Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)

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Archive to 1 Dec 2006 • Archive to Nov 2008 • Naming conventions (settlements) • Naming conventions (places)

Requesting clarification on dual names

The section on "Multiple Local Names" states: "Experience shows that the straightforward solution of a double or triple name is often unsatisfactory; there are all too many complaints that one or the other name should be first." At Talk:Senkaku Islands, the point has been raised that while this guideline strongly frowns on multiple names, it does not forbid it. I don't know how well watched this talk page is, but I have a few questions on this part of the guideline:

1) Are there currently any Wikipedia articles that have "multiple names"? As an example, there is a proposal that the name of the above mentioned article be changed either to Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands or Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. If such a proposal were to be seriously considered, would it be the only example of its type, or are there other dual-named articles?

2) Since the line quoted above implies that dual names have been tried in the past but failed, does anyone know of an example of this? That is, anyone know of any article histories where we could look to see the attempt at dual names causing equally bad edit warring to just choosing one name?

3) Assuming that, nonetheless, the "local" editors at that talk page really felt that there was no better solution, that there was no distinction between the two names, and that the dual name is actually one of the more common names used in English sources, where then would they need to go to determine if this breach, or at least, "bending", of the guidelines should be allowed? That is, assuming somehow the dual name got talk page consensus, could we then just move it to do the dual name? Or would we need to raise the issue somewhere "higher", like the Pump, or some other noticeboard?

Thanks for any input. Just to clarify, I'm not looking for any input here about what the name of that particular article actually should be. I'm just trying to figure out if there is any point in discussing a dual name at that article's talk page. In full disclosure, I have thus far argued that there is not). My worry is that even if we were to agree to the dual name, as soon as we moved it, someone else would move it back as a violation of the guidelines. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:45, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

1. The only place I know of which has a multiple name as an article title is Biel/Bienne, although there was some discussion about doing it for New Zealand places (did that come to anything?).
   • Biel/Bienne is quite different from the Pinnacle Islands (to choose the least partisan of the single names): Its naming and nationality are uncontroversial (on Wikipedia and I think in Switzerland); and the double name including the order is both official and customary.
2. For the background of that provision, see WP:LAME on Bolzano; IIRC that entry is quite correct, including the two move requests from Bolzano/Bozen to Bozen/Bolzano; almost all of the mess should have been archived by now.
3. This is a guideline; genuine consensus may ignore it. But if you are worried about someone moving it back after a thorough discussion, preferably aired at WP:RM, you probably don't have consensus.
   • On the other hand, this is a warning, not a prohibition. If you think you can get genuine consensus on a dual name, without perpetual move requests, and with a clear answer to newbies who want the name they were taught in middle school, there's nothing here to make it pointles to suggest it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:20, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I think there are a couple issues I would like your consideration and input. (1) As I understand (from what the guideline says and what is discussed above), the main reason for avoiding A_B or A/B is the ordering problem. But if everyone who opposes A would rather have A_B than simply A, i.e. taking one name means much less compromise that dual name, isn't this a more acceptable solution to all? and that would mean less likely moving/controversy in future? (2) if in almost all literary in English, be in academic or media, if A_B is becoming more and more prevalent, and from the simple syntax/serach perspective, A_B or A/B appears much more often than simply "A", isn't this a good reason to pose A_B as a candidate? i.e. one could view A_B is THE NAME adopted by academic and media, instead of a dual name. It is not "an artificial invention" by the wiki community just for this pupose. Thanks for your input.San9663 (talk) 06:16, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

For me it's not so much the possibility of arguments over the order that's the problem; it's the possibility that once we start, people will start proposing this "solution" for all sorts of cases where there isn't really a problem to solve (Gdańsk/Danzig, Vilnius/Wilno/Vilna, Londonderry/Derry, Burma/Myanmar, Oder/Odra and so on - thousands of other places have alternative names) - I suppose we could name articles like this, it wouldn't be an entirely bad style, but we must be aware that once we start it will be hard to stop.--Kotniski (talk) 10:32, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Kotniski, but the likelihood of order arguments is the final straw: if we are going to use long, clunky, unidiomatic forms, and not even get peace out of it, what's the point? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:35, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

For me, part of the worry on order of names is that, even if got agreement now, that won't stop others from changing it in the future. That is, once the partial step is taken (say to move it from A to A/B), then in a month or so someone might say, "Yeah, but now that a dual name is okay, it's obvious B should be first, so I' moving it to B/A." But that's not really a reason to stand in the way, as any consensus can change, so it's not right to object just because it makes things more volatile. So I suppose that one step would be, if the local editors on that article do want the change, to get a solid agreement that at least no one editing right now would propose a move to B/A. I also see the logic in Kotniski's concern that this could be bad for other articles. If in fact such a solution is chosen at Senkaku Islands, it might almost be worth adding a line to this guideline specifically to point out that the use of dual names is only acceptable when a large portion of reliable sources themselves use dual names (which may be the case here). That is, that S/D wasn't chosen as a compromise name, but because that's actually the name used in reliable sources (assuming it is). Qwyrxian (talk) 01:37, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

A reasonable exception; let us know if compromise is attainable on those grounds. In fact, I have included a very limited statement on the acceptability of Biel/Bienne, since nobody seems to be disputing it on any grounds outside this guideline. If anybody can think of more restrictions, feel free to pile on. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:25, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

The Norwegian example of Gáivuotna – Kåfjord seems to conflict with your wording. For a limited period it was the official name, but it is not now - and on the evidence of the article itself, the place seems to be most commonly referred to as Kåfjord in English. Arguably it should be moved, although Kåfjord is ambiguous, which might be the reason it has not been moved. Mhockey (talk) 23:38, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

The talk page strongly suggests that this is another ethnic naming dispute. I don't think this falsifies what I wrote; it may imply that the article ought to be moved - but to which? There is the difficulty that if Kåfjord is ambiguous, it may be hard to find out what English usage on this arctic hamlet is.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:28, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Seems like I am late to the game. I agree that the name ordering of S/D and D/S can still be disputed, but that significantly lessens the degree of controversy even though that in itself is not a perfect solution.

Also, I personally doubt a consensus will be reached because numerous editors involved in the issue (mostly from Project Japan) seem to like nothing more than complete favour of "Senkaku Island" names. So, I'd be surprised if we don't send this issue right off to mediation. For more background, here's the thread and here's my summary of the issue. Bobthefish2 (talk) 01:41, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Philippines

The city naming conventions for Philippines have been evolving, as per this recent successful move proposal. I've updated the guideline to reflect what is happening as best as I can understand it. At least it no longer states the preference is to add the suffix "City", which is clearly out of favor. --Born2cycle (talk) 07:15, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Move discussion notification

There is a move request to move Green Bay, Wisconsin to Green Bay at Talk:Green Bay, Wisconsin#Requested move. Because the outcome of this discussion would affect our article naming conventions, you may want to participate in that discussion. Please discuss at the linked section. Powers ^T 13:57, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

RFC: United States cities

Throughout Wikipedia, with fewer and fewer exceptions, when the most common name for an article's subject is unique or primarily used to refer to that topic, that name is used as that article's title, in accordance with the general naming criteria specified at WP:TITLE. While WP:TITLE says "titles which follow the same pattern as those of similar articles [as documented naming guidelines such as this one] are generally preferred", it also says these titles should ideally be in compliance with the other criteria, including, "only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic unambiguously". The current guideline for naming U.S. cities is a glaring exception to this convention which is followed almost universally throughout Wikipedia. Why should the titles of articles about U.S. cities be treated differently? I suggest there is no good reason, and so propose that the guideline be changed accordingly.

If you peruse WP:PLACES (and please do), you will see that the United States is rapidly becoming the only country for which we disambiguate city names even when they are unique or primary. The vast majority follow the same convention used for almost all articles in Wikipedia: "when possible, use [[MostCommonName]]" (or words to that effect).

The U.S. guideline allows exceptions, but currently only for cities on the AP list. When that change was introduced a couple of years ago the hand-wringing that ensued about what problems will result has been shown to be without basis. In fact, the only effect of that change has been that people stopped proposing that those articles be moved, as had been quite common for those names prior to that change, and continues with those cities that remain inexplicably disambiguated [*]. Yet I won't be surprised if similar hand-wringing ensues for this proposal.

I propose that U.S. city naming be brought into compliance with the naming conventions used throughout Wikipedia, or at least brought into great compliance. I thereby offer two options in this proposal, as well as the choice to keep things as they are.

• A - Full Compliance. Change this part of the first paragraph of the current guideline:

The canonical form for cities, towns and census-designated places in the United States is [[Placename, State]] (the "comma convention"). Those places that need additional disambiguation...

To read:

When possible, use [[Placename]] for places in the United States. For cities that require disambiguation, use [[Placename, State]]. Those places that need additional disambiguation...

Also, delete the entire second paragraph about cities in the AP book since this new wording would encompass them anyway.

• B - Improved Compliance. Expand "exceptions" to include state capitals and NFL/MLB franchise cities as well as cities on the AP list. Change this current wording in the 2nd paragraph:

Cities listed in the AP Stylebook as not requiring the state modifier may or may not have their articles named [[City]] provided they are the primary topic for that name..

To read:

Cities that are state capitals, have NFL or MLB sport franchises, or are listed in the AP Stylebook as not requiring the state modifier may or may not have their articles named [[City]] provided they are the primary topic for that name..

• C - Status Quo

--Born2cycle (talk) 01:17, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Survey

Please indicate your 1st and second preferences, A, B or C, and a short reason/explanation.

