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Requested move 12 August 2019

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: not moved - see closer comment at end. (non-admin closure) Cinderella157 (talk) 23:55, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Peć → Peja – Kosovo has declared its independence in 2008. Previously Kosovo was an autonomous province of Yugoslavia and later a region of Serbia. In this time (1974-89) Albanian, Serbo-Croatian and Turkish were official language (Article 131). Look at the census of 2011: There are 94% Albanians - which means that the people in Peja would more use Peja as Peć. Let me show you reliable English-language sources: (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6) - there are many sources (books (published in different years), newspaper articles (NYT)). Certainly there are sources for Peć too. But look here on this result of Peć and Peja. According to WP:AT, WP:COMMONNAME (WP:UCRN): Sometimes, the subject of an article will undergo a change of name. (added ElmedinRKS (talk) 00:08, 13 August 2019 (UTC)) When this occurs, we give extra weight to reliable sources written after the name change is announced. If the reliable sources written after the change is announced routinely use the new name, Wikipedia should follow suit and change relevant titles to match. ElmedinRKS (talk) 21:44, 12 August 2019 (UTC)--Relisted. – Ammarpad (talk) 05:56, 20 August 2019 (UTC) --Relisting.  — Amakuru (talk) 06:17, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Did you read my arguments and the „arguments“ of October 2018? Here are different reliable English-language sources (WP:UCRN) and I have looked at WP:COMMONNAME in great depth. ElmedinRKS (talk) 00:02, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment: In order to convince the Wiki community about this move, you will need to show not only that Peja is used by reliable sources (and the examples given are not convincing – travel guides, one memoir, one novel, one single caption in a newspaper article), you need to show that Pejë/Peja has become the most commonly used name. You would have to show that there is a significant shift in usage since the last move request in 2018. I doubt that this is the case. --T*U (talk) 16:52, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
Sorry, but I can not understand it. According to WP:COMMONNAME I have to show reliable English-language sources. That is it what I did. The previous RMs are showing how much articles they are for Peć and Peja. And: In year 2007 this book was published. Or this neutral one. ElmedinRKS (talk) 19:37, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
The issue here is that for a COMMONNAME to be established the name has to be prevalent in English language sources not simply that some source use the name. The problem is that so far most people aren’t convinced that has been demonstrated.--64.229.166.98 (talk) 17:50, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
”Some sources”? ElmedinRKS (talk) 17:57, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Support per nomination. Unlike the occasional requests to use the Turkish names instead of the Anglicized Greek names of locations in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is recognized by only a single UN member, this request concerns a location that does not have an English exonym (thus leaving English speakers with either the Serbian name, Peć or the Albanian name, Peja), in an entity which is recognized by 101 UN members, including the entire English-speaking world (List of states with limited recognition). —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 15:18, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The current consensus is that Peć is the most commonly used form in English-language sources. What will be needed to change this consensus, is to convince me and others that this has changed. The proposer has shown a handful of sources that use Peja (by the way, the second and the third are identical, and the first is another edition of the same book). I could easily list any number of similar sources using Peć. Also, most of the given sources for Peja are not even new, so they will have been around when this was discussed last, and before that, and before that... Unless anyone can show that there has been a shift in usage, the current consensus holds. --T*U (talk) 16:24, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment: This article uses Peja and is from 2019. The argument that the books are not new shows that Peja was always been used. (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8); definitely Peja is the most commonly used form. ElmedinRKS (talk) 17:56, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Google analysis by Cal : this one is a bit hard because both Pec and Peja will turn up other entities on Google (a Hungarian city also with a Slavic(?) name spelled Pec plus some Czech villages as well as the Pec patriarchate, an athlete with the forename Peja, etc), so some filtering was necessary.

  • English google with "Peć" + Kosovo -Wikipedia : 746,000 results -- some of these refer to the patriarchate but I think many more refer to the city.[1]
  • English google with "Peja" + Kosovo -Wikipedia : 858,000 results [2] note also that some of the sources in both columns here are alternating between Peja and Pec'... but it seems Peja has a slight advantage.
  • English google with "Pejë" +Kosovo -Wikipedia: 538,000 results. [3]. Note that Britannica appears to have recently changed to using Peje by default.
  • English google with "Peje" (no umlaut) +Kosovo -Wikipedia: 308,000 results [4] -- this form is preferred in many Latin alphabets without the umlaut e, and is also used by Albanians when typing with non-Albanian keyboards.
  • to be fair I then searched Pec with no accent +Kosovo -Wikipedia... for 1,180,000 results. Some of these do refer to other entities but scrolling through I'd say the vast majority refer to the town in Kosovo.

So none of this shows what has become more common but we can gather (a) that Anglophones dislike the versions with accented letters, and (b) there appears to be a statistical tie if you add these forms together -- i.e. the Albanian name's variants have 1.704 million, the Serbian name's variants have 1.926 million (there is certainly some double counting for Pec/Peć and Peje/Pejë which helps the Pec side more because Peja does not get double counted .... buuuuut I don't think this changes the fact that the Albanian versus Serbian forms have a sort of parity online).

Google N-grams is unreliable for "Pec" here [[because a look through the sources it includes in Pec include cookbooks, some cases where it is apparently used an acronym like in chemistry and nanotechnology it seems, bodybuilding books (you know, pectorals) and so forth. With other forms, Peja and Peje are clearly dominant as you can see here [5], and although Peja Stojakovic is included in the Peja sources, the difference is way too huge for that to matter, and Peja actually had the upper hand before he was born (the same cannot be said for other places called Pec). Furthermore, the dominance of Peja/e is only growing and has steadily increased from 1996 till present -- but, even before '96, in English, it appears Peja had the upper hand (likely not because of any favoritism toward Albanian names, but instead perhaps because no one wanted to write that accented c -- the Pejë form similarly was beaten out by Peja). The vast majority of the sources of all of these remaining strings have to do with Kosovo. However, one thing I did find is that although we have a huge weight in favor of the Pej(a/e) variants, when we are talking about the Patriarchate, the situation is the reverse and very much favors the Serbian form.

I don't think COMMONNAME is clear here -- we have more of a Gdansk Danzig situation. So instead I suggest (1) Use Peja -- definite form -- Anglophones seem to prefer this -- for the city since the end of Serbian administration, (2) Pec for periods when under Serbian administration, (3) Ipek in history sections when discussing the Ottoman period and finally (4) Pec for all Orthodox Christian institutions in and of the city (Peja for Muslim/Catholic ones). Cheers, --Calthinus (talk) 21:28, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

That seems pretty reasonable. As you noted, the stalemate by the number of search results isn't of use here, so having this sort of balance reaches an good conclusion. Calling the city as per the time-frame of the context proves logical to me. ArbDardh (talk) 22:29, 24 August 2019 (UTC)ArbDardh
Wikipedia:SPEEDYCLOSE Everybody here agree that the renaming proposal is not grounded in WP:COMMONNAME or any other wikipedia policy. The consensus for the existing title remains. If nobody managed to present valid reasons to change consensus reached for Peć for 13 days, this discussion should be (not so speedy actually) closed.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 23:56, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Speak for yourself Anti. I dont support this.--Calthinus (talk) 01:10, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
@Antidiskriminator: Are you sure that “everybody“ does? I do not think so. @Calthinus: Agree! ElmedinRKS (talk) 02:38, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose - aparently there were no new significant changes since the last consensus. Another thing I already pointed out in other similar RfM´s for cities in Kosovo, and I will repeat again and it is valid for all RfM´s from around the world, is the invalidity of the argument that X or Y % of "locals" use the name more. Certainly over 90% of Venetians call their city "Venezia" but that is absolutelly irrelevant for English Wikipedia. Each language Wikipedia should use the titles for their articles in the most used name in the corresponding lnaguage. So, returning to our issue here, what matters is how English-language publications majoritarily refer. The title must be the one most recognisable to English-speaking readers. There are three options for cases of foreign places, one is a proper English word when it exists (exemple Belgrade for Beograd), second option is a native name, and third option is the adoption of the name in some language which has influenced English-language enough to be adopted instead of the native language. In our case here, English language has not come up with an original form of name for the city, but instead has adopted the Serbian version as Serbian has been culturally domminant in the region. Kosovo-Albanians should focus that the city is properly written in Albanian in Albanian Wikipedia, and allow all other Wikipedias in other languages to see by themselves what name they use in their language most commonly to identify the city and use that version as title. But demanding other language Wikipedias to addopt the Albanian name of the city just because majority of population now is Albanian, is unreasonable. Besides, it is overwelmingly commun to see either right at the lede, or in a section at the begining, the mention of the other names of the city, its etimology, etc. FkpCascais (talk) 17:51, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
Long time no see Cascais. As for proper English... what Anglophones actually use is not what you think. Google NGrams shows how much Anglophones hate having to type accented Peć , while the dominance of Peja is steadily increasing. [[6]]. --Calthinus (talk) 18:50, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
@Calthinus: Thank you for this ElmedinRKS (talk) 19:16, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
Well, what can I say Calthinus, if it comes out that Peja is now more used in English and is demonstrably predominant, then I would support it. Just don´t want to hear anymore the "we locals call it this way" argument. FkpCascais (talk) 23:29, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

*Oppose The proposal to move this has been rejected in the past. The argument behind this application is political, rather than a significant increase in the use of "Peja" in online literature. Both sides can argue for the name as both Serbian and Albanian are official languages in Kosovo. The fact that just because there is an Albanian majority does not warrant an immediate change in the name. Since the previous attempt to change the name of the article, I have not seen a significant shift in the use of "Peja" in online literature. Debating the names of towns/cities in the Balkans is an ongoing trend and I have seen it happen recently in the Skopje page when there was a push to have "Üsküp" utilised in text. For the sake of keeping the peace, this proposal should be rejected. ThreatMatrix (talk) 13:46, 27 August 2019 (UTC) The editor has been blocked as a sock of TryDeletingMe.

