justify a page move. We should all move on and focus on other things. BritishWatcher (talk) 20:33, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Actually, "endless debate" is not disruptive. Last time, the endless repetitive debate, and the opening of consecutive move request with no time between, was the source of disruption. The tables above are one possible solution to the repetition. No move requests have been made. In fact, the only disruptive repetition I can see is your contributions which can all be summarized as a plea to ban this topic for another two years. Your position is clear. We get it. If you've nothing useful to say other than yet another repeat, keep it to yourself. Perhaps the Arbs watching this could (re)clarify the types of behaviour that constitute disruption so that we can keep a lid on any potential non-constructive behaviour? --HighKing (talk) 00:03, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

The table of pros / cons would be a possible solution if there was checks and balances on what went into that table, sadly there are some highly questionable and sometimes inaccurate points made in that table. Also of course if there was an actual need for a table and RM which it appears there is not. I have not just been insisting on a 2 year additional ban although yes that is my favoured option. I have commented on the table, making specific points. Ive challenged some of the questionable claims. Ive stated we should respect the second poll that there is no demand for a change and leave it for a few months, accepting there is no consensus at present for an additional 2 months ban. Your unfair attack on me simply for me stating my opinions and contributions like many others have done in this recent debate is very unreasonable. When it comes to repetition, in my view those arguing for a change are repeating the same old points over and over again despite no change in the situation so nothing new being provided to justify change. Everyone else is entitled to give their opinion but im not? that is very fair. BritishWatcher (talk) 08:32, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

With all due respect to the people who worked on that table, the other wikis obviously do disambiguate in the title of the pages by using additional words, parenthetical or not. The only real question is whether calque should apply. I caution against assuming that whatever is valid in another language is immediately valid in English by direct analogy. I had some grief with this myself on the topic of gunpowder. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 01:52, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Your due respect is appreciated. I titled the section with some words left out. The meaning was: "Disambiguation of the state name is not necessary...", to show that the majority of the largest wikis use the single proper name Ireland as the state article title. Others have missed that was my meaning, so I hope you understand that, as you write, obviously they do disambiguate, just not the state name. Many here have long argued that disambiguation is forced on the state article title due to various reasons. Most other wikis in the list disambiguate the island article. That was my meaning, and I thank you for your comments which introduce an angle that was not discussed. This table is simply an effort to show there is a wider world outside of IECOLL and en.wikipedia.org that mostly disagrees with the current article titles here; it is not meant as a method of enforcement. Sswonk (talk) 02:26, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

The situation on those other wikipedia pages is very different though. This has been considered far more on the English wikipedia where as on those pages there has been no real proper debate or consideration of the facts. Also if we look at page views on the German wikipedia, about 200 view the island article a day compared to about 2000 viewing the country article. On the English wikipedia, the island page gets 8000 views and the republic of Ireland gets around 4000 views. BritishWatcher (talk) 08:43, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

What would be a better statistic is how many people visited the "Ireland" page and then visited the Republic of Ireland page having typed in "Ireland" into the search box (what I mean is, didn't arrive at an article by clicking on a wikilink in a different article). Or for those countries that have dab pages, which page was next clicked on. I've updated the table for those languages where the "primary" topic of "Ireland" was a dab page or if a redirect page, where it redirected to. But I don't know if it's possible to see how many people clicked on a link from a dab page. --HighKing (talk) 12:03, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

We don't know what readers are searching for. However, we can look at visiting and linking patterns to see what "Ireland" is more linked to and more visited.

We know is that there are 78,096 links to Ireland in the article name space and 37,615 links to Republic of Ireland in the article namespace. That's over twice as many links to the article at Ireland compared to Republic of Ireland.

The number of hits on the two articles is of roughly the same ratio. Last month, there were 217,475 hits on the article at Ireland and 108,087 hits on the article at Republic of Ireland. Like above, that's roughly 2:1.

Tools:

• http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/backlinkscount.py
• http://stats.grok.se/

For any readers who do land at Ireland expecting it to be about the subject described at Republic of Ireland, there is italicised text at the top of the article pointing to Republic of Ireland and the second paragraph of the article explains partition and points to the article at Republic of Ireland also. --RA (talk) 13:57, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

None of the info you've given answers the question I asked. Also, counting links is a poor way of attributing "primacy". For example, looking at the first 5 articles from "What links here" gives me Algae, A Modest Proposal, Atlantic Ocean, August 22, Achill Island. Looking at the instances of where the article has linked "Ireland" in each article - arguably those links could equally link to other articles. The Algae article says that "Algae are national foods of many nations" and then lists "Ireland". The next instance provides a list of countries "Scotland, Ireland, Greenland and Iceland". The "A Modest Proposal" article wikilinks "Irish" to "Ireland" instead of to Irish people. The Atlantic Ocean article says the first nonstop flight from "Newfoundland to Ireland" - no probs there. The August 22 article lists "Kilcummin harbour, County Mayo, Ireland" which should pipelink to "Republic of Ireland", and the "Achill Island" article should also. I'm not suggesting anybody runs around correcting (so-called) these links, just trying to highlight the fact that is could be argued that a lot of usage of [[Ireland]] isn't linking to the state article where arguably it should. --HighKing (talk) 17:00, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I would suggest that as long as we have separate articles on Ireland, the country/island and Ireland, the state, it will be impossible to predict which article is of greater interest to anybody who wants to 'know about Ireland' and looks it up on Wikipedia. It seems to me very likely that many people will want information from both articles and may well read them both. I am confounded by the argument that the title 'Republic of Ireland', which is stated by a law adopted by a sovereign Irish parliament, to be the 'description of the state', is prejudicial to that state. Surely any Irish citizen who really feels that way would be better employed campaigning to have the Republic of Ireland Act, 1948 repealed rather than campaigning to have the title of a Wikipedia article changed? Irish recorded history goes back well over 1000 years, and there are numerous other aspects of Irish life such as culture, sport, literature which are not solely related to the Republic. To make the article about 'Ireland' exclusive to an article that only covers ninety years of the history of part of the country is, in my view, very difficult to justify. There has been some talk about China - I would recommend also looking at the articles on Italy and Germany, both of which cover history, culture, literature and so forth from long before the foundation of the modern Italian and German states.

The obvious fact of the matter, as I remarked above, is that 'Ireland' is the obvious and correct title for both articles. Since Wikipedia's technical structure means that this cannot be adopted as a solution, there are two alternative courses of action - have one article that covers both, or rename one or both articles. I see nothing wrong with the first option, which could point to more detailed articles on both states (and to a very limited extent that is what we already have in the 'Ireland' article). But the second option means we need to have an alternative title for at least one of the articles. Well, the Irish parliament has provided us with one - the 'Republic of Ireland'. What could be a more obvious choice? And to my mind, what could be harder than finding an appropriate title for the article that's currently at Ireland? It's very clear on reading that article that 'Ireland (island)' would be wrong - as well as, to my mind, extremely POV - because it's not just talking about an island but about somewhere with a lengthy history as a discrete political and cultural space, about a culture, a literary tradition (or two, to follow Kinsella) - in other words, what could best be described as a 'country' (what other term would really suit?), because it is clearly not primarily about physical geography. Since it's clear that to call this article Ireland (country) would be confusing to many readers who equate 'country' with state and would probably be seen as representing a nationalist POV, that option can be ruled out. But any title other than Ireland for this article would be quite inappropriate. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 18:35, 3 October 2011 (UTC)197.194.118.28 (talk) 18:33, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Wow, it's hard for me to keep up with this fast moving discussion, but the argument that Sswonk is making is that the Republic is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC on many wikis. My caution about linguistic analogies is that while most Poles hearing Irlandia may well think of the Republic instead of the island, it's not clear that that implies the same about English speakers when they say Ireland. Although I haven't formed an opinion of my own on this issue, the discussion here should probably seek to determine, if possible, what is the primary meaning of Ireland in English, although I have a feeling that this may be a difficult and complex analysis because English is natively spoken on several continents. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 01:01, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I doubt if there's one answer to that question (in any language, in fact) that is valid regardless of context. In the contemporary political context, someone looking up Ireland could be interested in just the Republic - or they could be interested in all of Ireland, e.g. to find out background to the Northern Ireland conflict. In the literary or cultural context, it would probably mean all of Ireland. In the historical context, it can only mean all of Ireland for most periods - but it could mean just the Republic for contemporary history. However, one thing that is clear is that Ireland referring to all of Ireland is the broader sense, while the Irish state and topics relating to it are logically a subset of the former and the topics relating to it. That is, as several people have stated above, one of the criteria to be adopted in 'disambiguating', and it points to it being, logically, the primary topic, whether or not it is the primary topic in terms of inward links, hits etc. As the page at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC itself points out, there is no agreed definition of what will constitute a primary topic as a general rule, so I don't think that stating that to be the issue at stake will necessarily bring us any closer to a conclusion. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 01:12, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps you are right about the Ireland case, but from what I have seen in the archives of the former China page, now located at Talk:Chinese civilization, the issue there was decided on the basis of PRIMARYTOPIC in secondary sources, such as the Associated Press style guide and so forth. In the debate above, I have seen little recourse to sources (except some primary sources like the Irish constitution and a law). I image you'd argue that the Ireland case is closer to the Korea case rather than China/Taiwan from a strict geographical perspective, but naming conventions in secondary sources should still be considered if they exist. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 01:50, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Here is what the Associated Press says: "Ireland Acceptable in most references to the independent nation known formally as the Irish Republic. Use Irish Republic when a distinction must be made between this nation and Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom."[1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kauffner (talk • contribs) 03:53, October 4, 2011 (UTC)

Well, two obvious points: first of all, the AP stylebook has clearly got it wrong, since 'Irish Republic' is not a correct term for the Irish state. But more broadly, stylebooks which agree to calling the Republic 'Ireland' in all or some cases don't really help, because no-one (as far as I can see) is objecting to the Republic being called Ireland - the problem is that since 'Ireland' is also the obvious term to be used for the whole country/island, and Wikipedia does not permit two topics to have the same title, then assuming we need to treat these as two separate topics, we need an alternative title for one or both of them. A stylebook may provide evidence that the Republic is referred to as 'Ireland' in reliable secondary sources, but it is unlikely to clarify whether Ireland itself cannot also be referred to as Ireland by such sources. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 07:24, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

The aspect of AP policy that is relevant to our debate is the they do not use "Republic of Ireland" in any context. They tell their writers the fiction that "Irish Republic" is a formal name to make sure they are never tempted to use ROI, not even when the context is appropriate. Kauffner (talk) 05:33, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

They tell their writers that "Irish Republic" is a formal name. I see no basis for your claim that they do this in order "to make sure they are never tempted to use ROI". It seems much more likely that it is a mistake, and quite possibly a mistake influenced by the British tendency to use terms such as "Irish Republic" instead of the state's own officially adopted description "Republic of Ireland". ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 11:37, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