• 1st:A; 2nd:B - There is no reason for U.S. cities to be treated differently from other topics in Wikipedia. Any city, like any other topic in Wikipedia, whose name is unique or primary should be at the name without any disambiguation or additional unnecessary precision (A). But if there is still strong objection to that, at least bringing capitals and major cities with NFL/MLB franchises into compliance will be a big improvement (B). --Born2cycle (talk) 01:17, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

• C It ain't broken. Born2cycle's endless campaign on this issue is more disruptive than any of the names.   Will Beback  talk  01:38, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

• A Hesperian 01:52, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

• C. What is broken is the rest of the convention. Many editors have requested clarity in the titles. Some even requesting something other then the place name to get some idea when the place is. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:00, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
• A. There's no reason for U.S. cities to have a naming convention that differs from all other cities in the world, and the AP stylebook is not Wikipedia policy, much less holy writ. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:09, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
• C; in national and international contexts, such as news article datelines, these cities are referred to with the state identifier. It is a very common way to refer to most U.S. cities even with in the U.S. and provides clarity to both readers and editors. Powers ^T 03:05, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
• A There is no rational justification for this idiosyncratic exception to the general manner in which disambiguation is handled across every other topic in the encyclopedia. The title is merely a unique descriptor for the topic, it is not the job of the title to provide encyclopedic information. Mattinbgn (talk) 03:12, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Are you calling my justification irrational? Powers ^T 03:25, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
    • It doesn't appear to be to me. Take offence if you wish, but that is my opinion. It is at its root special pleading. It suggests that the United States is qualitatively different than every other nation on earth and that place names are qualitatively different than every other topic in the encyclopedia. Neither of those two claims stand up to any serious scrutiny. There is no rational reason why the same disambiguation practices that work adequately across the entire encyclopedia become somehow inadequate when dealing with US places. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 03:27, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Ah sorry, but why is something in common use lacking a rational justification? Many terms and phrases are rather clear when you can place them in context. The problem here is that many uses lack the critical component of context. So you need another way to deal with the problems. Vegaswikian (talk) 03:50, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
    • Something in "common use" is lacking a rational justification because being in "common use" in itself is not a rational justification. If it were, then Paris and London (for example) would be at Paris, France and London, England respectively. After all, those ways of referring to those cities are in "common use". But that's not how we name articles in Wikipedia. We try to use the most common name for the article's topic, and with only as much precision as is needed to avoid ambiguity (including considering primary topic criteria). Descriptive information beyond the name is typically only included in the title when required for disambiguation, and in those titles of topics that lack names ("List of ..." articles come to mind). For most topics, including most cities, worldwide, including those in the U.S., that means using just the base name of the topic for the article title, period. To make an exception for U.S. cities for no reason (or only for reasons that apply to other topics that are not also made exceptions) is unreasonable as well as irrational, by definition. I mean, look at the C votes so far... the guideline is cited repeatedly, yet no one has given any justification for it, except for this very weak "common use" point, and the admission that the real motivation is adding descriptive information to the titles even when it's not required for disambiguation, which is (for very good reason) contrary to the general naming criteria policy. That too is irrational in a proposal where the guideline wording -- and the basis/justification for it -- is what is at issue. --Born2cycle (talk) 08:31, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
• A, in principle, and definitely for any new articles (although I'd be surprised if there were many substantial settlements in the USA which have yet to gain a wikipedia article). However, I would oppose mass renaming as it's likely to be very disruptive - there would still be quite a few people who (not unreasonably) feel attached to the status quo. I particularly dislike B - why should a particular sports franchise affect naming conventions for cities? bobrayner (talk) 04:31, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
• C keep as is. There is no good reason to change. The current system is working, as it is. The US is a big country with many thousands of cities. Too many US cities have names that are duplicated in other US states; too many US cities have names are copied from Europe. Endless confusion from such a change. As things are right now, readers have a running chance to know the correct city being discussed by looking at the 'name, state', without having to go look up the article (a waste of reader time). If anything is to change, it is the names of the some other countries' cities--these are usually useless as written forcing readers to go hunt. Mention of NFL/MLB franchises makes the nomination laughable. This subject is about geography, not corporate/sports advertising. Hmains (talk) 06:12, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
• A - having random variation in the way we name articles, based on the differing personal preferences of editors from different countries, doesn't make the encyclopedia any better. --Kotniski (talk) 10:33, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
• C The current practice is not "random variation" from worldwide naming conventions. It accords with WP:COMMONNAME, as evidenced by the AP Stylebook. The Oxford Guide to Style also has this to say (para 4.2.10): "Newspapers ...make allowances for the 'local knowledge' expected of their readers..the New York Times does not require clarification for White Plains or Yonkers, whereas the Wall Street Journal - ... aimed at a wider readership - does. When in doubt it is best to err on the side of caution." That seems to be good advice for WP. It is also consistent with the practice in other countries where a Placename, Subnational unit name for unambiguous places would be regarded as unnatural (or even an American import) and therefore inconsistent with WP:COMMONNAME. --Mhockey (talk) 11:59, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
• E - None of the above. Don't make rules that force conformity for conformity's sake... let editors have some degree of flexibility to title their articles as they think is best. Obviously we need to disambiguate many city and town names... but as long as we do so, does it really matter how we do so? to me, it does not really matter whether the article title is: Boston, Texas or Boston (Texas).
• C. I don't see the current situation as a problem. City, State is a very common way to refer to places in the United States even when disambiguation is not strictly necessary Eluchil404 (talk) 05:33, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
• C. Agree completely with Eluchil404. Also, Born2cycle is mistaken about London and Paris. In the U.S. the "city, state" pattern is so common that this pattern is even extended to European cities, and one hears "Rome, Italy". In Europe this usage does not exist. 213.84.53.62 (talk) 16:43, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Well, maybe not internationally prominent cities like Rome, Paris and London, but how about Modena, Italy which is at Modena? Brossard, Quebec which is at Brossard? Or Plymouth, Devon (a.k.a Plymouth, England) which, despite repeated attempts to move it, remains at Plymouth? There are hundreds of thousands of ghits for each of these disambiguated forms indicating how common this usage is, yet at WP that is not reason to move them from their base names when they are the unique or primary use of that name. Why should it be any different for U.S. cities? --Born2cycle (talk) 17:49, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
    • You are mistaken. This is a US custom that nobody uses in Europe. Nobody says Modena, Italy. This comma convention is an American convention. Sometimes the name of a city is ambiguous, and other means are used to disambiguate. If Frankfurt doesn't suffice, one says Frankfurt am Main. 213.84.53.62 (talk) 22:57, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
• A. Per WP:precision. Disambiguation terms should only be used when needed.TheFreeloader (talk) 17:27, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
• C. There is no need to change. City, state is the common form of the name for the majority of U.S. cities. It is not unnecessary disambiguation. There are far too many non-unique city names in the United States, and if we change the current method the next battle will be "my city deserves to be the primary, not yours" popularity contests among editors.DCmacnut<> 17:55, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
  • In other words, U.S. cities will be treated no differently than any other topic in Wikipedia, including cities of most other countries. Is that really so terrible so as to warrant this exceptional treatment? --Born2cycle (talk) 17:59, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
    • I agree with you that there is a problem with multiple standards for multiple countries, but Wikipedia has long operated on concensus, and concensus has been that editors in each country can come up with standards that fit their situation. Concensus has long held that for the United States, city, state is the appropriate. People are free to debate and try to change concensus on this matter, but so far, none of the statements I have seen make a compelling in favor of such a major change. It is more natural to use city, state in the vast majority of cases. You asked for opinions, and there is mine.DCmacnut<> 19:03, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
      • I understand that there was such consensus in the past, but this discussion indicates that consensus has significantly weakened, if not evaporated. If so, this would not be surprising, as predisambiguation in general seems to be falling out of favor lately not only for place names, but for many other topic areas as well.

        Anyway, what's relevant here are arguments in favor or against each of the proposals. So, you favor C because you believe, for example, that it is "more natural" to use Baton Rouge, Louisiana than Baton Rouge?

        I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "more natural", but WP:TITLE clarifies what is meant by "naturalness" in two ways:

        1. "use names and terms that readers are most likely to look for in order to find the article"
        2. "convey what the subject is actually called in English"

      Now, are readers most likely to use "Baton Rouge" or "Baton Rouge, Louisiana" to search for that city? Remember, we're discussing only those cities, like Baton Rouge, with either unique names or names for which they are the primary use. I suggest the former is much more likely to be used, if nothing else because it's less to type!

      As far as what the subject is "actually called in English", if you ask someone the name of their hometown (go ahead, try: "What is the name of the hometown in which you were born?"... not "Where were you born?", which is a different question), I suggest the answer most likely to be given is just the name, without the state, of the city, if the name is unique or the primary use of that name (e.g., someone from "Portland" is likely to answer either Portland, Oregon orPortland, Maine, but someone from "Baton Rouge" is probably going to say just "Baton Rouge"... because that's what that city "is actually called in English".