@ThreatMatrix: Hello TryDeletingMe. Long time, no see. Wait for a SPI. I will file one soon time permitting. Cheers, Ktrimi991 (talk) 15:00, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
@Ktrimi991: I see you are synonymous with edit warring and that you have taken the liberty of removing traces of it off your talk page. VJ-Yugo, Osourdounmou and Donaldduck13, it seems your witch-hunt is never ending. ThreatMatrix (talk) 08:07, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
Ktrimi991 ThreatMatrix: Mutual accusations about editor conduct has nothing to do in this RfC unless substanciated. Please WP:REDACT. --T*U (talk) 11:00, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
  • @Calthinus: @ArbDardh: I read your comments and I need to have sth clarified. You are proposing to have Peja, Pec and Ipek used throughout the article based on the historical context and I fully support this. What should the article name be according to you? The current one or the proposed one? Ktrimi991 (talk) 22:07, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
    • Having also looked at the previous requests for a name change, I think it should be changed to Peja. Peć seems as if it is falling out of usage in preference to Peja, as per Calthinus's helpful Ngram (i.e. a change would be reasonable to keep up with the times). ArbDardh (talk) 22:22, 28 August 2019 (UTC)ArbDardh
      • Ktrimi991 My bad I didn't specify this, I kind of implied it. For any time when Serbia has control of it, it is Pec', Ottomans Ipek, and any other time Peja. The city is not under Serbian control at present, so the name should be Peja. Of course, this is global-policy-wise reinforced by Google's evidence of the large preference for Peja at the expense of "annoying" accented forms. If Serbia were to reconquer it, we would again be in a period of Serbian control. I.e. formally, name of article adheres to the same time period scheming used within the article, whereby it refers to the present moment. Differing use within the article's sections according to what part of history is being discussed is unchanged regardless of the article name. Cheers. --Calthinus (talk) 22:33, 28 August 2019 (UTC)Removing my vote on what the page name itself should be -- per Khirurg's evidence, going further in depth, it seems Peja surpasses Pec in results only in 2017 [[7]], still too early to say that this will last, page name should probably wait. --Calthinus (talk) 06:03, 1 September 2019 (UTC) Unstricken per later investigation revealing that Google scholar was not restricted to English docs.--Calthinus (talk) 16:07, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
@Calthinus: Peja+kosovo returns 15 pages since 2019. Peć+Kosovo returns 10 pages since 2019. ElmedinRKS (talk) 11:08, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Note: I made a quick "advanced search" of GoogleScholar. For works published in English during the 2018-2019 period (because the last RM on this talk page was made in 2018), "Peja Kosovo" returns 38 pages of results [8] while "Peć Kosovo" returns 17 [9]. Ktrimi991 (talk) 23:22, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
  • weak support mostly per reasoning by Cal google analysis. Cal convinced me that Peja is more popular in the current era than Peć. It is only natural that accented C is getting out of use among all those using US/EN Keyboards (but that is just my opinion). Also, I 'd like to note that the argument of "what locals say" is of some value. The reason is locals most commonly have an opinion about the various terms in English language. So if their city/town/village is world-known, their opinion would be insignificant, but if their village is grossly unknown, their opinion (usually expressed on how local authorities describe themselves in English) is of some value. Cinadon36 06:36, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose It is clear that if the Serbian diacritic is removed from the name, Pec is more commonly used than Peja. I would support renaming the article to Pec, much as we have Pristina and not Priština or Prishtina. 23 editor (talk) 15:11, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
Comment @23 editor: Pec is a wrong spelling because the ć is missing here. Pristina is actuall a neutral diction of Prishtina (Albanian) and Priština (Serbian). Did you see Calthinus results? 858,000 results for Peja while Peć has 764,000 results. Also Ktrimi991 researched on Google scholar and he got 17 pages of result and for Peja 38. And do not forget my given reliable English-language sources. --ElmedinRKS (talk) 16:39, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
To be entirely fair 23 editor is proposing removing the ć, so the comparison would be to "Pec" -- which does have more on its own than Peja. When you add the different forms for the Albanian and Serbian forms together it is very hard to distinguish which has more for raw Google since many, possibly a majority of results will use both the Albanian and Serbian forms. --Calthinus (talk) 16:55, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
I do not want to assume bad faith but MarcRKS had made only one edit (that back in 2017) before commenting here. Ktrimi991 (talk) 19:29, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
Comment That could be true but he is active in de:wp (too) and knows the discussions about Kosovo local names. ElmedinRKS (talk) 20:05, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
I have reformatted to show that this is not part of the discussion just above it.
It would still be interesting to know how MarcRKS became aware of this discussion, given their total list of one edit before commenting here. --T*U (talk) 08:25, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
It's true, I only have one edit, however I'd like to highlight that I'm following almost all discussions about Kosovo articles. I simply thought that now it's time to share my opinion, after reading all comments above wisely. Personally, I'm more active in the German Wikipedia (see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:MarcRKS), but I'm thinking about starting in the English Wikipedia as well. MarcRKS (talk) 11:37, 31 August 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.233.40.126 (talk)
  • Oppose A search with Google Scholar shows "Peć+Kosovo" returns ~4500 hits [10], while "Peja+Kosovo" only ~2600 hits [11]. While it's true that Peja is gaining on "Peć", it's nowhere near close for a page move yet. I also note that no one here has convincingly demonstrated that "Peja" is more common". Khirurg (talk) 00:12, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
@Khirurg: But your search with Google Scholar is not only in English. I also saw a source in [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=600&q=Peć%2Bkosovo&hl=en&as_sdt=0,29 German (last one). ElmedinRKS (talk) 11:13, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
ElmedinRKS This appears correct. I've manually reset the search to English. Pec is still in the lede, but the difference is much less. [2,000 results]; [2,500 results]. However -- if we restrict it to more recent years, Peja begins to win. If its only 2009 (first year after independence) onward, we have Peja+Kosovo with 1,610 results [[12]], and Peć+Kosovo with 1,310 results[[13]]. Restrict to the last 5 years, and Peja+Kosovo leads with 1,090 results[[14]], whereas Peć+kosovo has 748 results [[15]]. I'm unstriking my vote after seeing this.--Calthinus (talk) 16:07, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Irrelevant. To make the case for a page move, it is necessary to show that one form of the name is clearly more common than the current name. This has not been demonstrated here. Restricting searches to the last 5 years is not how this is done. Khirurg (talk) 18:58, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
However, restricting searches to the last eleven years, i.e. 2009 onward is meaningful. Because it is all sources that were likely composed and published after the major February 2008 change in status (Serbian autonomy -> independent) followed by recognition by the vast majority of the political West (including all natively Anglophone countries) as well as a good chunk of the rest.--Calthinus (talk) 19:02, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
But Calthinus showed that Peja+kosovo have 2,000 and Peć+kosovo 2,500 hits. The difference is not so much. In this case Peć is definitely not more common. ElmedinRKS (talk) 19:08, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Actually, Peć is slightly more common. And even if it wasn't, for the page to move, you have to make the case that "Peja" is more common. You haven't (because it isn't). You want to move the page, the burden of proof is on you. Basically, nothing has changed since the last failed move request from last year. Khirurg (talk) 19:23, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
In my opinion is it not justified to say that Peć is more common with 2,500 hits than Peja with 2,000. I showed some English-language sources after WP:UCRN rules and other users did a really good research. Sorry, but the last mentioned point is wrong. ElmedinRKS (talk) 20:43, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Support, Your arguments and sources have convinced me. --Gomaza (talk) 03:07, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Support Calthinus' and ArbDardh's proposal to move the article to "Peja" and use Peja/Peć/Ipek throughout the article based on the historical context. The Ngram results show that Peja is more used in books that Peć, though the results are not of much help in this case as they are for books before 2009. Raw GoogleBooks reaults (without Ngram) are not useful at all as they contain many Albanian and Serbian books, and in many cases "Pec" refers to things very different from the subject of this article. GoogleScholar results for academic articles published since 2018 (the last RM discussion on this talk page took place in 2018) show an obvious preference for "Peja". GoogleScholar results for English sources for all years ("No specified year" option) too back "Peja". Sth bad is that this discussion has become another matter of dispute between Balkan editors (from a small number of Balkan countries that have problems with each other) with small amounts of input from editors of another background and worldview. While 13 editors have "voted" here (the nominator and myself included; 8 support vs 5 oppose), only 5 are not from the Balkans (4 support vs 1 oppose). Editors from places outside the Balkans should be more encouraged to participate in such stuff. The name of the article is a small thing though, the body of the article is the part that needs the most of work. Ktrimi991 (talk) 00:37, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Calthinus has done very extensive and valuable research into the common name, and concluded it's a complete wash. Sources are neck-and-neck. As such, something akin to WP:RETAIN kicks in - we should not arbitrarily switch from one equally-used variant to another equally-used variant, we should stick with the way it is. I would probably support a move to Pec without diacritics, as the research also shows English sources prefer wihtout, but that page is currently a disambiguation (as, indeed, is Peja) so that's a sideshow. Overall, there is no good reason to move and it would represent a breach of WP:NPOV to switch from the version used by one ethnicity to the version used by a different ethnicity, when both are equally common in English.  — Amakuru (talk) 08:37, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment - I can't find where Calthinus expressing this conclusion of his you are mentioning, but I can point to his claim that "the dominance of Peja is steadily increasing" in English.--౪ Santa ౪99° 19:08, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
    They say it several times, for example "the Albanian versus Serbian forms have a sort of parity online". The research by Calthinus is very useful, and demonstrates clearly why at this point no move should be made. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 12:09, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Curious, would you care to explain the rationale of why "Peja" (Albanian) is a clear breach of WP:NPOV, but "Peć" (Serbian) is not?--Calthinus (talk) 16:24, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
If the article had always been called Peja, that would be fine. But given that it is currently titled Peć, and neither title enjoys common name status over the other in English, it would be clearly POV to switch from one to the other as this RM recommends. We should not be taking sides in ethnic disputes.  — Amakuru (talk) 12:06, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Support per nomination by @ElmedinRKS and additional reasons outlined by @Calthinus, @ArbDardh and @Ktrimi991. Long overdue change. Peja has been gaining traction for some time now in the English speaking world over Pec.Resnjari (talk) 10:40, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Support per rational given by ElmedinRKS, Calthinus, ArbDardh and Ktrimi991, with respecting Peja/Peć/Ipek throughout the article based on the historical context per Calthinus' and ArbDardh's proposal. However, these polls are pointless and ridicules, given that they boil down to who has more currently involved editors in terms of their ethnic identity, which then boils down to how many of them is aware of this poll. This needs to be decided within neutral as possible environment - it should go step-by-step, all the way to arbitration.--౪ Santa ౪99° 18:52, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