With respect, Herr Have mörser, you say I am making a "primary topic" argument. I am not. Also, you'll find I very rarely will link to wiki policy in my statements. I tend to debate by pointing toward common sense rather than with the "gimlet eye of a wiki lawyer." Common sense and a preponderance of secondary sources, those being other reference works to which we can compare as having the naming issues faced by this one, point to Ireland as the title. And as for the Tir Na n'Og council, I will say Hilarious! Or more to the point, the primary group that has held sway here has written all that before; it always goes: "we must disambiguate, therefor... and then conclude: the Oireachtas has given us the answer." There is not a "question", and even if there was a question the Oireachtas did no such thing, they declared a republic and left the Commonwealth. Ireland has a history much older than the legal existence of the state; its flag is over one hundred sixty years old, and the impetus for independence and self-determination is much older than that. In spite of another popular argument regarding two states, there is only one state on the island, the other jurisdiction is not a state at all but instead a province of the former occupying power. With respect, the days of "Republic of Ireland" being used for the title are numbered; the arguments for it crumble under scrutiny and hence many supporters of it also supported a ban on discussion. Since most of this has been spelled out before, I will not go further into detail. In summary, the particular legal entity is not the only topic that would be covered at the article if the current title were not incorrect. Since it is incorrect, however, all argument that concludes "a history of only ninety years is insufficient to own the title Ireland" is not an argument against the title, it is an argument against the name itself. Wikipedia can't argue against the nation's name, unless that is what is in fact happening here. If the article were titled properly, then all of the other historical periods would be handled with sub-sections and "main article" branching section hatnote links within it, and at that point an article merely about the physical geography would indeed be appropriately titled "Ireland (island)" since that would be all it need discuss. The problems argued as arising from changing the "status quo" have always relied on the beholder first believing the falsehood that disambiguation of the name of the state is a necessity. They'll say disambiguation is required since the content of the article about the state is limited to what is under the current title, which they then won't allow can include the topics that Ireland should cover because the state started in the nineteen twenties, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. That is the strange loop that the "status quo" supporters suppose everyone should be limited by. Sswonk (talk) 03:37, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Also, before someone reading that kindly notes to me that strict Irish republicans and Sinn Féin adherents might fall into the "status quo" camp due to their conviction that Ireland as a national name has not been properly achieved due to partition, no need. I've read it. But even if they want to change the ga.wikipedia.org title to na Sé Chontae Fichead or prefer to use Poblacht na hÉireann, they're presenting essentially the same limitations, and I would still hold to fundamentally the same argument about the proper title, which should be Éire there or Ireland here as a matter of common sense titling not relying on short-sighted rectitude. Sswonk (talk) 04:30, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

So, Sswonk, what you're really calling for could equally be described as extending the Ireland article to be extended to cover the Republic of Ireland - because the Ireland article is, rightly, where all the other information you talk about (broader Irish history etc) is now. That's fine by me, but that's not what any of proposals above are for and nor is it what any of the proposals advanced last time round were for. None of these proposals suggest that renaming the article about the Republic Ireland would also open it to covering the full extent of Irish history, geography, culture etc. And I suspect that many of those in favour of the change of title would oppose what actually would amount to an effective merger of the two articles. In any case, mergers are meant to be dealt with in a different way. Finally, I don't see any sign that the arguments for using Republic of Ireland are 'crumbling'. On the contrary, no serious objections to it have been put forward apart from a kind of personal objection to it shared, for unclear reasons, by a considerable number of editors, and the bizarre and unsubstantiated claim that it was 'promoted abroad' by the British government. The latter strikes me as unlikely, since I can clearly remember the British official media consistently using the term 'the Irish Republic' - if at some point in recent years, they changed to using 'Republic of Ireland', the description of the state adopted by Irish legislation, we should be grateful to them for that sign of respect surely. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 06:53, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I hope pointing to Republic of Ireland (term) will help you see that the term, along with Eire (the Irish name of the state without an accent over the E) and Southern Ireland to name three were names used by the U.K. governments as part of a very serious effort to dissuade other governments from officially calling the state Ireland. You may have to dig deeper, that is a starting point. Not bizarre and unsubstantiated. If you feel no objections here are serious, then I see no reason to go any further. What can I say as long as you buy the line that "It's all prattle", another argument that is truly unsubstantiated and prime for crumbling? Sswonk (talk) 14:07, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I am not at all sure that the page you link to supports the point you are trying to make, and unfortunately I cannot access the Daly paper via Jstor. Certainly it provides evidence that the British government used the term 'Republic of Ireland' instead of 'Ireland', but it is not clear that it promoted the use of the term abroad, it remains a fact that in doing so it was using a term adopted as 'the description of the state' by Irish legislation, as opposed to its practice in other cases of using the terms 'Eire' or 'Irish Republic' (which I remember regularly hearing on the BBC not that long ago) and it is still, in my view, an unconscionable leap from that observation to a claim that that practice by the British government renders a term stated by Irish legislation to be "the description of the state" somehow non-kosher. Furthermore, none of this gets around the other problems, notably the glaring issue that on the basis of your most recent statements you clearly want, not simply to rename the two articles, but to rename the 'Republic of Ireland' article 'Ireland' and include in it much of the sort of general information about Ireland that is currently in (logically enough) the article now entitled 'Ireland'. Apart from the technical issue that this probably turns the question into one of merging and not just renaming, I would be surprised if there were not considerable objections to such an approach from many of the participants in this discussion (not from me, by the way). ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 14:25, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

View counts

View counts for the last year for the two wikis in the top 20 with Dab pages (hence not skewed by defaults, non-piping, wrong naming)

		Oct 2010	Nov 2010	Dec 2010	Jan 2011	Feb 2011	Mar 2011	Apr 2011	May 2011	Jun 2011	Jul 2011	Aug 2011	Sep 2011	Total
French	Irlande (pays)	34911	48777	30561	41047	35672	50641	39310	49781	31828	26999	28263	37053	454843
	Irlande (île)	8238	9693	6838	8528	8336	11887	6357	7538	4958	4261	4413	4949	85996
	Ratio	4.2	5.0	4.4	4.8	4.2	4.2	6.1	6.6	6.4	6.3	6.4	7.4	5.2
Dutch	Ierland (land)	11647	15651	10882	15081	13469	14103	11224	17055	11189	7947	7412	7295	142955
	Ierland (eiland)	2428	2448	1980	4205	2750	2473	1979	2848	2088	1390	1513	1548	26781
	Ratio	4.7	6.3	5.4	3.5	4.8	5.7	5.6	5.9	5.3	5.7	4.8	4.7	5.3

Which is about as surprising as pants. I'm gobsmacked there's a debate about this. Extend to Ireland the basic human courtesy of calling her by her proper name. Dickdock (talk) 19:10, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

So far, this has been a civilised discussion. Please stop this provocative language: "gobsmacked there's a debate", "basic human courtesy", "calling her by her proper name". There's a debate because there are two sides to the story. Please extend to all the participants the basic human courtesy of acknowledging that. Scolaire (talk) 21:39, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm content with the status quo. But, I'm not gonna put up much of a fight, if it's not kept. GoodDay (talk) 20:08, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

But why stop there, Dickdock? End the tryanny inflicted on the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya! Liberate the French Republic! Stop the oppression of the United Mexican States! Won't someone please think of the State of the City of the Vatican?! I could go on... Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 21:03, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

The most official form of a country's name is its UN member name. These are listed here. None of names you mention are UN member names. Kauffner (talk) 01:51, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Citation, please? Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 06:52, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Surely the "most official" name of any state is the name in its constitution? In the case of the Republic that name is "Éire". "Ireland" is allowed in the English language, but not in French or Dutch, and "Irlande" or "Ierland" are not provided for at all! For that matter, I can't find "Irlande" or "Ierland" in the UN members list either. Scolaire (talk) 07:40, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

A constitution applies only to a state's territory, while the UN member name is intended as an international name. The only reference to specific languages in the constitution is in Article 8, which defines both English and Irish as official. I assume that the writers of this document had only those two languages in mind. I don't see any suggestion in the constitution that the Irish state has jurisdiction in Holland or France, although I suppose it is possible that the clause might apply to Dutch or French speakers inside Ireland. Kauffner (talk) 20:22, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

So that'd be a no, then? Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 20:41, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

View counts for fr Wiki have to be taken in conjunction with the articles themselves. Irlande (pays) has a large section on the history of the whole island, it's "Railways" section tells us that Northern Ireland Railways (NIR) runs a Belfast to Derry service, and its list of Irish (state) films includes Bloody Sunday. So what does that tell us? Scolaire (talk) 21:52, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Scoláire has taken the words out of my mouth. The largest single part of the French article on "Irlande (pays)" - note in passing the title - is about Irish history, starting several thousand years before the current political division of the island. The article at "Irlande (ile)" covers history and economy much more briefly, even in so far as they relate to matters before 1921.

Secondly - "Extend to Ireland the basic human courtesy of calling her by her proper name." - a couple of points need to be made in relation to this plea. First of all, when Ireland is represented as a human being (or similar) she is hardly ever called Ireland, but variously Erin, Hibernia, Éire, Fodla, or Banba. I do not think we need the additional confusion of deciding whether to use one of these five names or, alternatively, Ireland (personage). Furthermore, Ireland is already called by her/its correct name in the article Ireland. For purely technical reasons, it is not possible for another article to have exactly the same title, so if we want a separate article about the Irish state, either it or the article about Ireland as a whole is going to have to use a different title. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 22:40, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Linking patterns are also different. On the French wiki over twice as many articles link to the article on the state (8,736) compared to the island (4,265). On the Dutch wiki, five times as many articles link to the article on the state (5,194) compared to the island (1,054). This is the reverse of the situation on the English wiki. On the English wiki over twice as many articles link to the article on the island (78,096) compared to the state (37,615).

In contrast to the French and Dutch wikis, the linking and hit patterns on the English wiki are similar to the visitor and hit pattern on the Irish wiki (although with greatly differing numbers). The number of articles links to ga:Éire (1,771) being about twice as many as to ga:Poblacht na hÉireann (651). And, like on the English language, the articles on the island gets more its hits (456 last month) compared to the articles on the state (145 last month). --RA (talk) 22:43, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

No, no, resist, resist. But the vortex, the vortex, it's....aghhhhhhhhhh....

Re links: naturally the English wiki has skewed linking and skewed view counts: it uses the wrong name and defaults to the island. This is sneeringly obvious.

Re content: the dab exercise allows one to see, barring access to server logs or brain scans, what name people look up. The content might as well be "Ireland is an endlessly circular (or should that be circularly endless? - see Talk) debate conducted by a micro-coterie of flatulent wikibubblings". This is staggeringly irrelevant.

Re Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya/French Republic/United Mexican States/Vatican/I could go on: I'm sure you could. Next!

Re has been/civilised/stop/provocative/two sides/all participants/courtesy/acknowledging: you left out "pants". But yes I am being provocative/discourteous/unacknowledging, seeing as how I'm (still) gobsmacked that this provocative/discourteous/unacknowledging debate is even taking place. See what I did there?

Although seeing that It is allowed, that Senates and great Councils are often troubled with redundant, ebullient, and other peccant Humours; with many Diseases of the Head, and more of the Heart; with strong Convulsions, with grievous Contractions of the Nerves and Sinews in both Hands, but especially the Right; with Spleen, Flatus, Vertigos, and Deliriums; with scrofulous Tumours, full of fetid purulent Matter; with sour frothy Ructations: with Canine Appetites, and Crudeness of Digestion, besides many others, needless to mention. This Doctor therefore proposed, that upon the meeting of the Senate, certain Physicians should attend it the three first Days of their sitting, and at the Close of each Day’s Debate feel the Pulses of every Senator; after which, having maturely considered and consulted upon the Nature of the several Maladies, and the Methods of Cure, they should on the fourth Day return to the Senate-House, attended by their Apothecaries stored with proper Medicines; and before the Members sat, administer to each of them Lenitives, Aperitives, Abstersives, Corrosives, Restringents, Palliatives, Laxatives, Cephalalgics, Icterics, Apophlegmatics, Acoustics, as their several Cases required; and, according as these Medicines should operate, repeat, alter, or omit them, at the next Meeting.