      So, to refer to cities with either unique names or for which they are the primary use of their names, don't you agree it is "more natural" to use just the name, without the state? --Born2cycle (talk) 20:00, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

      • In a word, no. I have my opinion and you have yours.DCmacnut<> 20:17, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
        • Well, neither of our opinions are relevant here, per WP:JDLI. What matters are the quality of the arguments that underlie our positions. If you want to define "natural" in your own mysterious way and then declare that "city, state" is more "natural", that's fine, but it's not pertinent to a discussion about WP guidelines. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:31, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
          • I'm not defining anything in a "mysterious way." City, State is the common name used in the majority of "English-language reliable sources", and is not overly precise per WP:PRECISION. It's not that I "don't like" the change. The fact remains that the guideline is what is is, and I have yet to see a compelling argument that making the change you recommend will improve the use of Wikipedia and its readers.DCmacnut<> 21:26, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
            • Please explain how, Baton Rouge, Louisiana is not overly precise per WP:PRECISION. In the mean time, I will explain how it is. WP:PRECISION states: "Articles' titles usually merely indicate the name of the topic. When additional precision is necessary to distinguish an article from other uses of the topic name, over-precision should be avoided. Be precise but only as precise as is needed. ".

              Now, does Baton Rouge indicate the name of the topic? Yep. Is additional precision necessary to distinguish Baton Rouge from other uses of "Baton Rouge"? Nope. Is Baton Rouge, Louisiana avoiding over-precision? Nope. Is Baton Rouge, Louisiana precise? Yep. Is it only as precise as is needed? Nope. There is no need to be so precise as to specify the state; Baton Rouge is sufficiently precise.

              Bam, on every WP:PRECISION point, Cityname beats Cityname, State when disambiguation is not required. It's no contest. I'm looking forward to learning how you see it otherwise. In addition to precision, Baton Rouge also clearly beats Baton Rouge, Louisiana on the WP:AT criteria of "Conciseness" ("shorter titles are generally preferred to longer ones.").

              As far as improving the encyclopedia for users, any benefit with respect to naming change will never be huge. However, to the extent that we disambiguate only when necessary, our titles more reliably convey whether the use of the name is unique or primary, or whether there are other uses. That is, if all U.S. cities were disambiguated only when necessary, then the title Portland, Oregon would clearly mean there is another relatively significant use of "Portland" (because if there wasn't, then that article would be at Portland). As a WP user I find this feature useful with book names, people names, film names, TV series and episode names, educational topic names, and names of cities in most other countries. For example, you can look at Category:Novels_by_Stephen_King and immediately see which of his novels have unique/primary names, and which of his novels have names that have other relatively significant uses. Or, take a look at Category:Port cities and towns in the United Kingdom to see which are unique/primary, like Bristol or have names with other relatively significant uses, like Sunderland. Why shouldn't we provide this feature for our readers with respect to U.S. city names too? What do they get in return for losing this feature by our putting all U.S. cities at city, state whether they require disambiguation or not?

              So, I've explained how this convention is not in conformance with WP:AT and WP:PRECISION as much as it would be if we put those cities that don't require disambiguation at Cityname as I propose with A, and I've explained how readers will benefit if we disambiguate only when necessary. Are you persuaded, or do you still just don't like it? --Born2cycle (talk) 04:28, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

• A If a name is unambiguous, there is no reason to disambiguate. --Polaron | Talk 20:19, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
• C. This guideline complies entirely with WP:TITLE#Explicit conventions, which was written to accommodate it. Wikipedia has many naming conventions relating to specific subject domains (as listed in the box at the top of this page). Sometimes these recommend the use of titles that are not strictly the common name (as in the case of the conventions for flora and medicine). This is another naming convention; and I'm bored with this cyclic effort to assert falsehood. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:39, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Accusing others with whom you disagree of asserting falsehood is not exactly assuming good faith, is it? I respectfully request that you strike that comment. - Nick Thorne ^talk 23:20, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

No, it is a statement of fact; the assertion is false. In this case, the policy - with B2C dissenting - has included the text quoted for a long time; it has always included some equivalent support for specific conventions. What B2C says is false; he should know it is false; and he has made the claim that the guidelines must be adjusted to comply with what he would like policy to say on multiple pages, in pursuit of an agenda he has been a (minority) advocate of since before he changed user name. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:49, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Of course, you have only stated why the US convention and WP:TITLE may not be in conflict, not that mandatory disambiguation is actually necessary. (If you look hard enough then there are loopholes in most policies for everyone's favourite idiosyncrasies). Despite the cherry-picking citing of the exemption, you cannot deny that the general principle of WP:TITLE is to use the common name, taking into account both preciseness and conciseness. You haven't addressed why US place names need to deviate from this general principle, and that is because there is no need for this deviation. Where is the evidence that the general naming principle across the vast majority of the encyclopedia is inadequate for US places? ILIKEIT is not an argument. Asserting that something is allowed does not mean that is worth doing. Accusing people with differing opinions of "falsehood" is not helpful either. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 22:04, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

No, I haven't explained why we disambiguate; others have. But rather than making you read them: Most American placenames are ambiguous, creating a de facto convention; in this the United States differs from other countries. It is difficult for a reader to tell, other than for the most famous places, whether a place-name is unambiguous or primary usage. Therefore, rather than providing an unexplained patchwork in which some of the articles are disambiguated and others in the same county are not, we choose to disambiguate all but the most obvious cases. Consistency with similar articles is a principle of WP:TITLE, after all. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:28, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

But aren't most Canadian, English, Australian, and other English-speaking countries' placenames ambiguous? Dohn joe (talk) 22:48, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

No, apparently not. The United States has more names just because of its size and populousness, and tends to have produced uniqueness within each State, not within the United States (so for example, the US has 21 Springfields, each in a different state, and innumerable Washingtons and Madisons).

For comparison, the use of aboriginal names in Australia seems to have provided a larger name-stock; they're used more often than Indian names are in the United States (for example, Indian names - except for the States themselves - are quite rare in New England) and the Australian names are not as often borrowed within the country (see Wyoming and Miami, on the other hand) and are more diverse because of the diversity of the aboriginal culture (the same Algonquian name is all too often used several places in the Northeast; the same Lakota names in the Far Midwest; and so on.)

And much of the English namestock was left behind; nobody ever bothered naming a settlement anywhere after Brill, say. So England has, again, a larger stock of names for a smaller area. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:08, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I wonder if anyone has done any analysis of this. Anectdotally, what you say makes sense, but I'd love to see some numerical evidence of percentage of placenames in (say) Massachusetts, Ontario, New South Wales, Jamaica, and England are either unique or their WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Dohn joe (talk) 23:59, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

[1] Hesperian 05:48, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Feel free. A sample of American placenames - and I believe other countries' - was examined in the archives of WT:NC (settlements) before the page was merged here. 77 out of 100 American names were ambiguous. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:05, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

• A Only disambiguate when necessary. - Nick Thorne ^talk 00:11, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
• A So far, I have heard people assert that it is most common for sources to use City, State. I have not yet seen anyone produce evidence of that, outside of the AP Handbook. Absent extremely strong evidence, it seems to me that these articles should conform to our normal naming principles, rather than specialized ones based on hypotheticals and unsourced claims. If someone were somehow able to demonstrate that, however, then I would be inclined to change my opinion. Three possible places to look: other encyclopedias, since we are specifically directed to look at them when considering other "ambiguous/multiple local names"; scholarly articles; and newspapers with a primarily national or international circulation. I hold that, even though the current procedure is to use City, State, the burden is on those who wish to maintain this counter-to-standard format to verify that their preferred titles meet the necessarily high bar required for an exception to standard conventions.98.176.17.189 (talk) 05:27, 22 December 2010 (UTC)Sorry, this was me. Please know I wasn't socking on purpose; I'm just on an unfamiliar computer which seems to log me out unexpectedly. Qwyrxian (talk) 08:30, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Per WP:ILLEGIT, we may not use sock accounts to discuss policy changes. Please sign in with your regular account.   Will Beback  talk  09:34, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
• C. Status quo works well for the USA and there is a good argument for extending it to other countries. Deb (talk) 12:22, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I supported 'C' for exactly the opposite reason. It works well for US cities because it is the convention inthe US. Outside the US is is not the convention and I would not want to see a US convention imposed on towns in other English-speaking countries. Martin Hogbin (talk) 15:07, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

• C Status quo is fine -- put the articles at the commonname and use redirects for the rest. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:56, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
• Comment. At this point I count 10 A votes, 11 C votes, and one other. Out of over 20 participants only half support the current wording (C) - that's no consensus by any measure. Accordingly, I've added a disputed tag to the U.S. city guideline. We really need to come up with wording that has consensus support, or remove it. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:09, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
• A We shouldn't be imposing excessive standardization, especially when it goes against popular usage. Newspapers have an entirely different purpose to encyclopedias, so using a newspaper style guide to determine article titles seems counterintuitive. The Celestial City (talk) 22:58, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
• A: If the city or town has a unique name, it is unnecessary to disambiguate that it is within a specific state.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:08, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
• C The status quo works well. Noel S McFerran (talk) 02:28, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
• C The status quo not only works well, but it is the standard usage in the United States in both written and spoken usage. We always put the state name on the envelope when mailing a letter. People don't say "I was born in Missoula"; they always say "I was born in Missoula, Montana", even though there are no other cities named Missoula. If I do a Google search for "Missoula," Google suggests that I must be looking for "Missoula Montana" and offers as its first choice "Missoula, MT - Official Website". Similarly, journalists and other writers follow the Manual of Style guidelines, on which our Wikipedia tradition is based: the state is always named at the first citation of a city, except for a few dozen specified cities that are considered to be recognizable without the state. This misguided attempt to eliminate the state from American city names would affect tens of thousands of article titles, without any improvement in Wikipedia's functionality and in fact a likely decline in functionality. (BTW, Born2cycle, I am more than a little surprised at your attempt to count "votes" above, only three days after your posted your proposal - because in another recent discussion which you started in an attempt to eliminate "unnecessary" disambiguation from neighborhood names, namely Talk:Alta Vista, San Diego, you strongly objected to "this whole approach" when someone began tallying people's responses.) --MelanieN (talk) 04:43, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
  • It's not standard usage in other encyclopedias, like the Brittanica:
    • Sacramento
  • BTW, notice how they disambiguate with parentheses:
    • Portland