I don't really agree with the last comment -- some things are not perfect, and maybe some editors vote predictably by ethnicity but others don't (we have one Greek that voted on the Albanian "side" here; if everyone's a cookie cutter nationalist you would expect Greeks to always help out Serbs where Albanians are concerned; also on grounds of my own ethnicity one might expect me to support the Serbian name of a historic Serbian holy site here but I don't). Maybe some people's opinions are influenced in part by their background, and it would be better to have more editors who are less connected to the Balkans !voting, but I don't think they should be discounted just because of that, if that's what you're implying. --Calthinus (talk) 22:55, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
Don't take that too personal (actually, at all), but that's exactly what I meant, you understood my message perfectly correctly, and I absolutely understand both your point and reaction as well, which is completely in accordance with Wikipedia's customary line. However, it is enough for one editor to vote (emotionally) according to his or her ethnic background, and we can no longer call this project an encyclopedia - and, unfortunately, as long as that's the state of affairs, Wikipedia alone will continue to consider itself an unreliable source of information and references.--౪ Santa ౪99° 01:47, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Its the nature of the wiki beast, it is what it is.Resnjari (talk) 14:46, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose I oppose the move. Nothing significant has changed since last year/voting. Calthinus showed us that the variant Pec is still used slightly more frequently. Term Peja began to be used more often, but still not so much that we could move to it. Acamicamacaraca (talk) 07:58, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Actually it has. Last year's nomination for a pagemove was poorly done [16] with the initial reason given that the municipal website uses that form. No other evidence was provided that is in line with Wikipedia decorum for such proposed pagemoves. A little later a poor attempt was done as the discussion followed. The inexperience of the nominator is evident in that thread. As even you yourself state, Peja now is more used then the form Pec. Whether change happens now or in the not to distant future, the future trajectory in English sources is for Peja and not Pec.Resnjari (talk) 01:34, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose Peć is still very much in use. Some institutions of culture related to Peć (including those of Serbian Orthodox Church) use the original name of the city. This change would only cause more mess and more renaming and more trouble would come from it. Search engines also show another story. I think that renaming on a larger scale should take place only after the politicians come up with some sort of mutual agreement, which will not likely happen soon. I agree that this way of voting will not give us good results on the long run and this example could only damage Wikipedia further. Sadko (talk) 11:06, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Indeed they do -- and I'd rather keep them so on Wikipedia whatever we decide here -- but we can't state this without also acknowledging that SOC is a rather political institution and perhaps not the best thing to base decisions here on. It's pretty widely acknowledged by RS to also be a political actor. From its own page here, cited there too -- The church's close association with Serbian resistance to Ottoman rule led to Eastern Orthodoxy becoming inextricably linked with Serbian national identity... After the war the Church was suppressed by the communist government of Josip Broz Tito, which viewed it with suspicion due to the Church's links with the exiled Serbian monarchy and the nationalist Chetnik movement.... [Predictably, its theological stance is that Kosovo recognition as a "sin"]. Well His Holiness Irinej is in his rights to have that as his policy, and really I do feel for religious Serbs who feel like their holy sites are being ripped from them, but perhaps we shouldn't refer to such an institution as a source for our own decisions on a global encyclopedia.--Calthinus (talk) 13:57, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
That is only partially true. You are making a generalisation, which is rather ignorant in my book. The way SOC external affairs/comments work largely depends on views of the current patriarch and the most influential bishops. I could give you a number of examples for this - and we do not need to go centuries deep in the past. What is your point with the quote about the role of the church during Ottoman times? It's nothing new that they support/ed monarchists; church leaders accross the Globe belive in the sort of society in which "God is on heaven, king is on earth". P.S: An interesting piece of information for you: so called people's kitchens, mostly managed by SOC, feed not only poor Serbs all over the territory of Kosovo but also Albanians and a number of other groups. And just for the record - I am not a member of SOC and have no plans to be. Sadko (talk) 20:18, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Both of you have veered off topic. This is a pagemove for an inhabited place, not for a pagemove for the name of a diocese or the Patriarchate of Pec. What the Serb Orthodox Church calls this inhabited place has no dominate bearing on proceedings here. Otherwise one can start bringing other religious institutions into the mix like the Muslim Muftiship of the town which uses the form Peja etc. In contention is whether there has been an overall shift from Pec toward Peja in English sources. In the nomination, the evidence represented shows there has been. Is that a wide enough margin to change the name at this point in time will be something for the admin to decide.Resnjari (talk) 01:25, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
The point was missed here. Some SOC communities have some autonomy, for all I know some might differ on gays or whether "blood" is necessary to defend Kosovo. But I would be astonished if a single one seriously disputed the stance that the (a) all of Kosovo is Serbian and (b) the SOC is a Serbian national institution since at least the 19th century, meaning its view is not a reference for us.--Calthinus (talk) 06:33, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
Even if it was devoid of its political elements, a religious institution like SOC doesn't determine a name of a place. That was the jist of my comment. I see where your coming from as well and i agree.Resnjari (talk) 14:45, 11 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Support. I wanted to close this request as "moved" but I realized that I could reasonably be considered "involved" and I just don't want that drama. But the idea of calling a city by its modern name is well established, and since (let's be real) neither name sees any real usage in English, we should go by the common name of the people who actually run the city. Peja. Red Slash 06:00, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. This city has a history of some importance and in the history books it is always Peć. Srnec (talk) 02:44, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Comment: @Srnec: Well, Istanbul has a history of some importance too. Should we move it to Byzántion or Constantinopolis? Peja was govern a long time by the Ottoman Empire. In that time they definitely does not use Peć or Peja but Ipek. ElmedinRKS (talk) 04:24, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
That's an erroneous suggestion by @Srnec. The settlement was part of the Ottoman state for around 500 years. It was known as Ipek and history books reflect that reality. Its Slavic name was used in an official capacity for much less than that. @Srnec:, if historic names are the way to go, i'm also all for renaming this article and others by their former Turkish forms in the region. Ipek sounds fine too.Resnjari (talk) 12:49, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Resnjari Serbian history of Pec: 1180-1455 and 1912 to 2008, in all those 381 yeard are less than the 457 years of Ottoman/Turkish history. As they say Kosovo je srce Turkije.--Calthinus (talk) 14:20, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Spot on Calthinus ! lol Resnjari (talk) 14:44, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Do not forget that the albanians got an autonomous status between 1974 and 1989. 1991 was the first Declaration of Independence and after the War Kosovo was under internation control, which made Peja a little bit more popular as before. ElmedinRKS (talk) 17:35, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
I never said anything about who ruled the city when or about official names. And as a matter of fact, we do have an article at Constantinople. Srnec (talk) 18:26, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
@Calthinus: Before trying to go full stand-up you forgot to mention several centuries of Slavic dwelling (mostly future Serbs, by fundamental logics and later archeological findings) on the territory of modern day Peć. That is some solid 500 years for you, or more. cheers Sadko (talk) 12:39, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
Sadko This was a joke for Resnjs consumption but you're right and its a fair point. Alas aside from likely Montenegrin objections to that logic^, we don't know what pagan Slavs called it. And we dont know the exact details of Albanian presence. The Tito era Serbian view as reproduced by Madgearu was that Albanians were there from around 1100 or so (alongside Serbs). The Albanian view of course has always been autochtony (again alongside "the Slavs"). And another reality that neither Serbian nor Albanian historiographies will easily admit is that the whole of Kosovo was a nest of Romance speakers in the Dark Ages who only assimilated slowly.--Calthinus (talk) 13:26, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
@Sadko, the Ottoman period is also some 500 years where that culture greatly impacted the town through Islamic monuments and other architecture, not to mention that for a large part of that time the town's population was overwhelmingly Muslim. And to @Srnec's point, yep that's why the the ancient period divided into Byzantium, the Orthodox era and even Ottoman era into Constantinople and the modern Turkish era is Istanbul. Are you saying we should divide this article into separate pages then, say into Pec for the Slavic era and Ipek for the Ottoman era with Peja for the modern?Resnjari (talk) 16:59, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
Comment: They do not. Kosovo have two official languages, Albanian and Serbian. But that is not important here. ElmedinRKS (talk) 17:35, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
Interesting then that your nomination talks about a name change. Srnec (talk) 18:26, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
There are 94 % Albanians - which means that the people in Peja would more use Peja as Peć does not mean The Kosovo government refers to the city as Peja. ElmedinRKS (talk) 18:45, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Support for the arguments made above, we have to accept the reality that the city's official name is Peja (in Albanian) and not Peć (in Serbian). BalkanianActuality (talk), 16 September 2019 (UTC)
@BalkanianActuality: Actually both names are official (since Kosovo has two official languages). --T*U (talk) 13:17, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
Maybe with official name he means the most common name in English-language sources. ElmedinRKS (talk) 21:47, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
Annotation: Pec is a wrong spelling. ElmedinRKS (talk) 23:03, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
The BBC alternates between both forms this decade [18].Resnjari (talk) 20:16, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
Reuters (in its search results) is in the never-never catagory when it specifically refers to the town [19], [20] and not organisations like the Patriarchate. Instead Reuters uses Peja for the town [21].Resnjari (talk) 20:16, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment. IMO, in doubtful cases, we should use the official name, local or otherwise. See for example North Macedonia (I haven't the energy to locate the WP:RM in the page archives) and several closed discussions on Talk:Eswatini (formerly Swaziland). I feel unqualified to have an opinion on this RM.
Meanwhile, 'Pec' for 'Peć' is just plain wrong. 'c' and 'ć' are different letters, pronounced differently. It's like saying that English 'was' and 'wash' are the same word. Narky Blert (talk) 23:28, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Closer comment: This is a case where the official name has changed. Comments have considered whether the name change is used sufficiently commonly for the name of the article to be renamed. There is no arguement (that I can see) that questions how the town is known locally (within Kosovo) now, in consequence of Kosovo's independence. Arguements centre on guidance at WP:COMMONNAME: Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it generally prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent [emphasis added], reliable English-language sources) as such names will usually best fit the five criteria listed above. Germany (v Deutschland) and Belgrade (v Beograd) are examples. They also centre on WP:NAMECHANGES, where weight should be given to more recent sources. Istanbul v Constantinople) is an example where the common name persisted well after the official name change. Wikipedia:Official names, though not a guideline, is pertinant to the discussion. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names) is a context specific guideline.

