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[[User:Bermicourt|Bermicourt]] ([[User talk:Bermicourt|talk]]) 19:06, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
[[User:Bermicourt|Bermicourt]] ([[User talk:Bermicourt|talk]]) 19:06, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
:A sufficiently wide-spread ignorance ''is'' English; see [[mob]]. But the other two points are well-taken. [[User:Pmanderson|Septentrionalis]] <small>[[User talk:Pmanderson|PMAnderson]]</small> 02:31, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

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Province of Bolzano-Bozen

Over the last years quite a number of straw polls and moving requests have been instigated by 2 users (user:Icsunonove & user:Supparluca) to move locations in the province to Italian names by claiming these names to be the most common used English names. There were suspicions that those two users were actually one person, as user:Icsunonove or as he was also known user:Taalo had already been caught using socks to manipulate discussions [1] After being checked in his rude behaviour in February by admins and thus going on a "permanent sabbatical" Icsunonove disappeared along with Supparluca. In my view this throws in doubt all discussions and debates that have been going on regarding the names of the Province of Bolzano-Bozen, as i.e. there are other suspicious coincidences: i.e. user:Ian Spackman was registered the same day as all the socks in the aforementioned checkuser report,...
I do not take issue with the rule, that cities and communities in the province be names according to the majority of the population; but I am suspicious that the both: the village of Ortisei and the city of Merano have been moved to their current names by manipulation of google search results by the aforementioned 2 "users". i.e. a google search today for both Meran and Merano, resulted in 100,000s of false positives: there is a shoe company names Allen-Edmonds Merano, a Violin Model named Merano, a Norwegian circus named Merano, a place named San Merano near Palm Beach,... a Hotel Meran in Prague, a family named Meran, a technology company named Meran, a chess opening named Meran,... trying to get these false positives out I get the results that Meran is twice as common in English as Merano. As most other searches have been arbitrarily manipulated too (i.e. the google books searches in the discussions were made to exclude all material published before 1957, in other searches the word Italy was added as a word that must be found) I suggest to scrap google search in the case of finding the "right" name and to remove the line "There appears to be sufficient evidence that Merano is more common in English, however." as in my view it is impossible to establish a commonly used name in English for both: Ortisei and Merano. Subsequently I suggest to move the 2 communes to the name of the majority of the population to keep in line with the naming convention for the Province of Bolzano-Bozen and allow no more exceptions or debates regarding the names of villages, communes or cities in said province, but follow vigorously the rule: "those articles are placed according to the language of the linguistic majority." --noclador (talk) 12:07, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure whether all three were all one person, but user:Icsunonove had demonstrably a veritable park of socket puppets. For Meran, the case seems to be fairly clear as far as Google is concerned:
Since there is also a slight German-speaking majority in town ("South Tyrol in Figures 2008", Provincial Statistics Institute of the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol, Bozen/Bolzano 2007, p. 17, table 10), the naming convention points to Meran. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 12:55, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Doh! I just had proposed: no more google searches! as they are unreliable and therefore I suggest to stick with the linguistic majority rule only - so, your google search results are a bit of the mark here... --noclador (talk) 14:52, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we can't discount the possibility of the existence of an established English name, which of course should be used when it exists, taking precedence over any other rules. But an established English name is much more than just a name borrowed from another language and used slightly more often in English texts than other names borrowed from other languages. I'm pretty sure that a Google test can establish that an established English name exists, but only if the results of the test are overwhelming. Results of 322–281 and 1980–1679 are certainly not overwhelming; they are narrow, as is anything below a 2:1 ratio, I would say. So I'm with Noclador on these specific cases: definitely use the local-majority rule here as per WP:UE#No established usage (and remove the clearly flawed "sufficient evidence" sentence). Just don't let the rule override WP:UE. —JAO • T • C 15:08, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Go with User:Noclador’s proposal. Gryffindor (talk) 13:13, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please try reading what this page says about raw Google searches.
  • I find it a curious choice for Gun Powder Ma to be using the Spanish Google Books while searching for English hits; but there is a depressing incidence of false positives: The book on the sixteenth century, the five books published before the First World War, and The Count of Monte Cristo (with Mme. de Saint-Meran). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:36, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Question: as there are currently no arguments against my proposal to remove google searches from the naming convention piece about South Tyrol and using only the language majority of a location to determine its article name, can I change the naming convention about South Tyrol in this way:
a) by removing the sentence: "Exception: The population of Merano is almost evenly divided, with a slight German-speaking majority; and Meran is quite often used for it in English. There appears to be sufficient evidence that Merano is more common in English, however."
b) and by changing the last sentence in this way: "Therefore articles about locations in the province of Bolzano-Bozen are placed according to the language of the linguistic majority."
is this acceptable? --noclador (talk) 14:44, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'd support these changes as well. --Mai-Sachme (talk) 13:23, 14 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reverted. A discussion here (among users of one nationality and one point of view) does not represent consensus. This page describes what Wikipedia actually does - and we do not, and on the present evidence should not, call the article Meran. The solution is providing more evidence, not forming a cabal in project space. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:45, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"of one nationality"... Could you please stop with your silly defamations? Noclador is a former member of the Italian army and I can find the following inscription in big letters on my passport: Repubblica Italiana. --Mai-Sachme (talk) 23:11, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Talking of silly defamations, spot this above from user:Noclador:
‘there are other suspicious coincidences: i.e. user:Ian Spackman was registered the same day as all the socks in the aforementioned checkuser report,...’
I regard this as a perfectly absurd attack. You can check my edit history to see how long it took me to enter into tryrolean territory. (My recollection is that it was when I was working on the list of Italian cheeses—or perhaps on one of the lists of Italian wines—that I strolled over to see what the conventions were for naming things in that area of Italy. What I found was a stupid battlefield: some sort of attempt to re-enact the first world war, with a lot of idiots, as well as some reasonable people, on both sides of the dispute.) As well well as absurd, I regard it as a disgraceful, snide and personal attack—one which I would not have expected from that editor, who has made many valuable contributions to the encyclopedia. I request that he strike it immediately and make an appropriate retraction and apology here, on the page where the accusation was made. Alternatively I would request that someone asks for a checkuser. Then he or she can grovel even more deeply when the result is forthcoming. Yours in anger, [Apology made and accepted.] Ian Spackman (talk) 09:30, 29 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know if I count as a participant, but for what it's worth I'm Swedish. I like Bejnar's revision, clarifying that WP:UE takes precedence without going into examples of cases where WP:UE does give guidance (and especially without labeling such cases "exceptions", which they are clearly not). This guideline does not need to go into detail on which communities are guided by WP:UE and which ones have to be solved by other methods: that's a question for Talk:Merano and the likes. —JAO • T • C 05:32, 29 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Jao that Bejnar's revision clearly improves things! as it is now it is a clearly defined rule without any exceptions and I think we should let it stand like that. --noclador (talk) 07:23, 29 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Naming convention for Italian cities