This Project could not be of any great Expense to the Publick; and might in my poor Opinion, be of much Use for the Despatch of Business, in those Countries where Senates have any Share in the legislative Power; beget Unanimity, shorten Debates, open a few Mouths which are now closed, and close many more which are now open; curb the Petulancy of the Young, and correct the Positiveness of the Old; rouse the Stupid, and damp the Pert. Dickdock (talk) 09:19, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Have you morphed into R.T.G.? --Scolaire (talk) 09:34, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Could you condense all that & put in laymen's term? GoodDay (talk) 10:39, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

It's good to see someone talking sense at last. DrKiernan (talk) 10:45, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I want some of what Dickdock's having. JonC^Talk 20:24, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Your Swiftian quotation is charming but I think your failure to engage with any of the substantive arguments is more telling.ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 11:40, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

OK, guys. Play nice. --RA (talk) 20:40, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I morph into others and use them as my astralpuppets to avoid IP checks. But I'm not admitting anything. ~ R.T.G 17:26, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

And by the way, this debate reminds me of the one on Gideon. The ratio of hits to other articles was much larger, tens of thousands to hundreds in one case, but none could be the definition of what Gideon is except the ancient character himself. ~ R.T.G 17:30, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

The problem: "Republic of Ireland" as the name of the state

From the discussion above, regarding the table showing titles on the top twenty Wikipedia sites by article count:

“ I hope pointing to Republic of Ireland (term) will help you see that the term, along with Eire (the Irish name of the state without an accent over the E) and Southern Ireland to name three were names used by the U.K. governments as part of a very serious effort to dissuade other governments from officially calling the state Ireland. You may have to dig deeper, that is a starting point. Not bizarre and unsubstantiated. If you feel no objections here are serious, then I see no reason to go any further. What can I say as long as you buy the line that "It's all prattle", another argument that is truly unsubstantiated and prime for crumbling? Sswonk (talk) 14:07, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I am not at all sure that the page you link to supports the point you are trying to make, and unfortunately I cannot access the Daly paper via Jstor. Certainly it provides evidence that the British government used the term 'Republic of Ireland' instead of 'Ireland', but it is not clear that it promoted the use of the term abroad, it remains a fact that in doing so it was using a term adopted as 'the description of the state' by Irish legislation, as opposed to its practice in other cases of using the terms 'Eire' or 'Irish Republic' (which I remember regularly hearing on the BBC not that long ago) and it is still, in my view, an unconscionable leap from that observation to a claim that that practice by the British government renders a term stated by Irish legislation to be "the description of the state" somehow non-kosher. Furthermore, none of this gets around the other problems, notably the glaring issue that on the basis of your most recent statements you clearly want, not simply to rename the two articles, but to rename the 'Republic of Ireland' article 'Ireland' and include in it much of the sort of general information about Ireland that is currently in (logically enough) the article now entitled 'Ireland'. Apart from the technical issue that this probably turns the question into one of merging and not just renaming, I would be surprised if there were not considerable objections to such an approach from many of the participants in this discussion (not from me, by the way). ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 14:25, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

”

ComhairleContaeThirnanOg, this is my response to you, but I am also asking readers to take it into account. There is a great deal of difficult reading and thinking required here. It is not something that can be solved on Twitter, or with a few emails sent from a smart phone. I will try to answer your comment here since you have given some thought to what I wrote and I don't want to leave you to wonder about anything there.

Before your last comment, and again in part within it, you seem to express doubt that anyone has proposed or taken a position suggesting an article merger of sorts in these discussions. I have more or less done that in previous statements following my vote above. Also, Scolaire in fact had a similar position in 2009, and I am not exactly sure why he has now moved to support the "status quo" in his votes and comments here. Regardless, if you look at the 2009 poll and also the roll call of membership at WP:IECOLL#Members, you will see that arguments and page moves, and resulting animosity, admin reactions and discussion lockdown regarding the title caused many editors to leave, and in several cases leave Wikipedia entirely. IECOLL had become almost entirely the purview of supporters of the "status quo" due to the persistence of a few editors on this page. The amount of pressure to preserve the name "Republic of Ireland" against the objections of so many other now-absent editors serves as another indicator, as I wrote above, that the title is less than ideal. We have alternatives, and it should be changed, even if not to Ireland with merger.

A while ago I did purchase the journal article by Mary E. Daly via the University of Chicago Press and JSTOR. It is not yet available from my public library, which does give access to older articles in the Journal of British Studies however the cutoff date for free access is just short of 2007, when the article appeared. In time it should be available through library membership. So, I can't provide direct citations but I hope you will trust my paraphrasing and quotation. Daly indeed does cite several examples of the British government promoting the terms I mention to other governments, including much detail involving incidences of that with Canada and Australia. She cites the National Archives of the United Kingdom in writing about the diplomatic situation: "Canada duly came into line with the wishes of Buckingham Palace and the Dominion Office. The Canadian ambassador presented identical letters of credence to those presented by the British ambassador. Australia does not appear to have considered upgrading its representation in Ireland to ambassador until 1953, and by then the Fianna Fáil government was insistent that all credentials (with the possible exception of the British ambassador) should be addressed to the President of Ireland. Australia would only agree to letters giving accreditation to the Republic of Ireland or Dublin. This position was adopted on the advice of the British government, who emphasized that any reference to “Ireland” or the “President of Ireland” would be embarrassing to the British government and to Her Majesty."(p. 88). That is the type of incident I refer to, and Daly concludes by writing "Up to and including the year 1999, the Diplomatic List issued by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office referred to the Republic of Ireland. Since 2000 it has referred to Ireland, and the credentials presented by the British ambassador, Stewart Eldon, in 2003, were addressed to the President of Ireland."(p. 89).

That provides the backdrop to the thinking involved in the article naming that occurred in 2002. A couple of editors involved who "won" that debate were both U.K. residents and took a position similar to that described by Daly whereby Ireland was deemed an unacceptable name for the country. It seems as though, if that is what they were taught up until two years previous by their own government, then it certainly must have informed their judgement. The following boxed section is my response to your questions of seriousness, and of truth regarding the use of the term. Please, refrain from commenting here or within the box and use the area beyond my signature for further discussion.

Wikipedia and the false name

In the earliest days of Wikipedia, there was a heated discussion among the early editorial staff when this issue arose. The discussion occured in late November and early December of 2002. The three primary editors involved initially were:

• Renata (talk · contribs) – unnamed editor, a Scot from Edinburgh, still active on Wikipedia. Her position was that naming an article about the state "Ireland" is very offensive to those in the north, and used anecdotal evidence or hearsay to back up her statements.
  
• Camembert (talk · contribs) – Lee Pilich, from Doncaster, Yorkshire, no longer active but also prone to see Ireland as an unacceptable title because it could mean either the Republic or Northern Ireland, and thus "politically dodgy to say the least". His view represents that followed by the U.K. up until 1998, only four years before the discussion occurred, a view which formally discouraged the use of Ireland as the name of the state.
• Scipius (talk · contribs) – unnamed editor, a Dutch person from Maastricht. Scipius unfortunately took the view that Ireland would be the title of an article about the current state exclusively and thus was the eventual causative factor of the current situation. This is because of what happened next, which has again unfortunately guided the conversations since that time.

An example of the thread, from the middle of the most active day of the initial discussions, 17 November 2002.

Several editors began arguing against Scipius, but the two others mentioned and especially Camembert provided much of the countepoint argument for the title "Republic of Ireland". The discussion was rather heated during the first few days. An Irish nationalist editor, Jtdirl (talk · contribs), also later weighed in against using Ireland. The real decision came from Larry Sanger, at the time still very prominent at the encyclopedia he named "Wikipedia" when he co-founded it with Jimbo Wales. Larry Sanger (talk · contribs) in typical unapologetic fashion chose the scheme we now have, and in so many words told Scipius to give up trying to have an article about the state called Ireland actually have the title "Ireland". The title Camembert and Renata had used, "Republic of Ireland", was Sanger's choice. Among other reasons, Sanger cited the need to have an article about Ireland that was outside the scope of the current state, using the example of Irish music which he played.

The debate at that point became about the wrong thing, and has been hopelessly mired in the strange loop I mentioned above since that time. We ended up with a poorly thought out situation that has yet to be properly addressed. What resulted was a title for the article about the state that is incorrect and misleading, and an article into which inserting much relevant information became highly restricted. That is, the "Republic of Ireland" title refers to an entity that did not exist before 1949, let alone 1922. Yet the rest of the world outside of the class "Wikipedia editorship" treats Ireland as being inclusive of much of the history of previous formations, and Ireland the state as inheritor of the bulk of the history just as it is caretaker of the land. Limerick, Cork and Galway are still in Ireland. The Book of Kells is still in Ireland. The birthplace of James Joyce is still in Dublin, Ireland. Anyway you slice it, those sentences are all true today with the modern state as the meaning of the single word Ireland. It takes a long stretch of the imagination—and plenty of excuse making and disambiguating literary gymnastics—to make it seem as though we have to use "Republic of Ireland" in any of those cases. However, that is where the descriptive term ends up when it is used as a title for the land, country, nation, state, whatever you want to term it, the place now officially and legally called Ireland. On this highly respected map, it is Ireland. Up in the right sextant of the island itself there is the U.K. territory Northern Ireland, but the remainder is unarguably Ireland, the state. That is its name, and that is how the great majority of our outside sources will quite naturally refer to it. Here are lists of some of the most prominent organizations and entities that disagree with using the name "Republic of Ireland" when titling articles about the state. Given that the state itself is certainly involved in some of the decision making about the form of address, or title, which is used by the organizations, I think we can conclude that the state does not view "Republic of Ireland" in the same light as Larry Sanger and those early editors.

United Nations and European Union

• United Nations

Member States of the United Nations

The list links the name Ireland to the website of the Permanent Mission of Ireland, in New York, at http://www.irelandunnewyork.org. Using the site-specific search tag "site:" on that domain through Google reveals that none of the pages currently contain the phrase "Republic of Ireland". The search shows one link to a previous version of the page, which is no longer how the page reads. The previous version read: "The Republic of Ireland Act of 1948 provides for the description of the State as the Republic of Ireland but this provision has not changed the usage Ireland as the name of the State in the English language."

• European Union

Countries

Lists the member states of the union, and links to a brief article on the state. Of interest to us is the publications style guide of the union, which is found at:

International Style Guide

The style guide notes at the bottom of the table are clear about the disposition of the term "Republic of Ireland": NB: Do not use ‘Republic of Ireland’ nor ‘Irish Republic’.

Other international organizations

3

Web directories and reference publications

• Britannica Online Encyclopedia

Ireland

• British Broadcasting Corporation

Country Profiles

• Infoplease

Countries of the World

• National Geographic Society

Countries

• Open Directory Project

Regional

• United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Europe

• United States Central Intelligence Agency

The World Factbook -- Europe

• United States Department of State

Country Specific Information

• WolframAlpha

Ireland

• Yahoo!