There has been a body of evidence presented with searches from n-grams, Google search and Google scholar. I do not doubt the good faith in doing so but the analysis offerred with same is not clear. It is not simply a matter that the sources are "English language" but are they "independant" - ie are the authors, though writing in English, writing from an ethnic "bias" or, are they writing on the subject "at arms length"? I am not convinced that the analysis has sufficiently considered the criteria of independance.

In considering the evidence, the distinction between Peć and Pec has been noted. I also note Peja v Pejë. It is valid to observe that native English speakers are less concerned with usage of diacritics. Cadiz v Cádiz is an example. The significance was noted in the close of a previous move discussion. Consequently, evidence and analysis should not ignore this.

Red Slash observes that neither name sees any real usage in English. This is a comment that appears to have particular merit. However, it has not been developed sufficiently to give it significant weight.

There is no consensus arising from the discussion. Further, I do not believe that a consensus will be arrived at by simply relisting the request. However, consideration of the observations herein may assist in focussing the discussion and facilitate a consensus - one way or the other. This close is therefore without prejudice to a further request. Cinderella157 (talk) 23:55, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 20:07, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Change the name to Peja

The user who keeps changing the name back to the less used Serbian version shows strong political influence and refuses to follow the policies of Wikipedia of not spreading false news towards helping propaganda. Searching Peja + Kosovo in google and google scholar shows more results than the Serbian version. All the documents released from the country of Kosovo in the English version refer to it as Peja, which brings down the argument that Peja is referred otherwise on English. Please change the name back to Peja and stop with this stupid political propaganda. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.22.59.2 (talk) 13:25, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 18 August 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: moved. By strength of the arguments presented, there is consensus for this name change. – bradv🍁 19:33, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

– Hi. I have never edited on Wikipedia, so excuse any lack of familiarity with the common practices in place in this community. I take note of the previous arguments against changing the name of this page, which hinge on the claim that Peć is more common in English usage. Some users have used Google results to claim this, however this seems to produce inconclusive results, sometimes skewing to one side, sometimes to another.

In any case, it seems to me there are at least six good reasons to change the page name to Peja.

1) All other major cities in Kosovo are titled by their Albanian names, except Pristina. Gjakova, Ferizaj, Gjilan are in Albanian. Of course, Peć sees more English usage than Đakovica, Uroševac and Gnjilane, which is an argument against this reasoning. However, one should consider the matter of naming consistency across the territory of Kosovo.

2) The municipal government English language website, as well as documents issued from the municipality in English, all call the city either Pejë or Peja, and the Municipality either the Municipality of Pejë or the Municipality of Peja. As the article states, it is about the municipality. Municipal website: https://kk.rks-gov.net/peje/en/[1]. Example document issued by the municipality https://kk.rks-gov.net/peje/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2020/08/B05-Njoftim-per-Kontrat-2-1-1-1.pdf[2]. (See p. 2, which refers to the "Municipality of Peja".) I realize some have argued that official names do not constitute common usage. However, since there is no clear consensus, for example in Google results, as to which name is more commonly used in English, it makes more sense to take official names into account, as well as common practice with other Kosovar cities.

3) As many have pointed out, the use of diacritics is not preferred by English speakers. This has the effect that if one searches "Pec" (without the ć), one is referred to a disambiguation page. Same goes for "Pejë", "Peje" or "Peja". Therefore, for English speakers (who presumably do not have access to the letter ć or ë on their keyboards, all possible spellings currently lead to a disambiguation page. This could be confusing to many users, and is clearly not desirable. To avoid this, Peja is the most neutral and easily typed English spelling.

4) For what it's worth, most tourist websites and tourist materials for the city, seem to refer to it as Peja.

5) Some have argued that since the Germany page is not titled Deutschland, and the Belgrade is not titled Beograd, then this page should also not be called Peja, just because it is official. However the first example, Germany, is a native English exonym for the country, and is not comparable to Peć, which is the Serbian name for the city, adopted into English after the Balkan Wars. Prior to this the English name was based on the Turkish name for the city, Ipek.[3][4]. As for Belgrade, this name has been in English usage and is undisputed, while the case of Peja/Pejë v. Peć is both disputed and there is no clear preference in English usage. Therefore, the argument that official usage (in English language municipal documents, for example) is irrelevant, is strange. Notwithstanding the usage of Pejë/Peja by, as an example, Britannica [5], because there is no clear English language preference, the official usage of the municipality (which this page is about) should be considered, and would be most neutral.

6) It is used, for example, by the Encyclopædia Britannica[6], which on the naming convention page[7], is listed as a sources for "widely accepted names".

References

  1. ^ https://kk.rks-gov.net/peje/en/
  2. ^ https://kk.rks-gov.net/peje/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2020/08/B05-Njoftim-per-Kontrat-2-1-1-1.pdf
  3. ^ https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Edward_Stanford_1877.jpg
  4. ^ https://www.britannica.com/place/Peje
  5. ^ https://www.britannica.com/place/Peje
  6. ^ https://www.britannica.com/place/Peje
  7. ^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(geographic_names)

– Best regards. Leokr (talk) 14:40, 18 August 2020 (UTC) —Relisting.  — Amakuru (talk) 16:26, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

  • Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 15:27, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment whatever the consensus is here, it should probably be extended to District of Peć as well to remain consistent.-- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 21:16, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose This question was discussed in details not that long ago. Sadkσ (talk is cheap) 22:32, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support per detailed nomination and per convincing references. This request concerns a location that does not have an English exonym (thus leaving English speakers with either the Serbian name, Peć [with a Serbian diacritic, which would only be intuitive to use for a place with a Serbian-speaking population] or the Albanian name, Peja [without a diacritic]), in an Albanian-speaking entity which is recognized by 101 UN members, including the entire English-speaking world (List of states with limited recognition). —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 22:46, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose Google Trends clearly demonstrates that Pec (without the diacritic, including in Serbia) has been most commonly used globally from as far back as 2004, outpacing Peja by a factor of 8 to 1. [22] In the United States, Pec is more commonly used by a factor of 7 to 1. [23] We have a similar situation in the UK. [24] If broken down by region, Pec is used more often in all the Western countries. The only country where Peja is used more frequently is Poland (not an English-speaking country). [25]
It is important to note that the Peja results are artificially inflated by mentions of the basketball player Peja Stojaković. Otherwise, they would be even lower than they are. There are two villages in the Czech Republic, both with around 300 inhabitants, called Peč and Pec. Given their small size, I doubt they have seriously affected global trends in favour of Pec over the past 16 years. Going by WP:COMMONNAME, this renaming proposal is baseless. Amanuensis Balkanicus (talk) 03:06, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
@Amanuensis Balkanicus. The Google Trends reference is both inconclusive and misleading. Pec (w/o) diacritic leads to thousands of companies and organizations around the world, for example the Pakistani Engineering Coorporation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEC. Since Google statistics are inconclusive, and do not constitute common use by reputable sources, it is non-productive to reference them here.
If you add the diacritic, the results are much lower. But this does not mean it argues for changing the name of the Wikipedia page, since Google results are inconclusive and difficult to interpret. Please reference and see my above arguments instead.
Thank you. Leokr (talk) 04:50, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support per WP:COMMONNAME. On Google scholar: Peja+Kosovo 2,940 results Peć+Kosovo 1,940 results. But what should be established here is what is the name used in everyday life (what the COMMONNAME policy tries reflect) if you have any sort of activity that is related to this town. In practice, every travel guide, hotel booking service and any other service uses Peja/Pejë for this town. If even Brittanica with its very slow methodology of adaptation to changes in the real world has opted for Pejë (the indefinite form of Peja), I'm sure that wikipedia can finally to Peja (as over 95% of its citizens call their town). Despite !vote attempts to keep a status quo that is far removed from real life, wikipedia has moved to Gjakova (instead of Đakovica), Ferizaj (instead of Uroševac), Gjilan (instead of Gnjilane) for the same reasons. Time to do the same here.--Maleschreiber (talk) 11:42, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose, not again with this nonsense. A unsuccessful move request was closed exactly a year ago. It is not hard to see why. Google Books results for "Pec+Kosovo": 13,000 [26], for "Peja+Kosovo": 6,000 [27], for "Peje+Kosovo": 2000 [28]. Likely the reason for this is that the town's main claim to fame is the Patriarchate of Pec, which will likely never be referred to as the Patriarchate of Peja for obvious reasons. Contra Maleschreiber, many place names in kosovo have not been moved from their Serbian spelling (Mitrovica, Pristina, Gracanica, Podujevo, Orahovac, Glogovac, Suva Reka, Podujevo, etc.). The argument "this is what the inhabitants call it" is not policy based. It only matters what reliable English language sources call it. In this case, it is very unlikely the name will ever change, due to the Patriarchate. Also, the OP, Leokr (talk · contribs) only has 5 contribs [29], all starting August 18, though the account was created in 2017. Almost certainly a sleeper account of one of the many banned users in this topic area. Needs looking into. Khirurg (talk) 16:29, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Hi Khirurg (talk · contribs). Did you have an argument against this? I did see the move request from 2019, but I did not feel that the closing reasoning was very thought out, so I wanted to bring this up for discussion again. As for my account history, I made this account in 2017 to add a custom font to my Wikipedia layout, to experiment with the UI. Although I have not contributed, I do not see what the problem is. My arguments for the move are sincere and written in a civil tone. It is impertinent to show such a lack of good faith in the argument's of others. I hope that whoever closes this request will consider whether the opposition brings any new and/or convincing argument to light, and that opponents are reviewing the case somewhat impartially. We are not trying to find out which English name for the city is more palatable for Serbs or Albanians, but what will be more useful and intuitive for English speakers.
Best regards. Leokr (talk) 16:47 PM 19 August 2020(UTC)
How about you cut the bs and tell us the name of your previous account? Khirurg (talk) 00:27, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
Khirurg, we don't have to take this kind of tone. Leokr will reply to you. ArbDardh (talk) 01:06, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
Kind of a weird answer. How are you so sure? Are you him? Khirurg (talk) 03:57, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
I think I can assure you I'm not! No, I just think it's logical enough to assume they would. I don't see why not. My main point was to not start using phrases such as bs. We don't need them to sort this debate out. ArbDardh (talk) 11:45, 21 August 2020 (UTC)ArbDardh
I can see that Khirurg (talk · contribs) has edited their opposition to include arguments about placenames in Kosovo that use Serbian forms. I will address these. As far as Gračanica goes, it is a majority Serb community, so it makes sense that the Serbian version of the name is still more common in English. Along with Podujevo/Podujeva, Orahovac/Rahovec, Glogovac/Gllogoc and Suva Reka/Suhareka, Gračanica are very rural, small and (for most English speakers interested in the region) irrelevant. As far as major towns go, the only one with a non-Albanian form common in English is, as you mention, Pristina. However, this usage is highly established and also used in official English language documents in Kosovo. Meanwhile, Mitrovica, as you probably know, is spelled the same in both Serbian and Albanian.
As far as the Google results go, these arguments are very stale. The results are inconclusive, and the geographic naming conventions policy refers to common usage by reputable/widely accepted sources, not any sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(geographic_names).
I also am concerned about the tone of your replies. You rudely asked about my account history, as if it has any bearing on the arguments, yet I answered. If you do not believe my reason for creating a Wikipedia account in 2017, then that is your prerogative, but please do not attack other users such as ArbDardh (talk · contribs) in this way.
I must say the seemingly ethnic fault lines and political interest in the two sides of this discussion makes me feel distraught. I would have hoped for a more constructive discussion.
Kind regards, Leokr (talk) 12:29, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
@Leokr: any editor is welcome in wikipedia regardless of the number of their edits and if anyone suspects you to be any other editor, they can report you. But they can't casually link you to other editors (WP:ASPERSION) outside the context of an actual report.--Maleschreiber (talk) 12:54, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support - I have yet to come across a convincing argument why it should remain as Peć. On the basis of the inconclusive Google results, as Leokr (talk · contribs) proposes, our main priority should indeed be finding the most convenient, reasonable name. Therefore, coupled with the recent changes of Đakovica to Gjakova, Gnjilane to Gjilan, and others as mentioned, it only seems logical to change Peć as as well. Although Peć may not be falling out of use, this is not to say it is still the most fitting. User:ArbDardh (talk) 17:05, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support per ArbDardh's rationale. N.Hoxha (talk) 20:18, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Side comment: if you remove the results that are about the Patriarchate of Peć, the gap in modern use between Peja/Pejë and Peć/Pec increases even more. That's a very normal phenomenon and should not be politicized as sadly happens usually. Name use reflects the conditions of its time. Wikipedia should at the very least be as close to the movement of time as Brittanica, a tertiary source which has minimal input from outside editors. --Maleschreiber (talk) 22:19, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
Side comment this account !voted here in its 12th edit just 10 minutes after another account that is not particularly active in English wikipedia. It's obvious what is happening and will keep happening but these accounts should know that "its name is traditionally Serbian" is not an argument or policy in wikipedia and with such actions they're only showing how necessary it is for the whole community to be involved in order to stop these attempts and allow the community to decide freely.--Maleschreiber (talk) 11:04, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
What's even more obvious is that the account that started this move request has all of 10 contribs [30], all from August 18. But that doesn't seem to bother you. Khirurg (talk) 00:34, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
No, it doesn't bother me because one editor who starts a move discussion, can't influence its result. You can file a report at SPI if you have any suspicions about a returning editor. Massive off-wiki canvassing and campaigning on the other hand undermine community decision making.--Maleschreiber (talk) 12:54, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, except if the socking was on the other side, you wouldn't be saying that. And if you think there is "massive off wiki canvassing", you should file a report at WP:ANI instead of railing about conspiracies on the talkpage. Khirurg (talk) 02:14, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
"per Sadko" refers to the comment "This question was discussed in details not that long ago". Neither is an argument of course, nor is 2018 when this was last discussed with almost no actual debate, "not that long ago". The 30 edits of the above account in all of 2020 in English wikipedia require no further analysis.--Maleschreiber (talk) 14:00, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
What requires "no further analysis" are the total 10 contribs from the OP [31]. Khirurg (talk) 00:34, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
It is. Stop bashing other editors. Arguments were laid out during that debate and nothing signifacnt has changes in all this time. The idea here is to achieve the wanted result through agressive pushing and team-tagging, while putting labels on editors who are opposed and accusing them of the similiar sort of behaviour. Means and instruments should be chosen in RL and on Wiki both. Not to mention that the editor you want to bash and label is an admin and a senior editor who trumps anything you have done during your stay on the project. x Sadkσ (talk is cheap) 15:19, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
This is the English wikipedia, not the Serbian wikipedia/wikiquote - and whether someone is an admin there is irrelevant to our discussion or their editing here. Arguments still have to be presented and be judged based on their content which is very lacking from those who !oppose the move. The canvass issues are self-explanatory, any comment is redundant. Other editors can judge the depth of the discussion of the previous Talk:Peć/Archive_2#Requested_move_11_October_2018 move request. What stands out among the few who participated is that someone even argued in 2018 that it shouldn't be moved because it had already been discussed in 2015. It highlights that the response "we've discussed it before" is not an argument, but a deflection from the burden of having an argument.--Maleschreiber (talk) 15:39, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
(8 March 1999: The Serbian Run District Court in Peja convicted the following for "hostile activity" and "terrorism"). Information from Council for the Defence of Human Rights and Freedoms - PHDN [32] Mikola22 (talk) 19:07, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
A lot of the opposition to this move seems to come from Serbs or those who make a lot of edits about Serbian topics. I too, like @WEBDuB, am worried about POV pushing. A lot of the opposition of this move also speak very respectlessly and little consideration for nuance in argument when addressing their opponents in opinion. I take note of the use of the word "non-sense", as an example. It is important to consider all arguments, as I did with the arguments from previous requests before I made this request. I addressed the concerns of those who worried English common use would be harmed, for example. Meanwhile, the opposition seems stuck on that line of argument, and seem unable to address any of the reasons from myself and other supporters have pertinently provided. They then claim we are nationalists for giving clear and new reasons. This is an unacceptably low level of discourse by the opposition. I sincerely hope that some of you will be able to formulate some good reasons of opposition, when I have given six good reasons in support, without reference to the inconclusive Google data (which both sides claim), and without appeal to national interest, but to the best interest of the English-language Wikipedia user.
Best regards. Leokr (talk) 16:42, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support I think we should be careful not to overlook the arguments because of some people reacting emotionally. So far I cannot see a single argument against the move, other than "it has historically been so" and google hits. Both have already been refuted quite convincingly by senior users in the current discussion.Uniacademic (talk) 12:24, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