  (I'd be happy to discount "votes" according to how well the arguments are presented, if you prefer, but I doubt you'd prefer the result). --Born2cycle (talk) 23:28, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

(Well, that's actually been your usual approach: "certain people are basing their arguments on the criteria that I prefer, therefore their opinion should count more." So I was surprised to see you promoting a head count in this thread. I'm guessing it was because about half the people here were agreeing with your viewpoint - which is more than usually do.) --MelanieN (talk) 01:27, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

• C, as it's clear and customary, not only here but in everyday use. Jonathunder (talk) 03:15, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
  • For those cities with names that are unique or primary, the base city name is also clear and customary, not only here but in every day use, and also complies better with the WP:TITLE naming criteria concise ("shorter titles are generally preferred") and precise ("only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously"). --Born2cycle (talk) 03:57, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
• C - I think the current system works fine. When writing for an international audience in plaintext, I tend to write "City, Country" (eg. Rome, Italy; or London, UK; or New Orleans, USA). When writing on Wikipedia, I tend to pipe the link to the article name, and add any in-text location disambiguators in plain text, such as "Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA" (depending of course on whether the location had already been imparted to the reader earlier in the article). Really, the actual title of an article is not something to argue over - better by far to ensure that the text in articles provides the necessary context and that piping is done where needed. Carcharoth (talk) 18:31, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
• A Born2cycle summed up my thoughts better than I could. --TorriTorri(^talk/_contribs) 22:55, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
• A. Enough with walled gardens. US is not that special a country that it needs its own naming conventions; the standard Wikipedia ones work fine. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 10:32, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
• A (with B being my second choice). Titles which are not ambiguous shouldn't be disambiguated—it can't be any simpler than that.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); December 27, 2010; 17:33 (UTC)
• Comment. If I'm not mistaken, the count is now 15 for A and 15 for C. While there appears to be no consensus for the specific proposal, the status quo (C) also lacks consensus. But it's only been a little over a week. Is there a compromise position? That was the point of B - but few are expressing a preference for a second choice so it's hard to judge if that's a compromise that has consensus. Each side seems to be dug in pretty hard. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:08, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
• 1st:C; 2nd:B Let's say for the sake of argument some tremendously important event were to occur in Amalga, Utah. No news media, textbook, or encyclopedia would say, "Osama bin Laden was apprehended in the small town of Amalga.", without the comma convention. Removing the state only makes sense (if at all) for very large, well-known cities. Ntsimp (talk) 22:48, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

• C I visit here upon noticing multiple edits in Connecticut neighborhood names, by Born2cycle, citing some supposed policy or guideline. There is NO WAY that any reader expects "Marion (Southington)" as a placename. Marion, Connecticut (as it was) or possibly "Marion, Southington, Connecticut" (but marion spans out of Southington) make sense. This whole proposal and the recent Connecticut edits, in the midst of unfinished RFC, seem just disruptive. --Doncram (talk) 23:54, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
  • My edit summary referred to the CT neighborhood convention (which is undocumented - there is no documented guideline for naming U.S. neighborhoods),; I did not cite a policy or guideline. The CT neighborhood names have nothing to do with this U.S. city naming RFC.

    In the CT neighborhoods case, I was just making the few remaining CT neighborhoods that require disambiguation, but were not disambiguated consistently with other CT neighborhoods, to be consistently disambiguated. See Category:Neighborhoods in Connecticut. How is that disruptive? --Born2cycle (talk) 00:02, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

    • Your edit summary asserted there is a convention, which you clarify now here and at your/my Talk pages that there is no such documented decision. In fact there is no convention. As u acknowledge there is variety in practice in the existing placenames in Connecticut; u discern one pattern and try to spread that. From being involved in CT placenames for some time, I am aware of a different trend and editors views besides Polaron's and urs. Ur changes there are moves towards what you prefer in this RFC. U are using disruption elsewhere to try to support your position in this RFC. That's the simplest explanation: u r spreading disruption to make some point here. --Doncram (talk) 03:26, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

• A. American cities shouldn't be treated differently than the rest of the world. The current naming convention overvalues consistency, placing it above conciceness and directness. We should also revisit the naming convention for American townships, which is even more onerous. They are named [township], [county], [state] (example), regardless of the need for disambiguation. - Eureka Lott 01:11, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Yikes! There was a tendency to name U.S. city neighborhoods similarly (neighborhoodName, cityName, stateName), also regardless of whether disambiguation was necessary, but thankfully that seems to be changing. For example, most CT neighborhoods are not disambiguated if they are unique or primary, and those that require disambiguation mostly use neighborhoodName, (StateName). See: Category:Neighborhoods_in_Connecticut. And for a WP:RM discussion about one that is out of compliance with that convention, see: Talk:Marion, Connecticut#Requested move. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:27, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
    • Don't make claims about what CT naming conventions are, they are in disorder and there has never been a good discussion and rationalization of them. In a requested move u just opened for the properly named neighborhood "Marion, Connecticut", u propose moving it to something else, another editor proposes moving to "Marion, Southington, Connecticut", etc. There is no good practice or consensus in CT to point to, to bring insight to this larger RFC. You might be able to ride in and make some disruption there, but don't claim there is a consensus there. --Doncram (talk) 03:26, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Interesting! Born2cycle has tried multiple times to change the naming of neighborhoods of San Diego, which until recently have all been in the format NeighborhoodName, San Diego, California. He wants to change them to NeighborhoodName if he feels they don't require disambiguation, and NeighborhoodName (San Diego) if they do. One such recent, unsuccessful attempt can be seen here; the result of that discussion was NeighborhoodName, San Diego, rather than the format with parentheses that he prefers. From what you say it sounds like he is going ahead and inserting the parenthetical disambiguation into other neighborhoods - which he will then cite as precedent the next time he tries to do it in San Diego! --MelanieN (talk) 07:22, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. Born2cycle and another participant in this RFC have changed names of Connecticut articles to Neighborhood (town) format, then Born2cycle comes here pointing to the pattern he sees (now) in the Category of Connecticut neighborhoods. Good for you, that you have more organized resistance to that kind of disruption. It's too bad so much of our wikipedia lives is spent dealing with this kinda stuff. --Doncram (talk) 07:55, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

When I first looked at that cat, all entries (several dozen) followed the convention except for three, so I changed them to comply as well. But the convention was obvious prior to those three moves. At the time, I had no idea how it came to be so, except I knew one other move for compliance was made by Polaron. --Born2cycle (talk) 08:27, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

For the record, the CT neighborhoods category in which Born2cycle believed he discerned a pattern included 17 mis-named articles on CDPs (all under new Requested move to be corrected to comply with Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)) and 9 articles which didn't belong at all (which i just removed). It was and still is a mess. --Doncram (talk) 17:04, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

• C. I am convinced by statements by Users Pmanderson and MelanieN. Specifically that "most American placenames are ambiguous, creating a de facto convention;" and that in the current US practice "you don't have to wonder what to title an article or how to wikilink it." I looked up the relatively few dab pages I could think of with more than one Scottish placename on them, and it's clear the situation in the US (and perhaps also elsewhere) is different. Perhaps for this reason alone we simply don't use the US convention in normal speech or writing - no-one refers to Dallas, Moray as it is generally obvious whether you mean the local village or the Texan city. I see from the dab page there are more than a dozen others in the US, none of which I had ever heard of. Re comments by Ntsimp - I don't agree. I think UK news outlets might say "Osama bin Laden was apprehended in the small town of Amalga in Utah". In short to a degree we are dealing with WP:ENGVAR, which in my view trumps WP:PLACE in this instance. For the record, I have not been an American since the tragic events of the Jurassic. Ben MacDui 10:01, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Ben MacDui, you've convinced me. This must certainly be an instance of WP:ENGVAR. The UK style in your example is foreign to me; I was completely ignorant of it. I think that's likely what's going on in this entire discussion. Ntsimp (talk) 14:39, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree, there is an important WP:ENGVAR aspect to this discussion. Ben MacDui is exactly right about the way disambiguation is handled in UK English. Martin Hogbin (talk) 15:37, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I suggest the ENGVAR argument is a red herring. After all, there is no dispute about city, state being a common way to disambiguate in American English in contexts in which disambiguation is required. The fact that sources don't repeatedly refer to cities in that format clearly indicates its use is for disambiguation. In WP, we don't add precision when it is not necessary for disambiguation. This is ultimately about only those U.S. cities with unique or primary names, even if it's the minority of cities. And even if, say, Chicago was the only city in the U.S. that had a unique name, why not leave it at Chicago? We would unnecessarily disambiguate it just because every other city in the U.S. needed to be disambiguated? Why? --Born2cycle (talk) 16:08, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

The point is that "City, State" in American English is not solely (or even primarily) about disambiguation—and using the large, well-known city of Chicago (an article whose naming is completely off-topic in this discussion) as the example obscures the point. The example of Amalga, Utah, unique but obscure, is more to the point. "City, State" is the common way to designate all but the largest and most famous communities in American English, whether or not the name is unique. Ntsimp (talk) 16:33, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Born2cycle, as I understand it, someone who lived in Amalga, in Utah, if asked where they came from, may well actually say, 'Amalga, Utah'. In other words, in the English dialect of their choice the place is called 'Amalga, Utah'. Imposing a naming convention on someone who lives in a particular place, just for the abstract concept of consistency, is likely to cause unnecessary friction. I cannot speak for someone from Amalga but I can say how I would feel if this were done the other way round. Martin Hogbin (talk) 17:17, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Well the point about the Chicago example had to do with the issue of only a minority not needing disambiguation being justification for disambiguating all, but fine, let's go with Amalga.