Countries in the Yahoo! Directory

British Monarchy

In May of 2011, Elizabeth II paid an official state visit to Ireland. A press release announcing her itinerary from the official website of the British Monarchy refers to the state as Ireland.

End game

Described by me as a good representative list of important websites, the information above shows no use of "Republic of Ireland" as a title nor as a phrase linking to an article. All articles referred to on the sites are entitled "Ireland" which specifically addresses the state itself. This is the expected usage in 2011 of the word Ireland, and Wikipedia stands virtually alone in its misuse of the term "Republic of Ireland" as an article title. Larry Sanger later founded Citizendium, an encyclopedia structured similarly to Wikipedia but quite different in its editorial approach. There, the article "Ireland" is a disambiguation page and the article on the state is titled "Ireland (state)". "Republic of Ireland", the description of the state that Wikipedia thinks is the name, is redirected to "Ireland (state)".

I hope the response gives you an idea of the amount of thought that has gone into my objections. Many of the others here I am sure have thought about this a great deal. The most difficult presentation but in my mind the one we should work for would be to allow the title Ireland to include the state and also much of the history, as would and does an article about places like France, Germany, Greece and so on, with liberal use of article forking and hatnotes to those forks. Barring that, another solution which was offered as option D in 2009, simply renaming "Republic of Ireland" to "Ireland (state)", would end the incorrect and misleading titling scheme we have now. Without question, in spite of a perceived need to disambiguate the state name, readers are being led to believe that the name of the state is "Republic of Ireland". That is being done by the title and the subsequent use of that title by mirror sites and careless journalists and writers who don't take the time to read or understand that it is not the name of the state. Given the benefit of hindsight, as a group we should not continue to allow that. Sswonk (talk) 05:27, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Comments at the problem

I feel sorry for you all, and wish that the efforts above had been used instead adding to the larger encyclopedia. Surely wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not an international organisation? Many of the arguments above belong at Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars. As an encyclopedia any ambiguity must be catered for, and so I support separate -state and -island pages, even though my ancestry and affiliation is Irish nationalist. Not because separate pages comprise a wicked imperialist plot, but because we live in 2011. BTW an "Irish province of the EU" is just as likely in the next 100 years as ROI and NI were in 1911 – unthinkable, but it happened. I don't care what QE2 said during her visit, I am a native, and we island-inhabitants have had to endure the ROI and NI systems to our great cost. Ireland-the-island is a very much bigger encyclopedic subject than ROI and NI put together.Red Hurley (talk) 07:25, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

I haven't the foggiest why you wasted time on all that. We know Republic of Ireland isn't the name of the state, it is an officially sanctioned description of the state. What we were discussing is what the article in Wikipedia about the state should be called as there is a disambiguation problem, both the state and the island are called Ireland. It is the same sort of problem you get when two of your friends have the same name and you have to say who you are talking about, whatever you do doesn't change their actual names. Usually they will have different nicknames if they are that close and thankfully here Ireland (the state) has provided an approved nickname. The disambiguation rules in WP:DISAMBIG are more for quite different topics with the same name rather than closely related ones but if we follow them we'd put brackets after one or both Ireland's rather than saying Republic of Ireland or Island of Ireland. Since they are very closely related it's better if we can get proper titles without the brackets but deciding between the forms and which if either gets brackets or a nickname is up to the consensus here. Dmcq (talk) 09:34, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Pro-page movers, should be concentrating on the 'island' article's name. Get that changed & there'd be less resistance to changing the 'country' article's name. GoodDay (talk) 13:47, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Well that definately convinced me to vote for change... nope wait, status quo still sounds as good as ever. I wonder is there as much arguement over the Hellenic Republic article, especially seeing as its title is not the official name of the state? Mabuska ^(talk) 18:12, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

So to summarise - while some of us have been talking about whether or not the ban on discussing page moves should be extended (consensus: no); or whether there was even a demand for a new discussion on page moves (consensus: also no), you've spent an inordinate amount of time researching and rehearsing arguments about moving moving ROI -> anything else. We've already heard the "Other wikis don't call it ROI" argument - many times. Didn't convince many, if any. We've already heard the "It's an imposition of the British!" argument. It wasn't, and the argument didn't convince many, if any. Now we appear to have a "Look, all these bodies call it Ireland!" argument. Which nobody has ever disputed. We've heard all of these arguments before, ad nauseum. I honestly suggest your time and energy would be better directed elsewhere. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 18:54, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

It convinced a clear majority of Irish editors living in Ireland (the State), lest you forgot. But then, as I recall, you'd prefer if I wasn't here anymore to express an opinion - but rather had gone the way of the other banned Irish editors. Sarah777 (talk) 20:04, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

A clear majority only in the eyes of those who don't understand the PR system. The only banned Irish editors I'm aware of are Vintagekits and Tfz/GoldHeart (and I'm not sure the latter is Irish). Who else was there? Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 21:05, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Analysis of the first 200 first preference votes in the Ireland article names poll showed that the proportion of "British" editors and "Irish" editors voting for "Republic of Ireland" was essentially the same (both about 50%).

Based on the editor's self-identification with a specific country or nationality on their user pages, counting "Northern Irish" as British, and "Irish" as "Irish",

British (55): 29 F, 26 not F

Irish (30): 13 F, 17 not F

Others (identified) (59): 21 F, 38 not F

Not known (56): 22 F, 34 not F

Total (200): 85 F, 115 not F.

Conclusion: 53% of "British" editors vote F, and 43% of "Irish" editors do.

Counting "Northern Irish" as "Irish", except for one editor who identifies as both British and Northern Irish:

British (52): 26 F, 26 not F

Irish (33): 16 F, 17 not F

Others (identified) (59): 21 F, 38 not F

Not known (56): 22 F, 34 not F

Total (200): 85 F, 115 not F.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by DrKiernan (talk • contribs) 07:42, October 10, 2011 (UTC)

There was a question about seriousness from ComhairleContaeThirnanOg, and I did my best to answer. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg had trouble with the issues involved as seen from my perspective. This is the second time you have gathered the strength to comment about anything I have written, Bastun. Both times, you have sought to define what "we" are talking about, apparently excluding me from your definition of who is allowed to be a part of this. It was not my intention, but the reactions to what I wrote in response to questions from another editor are exposing the impatience and imperiousness of the mindset of you folks supporting the incorrect titling scheme. Your response and the responses here that say overtly that anything approaching reasons to keep a discussion going are: "lame" and something to "feel sorry" for (Red Hurley) and "wasted time" (Dmcq), well, those are your opinions. Stating that you think I am wasting time telling you in detail why your position is incorrect isn't valid debating practice. It is just saying you aren't going to listen. Extend that to what you voted for, Bastun, and it becomes what we had for two years previous: a waste of a different kind, that being forced suppression of opinion. I want readers to believe that if they have a question about the title, they can come here and find a forum for discussion. You want them to come here and be told off, to be silenced by your expressions of boredom and knowledge of how many times you've had to support your (bad) title for the article. Change the name to the "Status quo: End of Discussion" project, or find somewhere else to spread your disdain of honest discussion and serious writing. Is this a kind of "honeypot" against advocating for the proper title, or is it a real collaboration page? BTW, even though I feel kind of insulted by you fellows telling me what you think is a waste, you know, I won't go crying to AN/I as was the practice of so many others both here and absent who fought for the "status quo" in 2009. The medium is the message here, Bastun. You can't win the argument so you divert attention by calling any opposition at all a waste of time or "uncivil". Why don't you wait before you repeat that argument again? Sswonk (talk) 19:46, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

I am way past arguing with or debating this issue with the Wiki editors who insist on inposing Anglo-pov on Ireland-related articles. China is China; regardless of the fact that Taiwan also claims to be China, or even a part of China. (Which it most certainly is). But in the weird world of Wiki's WP:NPOV we must accept that Anglo bias - thus Ireland isn't Ireland. It seems the Wiki establishment would rather scarifice Wiki's credibility than abandon British pov. Whatever. Sarah777 (talk) 20:00, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Lol @ "Anglo pov". Whose POV is the Hellenic Republic example Mabuska cited above? JonC^Talk 20:25, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

If you want to set up a straightforward vote about changing the title from Republic of Ireland to Ireland (state) that's fine by me but could people please leave the 'Anglos' imposition and the tl;dr posts out please. And by the way I think of that fervour about the name as something Americans do rather like they go on about the famine. Dmcq (talk) 20:37, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

I think a vote like that would qualify as an RM. I want to win minds, not votes. Let's avoid mob rule in this case. In honesty, I recognize that convincing many of the thoughtful people here to understand the implications—that the titles can and should be adjusted to improve our goals of maintaining neutrality and presenting valid information—is needed. Votes are like games, they only decide what is "winnable". In this case they have resulted in a less than ideal title. Readers take a great deal away from the title, it is in very large type compared to the text. Having a disclaimer that says "it is a description, not the real name" is locking the barn door after the horse has left. More than a few readers, including lazy journalists, are going to get it wrong based on seeing the title here. Wikipedia is not only virtually alone in the world on this, the en.wikipedia.org is virtually alone among the top Wikipedias. Those are valid reasons to cause even longtime supporters of the RoI title to think about moving away from it. Sswonk (talk) 01:03, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Well if we want to pile on the angst about the name one of my relatives was a TD who vigorously argued against the constitution clause trying to claim all of Ireland and said it would lead to long term divisions and trouble in Northern Ireland just like it did. So I'm not too enamoured with all the politicians who kept on pushing this point. However we have the clause gone and the Good Friday Agreement and all that now which I am very pleased about so if people want it called Ireland (state) I'm not going to oppose that. Don't expect to win any hearts or minds with your arguments though. Do I care what some journalist uses for it? No I don't. I care what it is, not what it is called. Dmcq (talk) 07:15, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Sswonk, you're missing my point. You're getting down into "Reasons why I am right!" - ignoring that all of those arguments have been made before, and merely inviting others to start responding with "Reasons why they are right!" Up above, people are still talking about macro issues. Something is more likely to come from that, I think, rather than your method. But don't let me stop you. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 21:05, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

I acknowledge the past, rather than ignore it. What exactly are you defining as "macro"? If you mean the "Summary table", that ignores the possibility of a merger, so it can't be addressed in any other way. Also, there was a profession that there weren't serious points being made, I had a few hours to look at the entire history beginning in 2002 so I gave it my best. Dmcq: this is in response to your request to avoid tl;dr statements: re: RoI, see Lipstick on a pig. Sswonk (talk) 21:18, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Please leave out the allegations and accusations of Anglo-bias and implied anti-Irish editor agenda. Such comments only seek to stir the pot and fester bad faith amongst us all and more than likely descend this discussion into a tedious and unnecessary battlefield. Let's keep it pleasant and based on actual proper arguements. Mabuska ^(talk) 21:20, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm neither British or Irish. I just accept the satus-quo, per pipe-link solution & the title display proposal. If these titles do get moved - I'm not gonna cry over it. PS: Again, pro-movers should be concentrating on the island article. GoodDay (talk) 13:40, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

People have overwhelmingly supported the status quo, those obsessing over the need for a name change should recognise there is currently no support for their proposals, and drop this for atleast a month or two. Then rehash the same arguments again in a few months.. but if this continues it absolutely reinforces the need for the arbcom 2 year ban to be extended. Some editors just refuse to accept the status quo. BritishWatcher (talk) 10:44, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Well so far i have seen nothing in the mass amount of comments taking up this talk page that has shown a shift in the general opinion. Mabuska ^(talk) 21:02, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Sswonk, I feel privileged to have inspired such a lengthy exposition, but I am not in the least persuaded. As far as I can see, and as several other editors have pointed out above, nobody is questioning the fact that the correct name of the state is 'Ireland'. You have provided plenty of evidence to prove the point that the official name of the state is Ireland, and that that is the name officially used in international organizations as well as by the state itself. But nobody, as far as I can see, has disputed that. The problem is that we also have a country, or, if you prefer, an island, called Ireland, which has existed for a lot longer and is clearly, as disambiguation goes, the broader topic. Hence, the need for at least one of the articles to bear a different name (or, for that matter, for the articles or their content to be to some extent re-arranged, partially merged or redivided etc). I don't see how your contribution, lengthy and detailed though it is, has got us any closer to agreeing a superior way of resolving that problem than the one currently in effect.