Hi all guys. I am here to ask for a revisal of the existing naming convention policy for Italian city places. There is no doubt using a title like Erba (CO) is comprehendable only to some Italians, whereas all other people could find it really hard to figure out what "(CO)" is about. In cases like these, more reasonable titles like "Erba, Italy" should be favoured and suggested instead, as it already happens with all other geographical locations. Just using the current notation "Cityname (Province-Abbreviation)" only because it is followed by the Italian language Wikipedia is not a good point, because this is the English language Wikipedia, and title names should be focused on how English speakers expect them to be. So, Naples instead of Napoli, Munich instead of München, and "Some_city, Italy" instead of "Some_city (Some_italian_province)". Thoughts? --Angelo (talk) 21:37, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The problem will still occur when there are two municipalities in Italy with the same name. Any guideline or policy needs to take this into account also. I accept the point being made that "CO" means very little to people outside Italy. If that is the general view, then the second level of dismbiguation where there are two or more settlements with the same name could probably be "settlement, province" (Erba, Como), and if a third level is necessary "settlement, municipality" (Incino, Erba) where there are two or more settlements in a province with the same name. Skinsmoke (talk) 23:34, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a good idea - but, what will we do if there are 2 Erbas?? or what when there are even more?? If you have a solution for this, then I support your suggested changes. --noclador (talk) 23:36, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We have that same problem with all other cities, for instance we have a huge number of cities all named Springfield and, in that case, we use subnational entities to disambiguate. So, for two Italian municipalities with the same name, we might use regions ("Erba, Lombardy") or provinces ("Erba, Province of Como" - also because in my opinion "Erba, Como" suggests Erba is part of Como's local territory). --Angelo (talk) 08:05, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes that is a crucial point: as the number of articles on the so-called frazioni, increases, we will often have to disambiguate by municipality. (Already in the Italian Wikipedia there are two places in the province of Brescia called Pescarzo, distinguished by commune as it:Pescarzo (Breno) and it:Pescarzo (Capo di Ponte)). So when disambiguating by province we need to make it clear that it is the province we are referring to.
We should use a standard method for disambiguation of geographic places, regardless of county. I agree that if disambiguation is necessary at only the national level, use country names after the comma, e.g., Noor, Iran. If disambiguation is necessary at the provincial (1st administrative level), use provincial names after the comma, e.g., Baladeh, Kandahar. The question then arises whether that title should actually be Baladeh, Kandahar, Afghanistan which is more quickly grasped as to location, but is longer. There are at least seven settlements known at one time or other as Ojo Caliente in New Mexico, and many more (hopefully non-notable) hot springs with that name. The only three notable settlements are one in Taos County, one by Zuni in Cibola County, and the headquarters for the defunct Warm Springs Apache Reservation in Socorro County, none of them necessarily more notable than the others. Hence their articles should depart from the standard US "town-name, state" format and either be in the unwieldly form: "Ojo Caliente, Taos County, New Mexico", "Ojo Caliente, Cibola County, New Mexico", etc.; or the shorter, but less self-evident, form: "Ojo Caliente, Taos County", "Ojo Caliente, Cibola County", etc. But maybe the United States is a poor example if hard cases make bad law. Nonetheless, if disambiguation is necessary at the 2nd administrative level, for example see Galoogah, Babol, Mazandaran and Galoogah, Behshahr, Mazandaran, certainly the country name can be disposed of. Regardless, I agree that, in accordance with the Manual of Style, place abbreviations such as "CO" for "Como Province" should not be used. Always consider whether an abbreviation may be better simply written out in full, thus avoiding potential confusion for those not familiar with it - we do not have the same space constraints as paper. --Bejnar (talk) 22:27, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that a world-wide standard would be a good thing to achieve, but I suspect that that might take a very long time, and that in the interim we should agree a (possibly interim) convention for Italy. Ian Spackman (talk) 08:26, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Angelo that a change is needed. Until recently I have been a supporter of the current convention because it was simple, predictable and gave a consistent look to category listings. As to the obscurity, well dab pages seemed entirely adequate in handling that. I have changed my mind for two reasons. Firstly the standard was in practice un-enforceable—people were always moving articles away from it. Secondly it is now the case that people often come to articles via the Search box with its drop-down list, thus being able to by-pass those dab pages. I am concerned, though, that we establish a convention where category lists have a consistent look: with some places disambiguated by Italy, others as Piedmont, others as Province of Alessandria, and still others as Alessandria those categories could esily become confusing. My suggestion would be to define three classes of settlement: provincial capitals, other communes (i.e. municipalities/comuni), and other places. Thus Syracuse (Italy), Bra (Province of Cuneo), Isola (Madesimo). Ian Spackman (talk) 08:53, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The general convention is not to use brackets for places. So, it should be Syracuse, Italy, Bra, Province of Cuneo and Isola, Madesimo in the previous example. However, Syracuse, Italy is a redirect to Syracuse, Sicily and I can't really see why Italy is a better disambiguation than Sicily. Perhaps the first level of disambiguation should be region rather than the country. This would not be unusual for larger countries (in the United Kingdom, places in Scotland are initially disambiguated by country, whilst places in England are disambiguated by ceremonial county and in Wales by unitary authority). I would also suggest that Cuneo Province would be better than Province of Cuneo. Skinsmoke (talk) 12:24, 2 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t have strong feelings about brackets versus commas. In some ways I would think that dsambiguating by commas for provncial capitals and other communes, but brackets for sub-communal entities would make sense. I left the regions out of the equation deliberately: with the exceptions, certainly, of Sicily, Sardinia and Tuscany, I don’t think they are much more widely known than the province. (Province of Rome will mean more to most readers than Lazio and Province of Naples than Campania.) I am afraid that ‘Cuneo province’ comes across to my ears as a bit barbaric, though I couldn’t explain quite why! Ian Spackman (talk) 14:35, 2 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In Syracuse's case, I don't see the point of having Syracuse, Sicily instead of Syracuse, Italy. There is only one Syracuse in Italy, and using this approach just makes no sense at my eyes. Disambiguating cities by region should be something to make only when there are at least two cities with the same name in a particular country. --Angelo (talk) 23:27, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It should be Syracuse. The major competitor will be, while the United States section remains unchanged, be at Syracuse, New York. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:29, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Move request for Meran