Asking "where they came from" to someone from Amalga can result in a variety of answers depending on where they are when the question is asked, varying from "the United States" (if, say in China) to "Utah" (if somewhere on the east coast) to "1234 Pine Street" (if at a store in Amalga). A more appropriate question to look at here would be, "what is the name of where you are from?". The answer to that is likely to be just "Amalga", every time, and that's the point here. By putting that article at Amalga, Utah rather than at Amalga we are misleading those outside of the U.S. to come to mistakenly believe that the name of that town is "Amalga, Utah". That's wrong. The name is just "Amalga".

Speaking of Amalga, note that Amalga is a redlink, demonstrating one of the chronic problems with all categories of articles that are predisambiguated by conventions like U.S. cities are. I wrote about this and related problems below at #Another option, and it was referred to as "Evidence-free conjectures". But this is perfect evidence, particularly since it was chosen by a proponent of U.S. place name predisambiguation, not by me. Like most such evidence, it probably won't last long now that it's been identified as a redlink, but I note that this article has existed since 2002, and no one has apparently ever noticed and cared that the redirect from Amalga was missing. It will surely be fixed shortly, now that I've pointed it out, but I suggest that there are countless other such missing links (and the other problems I mentioned below) for these articles, precisely because of "predisambiguation mentality". I won't repeat here what I said below, and how "only disambiguate when necessary" fixes it, but I welcome others to continue discussion on these points down there at #Another option. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:29, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Yet Amalga would still have to be disambiguated at Amalga, Utah, even under your proposed A, because there is also an unincorporated town of Amalga, Idaho and a historical town of Amalga, Alaska. Those articles don't exist yet, but could be created. So even an obscure name like Amalga further emphasises that most U.S. placenames will need to be at Name, State. Even if you argue that it should be at Name (State), it will leaves us with inconsistent naming and lead to multiple (and likely controversial) moves as editors start claiming "their" city has priority over the Name.DCmacnut<> 20:24, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

We already have those debates, but they currently involve redirects instead of article titles. Sacramento redirects to Sacramento, California, and other communities are listed at Sacramento (disambiguation). The same applies to Dayton, Tampa, and Tacoma. If the primary topic is clearly established and the redirect is already in place, what's wrong with moving the article over the redirect? - Eureka Lott 20:47, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

• Dcmacnut, well, if Amalga would still have to be disambiguated per A because it is neither unique nor the primary use of the name, then it's not a good example here. However, from what you say here, it seems like the Amalga in Utah does meet the primary topic criteria relative to these other uses so obscure they don't even have coverage in WP yet. Even Microsoft Amalga is probably too obscure to challenge the Utah town for being primary topic, but an obscure town with a truly unique name would probably be best. How about Lompoc? --Born2cycle (talk) 20:55, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I guess this is as good a place as any to respond to Born2cycle's claim that "The fact that sources don't repeatedly refer to cities in that format clearly indicates its use is for disambiguation." This is definitely not what it indicates. When writing about a person, you switch to just the surname after using the full name. That doesn't mean the full name is for disambiguation. It's about conciseness, avoiding redundancy, and other points of good style. For me and other Americans outside of California, Lompoc is Lompoc, California. Giving the name of an unfamiliar town without its state is really weird and sounds like a foreign dialect of English. Ntsimp (talk) 00:39, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, point taken, when the name is unique we add on , state not for disambiguation, but for precision (beyond that needed for disambiguation). Yes, for those who are unfamiliar with the topic, including most Americans outside of California, we would likely use Lompoc, California to refer to that town. Of course. No argument there.

But recognizability is one of the key general naming criteria identified at WP:TITLE, and it is specified in terms of someone familiar with the topic, not someone who is unfamiliar with it: "an ideal title will confirm, to readers who are familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic, that the article is indeed about that topic". This makes sense since someone unfamiliar with a topic cannot by definition be made to "recognize" it, until after he or she is made familiar with it... recognition of a topic implies previous encounter with the topic! This point about naming for recognizability being only for those already familiar with the topic, combined with conciseness ("shorter titles are generally preferred to longer ones") and precision ("...only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously"), all clearly favor plain names of unique topics like Lompoc over more precise and longer names like Lompoc, California.

That is, the title indicated by the proposed wording in A, Lompoc, complies much better with our naming policy than does the less concise and more precise than necessary, Lompoc, California. The fact that the longer title makes it possible for someone unfamiliar with the town to know what state it is in from only the title is, according to our naming policy, irrelevant to deciding how to name the title. --Born2cycle (talk) 03:35, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

• A. The names of cities are usually unique within a state, but this varies greatly throughout the United States as a whole. Ultimately, the question arises which state "owns" the name. I am of the opinion that the status of a city in size, governmental importance, or international status should have no bearing on how the article is titled. The United States is a collection of states - just like the European Union is collection of states (albeit more of confederation than federal union). In cases of duel-names in the EU, I don't expect that one city would automatically become the official owner of the name. It is ultimately disrespectful and takes away from the neutrality of Wikipedia. The cities of the United States should be given the same level of respect. DevinCook (talk) 11:33, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

But in the EU we do not say things like 'Paris, France'. Martin Hogbin (talk) 15:37, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

• C. A view from outside the US. Originally I was going to support 'A', because that is how we generally do things in the UK. 'London' has only one meaning (unless qualified) to most Brits and even with relatively ambiguous names, such 'Newcastle' we generally have the convention that 'Newcastle' alone would refer to the most well known place in the UK with that name - Newcastle upon Tyne. On the other hand, in the US it would seem that it is a de facto convention to use 'Name, State'. As we use both US and UK English and conventions in WP and the policy is to use US English for obviously US-based articles, I guess we should use the US naming convention for US cities. We Brits on the other hand would not want to see 'London, England', for example. Martin Hogbin (talk) 14:05, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Yeah, but what if you're near London, Ontario? :-) --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:55, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Then the conversation goes, 'I thought you said you lived in Canada?'. 'Yes I do, there is another London in Ontario you know'. :-)

• C. I think the current setup for city naming in the United States is fine. However, we need to develop a more precise standard for neighborhood naming. Dough4872 17:48, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
• C per Hmains and Eluchil404. ThemFromSpace 18:27, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
• C - The status quo works just fine, and the status quo is consistent with the way Americans identify cities when communicating with people outside the local area. This likely has to do with the large land area of the country, and the large number of populated places that have names. While it is likely true that there is just one "Ishpeming" in the world, that city's denizens do not presume that the rest of the world recognizes the name, so it is conventionally referred to as "Ishpeming, Michigan." (BTW, much the same thing can be said regarding Wollongong, New South Wales.) Furthermore, maintaining the "city, state" form as a near-universal convention for U.S. places prevents many essentially pointless arguments over whether a particular city name is a primary topic. --Orlady (talk) 22:51, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
• A. While City, State is commonly used in the US and to an extent internationally, I doubt it's the most common form for many cities with unambiguous names. Jafeluv (talk) 00:28, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
• A. There's no reason to use "City, State," when the name is unambiguous or a primary topic. Baton Rouge, Sacramento, and so forth are perfectly fine article titles. To address some of the arguments for the status quo I've seen, I don't see how editors knowing how to link is relevant. Editors will be able to link via "City, State," regardless, and people who don't like getting to articles through redirects can change those links if they like. The idea that people won't know what state the city's in are also silly - if they are at the article itself, the article will obviously say that. If they are clicking through another article, well, that article should provide context when it's appropriate, and there's no guarantee as to what text other articles will show, anyway. I'm not sure how having an article called "Lompoc" is "really bizarre" or "out of some foreign dialect of English." It is how the city is normally referred to. It's how articles on cities are always titled in print encyclopedias. It's the name of the actual city. And again, in what context, exactly, will people be confused? The article will say it's in California in the first line. john k (talk) 06:08, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
• C Per above, it ain't broke. --Kbdank71 16:28, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

• Point is that the base assumption of these naming conventions has problems. A while ago, it was decided that Las Vegas should not be the place for one of the cities with this name or a redirect. It currently is a dab page. In processing the new incoming links which run about 5 a day or approaching 2,000 in a year, at least 90% are not for the city. While I agree that this is not the normal case, it does show that the normal can be problematic. Add to that the problems with category names where there is no way to see what has been added to any category and you have a recipe for disaster. The better solution is to have all places in the form of place_name, some_country_dependent_higher_level_division. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:08, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm still not sure I understand the argument that "Las Vegas" is ambiguous between the city proper and the Strip, but "Las Vegas, Nevada," is not. "Las Vegas, Nevada," in fact implies the postal usage "Las Vegas, NV", which actually includes the Strip. The use of pseudo-postal names to designate municipalities seems problematic to me. john k (talk) 06:22, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Trying to fix issues with category names by changing article titles is a case of the tail wagging the dog. If category naming is an issue, then fix the way categories are named. I am starting to come to the conclusion that the concept of categorisation is not worth the problems it creates for the rest of the encyclopedia. The idea that the article title should provide context to a name is a strange one too. Why should this principle only apply to place names? Should we also haveCalcium (element) and Heroin (drug)? It seems far more practical to treat disambiguation as a necessary evil and to rely on the article to provide the context needed, across the entire project. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 03:23, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

