Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements)

This naming convention is still being discussed and is therefore not yet fixed. Currently there is a vote going on at the talk page; if you have an opinion, please submit your vote as well.

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names)

Convention: In general, cities that exist in modern times should be named in this format: [[City, Nation]] . However, due to internal naming conflicts, cities within the United States should be named in this format: [[City, State]].

However, the reuse of city names in the USA presents a very important internal ambiguity issue and therefore city names in the US should be treated differently than city names for other nations. For US cities, the minimum amount of information needed to differentiate the name of an American city from other American cities and from other cities outside the United States should be used. This format is: City, State (the addition of "United States of America" being superfluous to resolving internal and external naming conflicts).</nowiki>

Tentative policy below (disputed sentence is in red)

Notable and very famous cites such as, for example, Paris, France are unambiguously known simply as "Paris" internationally. However, for naming convention consistency, the article on Paris should be at Paris, France but since this is the most famous Paris in the world and the most linked Paris in Wikipedia, the page named Paris should be a redirect to Paris, France. Thus, the most famous "Paris" in the world, Paris, France, would have redirect priority over the use of the Wikipedia page named Paris (at least until every current link to the most famous Paris is fixed to point to Paris, France -- then Paris can become a disambiguation page).

This final section is not policy yet and is still up for review

Since Paris redirects to Paris, France, at the top of the article on the French city should be links to minor uses of the word "Paris" with a statement such as " "This article is about Paris, France. There are also Wikipedia articles about Paris, Texas, and Paris (legendary figure)". This is called disambiguation-block format and is designed to quickly redirect visitors clicking on Paris who intended to go to one of its less famous meanings.

Please see wikipedia:disambiguation for specifics on the disambiguation block format.

Rationale: City names throughout the world are used and reused by different nations and mean different things in various contexts. To resolve this in a consistant way, a general convention of naming articles about cities in the format of [[City, Nation]] will lead to consistency and resolve many naming conflicts and ambiguities (naming cities in the format of [[City, Province]] or [[City, Province, Nation]] would be adding unnecessarily complex information that is not needed to differentiate city names in most cases).