That is not true, actually, and your comment is just empty vote without any proper argument. --Ąnαșταη (ταlκ) 19:51, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose How many times do we need to have the same discussion? Just look at the arguments presented in the previous debates. Google hits isn't a reliable indicator that one name is more common than another. --Aca (talk) 10:33, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
Aca (talk · contribs), I don't think that's a valid reason to oppose the move. The discussion has been brought up again because, simply, the issue isn't exactly finished, and I think Leokr (talk · contribs) did bring up some new points in his argument. It's too easy to not give these a go just because it's "the same discussion". ArbDardh (talk) 11:13, 23 August 2020 (UTC)ArbDardh
  • Oppose - There is no English language name of Peć. The English language sources predominantly use the original Slavic name - Peć, the name Slavs gave to this place when they populated the area in 6th century. The Albanian language neologism Peja/Pejë entered the sources for the first time about 100 years ago. It is important to bear in mind that this place is subject of larger attention of English language sources mostly because of two related topics: the Patriarchate of Peć and NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and because of that more or less, all English sources use the original - Peć version when they refer to Peć. The Albanian language neologism is a recent phenomenon, also pushed in English language general sources published by Kosovo/Albanian institutions within the campaign of Albanisation of names. Still, it is far from prevailing in English language specialized sources, and I doubt it will ever prevail having in mind the above-presented arguments. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 13:57, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
A neologism is a newly constructed term, Peja is just the name Albanians use for this settlement since the Middle Ages. When and how it was written (you're also wrong about that - but it's unrelated to our discussion) is a factor independent of the language itself. I think that you need to familiarize yourself with wikpedia's WP:COMMONNAME. The editor who started the discussion makes a very good case about current use in bibliography, including the most reputable encyclopedia in the 20th and 21st centuries, Brittanica. You're not disproving his arguments by putting forward a fringe narrative about "Albanisation of names".--Maleschreiber (talk) 14:19, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support I was a bit unsure, but after following the discussion for a weak, I am now entirely convinced that the move is the right thing to do. While GB search does not lead to a clear conclusion over which name is the most likely to suit readers that seek to get information, other things should be taken into account. This is a (small) settlement in a small Balkan country, so most people are likely to search info on it due to being its citizens who live in English-speaking countries (they are almost all Albanians) or due to being tourists (who tend to seek info in line with names used in official capacity by the country and used by local people). Most of them will come to search the city on Wikipedia due to real life reasons, not because they will make a prior search on GoogleBooks or GoogleScholar. So it is beyond any reasonable doubt that "Peja" is more suitable than "Peć" is. "Peja" is the only name that is in line with all the five criteria described by WP:COMMONNAME. Unlike "Peć", "Peja" follows the rationale of the Consistency criterion, ie "The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles" -- indeed, all major Kosovo cities have been moved to their "Albanian" names, as opposed to keeping the "Serbian" names. The last, but most meaningful argument, is that if we remove all !votes from the usual Balkan accounts that keep opposing each other here or there, the non-Balkan !votes are 4 vs 1 in support of the move. And they seem to be native English speakers. Ktrimi991 (talk) 23:20, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Note to the closing editor As we know, in such cases consensus is determined by the way how arguments stand against Wiki policies, not just by counting !votes. Such Balkan discussions have for years been damaged by canvassing etc. The most recent case: other editors have expressed concerns about canvassing, as lately is every discussion perceived as a "voting process", certain editors on srwiki who rarely edit on enwiki, appear and !vote the same way. Some of them have made blind reverts too here or there without any tp participation etc. Of course this does not mean that editors from srwiki or sqwiki are not welcome to participate here and give their opinion, but in any case the consensus building process should not be held hostage to blind "votes" by any side. As a matter of fact, only four editors (Ortizesp, Iamawesomeautomatic, StellarHalo, Red Slash and Roman Spinner) that have participated in this discussion so far, are not Balkan-focused. More input from non-Balkan editors would be welcome. Ktrimi991 (talk) 23:20, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
    And the same work also for certain editors from sq wiki who from time to time invite offwiki other albanian editors in order to use wikipedia as their political propaganda tool. Therefor this attempts of changing commonname of articles into albanian ones with attempts to present those as english. Not going to pass this time... --Ąnαșταη (ταlκ) 19:51, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
  • User:Cinderella157 actually makes a good point, maybe the best argument so far in a very long list of such Kosovo RM discussions throughout the years. WP:NCPLACE says that : one solution is to follow English usage where it can be determined, and to adopt the name used by the linguistic majority where English usage is indecisive. In this case, English results are obviously indecisive. GB search does not lead to a clear conclusion. There are several untrue claims: that "Peja" was not used during the war by English-language sources (check online, it was used), the settlement is mostly known due to the Patriarchate (it is not, the very majority of online sources that mention the settlement do not even mention the Patriarchate), and that Peja/Pec are both equal in official terms (not so, English-speaking countries --including the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand-- recognize as offical the documents of the government of Kosovo, that for ethnic reasons prefers and uses the Albanian name Peja). Ktrimi991 (talk) 11:08, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support move of the disambiguation page regardless of the choice of name for the city. If the city is not moved as well, Peja should redirect to it as a WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT. Neutral on the move of the city beyond that point. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:50, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support per proposer's rationale, and I agree with the good analyzis that user:Cinderella157 reported below by pointing out the relevant Wikipedia policies. – Βατο (talk) 22:11, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Support While GB results for both names are close to each other, people search info offline also. In that regard, names used by local people and official institutions tends to be preferred. Hence, one is more likely to come and search on Wikipedia "Peja" rather than "Pec". Also, readers can mistake Kosovo's Pec for places in Czechia and Hungary, and Peja can prevent that from happening. Better to avoid misleading our readers. Sadsadas (talk) 23:42, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose per Khirurg, Sadko, and specially per Antidiskriminator. Common name is not official name, and that is not relevan as both name are official, but the one established in history and contemporary sources combined is onlY one that matters. Therefor having in mind that historical presence of the name Peć is overwhelming, it is obvious that commonname, the most important part we follow is not changed from Peć. Maybe in one point in history it may be so, but for now it is not. --Ąnαșταη (ταlκ) 19:51, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
Cinderella157 put forward some very good arguments which are based on the way policy functions, unlike the comment of the above account who is not an active editor in English wikipedia and basically made the same unsubstantiated (in terms of policy, use of the names in bibliography) argument in 3 different move discussions (within 4 minutes) in Kosovo-related articles[33]. by the majoriAnother one of those instances which other editors have already noticed about participation in this move discussion.--Maleschreiber (talk) 20:27, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
It would be nice not to lie and mislead. I opened account in 2013, unlike most of support editors, including you. Many users cited google hits, from books and search, all of those are google hits. The question of sources are more important then number of hits, as most of the books mentioned are published by either RoK or in Albanian language. So please, stop with false misrepresentation of users whose comments fail your WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Also, stop WP:STAKING other users and their edits, that is rude and false representation. --Ąnαșταη (ταlκ) 08:42, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
It has been clarified but I'll say it again: both names are not equally co-official. As everywhere in Europe where minority languages exist, Serbian is used as official within the context of the minority rights of the Serb community in the few villages it is found. But it is not the official language used in the municipal services or any other context. The name used in almost all services of this town is Peja because that is the name which over 90% its population use to refer to their hometown.--Maleschreiber (talk) 20:53, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Peć was known historically and traditionally by that name (Peć). If we have to change Peć into Peja or anything else, then we gotta make sure the city is widely known as such. Right now, this isn't the case in the English world. Also, Google results and historical sources do not confirm that indeed Peja is the WP:COMMONNAME. (Maybe in the future it will, but not yet!). Also to those arguments above about official name being Peja, I shall remind them that this is not how Wikipedia works. Per WP:COMMONMNAME: "Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it generally prefers the name that is most commonly used." and yet Peja doesn't meet these criteria. I recommend that Peć's case is treated carefully also due to the politically complicated situation in Kosovo and the sensitive ethnic relations between Serbs and Albanians of the country Peć it is located to, which for us the Wiki editors is one more reason to stick with Wikipedia's rules and general practices for renaming city articles. --- ❖ SilentResident ❖ (talk ✉ | contribs ✎) 23:13, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
was known historically and traditionally by that name (Peć) The town has actually been historically known by the Ottoman Turkish name Ipek because for most of its history, it has been an Ottoman town which actually developed in the Ottoman era. Peć is the name of a small settlement on top of which the town developed. Now, neither this, nor a political argument about "sensitive ethnic relations" affect how titles are decided in wikipedia. It's surprising that anyone would even refer to "sensitive ethnic relations between Albanians and Serbs" in order to argue for the Serbian-variant of the name of a town, where 90%+ are Albanians and there are very few Serbs who actually live there.--Maleschreiber (talk) 15:46, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Strong support - buckle up, here's come a revelation to every single participant in this debate so far - debate that will never end, and it shouldn't until we all go to TP of relevant policies, and resolve the issue of bilingual geo naming, vis-a-vis title choice, by setting an additional or new one - the town has one, and one "official" name only! It is written Peja in Albanian, and Peć in Serbo-Croatian. I assume that in Kosovo, at this time, Albanian is the only official language, with Serbian being language of Serbian minority, and how is this regulated in country's constitution and laws I do not know, but
(* Revised entry:) So, nothing has changed in that regard in at least last five hundred years, while the official languages of Kosovo since independence remain both Albanian and Serbian, which means that nothing has changed in that department neither, so I assume it's mandated that at least in places with significant Serb population bilingual documents, signs, etc. are used.
I noticed that nobody actually talks about the problem in these terms - one official name, two official languages, nothing has changed since independence, except that 90-95% of the population speaks Albanian, and that this fact, together with Kosovo now being independent state, reflect in reality as Albanian eventually gained primacy over Serbian, and until we get an option of writing bilingual titles in the project we should respect this last point.(End of revised entry)
Further, Google is of no relevance, unless you set search engine to custom date threshold at 2006-present (or whatever is the year of Kosovo independence), so that result show which language version of the town's name is used since that particular year. Reason for this is that Kosovo was part of the South Slavic world, as part of various Yugoslav states, for nearly hundred years, with Serbo-Croatian language vs. Albanian in clear advantage and with nearly 15 million speakers vs. little over 1 million Albanian speakers.--౪ Santa ౪99° 19:30, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
@Santasa99:@Calthinus: could you move your comments to the main discussion, so that all !support/!oppose are in the same section?--Maleschreiber (talk) 13:26, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
Maleschreiber gotta run feel free to move mine. --Calthinus (talk) 18:32, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
This is not the argument. This means nothing, its most neutral for you, but for anyone else its not, so this comment doesn't mean anthing else but a !vote. --Ąnαșταη (ταlκ) 16:47, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
@Iaof2017: could you move your comment to the proper move discussion?--Maleschreiber (talk) 00:21, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I opposed it before and nothing has changed, so why not. This is not a large or important place. It isn't Kiev. But it has significance in history mainly under the Serbian name, as attested by UNESCO. For some Basque places, we use double nams (e.g., Ayala/Aiara) and ugly as it is I wouldn't oppose it here. Problem is, it would get way out of hand in the Balkans. Srnec (talk) 13:06, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Comment by closer of previous move request My close explicitly stated that there was no prejudice to a further RM but with the implied condition that it should not simply be a rehash of what has occurred before. Unfortunately, it largely is.