There is a request that Meran be moved to Merano, at Talk:Meran#Requested move to Merano (5 July 2009) Ian Spackman (talk) 14:40, 5 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Making a request for a move the same day as the decision has been taken is not the way to handle the debate, especially not as the move was preceeded by a long and extensive discussion.JdeJ (talk) 17:32, 5 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There was no actual consensus at that discussion. It is more collegial to request reconsideration than going to dispute resolution, but either will work. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:49, 5 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Search engine issues

May I suggest adding the following to the above section:

  • Multiple copies of same article:
    • There are many web sites which simply 'hoover' information from other sources. This can result in, say, 50 out of 100 search engine hits being copies of the same original source article, which distorts the statistics heavily.
  • Doubtful credibility of sources:
    • Especially in specialist subject areas, there may be widespread ignorance and misuse of correct names as used by authoritative sources such as experts in the field. Common usage is not necessarily correct usage. Whilst not an issue restricted to the Internet, it is a particular risk when using a search engine.
  • Tendency of native speakers to use their own names:
    • There is sometimes a tendency for native speakers, even those with a good command of English, to leave names in their own language. Often this is entirely appropriate. But sometimes, it is simply confusing. E.g. A native German speaker may use Rheintal when describing the Rhine Valley and Theodor-Heuss-Brücke for Theodor Heuss Bridge. If the subject is uncommon, there may be a preponderance of hits on such sites which gives a false impression of correct English usage.

Bermicourt (talk) 19:06, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A sufficiently wide-spread ignorance is English; see mob. But the other two points are well-taken. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:31, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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