On another note, having grown up myself in the Republic of Ireland and lived most of my life there, I find it quite bizarre that some people seem to think that using that term represents an 'anglo perspective'. As far as I can recall, people generally disliked the terms 'Éire' and 'Southern Ireland', only the more republican would refer to it as the '26 Counties', but nobody I knew had a problem with the 'Republic of Ireland'. If we needed to differentiate the state from the country, we would refer to the former as 'the Republic', not to the latter as 'the island'. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 23:25, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

That last paragraph sums up my own position perfectly. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 23:35, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

ComhairleContaeThirnanOg, if we are talking strictly disambiguation then the point is that it should be disambiguated as it is needed to be disambiguated, on the actual most commonly used and legal name. If you need to disambiguate two exactly the same and very heavily used "Ireland" definitions, don't permanently muddy the waters by throwing in an artificial made up non-name. Thus "Ireland (something)" for either the island or the state, or both with Ireland as a disambiguation page like on fr:Irlande or the Citizendium page. That is only if, I envision an all-Ireland article that is the most difficult but still achievable goal. It should not—repeat—not be disambiguated using the internal, myopic local disambiguator. It may cause you, RA, Bastun, Scolaire and others no problems, but it is as Jeanne Boleyn wrote many days ago not natural language. It is normal for you all to say or write "the Republic", but we can't have an article called only that. And "Republic of Ireland" has those issues I discussed, including making several other editors who commented before quite upset. Look at the page logs, it was a major point of contention. So, again, less than ideal.

As for worrying about POV or anglo perspective, I am an American and that wouldn't rile me as much as some of the comments I've seen. However, it did rile me and will continue to rile me when it is completely denied and people who are pointing the POV out are utterly dismissed. I came at this from nearly completely outside, have never been to Ireland nor NI and I still can see that the term poses those issues. Lee Pilich ("Camembert"), for example, in his early comments in 2002 wrote: "I would, incidentally, be very surprised indeed if there was a decent map in existence which labelled the country, as opposed to the island, "Ireland" rather than "Rupublic [sic] of Ireland"." I was amazed to read that, since I have been around since the 1960s and every map that I can remember labeled the two "Ireland" and "UK" (or "NI" or "Northern Ireland"), and I looked for maps on Google image search and at the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection: I only found one map out of the first few dozen which fits Camembert's description, and it was from the UK military. So, as well meaning and oblivious as he and Renata might have been, if they were immersed in using OS maps and had been living in a country that until 2000 officially discouraged using Ireland as "embarrassing" and favored instead use of "Republic of Ireland", then, hey, that's an anglo (or British) bias. It certainly isn't American bias, and showing that all of the various organizations which Ireland participates in around the world don't use RoI makes it very plain that the government always uses Ireland alone. Except of course on that postal notice that some of the guys here think proves something. That is really grasping at straws if you ask me. I am thoroughly unconvinced that the "Republic of Ireland" title is the best choice, in fact I find it a remarkably poor one given all of the arguments it verifiably has caused here. Read those positions, look at those votes from 2009. There is a better way, even if it seems OK to you. Sswonk (talk) 01:13, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Ultimately what I am saying in response to both Bastun and ComhairleContaeThirnanOg is that you shouldn't assume that because you are Irish and you don't find a problem with RoI, that makes it a good choice. If you walked in the shoes of others who have been part of this debate, you could also find the current title confusing and illogical, biased and insensitive, misleading and incorrect, any or all of those. There are other choices and other means. And, instead of trying to even attempt to look at it that way there are many people here who have decided against seeking alternatives, and to act as enforcers rather than encyclopedists. They choose to resist and quash discussion, and lock it away to pretend away those realities. I find it unbelievable that anybody would seriously consider extending the ridiculous discussion ban, and nearly half who stopped by here did. This website is demonstrably a complete outlier when it comes to this situation and for its defense it has chosen ignorance and malfeasance via convoluted excuse making and know-nothing intransigence. Prove to me it deserves my continued contributions. "The problem is that we also have a country, or, if you prefer, an island, called Ireland, which has existed for a lot longer and is clearly, as disambiguation goes, the broader topic." That assumes the current article structure that has been in place since the 2002 discussion I linked. That assumes Ireland is not Ireland, in other words it must be separated in two by this encyclopedia: state independent of Britain only since 1922 vs. all other iterations before. I showed a score and more of websites, both Wikipedias and otherwise, that are not in the least uncomfortable with disputing that. Ireland to them is Ireland. It is the UK portion that needs to be treated separately, but that is not a concern for the word Ireland since that area has a name of its own. Get out of the mindset that says Ireland the country is something like an area code overlay, a mere esoteric abstraction that is not legitimate possessor of the word. Once you do, then you get us "closer to agreeing a superior way of resolving that problem than the one currently in effect". Sswonk (talk) 03:02, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

For the time being, the 3 articles will be remaining where they are. The consensus hasn't changed: Keep status quo & dispense with gag order on discussions. GoodDay (talk) 04:03, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Well the island article and the state article most definitely will not be merged so that's a complete non starter. The only reasonable choice I've seen is between Republic of Ireland and Ireland (state). My dislike of the politicians who pushed the claims to the North I've explained before and I'd like to point out the constitution with all that in didn't have that great a margin - it would have been far better if they had allowed people to vote on the separate clauses. So quoting officialdom at me isn't a great persuader. However I have no great objection to Ireland (state) if that's what people really want. Count me in with Bastun and ComhairleContaeThirnanOg. Dmcq (talk) 08:33, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Sswonk, for someone who would like me, Bastún, et al to walk a mile in your shoes, you show a distinct inability to grasp the points we are making or see, not only that there are other valid points of view, but also that there are other issues involved apart from whether 'Republic of Ireland' is a good article title or not. For example, you say 'That assumes Ireland is not Ireland, in other words it must be separated in two by this encyclopedia: state independent of Britain only since 1922 vs. all other iterations before.' I can hardly think of a better example of why you are not persuading some people!

Another point: you say 'don't permanently muddy the waters by throwing in an artificial made up non-name'. The term 'Republic of Ireland' is just as made-up as the term 'Ireland' was as a name for a state which did not control, but by adopting that name was seeking to reinforce its claim to, the entire island of Ireland. They were both artificial, legal terms which have both entered widespread use.

Re Dmcq's point, I don't have a problem with "Ireland (state)" either, though I prefer the common description adopted in Irish legislation and used in everyday speech (what is 'the Republic' short for, if not 'the Republic of Ireland'?)...

Anyway, I think ultimately GoodDay and Mabuska are right: a lot has been written but there has been no change in the consensus, such as it is, and certainly no consensus for change. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 14:35, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

One of the problems I have here is that I keep having to defend myself against a sort of self-conscious but slightly belittling attitude, y'know like "well he's a bright Yank" with a little smirk. Feels like it anyway, maybe I could blame W. and Dick Cheney, but we won't go down that path. Anyway, I grasp I think a little more than you suspect. Here's a sentence: "The Old English (Irish: Seanghaill, meaning "old foreigners") were the descendants of the settlers who came to Ireland from Wales, Normandy, and England after the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169–71." That's the lead of Old English (Ireland). Now mostly you and others are saying I need to get the problem with the link there to Ireland. It can't go to the article about the state, right? That's what you think I am not seeing? If so, try not to believe that I can't see that. I may not see it in the same day-in, day-out way you do, but I do understand fairly well how that is a difficult sentence, and about the "broad" Ireland topic and how linking the word there with the current article structures works. It's not that I don't understand, it's that I disagree about how you are separating the two. That's all. That's why I said in theory the "difficult article" is nevertheless attainable, it just got blown out of the water by Larry Sanger and the others as a result of the 2002 debate and the articles are entrenched at that stage even today. But Britannica can do it, and surely it is possible. I suppose it is not practical given the volume of editors and opinions in a wiki, maybe? The medium being the message, still I will push to find a way out of that hell.

Re: not changing minds, well so far I have you and Dmcq, both whose votes are recorded up there as "status quo", both now saying you have no problem with "Ireland (state)", thereby taking a step away from your votes. I think I got a little bit different response than was there before I started wallpapering the page with the seriousness you said was lacking in objections to the "status quo".

If other readers are thinking about this, that is the whole point of allowing free and open discussion. There should be no time limits, no votes, no "declaration of consensus, now please shut up" statements. The facts should be out there all the time, and that they are now makes me a little less likely to complain. NB: I did not say walk in my shoes, but walk is the shoes of everyone who objected. There were 10 votes, and a few skeptical statements beyond that. Anyway, Red King's statement has some more thought from 2009 for consideration. I'd like to see the RoI title moved by the Northern Hemisphere summer, certainly it seems attainable to me. It is the wrong title, and should be changed. I know about the issues, ComhairleContaeThirnanOg, including the ones Dmcq and others have talked about. It doesn't make a move toward calling the state Ireland in the title impossible as so many have wanted to declare. One problem is, the current "Ireland" article is like 90% of an article about a major sovereign state in terms of content, mostly without the flag and sovereign listings in the infobox. Makes it very odd, I think there is more to discuss in general. Thanks, now hoping you don't think I'm as thick as you just made me out. Sswonk (talk) 03:49, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

BTW, this you wrote above is really not true at all: "The term 'Republic of Ireland' is just as made-up as the term 'Ireland' was as a name for a state which did not control, but by adopting that name was seeking to reinforce its claim to, the entire island of Ireland. They were both artificial, legal terms which have both entered widespread use." It has been and is very easily shown that not only is Ireland the constitutional legal English name only, with no other equals; Ireland is no longer a "claim" per Belfast 1998; and finally Ireland is far and away the more widely used term, outside of parochial census forms, envelopes and other arcana that "compete" with passports, statements from the government's UN Mission, titles on scores of official publications and websites labeled as from the "Government of Ireland", and dozens of name plates at international venues whose statements are of the highest significance among those which we are supposed to use when we are discussing reliable sources and verifiability. In summary, the terms are decidedly not on an equal level by any argument, especially under law, and it is merely wishful thinking to promote it as IECOLL and Wikipedia have falsely tried to do. Sswonk (talk) 06:09, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

WP:TLDR unfortunately Fmph (talk) 08:22, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm about as sick of the this venue as I can be. If an argument is not spelled out, it is not serious. If it is spelled out and detailed and made "broad" it is boring and not worth reading. Reading posts of other editors and then leaving a two word dismissal intended to keep people from reading the thoughts of others is in my opinion a sign of either laziness or cowardice or both. Again, there is no rebuttal for those fundamental facts about how wrong the titling is, so opponents resort to impatience and self-satisfying bluelinks to essays. Such comments and actions make IECOLL look like a counter-intuitive title for a useless forum and utterly disappoint me. Sswonk (talk) 12:35, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Whilst Sswonk has yet to even remotely convince me to agreeing to move the RoI article, the constant "TL;DR"s are a bit childish. JonC^Talk 12:53, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