My understanding of the issue herein is that, the official name of the place has changed since independence of Kosovo and that the name of the article should reflect this, with various arguments being made for and against the move.

The guidance to consider in determining the appropriate article title is: WP:AT, WP:COMMONNAME as part of WP:AT, WP:OFFICIALNAMES, WP:NCPLACE and WP:NAMECHANGES. The most pertinant guidance from these are as follows: As there has been a change of the official name, from WP:NAMECHANGES: ... we give extra weight to reliable sources written after the name change. From WP:COMMONNAME: Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it generally prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable English-language sources) .... Considering WP:COMMONNAME more closely, it is not sufficient that the sources are written in English but they are also independent - this precludes authors with ethnic ties to the region. Also, inherent in the phrase "a significant majority", there must be a sufficient corpus of sources meeting the criteria for such a determination to be made. Where there is not a sufficient corpus to assert a common English name, the guidance is to defer to the official name - see WP:NCPLACE etc.

In considering the evidence, a simple google search is of limited value. It does not discern whether a "hit" meets the criteria or even if the "hit" is on-topic versus other uses. Google books is more likely to return "reliable" sources but simple gross counts donot resolve whether all of the criteria are being met. In my close of the previous RM I made reference to the observation by Red Slash: ... (let's be real) neither name sees any real usage in English .... While this comment hits the nail on the head, it was not sufficiently developed (with enough weight) to carry the move. Scanning the evidence from Google Scholar (at the time) indicated that a large proportion of the hits had strong national/ethnic ties to the locallity and should be excluded on the basis of independence (ie, they were not sufficiently at arms length from the subject).

Most recently, I have looked at the evidence from google books but limited the search by time to either the last 10 or last 20 years: "Pec+Kosovo" (last 10 - 1910) (last 20 - 5920), "Peja+Kosovo" (last 10 - 2810), (last 20 - 5010). Limiting the search by date is consistent with WP:NAMECHANGES. These raw numbers may be a little misleading though. Scanning through the pages for each search, they quickly run out of hits - after about five pages for each of the 10 year searches and 10 (for Peja) to 15 (for Pec) for the 20 year searches. There is then the matter of determining if all of the hits meet the criteria (independent, reliable English-language sources) and are relevant to the subject (ie not a false hit). The raw data suggests that "Pec" does not meet the criteria of a "significant majority" to be the WP:COMMONNAME. The results also indicate that either name is not all that "common". Both observations tend toward adopting the official name in this case. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 02:44, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Addendum: WP:NCPLACE (at general guidelines) states: When a widely accepted English name, in a modern context, exists for a place, we should use it. This will often be a local name, or one of them; but not always. If the place does not exist anymore, or the article deals only with a place in a period when it held a different name, the widely accepted historical English name should be used. If neither of these English names exist, the modern official name (in articles dealing with the present) or the modern local historical name (in articles dealing with a specific period) should be used. At WP:WIAN (a following section) it is also suggested to consult [current] disinterested, authoritative reference works such as Encyclopædia Britannica (already cited by the OP). There are other sources suggested, though access will be an issue. Out of interest, I consulted Google Maps, which gives the Latinised name as "Peja". Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 10:53, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
Isn't it the case that onus for the name change is on the proposed new name? In other words, for the move to occur, the new name would have to be the "significant majority", and if both names are roughly equally common (as appears to be the case here), the current name stays per status quo? Khirurg (talk) 04:36, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
Khirurg, I believe you are possibly conflating two quite separate matters. "Significant majority" is quoted from WP:COMMONNAME, within WP:AT. WP:AT places no such onus. Please quote the relevant section if you disagree. However, when closing a move discussion, a closer may find there is "no consensus" (ie no clear outcome for either name per WP:NOCON), the status quo will be maintained. I would also link WP:NOTDEM and WP:NCH. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 10:09, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment -
    • Peć is also official name. The sovereignty of Kosovo is disputed, with more than half of countries with about 3/4 of world population having position that it belongs to Serbia. For them the official name is Peć.
    • Besides, I think this argument presented at this RfM also somewhat nail on the head - I contend that the current name is better known to people in general for precisely two reasons, the first is the notability of such establishments as the Patriarch of Peć which far outweighs fixed English titles using the alternative title such as the short-lived League of Peja. The second (and in my mind clinching argument) is that Peć was widely used when the town came to prominence among today's English-speaking community which was during the NATO conflict of 1999: see link. Since then, reference to Peja has featured in no major headlines, only minor[5], and even then there is mention of it being called Peć. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 10:20, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
Cinderella157 gave a good overview of the arguments and I agree with them. Peć is not an equally official name, it is co-official in the context of existing Serb communities (~2%) and their right to receive public services also in their language in the 3 villages they live in. But that is not an argument against the use of the official name of the municipality. In many municipalities throughout Europe, a toponym related to linguistic minorities is also recognized as co-official in the context of minority rights - but that doesn't mean that it is actually used as an official language to any meaningful extent which would justify article titles to be changed in wikipedia. The Patriarchate of Peć is an unrelated article. I don't know how many people who are not interested in Serbian Orthodoxy search for it, but it is irrelevant to this move discussion.
The sovereignty of Kosovo is disputed, with more than half of countries with about 3/4 of world population having position that it belongs to Serbia. What you're basically saying is that because China doesn't recognize Kosovo, wikipedia shouldn't change the title of a small town in Europe, which almost all Chinese people have never even heard of. Fortunately for wikipedia, our guidelines for article titles don't include the geopolitical decisions of China as a criterion.--Maleschreiber (talk) 11:28, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
You misinterpreted what I wrote. I pointed to more than half of countries with about 3/4 of world population in the context of determining what is the official name. Peć is official name per legislative of Serbia and for all other countries who do not recognize Kosovo as an independent state. Having in mind that it is also one of the official names for Kosovo government, it would be a violation of WP:NPOV to proclaim Peja/Pejë as official.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 12:04, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
Wikipedia in most of those countries you are referring to its illegal, so I don't see whats your point. However, this is Wikipedia-English and as such you need to refer to those countries which have the English language as the primary language... and I'm afraid that the vast majority of the English speaking countries do recognize Kosova as an independent and self-governed country. Anyway, the Move was not based on these arguments but on other objective arguments.Bes-ARTTalk 12:15, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
Hello Antidiskriminator. I just want to point out that the much more famous Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople is not grounds for calling the Wikipedia page of Istanbul "Constantinople". In just the same way the name of the patriarchate is not really grounds for not moving this page, since this page is about the municipality and city. Best regards. Leokr (talk) 13:59, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
This is wrong on many levels and its not relevant argument for this discussion. --Ąnαșταη (ταlκ) 19:51, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
Hello Anastan (talk · contribs). I disagree that what I write is wrong. The Wikipedia page discussed herein is about the municipality and city, not the patriarchate. And the Wikipedia page for Istanbul is the same, while the page for the patriarchate is called "Constantinople". However, I do agree with you that it does not pertain to this discussion, and I only brought it up because of Antidiskriminators argument about the patriarchate, which (in my opinion) has no bearing on this discussion. Regards, Leokr (talk) 07:33, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
What's wrong here is the massive off-wiki canvassing and the community will deal with that after these discussions are over.--Maleschreiber (talk) 20:27, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
I have seen multiple accusations of off-site canvassing thrown around this and other Balkans-related move discussions. Could you provide any evidence of off-site canvassings of significant scale having taken place that is more than just users from Balkans participating in discussions and disputes in Balkans-related articles? StellarHalo (talk) 21:41, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
When the same accounts with very few edits in English wikipedia appear in the same discussions to put forward the same opinion, that is something which - in my opinion - requires much closer attention. There are accounts in these discussions which have logged in, voted in all of them and then logged out with no edits ever since. The same has happened in a recent AfD which I filed. Admins chose to relist the AfD and relist one of the move discussions in order to get a clearer view. It is sort of a solution, but my opinion since the beginning is that we need massive community participation by established editors in order to get a result that reflects a real discussion in the community. Regardless of the result - it has to be decided by the quality of arguments put forward by the community, not by !votes.--Maleschreiber (talk) 22:04, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
Actually the account with "very few edits in English wikipedia" is the initiator of the move request, Leokr (talk · contribs), who had no contribs at all prior to initiationg this request. But you're dishonestly pretending not to see that. It's always a conspiracy when you don't "win" isn't it? Khirurg (talk) 00:37, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
Hi Khirurg (talk · contribs). I don't why you are insinuating that I am doing something wrong. The first sentence in the move request literally says "I have never edited on Wikipedia". As far as I can ascertain, there is no rule against people who have never edited requesting a move. I have not hidden my inexperience, but I have tried to read previous arguments in previous requested moves, as well as the naming conventions policies.
Meanwhile, most of the opposition to the move makes no reference to these policies, besides WP:COMMONNAME, which it has been argued by many users does not really apply in this case, among which is Cinderella157 (talk · contribs), who writes that "The raw data suggests that "Pec" does not meet the criteria of a "significant majority" to be the WP:COMMONNAME. The results also indicate that either name is not all that "common". Both observations tend toward adopting the official name in this case."
In general, I am disappointed with the tone in some of the discussion here, which from some users have been harsh and antagonistic, and filled with bad faith accusations. Some could benefit from reading this article, Principle of charity. Regards, Leokr (talk) 07:33, 28 August 2020 (UTC).
One editor who starts a move discussion and has few edits, doesn't influence its decisions unlike multiple accounts with few edits which place the same !oppose in three very different discussions. There's no guideline against the former regardless of edit count. There are multiple policies that affect the latter. It's telling that Leokr has been active in this discussion, but many of the accounts with few edits who !oppose the move: logged in, !voted and since then have no edits, neither in this discussion, nor anywhere else. It's no surprise that the support/oppose ratio is <1 between Balkan editors, but the same ratio between non-Balkan editors is 4 to 1. All of these !votes should be discarded by the closing admin - or at the very least, this should be relisted so that actual editors have the chance to engage in a discussion about how policy functions.--Maleschreiber (talk) 15:46, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
There is plenty of discussion. If you are WP:IDHT pretending not to notice]], that's on you. And there are just as many !votes on the !support side, but again that doesn't seem to bother you. Khirurg (talk) 05:02, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

