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Why are British places generally not disambiguated

I find it a rather odd cultural favour that articles on locations in the United Kingdom are not subject to the rules set out at MOS:DAB. Why do places in the UK get articles with a hatnote to a disambiguation page, whereas places on the remainder of the planet that have thousands or millions of residents share a disambiguation page with Bum-frick, Idaho? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 18:12, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Much as I'm always on the lookout for creeping British imperialism on WP, I'm not sure I think UK places are that much more likely to go undisambiguated. Care to give a specific example? I can think of, say, London versus London, Ontario, and I think that one is fine as it is — it's on the lines of Los Angeles versus Los Angeles, Chile (although that last one escapes a disambiguator by virtue of a happy accent). --Trovatore (talk) 18:25, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

• I find your racist comment about creeping British imperialism offensive, unwarranted and injurious to, what I consider, the spirit of Misplaced Pages. Also I suggest you take a long, hard look at your own nation's history and ongoing foreign policy.--Ykraps (talk) 08:00, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
  • It's neither racist, nor directed, nor personal. It's a concept, not an absolute. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 19:35, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
    • What?! It is a race-based prejudicial remark directed at British editors and designed to stir up feelings of resentment. It is offensive and insulting and clearly racist!--Ykraps (talk) 20:34, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Did you really mean MOS:DAB? I think WP:DAB applies.--Boson (talk) 18:33, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

In particular WP:DAB#Is there a primary topic?--Boson (talk) 18:35, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Sounds more like there's a problem with articles on Bum-frick than some mythical convention that supposedly favo(u)rs the UK. But this is not really a policy issue; the policy exists already, it just needs to be discussed and implemented on an article-by-article basis. --Bermicourt (talk) 18:43, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

We don't seem to have an article on Bum-frick let alone one which favours Bum-frick, Essex over Bum-frick, Idaho. Off the top of my head Washington goes to disambiguation despite the town in the U.K. being the origin of that name. California covers the U.S. state despite 5 U.K. towns bearing that name. Bangor goes to disambiguation despite the Irish and Welsh towns originating that name. Dunedin goes to New Zealand not a redirect to Edinburgh. I don't see it myself for want of a decent example.Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 19:02, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Washington is a slightly sore point — personally I think it should go to the state. Washington, DC is in my experience more often called DC than Washington. As for a place in the UK, that's not even on the radar, and historical priority can go whistle. --Trovatore (talk) 19:11, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree in relation to Washington, Tyne and Wear but disagree with the State having precedence. Outside of the U.S. most people don't know where the state is (or even that it exists) and consider Washington to refer to the capital and that's their primary reason for searching WP for it. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 19:28, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Need examples. At random, I checked York, which I think is the primary topic, Nottingham, which I think is also the primary topic, and Lancaster, which goes to a DAB page. So it obviously is not a universal style. Meanwhile, there are numerous places in other countries that are not disambiguated despite not being in the UK. Resolute 19:05, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Worcester, Cambridge, Marlborough, Newport, and Plymouth are the first I could think of where the most common usage is unknown, and should be disambiguated. Also, Misplaced Pages:Naming_conventions_(settlements)#United_Kingdom calls for articles simply at ] whereas Misplaced Pages:Naming_conventions_(settlements)#United_States says they need to be at ] except in limited instances. ~DC 20:10, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

The difference in the naming conventions is not designed to give UK places precedence over US localities, but to reflect common usage in the two countries. For example (and correct me if wrong), the relatively important town of Waukesha, Wisconsin is known as typically known as that even though its the only locality of that name and the mention of the state isn't actually necessary. On the other hand, minor British villages do not have the county attached in normal usage. For instance, Zeal Monachorum is not typically called "Zeal Monachorum, Devon".

In cases where the primary subject is ambiguous, this difference in normal usage should not be used to give the UK article inappropriate significance, and the guidance of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC ought to be followed.--Nilfanion (talk) 21:33, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

But "Cambridge, England" and "Plymouth, England" are not atypical, for example. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:35, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

(Ditto "London, England" of course). I meant normal usage within the country, not internationally. Normal usage in the US to describe a US town is to include the state, whereas normal usage in the UK to describe a UK town is not to include the county. Plymouth is called "Plymouth" in the UK, not "Plymouth, Devon" or "Plymouth, England". That said, the 5 places mentioned by DC are examples of poorly located articles - due to unclear primary topic etc.--Nilfanion (talk) 21:42, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

And those are just examples from New England. Any way, I think the rule should be that if there is most common usage can't be determined, the name page should be a disambiguation page (so my 5 examples would be DAB pages), and not default to the English place (which seems to be the case right now). ~DC 21:55, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Not disagreeing there, was just pointing out the reason for the difference in the article naming conventions. However, you may want to read the archives of the pages you mentioned to see the previous lack of consensus over the moves. IMO, the hardest single one to handle is Birmingham.--Nilfanion (talk) 22:04, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I would have thought Cambridge would be a difficult one as well; as home to one of the world's top 5 universities, saying "I studied in Cambridge" is implied internationally to mean the UK not Massachusetts or Ontario Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 22:25, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Both terms go straight to the English city. I think the reason Nilfanion says Birmingham is more difficult is that Birmingham, AL has probably more grounds to complain than Cambridge, Mass; the latter, while very notable among other things for MIT and Harvard, is generally considered a suburb of Boston, whereas Birmingham, AL is a standalone city. --Trovatore (talk) 22:30, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