What clarity! WP needs more of this kind of thoughtfulness. --Born2cycle (talk) 08:36, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

The error is in thinking the state name serves only to disambiguate. Powers ^T 14:59, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I have never understood the insistence on forcing conformity of style when it comes to article titles... no matter what the topic area. Of all the criteria at WP:Article titles, I think conformity is the least important. Conformity is nice, but it is not necessary... and should always take second place to other criteria and needs (recognizably, brevity, the need for disambiguation, etc.). I see nothing wrong with different articles having different title styles, as long as the reader can easily find the article on the city they are searching for. Blueboar (talk) 15:38, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Conformity assists that, as well as assisting editors (which, while a secondary goal, is still important). Powers ^T 16:07, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Conformity establishes part of the look and uniformity of the encyclopedia. If 98% of the articles have state, city, then the other 2% look out of place. If we go to 50%, then it looks random, like there is no style sheet. If we go down to 10%, then they look out of place. Better to have a uniform look and feel for the readers' benefit. The fact that article name are predictable is a good thing. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:24, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Vegaswikian, "The other 2% look out of place" was essentially one of the main arguments made against even moving the U.S. cities on the AP list to their base names. Yet here we are... do Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York City, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, or Seattle "look out of place"? You get used to it, don't you? Does Carmel-by-the-Sea (which I just noticed is at its base name, not disambiguated) "look out of place"? Oh, my let's call the naming police! What a travesty! Seriously, what is the problem?

If the Green Bay, Wisconsin → Green Bay proposal succeeds, will Green Bay "look out of place"? Really? Why? How will that be a problem? By the "looks out of place" reasoning Cher should be moved to Cher (entertainer) because Cher "looks out of place" compared to Madonna (entertainer), Usher (entertainer), and Common (entertainer), and South Australian cities Adelaide, Port Lincoln, Port Pirie and Whyalla should be moved to Adelaide, South Australia, Port Lincoln, South Australia, Port Pirie, South Australia and Whyalla, South Australia respectively because they "look out of place" at their base names compared to Victor Harbor, South Australia and Murray Bridge, South Australia. The "looks out of place" argument completely ignores the reality of how mostother Wikipedia articles are named (precision is usually added to the name of the subject in the title only when necessary for disambiguation, thus making some more precise than other the norm, not something unusual).

Besides, I think your 2% estimate is grossly underestimated. I would expect around a third, maybe close to half, of all U.S. cities have names that are either unique or or the city is the primary use of that name. Besides, the unique or primary use ones are trivial to identify since for most of them the base name, like Sacramento, Spokane, Boise, Nashville, Nantucket, Tallahassee, etc., already redirects to the article about the city. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:10, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Green Bay has many uses, including the name of several bodies of water. It is not at all obvious that the Wisconsin city name could be considered a primary topic. --Orlady (talk) 22:57, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I did not make an estimate. I just used some numbers. I don't know how many place names are of the compound form. But pushing for dropping the second level will not remove all of these. There will still be many conflicts in the name space. Keeping and expanding the US convention will actually produce fewer exceptions and improved clarity and readability. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:38, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Powers, you say the error is in thinking that the state name serves only to disambiguate. Who thinks that? Clearly, including the state name serves a descriptive purpose, by adding precision to the title in addition to conveying the most common name of the topic. So the mistake is not in thinking that the state names serves only to disambiguate, but in thinking the title should do anything other than convey what the topic is usually called, and be the unique or primary use of the name in the title. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:10, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Born2cycle, you say the error is in thinking that the title should do more than just convey what the topic is usually called. Who thinks that? Powers ^T 21:36, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I thought you were thinking that the title should do more than just convey what the topic is usually called, unless you're also thinking that U.S. cities are called with the state qualifier more often than without it. Are you? If so, I suggest google search counts indicate otherwise, at least for cities whose names are either unique or are the primary use of the name, which is all that is relevant here. Here are two examples:

• Carmel-by-the-Sea, California About 40,800 results
• Carmel-by-the-Sea About 571,000 results

• Tallahassee About 10,600,000 results
• Tallahassee, Florida About 1,550,000 results

Anyway, you say the error is in thinking that the state name serves only to disambiguate. So, what purpose do you believe the state name serves, and is that a purpose information other than state added to Wikipedia titles serves? If so, what is that information in which titles? --Born2cycle (talk) 22:56, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

It's hardly surprising that "Cityname" gets more hits than "cityname, state", since one is a subset of the other! Even if you were to adjust the search terms to account for that, however, it's a crude tool at best; it fails to take into account the differing contexts in which city names are used. For example, many hits for the name without the state will be local sources where the context (meaning the state) is already established and specifying it would be redundant. That's not the case in a generalist encyclopedia. It also fails to take into account that the state name is not repeated if it's been specified once already. As for other purposes, there are several: clarity, consistency, simplicity, and recognizability. There may be more, but that list should suffice for my purposes. Powers ^T 00:04, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Are you suggesting establishing context is a purpose WP article titles are supposed to serve? If so, what is the basis for that? If not, why are you talking about context? --Born2cycle (talk) 05:39, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

No, and it's getting difficult to believe you're not intentionally missing my point. What I'm saying is that the name that we consider "most common" per WP:COMMONNAME changes depending on context. On Wikipedia, our context is world-wide, and in world-wide contexts, most U.S. cities are referred to with the state name appended on first reference. Cities are mentioned without the state name only when a more limited context has been established, either by a previous reference to the state, or by the reader's knowledge of the local area to which a source pertains. Powers ^T 11:58, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, now I'm with you. Thank you for having the patience and taking the time to explain what you mean, and that is a very good point. However, to use your words, it's also true that in this world-wide context, most cities in other countries are referred to with the country name or a state-like administrative unit appended on first reference... for example: Nice, France, Cork, Ireland, Salzburg, Austria, Brossard, Quebec, Whyalla, South Australia. These cities are mentioned without the disambiguator only when a more limited context has been established, either by a previous reference to the context, or by the reader's knowledge of the context to which a source pertains.

Yet the titles we use in Wikipedia for these cities is just the name of the city, without the context, unless additional context (as in Cork (city)) is required for disambiguation. For example, the cities just mentioned are at: Nice, Cork (city), Salzburg, Brossard and Whyalla, respectively.

So, I ask again, why should cities in the U.S. be treated by Wikipedia differently, inconsistently, from other topics in general, and in particular from other cities in the world? Why does the common name in a world-wide context reasoning you just gave not apply to non-U.S. cities in the way I demonstrated? And since it does not apply to them, why should it apply to U.S. cities? --Born2cycle (talk) 15:14, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

(sorry for outdenting) No, Born2cycle, as I also said earlier on this page, one does not say "Nice, France". Maybe you are used to hearing such things, it may be natural in your local context, but it is very uncommon in Europe. Since Wikipedia is not a US-only enterprise, it refers to places as one commonly does. It is Amsterdam, and Washington, D.C., and Frankfurt (am Main). 213.84.53.62 (talk) 13:07, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

It's a bit of a compromise, I suppose. That is, a compromise between a truly global view and a local view. Perhaps earlier I should have said "national" or "regional" context rather than global. My sense is that the states of the U.S. are so well known and differ enough from each other that they are more frequently used with U.S. city names than country names are on other cities around the globe. On the other hand, I can't say I'd object strenuously if editors wished to add country names to most cities -- although I might caution against it because of certain awkward constructions that might result such as "Brighton, Monroe County, New York, United States of America". The other factor is that so many United States communities are named after other communities in other states (due to migration patterns and a lack of creativity on the part of the pioneers) that most communities would require disambiguation anyway, and it just feels right to go ahead and do them all that way. Powers ^T 14:20, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your honesty. Yes, I'm afraid the objection to putting U.S. cities that don't need disambiguation at their base name ultimately comes down to "it just feels right". I really think that if you go to Carmel-by-the-Sea and give it a sec, it will feel right too. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:07, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Ah, yes, the exception that proves the rule. Anyway, "it just feels right" is not the same as "I like it". Just because the reasoning is ineffable doesn't mean it's invalid. And, it's only a small part of my reasoning anyway. Powers ^T 19:09, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Powers, I'm not sure what distinction you're drawing between "it just feels right" and "I like it" that is significant here (I concede that they're not the same in ways that are not relevant to this discussion). WP:JDLI states, "Emotion does not trump logic at Wikipedia." clearly indicating it's referring to "feels right" as much as to "like it".

As to the rest of the reasoning, it seems to be a rationalization of what "feels right". The aesthetic attraction of everything named consistently according to the same pattern is undeniable, but it's not the only consideration to be weighed.

Part of your reasoning is based on a sense of how often U.S. cities are called by city vs. city, state as compared to how often international cities are called by city vs. city, country, let's look:

• London, England: 22,400,000, London: 472,000,000 5%
• Omaha, Nebraska: 2,320,000 Omaha: 25,900,000 9%

Granted that's a small sample and has various problems associated with google tests, but it's still better than by going by a totally subjective personal sense, and indicates the difference is not that significant.