NOTE TO CLOSING ADMIN: This request is opened by users third edit of the never used account. Most of the Support users opened their account within days and one month to each other, at the end of 2019, during the Wiki Academy Kosovo event. The dates of duration of event lined with our "new neutral users" appearances on Wikipedia. It is obvious that Republic of Kosovo is using new editors again, as we have witnessed several times in the past years they already did, as their national agenda pov pushers and fighters. We already know that they educate new users to use English Wikipedia as pro-Albanian propaganda advocacy tool, and that is strictly forbidden by WP:ARBMAC. Therefor this coordinated list of renaming of established article name with attempt to rename them to Albanian language, that should be presented as new "commonname". And this is happening on at least 4 articles at the moment. Admins should be well aware that those requests are very much disputable, and therefor, consensus reached is actually not consensus, but organised and paid political advocacy. --Ąnαșταη (ταlκ) 08:42, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

What a strange, bad faith comment. Please, if you have any evidence of your accusations, provide it. Otherwise, your comment should be disregarded. Accusing and slandering others without evidence is against the rules. WP:No personal attacks and WP:Civility. Leokr (talk) 17:02, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
Looks like Khirurg and Anastan might be onto something. I guess appealing to r/Kosovo doesn't count as canvassing, does it? [34] Amanuensis Balkanicus (talk) 18:47, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
In any case, they are only discussing how to change the page name through the rules of Wikipedia after an apparent edit war. No one in the thread is asking anyone to vote or do anything. Canvassing according Wikipedia is "notification done with the intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way, and is considered inappropriate. This is because it compromises the normal consensus decision-making process, and therefore is generally considered disruptive behavior." In the reddit thread in question there was no attempt by anyone to influence any discussion, especially since the move request occurred after the reddit thread was posted.
Of course, if the closing admin deems the reddit thread sufficient to ignore the discussion and arguments, that is their prerogative. In my personal opinion there is no canvassing in play, since no comment is saying that people should vote on anything or influence any discussion, especially since there was no requested move when the thread was made.
On the other hand, we have editors accusing other editors of being basically paid operatives of states, as well as other editors writing in a disparaging and uncivil tone throughout the discussion. Leokr (talk) 20:29, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
One editor has been strictly warned for making WP:ASPERSIONs. @Amanuensis Balkanicus: admin oversight is necessary because you keep putting forward ASPERSIONs about other editors. Would anyone who is engaged paid advocacy and/or off-wiki coordination really do that on the central Kosovo discussion of reddit of all places? Really? You can't link any editor to any such activity and yet you put forward egregious accusations.--Maleschreiber (talk) 20:09, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
Who said anything about paid advocacy? Amanuensis Balkanicus (talk) 20:13, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
Anastan wrote "Most of the Support users opened their account within days and one month to each other, at the end of 2019, during the Wiki Academy Kosovo event. The dates of duration of event lined with our "new neutral users" appearances on Wikipedia. It is obvious that Republic of Kosovo is using new editors again, as we have witnessed several times in the past years they already did, as their national agenda pov pushers and fighters. We already know that they educate new users to use English Wikipedia as pro-Albanian propaganda advocacy tool, and that is strictly forbidden by WP:ARBMAC." Leokr (talk) 20:29, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
And/or off-wiki coordination - you can't link any specific editor to any form of off-wiki activity unless you have evidence. Since you obviously don't, what you're currently engaging in is an WP:ASPERSION.--Maleschreiber (talk) 20:26, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
I'm not accusing anyone on en.wiki of anything. But the genesis of this move discussion (and, by extension, the other move discussions) appears to have been on Reddit, which is off-wiki activity by definition. Whether anyone from r/Kosovo has coordinated with any of the move proponents on en.wiki and vice versa is unclear and remains to be seen. The idea that bringing something like this up on a subreddit where hate speech and perjoratives such as Shkije are commonly used and that it wouldn't be interpreted as some kind of political call-to-action is laughable. Amanuensis Balkanicus (talk) 20:37, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
That discussion was opened on the same day (I can't tell if it was before or after) - but that doesn't affect our discussion because not a single new editor has !supported this move - and the nominator is an old account despite the few edits. In fact, all of the !votes that involve new editors or editors with very few edits are !oppose ones. In fact, there's a large gap between Balkan and non-Balkan editors in favor of !support. In fact, the only discussion which has been closed by an admin as a case which was affected by canvassing recently was Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Destruction of books in post-independence Croatia which I filed and thankfully what very likely contituted heavy canvassing was recognized. So, what you're putting forward without being able to connect it to a single editor is an WP:ASPERSION. Because you can't put forward that something "remains to be seen" when you have nothing to back it up and you can name no account that has supported this move which can be categorized as a new !vote-only account. --Maleschreiber (talk) 21:02, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
Offwiki canvassing is off-wiki canvassing, period. No amount of complicated explications can alter the fact. And it is not hard to imagine your reaction is the same canvassing had been done on the Serbian side - you and your friends would be screaming bloody murder. Khirurg (talk) 05:50, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
Yes, off-wiki canvassing is what it is and that reddit thread is not off-wiki canvassing, but a public reddit thread which you can't connect to any editor of wikipedia and you won't find a single account that fits the category of off-wiki canvassing in this discussion. The WP:ASPERSIONs started from accusations of paid advocacy and a secret "WikiAcademy Kosovo" and they've devolved to "oh look, someone has created a public reddit thread". At the end day, there's not a single !support that could have been the result of canvassing. New accounts have only !opposed the vote. If that occurs, accuse that account openly and stick a notification that Wikipedia is not a democracy at the head of the proper move discussion.--Maleschreiber (talk) 14:54, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
Well it would have pretty hilarious if whoever posted that was dumb enough to use their Wikipedia username. But even though it doesn't appear to have been very successful off-wiki canvassing (although it seems that every single active Albanian wikipedia editor has !voted here), it still very much is off-wiki canvassing. But I forget I am dealing with the guy who was recently trying to convince the world that a Serbian Orthodox church is actually not a Serbian Orthodox Church. Khirurg (talk) 22:49, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
It sure looks like a Serbian Orthodox church, it sounds like a Serbian Orthodox church, but believe it or not, according to some Wikipedia users, this is actually NOT a Serbian Orthodox Church.
There's not even a hint that anyone from wikipedia posted that thread - don't put that forward as a generic WP:ASPERSION. There are no new editors who were drawn to this discussion to !support it. The total tally between Balkan editors was ca. 0.8-to-1 when it was relisted, but between non-Balkan editors, most had !supported the move. I don't think that ethnicity of editors matters, arguments matter - wikipedia is not a democracy. Side comment: A structure which has been used as a Byzantine church for 500+ years, as a Serbian Orthodox Church for ~150 years, as an Ottoman mosque for ~300 years and as a museum for the last 70 years, is not a Serbian Orthodox Church despite claims by the organization which wants to gain the property. It is a cultural monument that "belongs" to everybody regardless of religion and nationality.--Maleschreiber (talk) 00:21, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
That count of yours about non Balkan users, numbers, votes etc, its not true, actually. Its misrepresentation and gaming the system in the end. You should not count for yourself, as that is not true, but leave someone unrelated to conclude in the end. Also, your comment about Bogorodica Ljeviška. Well, its Serbian Orthodox Church, despite IDONTLIKEIT. And there are so many sources to prove it. Cannot believe in your comment. But that is not the subject of this request. --16:47, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
@Maleschreiber: You may think this type of POV sophistry is clever, but all it does is damage your credibility. It's also pretty funny of you trying to creatively re-define what off-wiki canvassing is, what with all 9 of your months editing here.Khirurg (talk) 00:37, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
One hundred years ago, there was a minaret and other para-structures which marked this as a mosque. Then for a time it was redesigned again as a church and in the 1950s, the interior was again redesigned as a museological space. It has a complex history which is reflected in its architecture. In our era (postmodernity), complexity is accepted for what it is. In previous eras, complexity was thrown aside in favor of simplistic narratives. Those eras are behind us.--Maleschreiber (talk) 01:37, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
The only "complexity" I see is in your elaborate sophistry to try to convince the world not to believe our lying eyes. Khirurg (talk) 04:13, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
(Comment inserted subsequently) If that reddit post is all we have then it's safe to say that there is no evidence of off-wiki canvasing. As for Maleschreiber's credibility as an editor, it's even safer to say that he came through to the other side of these sustained personal attacks with his credibility unscathed, his demeanor exemplary, and, most importantly, his arguments cogent and well-reasoned.--౪ Santa ౪99° 15:32, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
  • Another note Anastan has been warned by an admin for the aspersions they made on move discussions [35][36]. The admin made a good summary of the situation while referring to Anastan: "As you know, you yourself were once named in an SPI and were blocked one week for apparent meatpuppetry. Ironically, that SPI involved another user that worked with you in the same Wikipedia workshop. Your charge about new editors who worked together at Wiki Academy Kosovo has some common elements with that". It seems that Anastan is accusing others of things he got blocked for in the past (off-Wiki coordination with srwiki academy editors). Ktrimi991 (talk) 13:55, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
  • I suggest that accusations and replies to accusations come to an end. Several AfDs on the Yugoslavia topic were recently closed without much regard for the number of !votes. It happened so as it is well-known that partisan !votes are a real thing. One thing in this context is meanigful. Apart from one, all the "non-Balkan editors" (editors who are not focused on the Balkans) who have !voted here have supported the move. Cheers, Ktrimi991 (talk) 23:12, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
Absolutely not true. Khirurg (talk) 22:01, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
100% not true. Sadkσ (talk is cheap) 17:14, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, the situation has changed since I made my post above. Now the non-Balkan editors are 9 vs 3 in support of the move. Ktrimi991 (talk) 13:42, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
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.
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