Talk:La

breakdown

Possibly into LA La la? Rich Farmbrough, 14:00 1 April 2007 (GMT).

Why? It should be the opposite: consolidation of everything into one page. In fact, I'll start by consolidating [[L.A. (disambiguation) into La, the reasons being a) the former dab article is small; b) there's no practical difference between 'L.A.' and 'LA' for most, if not all, entries. (Also, please watch me cleanup the article per guidelines.) --maf 15:57, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 20 June 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus. (closed by non-admin page mover) Calidum 04:23, 28 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

La → LA – Wikipedia:Disambiguation and abbreviations says For two-letter combinations, if there is no article, the page is usually placed at the uppercase version (BA), the lowercase (Ba) redirecting there.

At the moment, LA redirects to Los Angeles. I am a sometime Angeleno myself and love the city, but I do not think this is justifiable.

WP:PRIMARYTOPIC says A topic is primary for a term with respect to usage if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term. A topic is primary for a term with respect to long-term significance if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term.

I don't think the city can meet either prong of this test. I think a user entering "LA" into the search box is probably more likely to be looking for the city than for Louisiana, but probably not much more likely. And there are too many other meanings adding up to "all the other topics combined". If someone wants to make the case that the city has "substantially greater enduring notability" than the state of Louisiana, make the case, but I'm skeptical.

One more thing that will have to be dealt with: LA has a page history. I don't know whether there's anything there that really needs to be preserved, but that should be addressed. Still, it really shouldn't get in the way of having the disambig page at the right title. Trovatore (talk) 21:13, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Disambiguation and abbreviations says usually, not always - the example mb cited there has a lot of entries where uppercase MB is the proper abbreviation. However, la has only few and seldom used entries where uppercase LA is correct - I doubt that for stuff like the Lebanese Army and Latin America the LA abbreviaton contributes much to the "all other topics" sum. Thus, the only other important LA is Louisiana. But I don't think that there is a large fraction of Wikipedia readers entering LA instead of louisiana in the search box, as compared with LA instead of los angeles. (However, I must admit that this may be the special view of me being a German - I'm not aware of the US system of postal codes, but know of course LA for Los Angeles from the movies, TV and literature. On the other hand, the English Wikipedia has not only US based readers - does anyone outside really know about the postal codes?) --Cyfal (talk) 22:25, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Disambiguation and abbreviations is archaic. WP:Disambiguation#Naming the disambiguation page is current guidance which says A word is preferred to an abbreviation, for example Arm (disambiguation) over ARM. older ≠ wiser 22:41, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. It does appear that I missed the "historical" tag there. Still, I'm not sure "la" is enough of a "word" to trigger that guidance.

As to Cyfal's point, I don't really know what the numbers are. I just think it's a bit of a stretch for the city, as great a city as I think it is, to grab a two-letter abbreviation that can mean so many things, all to itself.

(As a side note, L.A. with the dots. currently points to la. Now that makes no sense to me. When you have the dots in there, it's overwhelmingly likely that you mean Los Angeles. That should probably be fixed.) --Trovatore (talk) 01:23, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed that. L.A. now redirects to Los Angeles consistent with LA. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 10:29, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. The status quo is fine, with LA redirecting to what I consider to be the primary topic, and a disambiguation page at La with entries for both "La" and "LA". Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 10:29, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I think L.A. should redirect to Los Angeles but I am unsure whether LA should redirect there. cookie monster (2020) 755 18:13, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support moving La to LA as main disambiguation page; but in any case Support that they should at least become a unified disambig page: The current page LA (2003-05-11) is actually 3 months older than the current page La (2003-08-21), but that probably doesn't matter. Both started out as disambigs, then one was redirected to the other, then the other way around, while LA also got the extra fun of being redirected to Los Angeles from time to time, all of that edit-cycling for 15+ years depending on the whims of anyone who thought they had such a brilliant new idea that they didn't need talk page consensus first. "LA" doesn't have a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC either: Some people may type it because they're trying to get to Los Angeles the lazy way, but they may also be looking up "LA" as a state abbreviation, which is Louisiana, or they may be non-English-native users just using capital letters. What tips it further for me is what "LA" really means when it's wikilinked: Basically, any article text that links to just "LA" is probably so poorly written that you can't trust the link to mean the right thing anyway. "LA" in a U.S.-centric article text is a likely Manual of Style violation, and it's just a matter of whether they violated the punctuation for Los Angeles or violated the rule against abbreviating the state name Louisiana in place names. A British article linking blindly to LA may be technically correct on current British punctuation trends, but is still a bad omen for bad prose that probably shouldn't have been that informal in the first place. --Closeapple (talk) 07:46, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - LA should take you to Los Angeles, which is by far the most notable thing commonly referred to as LA. Louisiana, I love you too, but you're rarely called "LA" out of context. In addresses, sure, but not commonly apart from that. Red Slash 07:57, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.