As are the huge amounts of repetition, the veiled personal attacks, and the promulgation of a position or argument that noone - noone - is disputing. (Just how many times do we have to say that everyone accepts that "Ireland" is the name of the country before Sswonk stops labouring that point?) Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 12:58, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

That I agree with. JonC^Talk 13:00, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Or the repetition that Ireland is a 'broad concept'? I haven't said anyone disagrees that Ireland is the official name. What I am repeating until it is made as obvious as I can is that using 'Republic of Ireland' is incorrect and misleading. That, Bastun, is the problem. TLDR notes not personal? At least I can keep from telling people not to read something! Childish is also a word I considered, Jon, thank you for giving my sentiments there some support. Sswonk (talk) 13:14, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

That is the problem - as soon we fix on Ireland some clever Singaporean will wonder what the hell the "Republic of Ireland" is. Fact is, we natives don't really know ourselves. Allow me to add some pandiculation to the arguments.Red Hurley (talk) 14:55, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Allow me to rephrase, then, Sswonk. Depite nobody disputing that Ireland is the official name of the state, you are spending a lot of kilobytes demonstrating how often it is used in the real world. But we already know that. It's use in the real world in the examples you cite causes no problems, because there is no other inconvenient entity (such as an island) also claiming the name. You also again state that the use of RoI is "incorrect and misleading". No, it isn't. It's used all the time by our government and officials, and the sky hasn't fallen in, what with it being an officially, legally prescribed description for the state. Similarly, the sky hasn't fallen in on the other states whose Wikipedia articles don't reside at the official state name. Which, I think, is a majority of them. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 15:30, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I haven't been convinced of the necessity to move any of the 3 articles-in-question. Nor, do I feel any urgency in preventing such page moves. GoodDay (talk) 17:59, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

All the time, or less so?

This table shows that rather than relying on the very generous estimation of Bastun that the government uses "Republic of Ireland" all the time, I would say it is more like my description of the term as seldom used. The state has a common name, an official name and a preferred name, and they are all the same thing: Ireland. There have been no arguments about the sky falling or any major claims of immediate serious harm here, just that RoI as title of the Wikipedia article has a long history of being looked at as less than ideal, is incorrect for an article title, and is overtly misleading to casual readers. Now we can add, it's a phrase not very frequently used or, concisely, uncommon on many major government websites. I suppose these government agencies don't feel the oppressive need to disambiguate as strongly as the chief protectors of IECOLL dogma. Currently, en.wikipedia.org is using the wrong title for the article about the sovereign state Ireland, it should reflect the common and official name that is used with much higher frequency, as is done on most other Wikipedia sites. Sswonk (talk) 05:16, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Google searches on major Government of Ireland web domains

Agency	Search terms* and results
Government of Ireland (includes all sites ending ".gov.ie" such as Taoiseach, Oireachtas, Departments, Boards and so on.)	Domain: gov.ie Search Number of hits Republic of Ireland 3,090 island of Ireland 7,560 Ireland 50,500
Citizens Information Board	Domain: citizensinformation.ie Search Number of hits Republic of Ireland 25 island of Ireland 32 Ireland 7,143
Irish Statute Book – Office of the Attorney General	Domain: irishstatutebook.ie Search Number of hits Republic of Ireland 90 island of Ireland 48 Ireland 33,762
An Bord Pinsean The Pensions Board	Domain: pensionsboard.ie Search Number of hits Republic of Ireland 3 island of Ireland 3 Ireland 380
Public Appointments Service	Domain: publicjobs.ie Search Number of hits Republic of Ireland 92 island of Ireland 54 Ireland 579
Revenue – Irish Tax and Customs administration	Domain: revenue.ie Search Number of hits Republic of Ireland 186 island of Ireland 3 Ireland 2,041
Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport	Domain: transport.ie Search Number of hits Republic of Ireland 46 island of Ireland 68 Ireland 1,426
MerrionStreet – Irish Government News Service	Domain: merrionstreet.ie Search Number of hits Republic of Ireland 7 island of Ireland 32 Ireland 2,811
Iris Oifigiúil – official Irish State gazette	Domain: irisoifigiuil.ie Search Number of hits Republic of Ireland 12 island of Ireland 6 Ireland 645
*results for "Republic of" and "island of" have been deducted from "Ireland" total results, for example, pensionsboard.ie had 386 hits for just "Ireland", results of 3 each for other two deducted gives 380.

The above figures, unfortunately, aren't accurate. The correct search for "Ireland", excluding "island of Ireland" and "Republic of Ireland", gives "About 43,400 results" rather than the claimed 100,000. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 10:07, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Disagree. The search which you suggest is 'correct' eliminates pages which use Ireland and any instance on any of those pages of either "Republic of Ireland" or "island of Ireland". That was not stated as the criteria, there is nothing either 'correct' or 'incorrect', but 'different'. The data show the amount of pages containing any of each term, but removing those that contain either of the other two from the results for "Ireland". The point is that your supposed argument that the current title enjoys equal use or at least significantly high use by the government is what is 'not accurate'. Sswonk (talk) 13:58, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

NB: I noticed that clicking the links after formatting with {{google}} gives different results than I originally had recorded when I had typed the searches in at the Google main page. In most cases, using {{google}} reduced the number of hits for "Ireland" by itself that I had initially recorded. The final numbers posted at the time of this note are accurate based on the footnote I placed in the chart. Sswonk (talk) 17:08, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Comments on the government site search results

I don't doubt your data & I do know that the country's name is Ireland. You should be concentrating on getting the island article name changed to Ireland (island). Thus if successful, there'd be less resistance to having the country article name changed to Ireland. GoodDay (talk) 05:28, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

I am interested in a title for the sovereign state article that is not the one chosen in 2002 and that caused so much distrust, anger and resentment up to and during 2008-2009. The alternative of Ireland (state) is much more acceptable to others here than would be an all-Ireland article, so I think that would be a viable choice. I think the theoretical "difficult article" that would be titled Ireland is possible, but that is the least likely outcome currently so I am not really promoting "having the country article name changed to Ireland". Everyone, GoodDay, I am sure knows what the name is. The problem has been, and is still, showing just why the current title is a poor choice in spite of the good intentions of many involved. I do believe some article should be called simply Ireland, that is not what I am discussing recently though. Thanks – Sswonk (talk) 06:06, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Cool. GoodDay (talk) 06:09, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

You've still not given a cogent argument - other than some people don't like it - as to why an unnatural disambiguator ("Ireland (state)") is required when there's a perfectly natural disambiguator ("Republic of Ireland") already in use. The latter, as you've shown, is used by our government, civil and public service. It's also used by the media and the population generally, when necessary - and not just when talking about our soccer team.

• "RoI as title of the Wikipedia article has a long history of being looked at as less than ideal" - WP:IDONTLIKEIT
• "is incorrect for an article title" - How so? Because it's not the official name? Most states on WP aren't on their official name. Because it's not the common name? True, but then there's that pesky island, which doesn't have another name or ready description. I also fail to understand how "Ireland (state)" is less "incorrect" than the official and legal description of the state.
• "and is overtly misleading to casual readers." If we assume by "casual reader" someone who is too lazy to read the entire lead, I'd hope we can agree that they will at least read the hatnote and the first sentence of the article. In addition, this argument would imply that every states' article should be on the official name.
• "Now we can add, it's a phrase not very frequently used or, concisely, uncommon on many major government websites." Because in the vast majority of cases, there's no need for it to be used. The same as on WP, where we can happily pipelink Ireland -> RoI when we're talking about the state.

Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 09:58, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

No time to respond to this at the moment, will be away for several hours. But, 'happily' is your description. Thank you for engaging in a dialog. Sswonk (talk) 14:01, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

What distrust anger and resentment? Some people just like arguing their side. Are some people here really resentful that the article about the state has the title Republic of Ireland? If you want go on about an article that causes actual resentment how about the Derry one instead? I agree with the article being titled Derry but I see no earthly reason why when the citations for an article about a person born there say Londonderry that article shouldn't say Londonderry and pipe to Derry instead of having the IMOS police swoop down on them. It's not as though people are forced to or even should write Republic of Ireland when the context is plainly about the state. Dmcq (talk) 14:26, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

So if the nats are willing to do a deal on Derry, you're willing to do a deal on RoI, is that it? That's really keeping to the principles and policies of Wikipedia, isn't it? Fmph (talk) 19:26, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that's what Dmcq is saying at all. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 22:26, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

No and may I point to WP:AGF if you are going to start quoting Wikipedia principle. Dmcq (talk) 00:26, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

OK, lets assume in good faith that you had another valid reason for introducing the Derry debate into this argument,. So can you please explain to us all what that was? Fmph (talk) 06:45, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

I was illustrating that there were things which really do get some people annoyed rather than this business where what we've got is a person saying other people are annoyed and that's why they're going on about it. I queried an assumption there, are you actually resentful angry or distrustful because the article titled Republic of Ireland is titled that? Why did you to start assuming I had some other agenda? Is the sort of thing you talked about me doing the sort of thing you do yourself? The question about the title is the only relevant one to this section so you can leave the other two there out if you like. Dmcq (talk) 09:13, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

I'd support changing Republic of Ireland to Ireland (state), if it meant changing Derry to Londonderry. However, that's not how it's done on the 'pedia. GoodDay (talk) 13:33, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Let me be absolutely clear. That is not what I was saying or asking about. I had no motives in that direction. What I asked was is there anybody here who is resentful angry or distrustful because of the title of the article Republic of Ireland? I gave an example of an article title which has given rise to real friction. How much more plainly can I state it? I see that as something which has not been justified and I am asking if it is true. This is like asking if xyz always answers a question with a question except here it is to answer a question with a bad faith accusation. Dmcq (talk) 13:42, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

I understand, Dmcq. I'm just announcing my conditions on these page move discussions. GoodDay (talk) 13:50, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Dmcq, your question though was difficult for me to understand. I wrote (italics added here): "I am interested in a title for the sovereign state article that is not the one chosen in 2002 and that caused so much distrust, anger and resentment up to and during 2008-2009." Then you asked "Are some people here really resentful that the article about the state has the title Republic of Ireland?" I was writing to GoodDay about what we both experienced in 2009 at the poll which resulted in the gag, and also the years leading up to it with forums full of anger, bitterness, AN/I, arbcom and wheel wars swirling around the name and of course Troubles related editing. My descriptions of the issue of naming in 2011 mostly relate to editorial objections involving common name, reliable sources, verifiability, undue weight and also but not primarily POV and neutrality issues. The bad blocks, abdication of responsibility and biased tinge of the poll debate are what got me convinced to work to change the title back in 2009, and the two-year gag even more so, but you appear to have confused my thoughts of that older Sturm und Drang with an assessment of theses debates. At least that is what I read. The Derry issue is a distraction, please don't go on about it within this debate. Thanks – Sswonk (talk) 13:44, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Do you personally feel resentful angry or distrustful because of the title? It was you who brought up the business about resentment not me Dmcq (talk) 13:54, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