Finally, I don't understand why it matters whether 90%, 9% or .9% of topics in a given group have either unique or primary use names to decide whether they should be at the base name. This was an argument made against moving the cities on the AP list, which of course amount to only a tiny percentage of all U.S. cities. That was no problem. Other than as a rationalization for what "feel rights", I don't understand why anyone would object to moving the remaining unique or primary use U.S. cities to their base names because they amount to some small percentage. No matter how small that percentage is, it's much larger percentage of all U.S. cities than the two dozen or so AP cities currently comprise. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:00, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, yes, it's quite obvious by now that you don't understand why anyone objects. I'm about ready to give up trying to explain it, honestly. Powers ^T 20:38, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

It's becoming obvious to me that the main purposes of removing state names from article names are (1) to obfuscate and confuse readers and (2) to help ensure that Wikipedia contributors spend more time in the inherently pointless (but apparently very stimulating) activity of arguing about inherently trivial topics (e.g., over whether a particular U.S. city is the primary topic for a name like "Springfield") than in building encyclopedia content. --Orlady (talk) 04:42, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Hear hear. --Doncram (talk) 06:17, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

There is obviously no primary topic for "Springfield." The normal naming conventions seem to work well enough for every other topic on wikipeia, so I don't see why pointless and ridiculous arguments would be more likely to be generated here. In fact, most naming arguments arise out of special conventions, not out of normal application of the general naming guidelines. john k (talk) 06:22, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Another reason is secondary disambiguation. To stick with the current comma-convention keeps a lot of other disambiguation more stable and easy. Many historic site articles use (City, State) as clarifying disambiguation, and i hate for there to be endless nannering about how since City is primaryusage, Smith House (City, State) should be moved to Smith House (City) now. A lot elsewhere is more straightforward, if City, State is used. For example, there was apparently just a successful quick, uninformed RM of Ann Arbor, Michigan to Ann Arbor, counter to the consensus guideline here (see Talk:Ann Arbor#Requested move). I suppose that means that the correct disambiguation of First National Bank Building (Ann Arbor, Michigan) and Thomas Earl House (Ann Arbor, Michigan) (currently a redlink), both NRHP-listed places withinNational Register of Historic Places listings in Washtenaw County, Michigan), now goes into contention? And what appears at First National Bank Building (disambiguation) and Thomas Earl House (disambiguation) now also all goes into endless contention? It's not worth it. --Doncram (talk) 06:17, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

• In addition to what I've already said, I'd like to point out that usage of "City, State," is often misleading. Our articles on localities are based, for the most part, on municipalities, minor civil divisions, and census-designated places. Our article on Rockville, Maryland, for example, is about the City of Rockville. The most common usage of "City, State," in everyday parlance, on the other hand, is for post office addresses. Post office addresses are usually quite different from municipalities. The post office designation "Rockville, MD," for example, comprises a significantly larger area than just the city of Rockville. Southern Methodist University has a post office address that says "Dallas, Texas," but is actually located in the tiny enclave of University Park. The Las Vegas strip is outside the City of Las Vegas, but to mail something to Caesar's Palace you'd still address it to "Las Vegas, NV." In some cases, such confusion is inevitable - Rockville, for example, is ambiguous with Rockville Centre, New York and other, smaller places, and isn't really a primary topic, so we don't have much choice but to use that form. But there's no reason to insist on this potentially misleading format when it isn't necessary. john k (talk) 06:22, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Another option

Hey folks - not being entirely satisfied with any of the above options, I propose an Option D. This option keeps the first paragraph as is, while making the following change to the second paragraph of the guideline: "Provided it is the primary topic for that name, any United States city may or may not have its article named [[City]]..."

This option preserves the "canonical form" language of the first paragraph, letting people know that "City, State" is a generally accepted way to refer to U.S. cities, while allowing more flexibility on an individual article basis - but emphasizing the importance of renaming only where it is truly appropriate. The practical effect should be that only articles where [[City]] currently redirects to [[City, State]] will be candidates for renaming. And since the language remains permissive and not obligatory, changes will only happen where there is consensus. Feel free to support, oppose, or comment. (Or ignore, for that matter....) Dohn joe (talk) 19:24, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I feel that this Option D will just lead to editors, such as those favoring Option A above, requesting moves of a large number of towns and communities. --Bejnar (talk) 20:01, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

The reason we don't do that is straightforward, and should be included in this page: How is a reader to tell whether Matawan, New Jersey is the primary topic for Matawan or not - without consulting an encyclopedia first? Most US communities aren't either unique or primary. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:39, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so let's posit that a reader doesn't know whether Matawan, New Jersey is a primary topic or not. Er...what then? How oes this lead to actual problems? No matter what our naming convention is, typing "Matawan, New Jersey" into the search box will take them to the article. Typing "Matawan" will either take them to the article or to a disambiguation page (or to another page with a hatnote, I guess, if there's another subject that is a primary topic for "Matawan"). All of this is true regardless of where the article is. john k (talk) 06:26, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

• The challenges of topics with names with similar spellings are not unique to U.S. cities. Sometimes determining whether a given name has a primary topic is also challenging. Neither issue is unique to U.S. cities nor is a reason to treat U.S. cities differently.

  If requests to move large numbers of towns and cities did occur, so what? It happened with the cities on the AP list, and was hardly an issue at all. It happened with Carmel-by-the-Sea, and nobody noticed. What's the problem? --Born2cycle (talk) 16:07, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

• We have to decide that even if we use "Matawan, New Jersey" as the name of the article, when deciding whether Matawan should redirect to the article about the town (if it's the primary topic) or to a disambiguation page (if there's no primary topic) or something else (if there's a primary topic other than the town). A. di M. (talk) 17:15, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. And this highlights one of the problems with predisambiguation - apparently, it causes editors like PMA to believe or assume that putting an article at a unique predisambiguated title obviates them from their responsibility to consider treatment of the base name of that topic as it applies to that topic.

As a result, it is very common for the base name of topics with predisambiguated titles to be neglected with respect to how that name is treated relative to that topic. The problems are manifested as:

1. missing redirects (the predisambiguated topic's base name is a red link),
2. missing links (the predisambiguated topic is not listed on the dab page for the predisambiguated topic's base name, nor in a hat note of the primary topic article when there is no dab page), and
3. the predisambiguated topic is not considered a "significant competing use" in primary topic determinations for that base name (e.g., Plymouth).

--Born2cycle (talk) 18:23, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

But this proposal won't do do any of those things.

The solution to missing redirects or dab entries is to create them. Moving the articles around will not help; indeed it is more likely to result double entries or none.

As for Plymouth: it is not the responsibility of this page to counter British or American nationalism; if consensus can be formed that Drake's home town is not primary usage for Plymouth - and that there is none - so much the better. But this proposal will do little or nothing for that; Plymouth, California will still need disambiguation (so will Plymouth, Massachusetts; it's not primary, it's merely the second most common reference of a name with many); the difficulty is to persuade people that Plymouth, Devon is desirable. Arguing loudly that Carmel-by-the-Sea, California is not desirable is unlikely to help in that. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:16, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Of course the solution to creating missing redirects is to create them, but editors have to care in order to do that, and "predisambiguation mentality" quite apparently inhibits that kind of care. The fact that a significant inappropriate consideration in city naming might be nationalism is beside the more general point that applies to all kinds of topics that are predisambiguated, not just U.S. cities. When the default is the base name rather than a predisambiguated name then consideration for how the topic is represented by the base name is naturally improved, and that's why proposal A would help with all of the issues listed. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:29, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Evidence-free conjectures of your own. The work of adding redirects and dab entries is widely ducked; most people add them when they have trouble finding articles (if then). This occurs with all articles, whatever their titles or topics; none of this declamation gives any reason why option A should make any difference.

For the rest, I agree with Lt. Powers above (and the archives of WP:NC (settlement) offer plenty of confirming evidence, under the user-name B2C wore out boring people on this subject). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:18, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to see that discussion; is there a non-dead link to it? --MelanieN (talk) 05:05, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

This is the final page; it links to the others. Born2Cycle was editing under a different username at the time, but his identity should be clear enough; most of the archive is filled with his campaign. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:35, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

• Question I see that every country has its own link on the "Naming conventions" project page, which suggests that each country may have its own rules or can reach its own consensus. Does that suggest that the only people participating in this discussion should be Americans? Or at least, should people offering their recommendation for the titling of United States cities identify whether they are or are not Americans? --MelanieN (talk) 05:05, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

BTW I see that the same convention is also used for Australia: "Most Australian town/city/suburb articles are at Town, State no matter what their status of ambiguity is." Are we discussing Australian placenames here too, or only United States placenames? --MelanieN (talk) 05:17, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi Melanie. There have many, many discussions about the Australian convention (on this page and at WP:AWNB ). American views in those discussions were very welcome and useful by the way, even if I did not agree with them. (There seems to be a lot of desire to shut down or illegitemise differing opinions by the supporters of mandatory disambiguation ...) There is another going on now at Talk:Alice Springs, Northern Territory if you want to take a look (or participate, even). I would think that attempting to broaden the scope of this discussion beyond US place names would be seen by most as an transparent attempt to deflect and divert the discussion from the topic at hand. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 05:30, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Please assume good faith. My question was an honest one: are the guidelines for a given country decided by Wikipedians at large, or primarily by Wikipedians from that country? And would a decision here affect the guidelines for Australia as well, since they follow the same general pattern? I take it your belief is that guidelines for each country should be discussed separately, and that no particular precedence should be given to the input of people from that country. Thank you for the invitation to participate in the current Australia discussions, but I will decline, because I don't know what the common usage in Australia is. I do know that the common usage in the Untied States is virtually always to say "city, state" in both written and spoken usage. We always say "I'm going to Buffalo, New York" even though there is no other city named Buffalo. (In fact, if someone did say "I'm going to Buffalo," the listener would almost certainly reply "Buffalo, New York?") --MelanieN (talk) 15:32, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Remember, we're talking only about cities that are either unique or the primary use of their name. Buffalo is not one of those.