No, because those three words were used by me explicitly describing up to and during 2008-2009. I don't feel that strongly, I haven't seen that degree of acrimony here. The meta-issues of how IECOLL is used to manipulate the debate and how people in general on this site are able to get away with dismissing genuine commentary with non-relevant bluelinked WP essays do make me skeptical. The title is a symptom of something to be wary of, as is anything related to overall gaming of the system and inherent bias be it male bias, POV bias, political non-neutrality or any of those. Sswonk (talk) 14:19, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Well nobody else seems to have stepped up to say they feel too fussed about the issue either so since the clear consensus was to keep the status quo perhaps we should consider the whole matter closed? It can always be brought up again in say another six months time and if you get your arguments in early then who knows perhaps you might sway some people, but I can't really see that happening just yet so soon after the last poll. Dmcq (talk) 14:34, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Be bold, open up an RM at Republic of Ireland. See if you've persuaded more editors to 'dump' Republic of Ireland as a title. GoodDay (talk) 14:39, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

You would think that might work, wouldn't you? But no, I already tried that. No can do. Next I'm going try a Republic of Ireland → Ireland (republic) RM based here. Kauffner (talk) 08:36, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks both for the thoughts, I feel comfortable with what I have written and the level of discussion. The idea of putting time limits or votes on this is however not in my thinking. Those make it like a contest, with inherent deadlines creating more urgency and resulting in disjointed discussions in my experience. A hiatus seems like a good idea, but not a forced one with the ability of "status quo" editors to pronounce "you can't discuss that now, wait until April". I don't plan to introduce more topics, they've been covered. In other words, let's just stop talking and leave it at that. I asked a while ago for someone to close HighKing's "Poll to see if people want to keep the status quo" at 24-10, even though the subsequent comments do show a little less support. Sswonk (talk) 14:59, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Isn't there a policy which states we're not suppossed to not use Google search for number of hits? Status Quo still sound good. (yes terrible pun) Mabuska ^(talk) 13:08, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

For example: Avoid criteria based on search engine statistics (e.g., Google hits or Alexa ranking), or measuring the number of photos published online. (from WP:POLITICIAN) Hohenloh ⁺ 13:35, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

You probably mean WP:GHITS which is not a policy but part of the essay "Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions". There has been exaggerated commentary at various times, words like "overwhelming", "widespread", and in this case "all the time". I am only using the results to debunk Bastun on that particular comment. Given that results vary based on how the query is entered, I agree that Google hits are of borderline significance in a way like polygraph readings, but they are useful nevertheless. I have been contending throughout these discussions that the state has a common name, an official name and a preferred name, and they are all the same thing: Ireland, and that the need to disambiguate generally is exaggerated. I could go on about the "huge" plurality of pages, like Moving to Ireland Guide, where the language supports my contention. Where's the need to disambiguate shown there? I mean, if you're moving to Ireland... Right now though, taking a break seems like a good idea to me. Sswonk (talk) 14:58, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

And everybody who doesn't agree with you has been contending throughout that the island/country has the same common name, and that indeed there is no need to disambiguate generally (hence piped linking) but that since Wikipedia cannot for technical reasons have two different pages with the same title, there is a need to disambiguate the page titles. If you can persuade people that we should have an article entitled 'Ireland' which (a) covers the entire island/country From the Earliest Times to 1921/1939/the present day and (b) is also the main page about the Irish state, fine. Problem solved. It seems unlikely to me, though. If you can't do that, then none of the arguments and data you put forward about what may be the common, official or preferred names of the state are an adequate basis for a change in the status quo. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 15:46, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

You and others appear stuck on the idea that I only want to change the "Republic of Ireland" title to "Ireland" and do nothing else, and that is not at all what I have written. I have expanded on my thinking, both in my vote and a few other places. The focus is on replacing the "Republic of Ireland" title, not on renaming to Ireland without disambiguation. See: this diff where I created and titled this section in response to you before, and this, another explanation of that focus. Sswonk (talk) 16:02, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I would support a change to Ireland (republic). GoodDay (talk) 16:10, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely. Sswonk (talk) 16:15, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

On the contrary, Sswonk, I recognize that you have higher ambitions, and I think that was clear in what I wrote. What you don't seem to be able to recognize is that your arguments in favour of "Ireland" as the name for the state don't have any real bearing on the actual situation here, where there is general recognition that "Ireland" is indeed the correct name of the state, but disagreement over how to deal with the fact that there is also another geographical, cultural and historical referent for "Ireland", of (undeniably) longer standing and (arguably) broader scope, which at the moment is the subject of the page entitled "Ireland". Lots of us see no big problem with the status quo as the best way of dealing with this issue in relation to article titles. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 17:29, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Regarding your edit summary of the above, "yes, but I don't think you get it..."[2], why don't you just write "we know better and you need to learn"? How is that a logical argument? How is that supposed to be persuasive? I have repeatedly demonstrated that I "get it" and in fact the lots of you that "see no big problem" need to review more than just your own self-justifying, question-begging statements which are based in logical fallacies. You "argue" below that "Republic of Ireland" wins based on naturalness and common name. The reality is that you live in a region where "the Republic" or sometimes in the U.K. "Irish Republic" are somewhat natural and somewhat common for some speakers; that says zero about the full phrase "Republic of Ireland". It is myopic and parochial as well, you are assuming first what is common within your limited region is common outside, and second that since "the Republic" is commonly used in your experience then it follows that "Republic of Ireland" is the prescribed title for an encyclopedia article. That is not a logical argument, it is a leap of judgement and that only. I can assure you, and the weight of reliably sourced publications will confirm, outside Britain and Ireland those terms are not only uncommon, they aren't even considered necessary. If you want to publish a wiki that is used only within Britain and Ireland among lots of you who see no problem, fine. What we are doing here is writing for a majority of readers who do not use those terms, who read about and use Ireland when writing about the sovereign state, and who do not need to be force fed your idea of what is natural. Do you "get it"? Take a look outside of IECOLL and your own experiences in that region and you might understand that. Stop putting words in my mouth and using condescending language. That you and others have repeatedly attempted to lecture me in spite of my strong objection and presentation of reliably sourced facts indicates to me that you are unwilling to move away from forcing your own points of view on others, which is part of what is a problem with the current title. Sswonk (talk) 19:16, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

"Stop putting words in my mouth and using condescending language." That's a pretty strange thing to write in a paragraph which consists almost entirely of you doing just that. Also, your assumptions as to where I live are mistaken. But most importantly, you have completely failed, yet again, to provide any arguments that seriously address the real problem here, let alone to persuade me that "Ireland (republic)" is more commonly used or less parochial than "Republic of Ireland". If your real preference is, as you have intimated and I have tried to engage with above, (and apologies for again putting words into your mouth) for an article that serves as the main article on Ireland both as the country and as the modern state, why not propose that formally? I might well support it. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 21:33, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Um... what need to disambiguate? I mean... if you're moving to Ireland, you're moving to a state, a jurisdiction where you will need to know how revenue and tax works. Which is why you're on the revenue.ie website in the first place. I'm not aware of any islands or other natural geographical features of the planet that raise taxes separately from the authorities they share a space with. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 19:57, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

In spite of the "um..."s, the "really?"s, the "tl;dr" comments, and more "meh"s and "yawns" just waiting to light the way going forward, I have kicked the habit and left your project, in your world seemingly blind to the answers on your envelope. Have entirely too much fun beating off more common sense down the road, I can do without this. It's the wrong title. Good bye. – Sswonk (talk) 06:27, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

"Everyone's out of step except my Johnny!", as an old teacher of mine used to say. Would this be an appropriate place to note that so far the only people supporting the RM below seem to be Americans and Canadians? Where are those who would defend us from the imposition of Anglo-American-Imperial-Wiki-Centric-POV-Pushing when we need them most? Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 09:19, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I've known since August that there was little chance, IECOLL has been made into SQEOD ("Status quo", end of discussion) by you, Scolaire, RA, Kiernan et al sitting as gatekeepers and manipulating all opposition toward your enforcement forum here. It's your small group specifically that's to blame, not those vast enterprises. Answers, 1) good as any. 2) I don't know, but that wasn't my argument even though it was plain most of you were shadow boxing against that apparition. Can you admit to me that I have, and always have, not taken that position as gospel but instead argued against your logic from a common sense and reliable sources perspective? Bastun? Sswonk (talk) 13:48, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

<comment withdrawn by editor>

This challenge via this diff represented the first attempt to thwart open discussion, on the day the suppression of discussion ended you stopped me from removing the restrictive tags that now stand. That's what part in "manipulating all opposition toward your enforcement forum" you played in my view. It would be great if you could help sway the opinions of people towards moving the RoI title. Sswonk (talk) 00:17, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Sswonk, since - if I've understood your position right - you're not in this just to get rid of the RoI title, why not propose something like this? At the moment, all your energy seems to be going into putting forward what a good few people, including myself, regard as inadequate arguments for something which is apparently not even your preferred option (moving the existing Republic of Ireland article to Ireland an moving the latter to some unknown point). ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 00:35, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

<comment withdrawn by editor>

Your defense here leaves out a crucial word from my quote and ignores the exposition. You: "Neither of those diffs shows any attempt to thwart discussion". Me previously: (your challenge to removing the talk page tags was) "the first attempt to thwart open discussion" and "(manipulate) all opposition toward your enforcement forum here", in other words funnel everything into the "status quo" playland here where any page move is ridiculed by the major denizens. The displaytitle farce you began was dead in the water, a straw man like Fmph with "option G". I did not bother commenting at the title mask idea, wrong in many ways, deceptive, unassertive and cosmetic. BHL gave that a good response, it was a complete non-starter. My "lipstick on a pig" comment here applies to the pipelink to RoI and any other attempt to hide the current bad title. For the title, we need to use either the single common form Ireland, by itself as part of a major restructuring of two articles, or more likely with some (dab) word in parentheses, probably (state). Ireland the single word should be the focus of the title. RoI is wrong, and frankly based on the many fallacious didactic justifications here essentially is representative of original research. Sswonk (talk) 13:25, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

<comment withdrawn by editor>

Arbcom were hands-off, and may have done or said nothing until you quickly went and complained to them so you could reinstate the funnel tags. Sswonk (talk) 13:25, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I notice that you didn't vote in either of the two polls above, although I assume these occurred prior to your withdrawal from the field. Kauffner (talk) 16:26, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Counter 'the nail that sticks out gets hammered down' with 'sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me'. Dmcq (talk) 16:52, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Requested move: Republic of Ireland → Ireland (republic)

After a two-year ban imposed by Arbcom, a page move proposal for the Republic of Ireland can finally be entertained. Kauffner (talk) 12:50, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

• Republic of Ireland → Ireland (republic)

– The current title of this article may mislead readers into thinking that the term "Republic of Ireland" is a long-form official name, equivalent to "Republic of France" or "Kingdom of Spain". In fact, the Irish government has discouraged use of this term for some time, as documented at Republic of Ireland (term). The official English-language name of the country is simply "Ireland", according to the Irish constitution (1937). "Ireland" is also the country's name as a UN member. The Associated Press Stylebook, the most influential journalism styleguide, recommends that the country be referred to as "Ireland" in most situations. The corresponding article in Britannica is titled "Ireland". This article notes prominently that the single word "Ireland" is the official name of the country. The purpose of an encyclopedia is to inform. This purpose is not advanced if incorrect names are used, however natural they might be. Kauffner (talk) 20:25, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. "Republic of Ireland" wins as per WP:COMMONNAME, naturalness and ease of usage. The evidence presented on this page (including numerous archived discussions) shows that the Irish government wishes the state to be known as "Ireland" for official purposes, but itself uses the term "Republic of Ireland" on the relatively few occasions where it is necessary to distinguish between the state and Ireland (the country/island) as a whole - as it is, in this case, for Wikipedia. The term also has the advantage of being officially recognized as "the description of the state" in Irish legislation (and presumably, if the Irish government actually found the term objectionable, they would have repealed this legislative provision). ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 17:39, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose per Evertype and Scolaire below, should be (state) and also discussion premature. Sswonk (talk) 13:03, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

'Support' — Although the Government of Ireland does in fact officially use the term "Republic of Ireland" in some cases, it has made it clear in practice that it prefers the constitutional name Ireland. It does not call itself the "Government of the Republic of Ireland". Maps, websites, publications, style guides—our reliable sources—are in agreement that Ireland, whether it is somewhat ambiguous or not, is the name and title used for the sovereign state. Since this site, en.wikipedia.org, is an outlier in this case and since the title does have the potential to mislead readers, I support this move. Sswonk (talk) 17:57, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - WP:TITLE gives 5 areas to be considered when naming an article. So is Ireland (republic) more Recognisable than RoI? No. Is it more Natural? Most definitely not. Is it more Precise? No. Concise even? No. What about Consistency? I think the vast majority of country article do not require piping in every article. #fail. An absolutely appalling proposal. Fmph (talk) 19:05, 16 October 2011 (UTC))

By this logic, we should get rid of all parenthetical disambiguators. Surely "planet of Mercury" is a more natural construction than Mercury (planet). So many responses to this RM are written as if the editor never saw a disambiguator before, so let me explain the concept. The name of this state is Ireland. This is the legal name, the official name, and the common name. But as Wikipedia already has an article of this title, we must include some additional text to allow the software to distinguish the two. As this convention is peculiar to Wiki, whether or not any RS refers to the subject as "Ireland (republic)" is irrelevant. If you have spent any time on Wiki, you know that this is a very common problem and that thousands of titles are done this way. Kauffner (talk) 07:34, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Actually thats pretty much exactly what WP:PRECISE says we should do.

i) Natural disambiguation: If it exists, choose a different, alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English, albeit, not as commonly as the preferred but ambiguous title .... If this is not possible:

ii) Parenthetical disambiguation: ...

So we should only use parenthetical disambiguation if there is no alternative. In this case there are a number of alternatives. One is to leave it as it is. Another is to move it somewhere else. IMHO that should be at Ireland, if it is going to be moved. Then move Ireland to somewhere else. Fmph (talk) 10:33, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - Readers will not be misled if they read the very first line of the lede and/or look at the infobox. The Government of Ireland offically uses the term "Republic of Ireland" in many cases, and it is in fact the legal description of the state. The Irish government has not discouraged use of the term and no such "discouragement" can be found at Republic of Ireland (term). They simply use the official long form name "Ireland" when no disambiguation is necessary, and "Republic of Ireland" when it is necessary. Like Wikipedia. "Republic of Ireland" meets WP:COMMONNAME; it is a natural disambiguator, much more likely to be searched for than the artificial construct "Ireland (republic)", which breaches WP:DISAMBIG. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 19:16, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I have to wonder what articles you read. The impression I get from the RoI article is that RoI is the full name of the state and "Ireland" is some kind of short form. You have to look at the footnotes to find out that "Ireland" is the constitutional name. Republic of Ireland (term) has several examples of official guidelines to "avoid" RoI, even for disambiguation. Kauffner (talk) 20:25, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

The first line of Republic of Ireland: "Ireland[7] , described as the Republic of Ireland,[8] is a state in Europe..." is fairly clear to me, as is the prominent infobox note "Article 4 of the Constitution of Ireland declares that the name of the state is Ireland; Section 2 of the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 declares that the description of the state is the Republic of Ireland." Republic of Ireland (term) has three examples, the most recent dating from 1963! It certainly no longer seems to be policy - which you seem to be ignoring. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 20:56, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

The current opening assumes that the reader understands that the word "described" refers to the 1948 legislation. That may not be "fairly clear" to everyone. Kauffner (talk) 02:12, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - Per Bastun. Kittybrewster ☎ 19:24, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Number of reasons, firstly reasoning for move is floored (see File:Envelope from Irish Revenue Commissioners.jpeg), secondly "Ireland (republic)" is a highly unlikely search term, thirdly as per the above discussion there clear consensus tor the status quo, so lets WP:Snow close this. Mtking ^(edits) 19:58, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
• Support as it's about a republic named Ireland. A republic that happens to share the same name as the island, which it's on. GoodDay (talk) 20:46, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Also, Ireland (country) is acceptable - since we've got Georgia (country) as an article title. GoodDay (talk) 21:40, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - Sounds too much like a disambiguation page which would be good to distinguish between the these two republics - Ireland and Ireland. Mabuska ^(talk) 22:05, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Per many above. In particular, with respect to the Wikipedia:Article titles, as ComhairleContaeThirnanOg points out, Republic of Ireland wins for recognizability, naturalness, precision, conciseness and consistency over Ireland (republic).
  I also think that worrying over whether readers will believe the title of the page is the legal "name" of the state, as opposed to the legal "description" of the state, is over-stated hand wringing. The legal "name" and the legal "description" is given in the first line and an entire section (the first section in the article) deals with this distinction in depth. Even at that, however, if a reader did leave the article without knowing the legal "name" of the state, it would not be the end of the world. Mixing up this distinction is not the greatest of errors or the most important thing to know about the subject. --RA (talk) 22:29, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose ww2censor (talk) 22:49, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Where on earth from anything abve did you get the idea that (republic) was a good idea instead of something like (state) or (country)? Not that I'd be particularly keen on them anyway. And would we still be able to put Republic of Ireland when the island is also being talked about or what would happen about that? I really can't see if it matters one whit whether a person who can't be bothered reading the first line of the lead or understand it thinks the name is Republic of Ireland - and my experience is that people like that will always find a way of misunderstanding whatever you say. Dmcq (talk) 00:16, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

The AP uses "Irish Republic." The current government seems to like "The Irish State". Who uses "country of Ireland" or "Irish country" to disambiguate between North and South? Kauffner (talk) 03:15, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

If "Republic of Ireland" is wrong and misleading for readers, as you say, then AP's style guide is even more wrong and misleading. Your evidence for use of "The Irish State" is a) irrelevant to this discussion; b) a website's menu heading; and c) used far less often than "Republic of Ireland". Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 09:12, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I was thinking of Wikipedia disambiguation and (country) would be the obvious one for that. State is more for things like Georgia the U.S. state as opposed to the country. Dmcq (talk) 13:14, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

"Country" fails for disambiguation purposes, in my opinion, because it is itself ambiguous and can be used to refer to all of Ireland as well - certainly plenty of people use it that way, and I would suspect there are probably plenty who would refer to both Ireland and the Republic of Ireland as a 'country' in different contexts. 'Ireland (country)' would certainly make me expect an article about all of Ireland, not about the Republic - even though I am from the Republic myself. I imagine it would probably have the same effect a fortiori on many readers from Northern Ireland and possibly from Britain. ComhairleContaeThirnanOg (talk) 14:39, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree. As far as the British government are concerned, England, Scotland, Wales and – yes – Northern Ireland are all countries, despite not being sovereign states. It's too ambiguous. JonC^Talk 14:43, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose It's unnatural and violates WP:DISAMBIG. JonC^Talk 06:23, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose per the many reasons already noted above. Mooretwin (talk) 08:45, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose The only useful moves is Republic of Ireland to Ireland in combination with and after the move of Ireland to Ireland (island). Night of the Big Wind _talk 09:30, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose but would support a move to Ireland (state). -- Evertype·✆ 11:44, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I'd only weak oppose (country). Dmcq (talk) 13:15, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose I do prefer Republic of Ireland to all other choices in this particular circumstance regardless, but I'd like to point out something most of you probably won't like to understand, I believe that Republic (Ireland) would have been better than Ireland (republic). I guess, in e-space, categories are more important to me than monuments. I like to see full respect to anything, good or bad, but my love for Wikipedia is not that people can dump things here and how those things might be placed, it's that they can pick them up and how easily those things might be sifted through. I'd have a conveyor belt of everything system any day before I'd have a buckstop system on one day. I know, doesn't make much sense or something but it does to me. ~ R.T.G 16:21, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. "Ireland (republic)" would only make sense to the uninformed reader if if there was a contemporaneous "Ireland (kingdom)". It doesn't make clear the distinction between the political entity and the larger country. Scolaire (talk) 07:26, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
• Comment: Opening an RM to a new title in the middle of a lengthy discussion - especially when the nominator hasn't taken part in that discussion for nearly two weeks - is totally against the spirit of collaboration on Wikipedia. This is the third time Kauffner has done this since 17 September. Scolaire (talk) 07:47, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose; a fuller, unambiguous title should be preferred rather than one that has to have disambiguation brackets. MTC (talk) 07:34, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
• Comment. 2 in favour, 18 against. WP:SNOW? Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 13:09, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
  • Yep, there's definitely no consensus for a move. GoodDay (talk) 13:11, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

There's definitely no consensus for THIS move. Fmph (talk) 14:32, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Full name is more descriptive. Hipocrite (talk) 14:35, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries

Every country on Wikipedia seems to have a foreign, or international, relations article. The format is a list of inter-governmental diplomacy, who has an embassy with who, who went to war with who, and that point is the cut off. None seem to have an article for cultural relations, which aren't the same as intergovernmental relations. I mean, as a tourist guide, Wikipedia *could* get you beat up in the nicest of places. I'm just plucking at the future with a broad focus on the debate category here. What direction is this energy going, that sort of thing. Don't the cultural relations of many many countries make up interesting and informative reading? I know, you dive any deeper into culture than art and law and people want to have a war, but for instance, we have an article Culture of Ireland and we have Irish culture in the United States so forth, but we don't have Cultural relations of Ireland tying them all together in relation to the one. We don't have all-for-one in that respect. We've two or three for each other in some cases, but that's it. In fairness, the problem with this naming debate is that we have to make it all up ourselves. The topic hasn't really been touched by the sources we rely on, though they leave us with mismatches that don't add the whole 100 per cent. So, I don't know if there is a particular academic discipline, aside from all encompassing history, best covering cultural relations, between masses of people rather than leaders focus, but if it was more important before, our debate would have been solved here much sooner if it needed solved at all. I think that at some time in the future cultural relations articles and subjects should and will be more important. Maybe they already exist and I do not know what name they are going by but I've not found them per se. So, if you don't mind, for those really immersing themselves in this debate, what sort of thing might you be interested in next? I think this sort of thing partly fits so in case I'm right I'll leave the comment and other people might think about it too. Have a rainy day! ~ R.T.G 16:51, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Well Wikipedia is the encyclopaedia anyone can edit, so if you can find a good source talking about such a topic and it seems distinct enough go for it. I'm not sure what kind of stuff you're talking about, is it mayors going off to Nova Scotia because of historic ties, towns twinning with towns in France or Zimbabwe, endangered communities getting together like with the Basques etc. that sort of thing or something quite different? Dmcq (talk) 11:15, 18 October 2011 (UTC)