People are much more likely to say "I'm flying to Sacramento", "I'm flying to Las Vegas", "I'm flying to Spokane", or "I'm flying to Orlando", than "I'm flying to Sacramento, California", "I'm flying to Las Vegas, Nevada", "I'm flying to Spokane, Washington", or "I'm flying to Orlando, Florida".

Of course, it's all about context. If the context is such that the state is not clear, usually the state is specified. With unique and primary names like Sacramento, Las Vegas, Spokane and Orlando more context is generally not needed, with cities whose names are homonyms for other uses, it's more natural to add additional context. One might argue that with WP titles more context is required or useful, but we generally don't add information to names in Wikipedia titles in order to provide more contextual information, unless it is needed for disambiguation (like for Buffalo). --Born2cycle (talk) 22:28, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Don't forget that classic song, "Shuffle Off to Buffalo...New York" ;) Dohn joe (talk) 22:56, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Is it necessary to point out that Buffalo is ambiguous anyway? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:20, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

• 

• Comment Considering the evidence at Commons:Category:City limit signs in the United States and Commons:Category:City welcome signs in the United States, it appears that most of these places don't use the state name when referring to themselves. I struggle to see why Wikipedia should. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 00:07, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
  • LOL. Good one. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:30, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

I think most people, driving along a highway, are already aware what state they are in. --MelanieN (talk) 01:27, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

• Comment One of the beauties of the current system is that it is so consistent, so predictable. Every city is treated exactly the same (with 30 exceptions supported by outside authority). You don't have to wonder what to title an article or how to wikilink it. But if this convention is changed as suggested, every city will require research to know how to cite it. Take a biographical article, which typically mentions several cities: you would have to look up each city to know how to cite it. Was the subject born in "Racine" or in "Racine, Wisconsin"? Did he settle in "Cody" or in "Cody, Wyoming"? Under the current system you don't have to bother with questions like that. The change would make it more difficult, more hassle to improve Wikipedia.
  Another advantage of the current system is that it immediately conveys what KIND of article it is. An article title like "Cayucos, California" or "Sleepy Eye, Minnesota" immediately tells you that this is a geographical article, about a place in the United States. An article titled "Cayucos" or "Sleepy Eye" could be about absolutely anything. --MelanieN (talk) 15:35, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
  • The first sentence in Cayucos, California "immediately conveys what KIND of article it is". Same for Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. The article text would not change if these articles were moved to Cayucos and Sleepy Eye, respectively. --TorriTorri(^talk/_contribs) 00:04, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
  • As to your first point, I fail to understand why redirects wouldn't take care of it, as has been done for most of the cities on the AP list. --TorriTorri(^talk/_contribs) 00:09, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
    • But to wikilink to "City" alone, you have to look up the article first. Under the status quo, I can be confident that Farmington, New Mexico links right where I want, even though I've never looked at that article. Ntsimp (talk) 00:26, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
      • You can still link to Farmington, New Mexico, which would be a redirect if the article is under another name. Jafeluv (talk) 00:31, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
        • You miss my point. Under the status quo, that link didn't require me to look up any of the umpteen other places named Farmington. If the standard were to change to "City" only for titles, then I would need to know whether or not the one I care about is unique. Ntsimp (talk) 00:51, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
          • Requiring editors to determine whether the name of the topic to which they wish to link is ambiguous is a good thing, because that process is how missing redirects and links are discovered. For example, if instead of Farmington, New Mexico, you were linking to Amalga, Utah, under the status quo you would be unlikely to notice that there is no dab page or redirect at Amalga, as it has remained a redlink since the article at Amalga, Utah was created in 2002. However, under A, you would be forced to check and see if "Amalga" is ambiguous, and in that process you would almost certainly discover that the redirect is missing. So, you would create it, or ideally, you would move Amalga, Utah to Amalga. All good. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:05, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
      • Or you could just use a piped link, seeing as there is nothing inherently wrong with linking to redirects. --TorriTorri(^talk/_contribs) 01:16, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
      • The purpose of article titles is not to make it easy for editors. You have provided no reason why place names in the USA are so different from everywhere else that they need special treatment, nor how their article are so different from the rest of the encyclopedia for that matter. Saying that US places require different treatment to everything else is what is known in the logic racket as special pleading - which isa logical fallacy. If the name is unique then there is no reason why the article should not be at its most concise form. Even for place names that are not unique, unless the non-primary ones are sufficiently noteable to warrant their own article (and the bare existence of a place does not make it noteable) it is not a problem. As an editor you should be concerned about which particular town you are linking to. Your argument looks simply like one of a desire to be lazy and sloppy. It is not good for the encyclopedia for editors not to take care when writing articles. Personally when editing I always check my links, it seems only polite to the reader to do so. - Nick Thorne ^talk 02:10, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

I think that the "City, state" convention is good for most cities, except the major ones noted in the AP Stylebook, because it helps the reader determine what state it is in. For example, very few people outside the Philadelphia area would know Hatboro is in Pennsylvania, so the article is titled Hatboro, Pennsylvania. In addition, most city and town names in the United States are repeated several times. Dropping the state name from unique city names would make article titles for U.S. cities confusing and inconsistent. Dough4872 16:41, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

And it makes it much easier to write articles mentioning places in the US when you don't have to look up whether or not the city needs the state.--20:19, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Are you guys reading the comments in this section? This point was already made and addressed just a few comments above. See my comment starting with, "Requiring editors ...". --Born2cycle (talk) 21:44, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Very few people outside of Meschede, for example, would know that it's in Germany, and yet the article is titled Meschede, not Meschede, Germany. Meschede, Germany redirects to Meschede. If this proposal succeeds, linking to cities will NOT require looking up whether or not the city needs the state because there will be redirects from City, State to City; as I stated a few comments above, there is nothing wrong with linking to redirects. --TorriTorri(^talk/_contribs) 05:49, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

<sarcasm>You can't compare Meschede to Amalga... Meschede is in... who cares but Amalga is in the United States!!!</sarcasm> --Born2cycle (talk) 06:41, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

To get this back to Dohn joe's suggestion, I think this might be best of all, as it would allow for discretion. There's no reason interested editors shouldn't be able to discuss these issues on a case by case basis. Those editors who believe such discussion is a waste of time can, you know, not waste their time on it. john k (talk) 06:34, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I would not be opposed to a variation of the proposed A wording that makes it clear that the transition from the previous canonical form (city, state) to the new one (disambiguate only when necessary) may take years. --Born2cycle (talk) 06:41, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Shorter: B2C is prepared to be disruptive for years until he gets his way. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:18, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Current move requests votes needed

Please, before the RFC above is closed, could everyone here please copy their votes here, also to:

1. Talk:Carmel-by-the-Sea#Move Request
2. Talk:Tallahassee, Florida#Requested move
3. Talk:Sacramento, California#Requested move
4. Talk:Boise, Idaho#Requested move
5. Talk:Las Vegas, Nevada#Requested move

And, could someone please open a Move review, or a Requested move 2, about Ann Arbor, Michigan? And could anyone please list a few hundred previously disputed city names, and open new move requests about them? Please do this before the present RFC is closed, so that these results may swing the RFC outcome. --Doncram (talk) 14:42, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Please note the moves are in varying directions. For consistency, please take care to vote "Support", "Oppose", "Oppose", "Oppose", "Oppose", or vote "Oppose", "Support", "Support", Support", "Support". Any deviations from that would be inconsistent. I would like to suggest that any votes should be discarded where the voter does not vote consistently across all 5 so far. Any local votes (identified by someone only voting in one case) should be discarded, because the voter would not be familiar with the general issue. --Doncram (talk) 14:56, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

• First, this could be a canvas for votes in contradiction to other WP guidelines. Having said that, I support the current guideline based on my reasoning above. However, I think that all editors in good faith should call for a truce and call for a moratorium on all place name moves. We are in the middle of a debate/discussion that, for now, seems to be going nowhere. Any attempt to move Boise, Idaho to Boise or any similar request goes against good faith in trying to reach concensus. The same goes for any attempt to move Carmel-by-the-Sea or Ann Arbor back to the City, State convention. All these repeated moves do is piss off one side or the other and undermine our efforts to try to come up with a reasonable solution. I call for all parties to join me in calling for a moratorium on placename moves.DCmacnut<> 15:35, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

User:Dcmacnut and User:John k (he had voted already in the first one) and i have now voted in all 5. It's been suggested that calling for local voters' views to be discarded is un-American. It doesn't matter, this is Wikipedia, not america. And those of us here can far outnumber the locals voting in any one of these, so their views will be drowned out anyhow. Come on people, vote! and vote! and vote! and vote! and vote! --Doncram (talk) 17:09, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I second DCmacnut's call for a moratorium on placename moves. Let's figure out what the Wikipedia guidelines actually are before we start applying them to articles. (Full disclosure: I opposed the Carmel-by-the-Sea move; I believe that another Wikipedia guideline that is not in dispute applies there.) --TorriTorri(^talk/_contribs) 19:16, 30 December 2010 (UTC)