(ec) @SJ How so? Cambridge, Massachusetts is home to both Harvard University and MIT, currently #1 and #3 in the Times education rankings. And too me Birmingham means the UK city not the Alabama one. DC T•C 22:32, Thursday October 14, 2010 (UTC)

Also, I looked at the archives. The last move request for Worcester was in 2008, Newport was 2006, Plymouth was 2008. Found none for the other cities I mentioned. DC T•C 22:41, Thursday October 14, 2010 (UTC)

@DC in my experience, internationally Harvard and MIT are identified as being in Boston. A US Google search for Cambidge throws up the UK College as the second hit despite the geographical preference that google searches use these days.Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 23:03, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Okay it shows, the University not the city. Which proves the point that Cambridge is ambiguous because it could refer to the University, the city in Massachusetts, the UK city, or the Canadian one. Also, "internationally" doesn't matter since most readers of this Misplaced Pages are from the U.S. DC T•C 23:15, Thursday October 14, 2010 (UTC)

I don't see the location of the largest number of readers as an even tangentially relevant issue. An encyclopaedia takes a worldwide view and should not intentionally bias its coverage towards its home or the location of its readers. We need to enforce the policy in a way that is neutral and which meets the needs of readers from all countries. Too many editors, of various nationalities, write content without thinking about whether it will make sense to people from another country. --DanielRigal (talk) 23:38, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

If we were to base all our decisions on the (debatable!) claim that "most of our readers are from the US", these decisions would have all been cut and dried a long time ago. The fact that they aren't, and that we still have lengthy discussions about the appropriate weighting between various national styles of English, should be a fairly clear indication that this argument isn't of much weight! Shimgray | talk | 23:46, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Ooo, there should be a name for that argument, which has never held water here. I thought it used to be mentioned at WP:ENGVAR, but it doesn't seem to be. Seems like a brief discussion of this endlessly repeated argument, and why it won't convince people, would be helpful for relative newbies. 109.155.37.180 (talk) 23:58, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

"most of our readers are from the US"....according to Alexa.com 22.3% of wikipedia traffic is from US so 77.7% is from elsewhere. Regards, SunCreator 00:15, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Misleading stat. That is traffic for wikipedia.org as a whole, while we care only about en.wikipedia.org. That said, this is the English Misplaced Pages, not the US Misplaced Pages. Resolute 00:30, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

(ec) My mistake. Did look for en.wikipedia.org but now apparent that was not returned results. Regards, SunCreator 00:49, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

(EC) Most readers of the English language Misplaced Pages are not from the US. Even if we combine the US and Canada, total access to EN Misplaced Pages is rather more than twice total North American access to all Wikimedia projects. As for the theory that Britain gets the primary topics, what about Boston, Lincolnshire, and Dallas, Scotland (I've been to Dallas, it even had a shop, in a corner of someone's front room). ϢereSpielChequers 00:46, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that it is improper to claim primacy for American English on Misplaced Pages. (It's also improper to claim primacy for British English; there's no shortage of editors who want to do that.) This is a settled question and it's not productive to keep bringing it up.

As an aside, since you mentioned Dallas, there might be a bit of a special case for Texas cities. Oh, I don't really mean for WP purposes, but in the vernacular. As a sometime Texan I can tell you that Texans will sometimes say "Dallas, Texas" even when speaking to other Texans in Texas. My theory is that they love saying "Texas" so much that it doesn't matter whether there's any point in disambiguating. --Trovatore (talk) 02:45, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Middlesex, Northumberland, Renfrew, Cornwall, Hastings, Durham, etc. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 06:01, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

As someone has said, US practice is to quote the state after the town name as if it is part of the name. The same is true incidentally in Germany - e.g. Winsen (Aller) which is even on the road signs as you enter it. If anything the US practice of "Town, State" has been wrongly adapted to become a disambiguation system for places, using commas instead of the normal brackets. So Boston, Lincolnshire should be Boston (Lincolnshire) following the general Wiki convention for placenames, but US practice has prevailed. Of course if the recent suggestion to adopt subtitles for Misplaced Pages was implemented, most of these arguments would go away. You would just have:
Boston
Lincolnshire
etc. And then who cares because there is no need for a primary topic. --Bermicourt (talk) 06:08, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

That's wrong. The correct way when mailing a letter is to use a comma between a city/town/village and a district/province/state. I believe this is just as true in Europe as in North America. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 14:35, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Things change. There are suggestions in the UK to deprecate county names in addresses in favour of postcodes. With the setting up of the post office, county names were used to resolve ambiguous addresses: in the event of a problem the dead-letter office would pass it to the 'county town' for resolution. That is now not the mechanism: take Skegness as an example, it has a PE postcode despite being 50 miles from Peterborough and in a different county. And in Germany, for example, the Lande are never used - just the postal code and the town name. Some railway stations, such as Leer, are disambiguated as Leer (Ostrfiesland), but Ostfriesland is a cultural designation, not an administative one (both Leer are in Lower Saxony).

When I learned touch-typing addresses were step-wise indented, and used commas at the end of each line. Now neither thing is true.--Robert EA Harvey (talk) 09:36, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I've just entered 'Paris' and imagine my surprise when a page about some place in France came up!--Ykraps (talk) 06:50, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

@Floydian I just checked most of those examples you gave all of the UK counties have (or had in the case of Middlesex) a population that is higher than the combined populations of the other places worldwide with the same name. Simply on the basis of individuals in that region looking for information about that region the UK one has the most right to be considered the primary article. Just as U.S. States are considered the primary article when towns with same name exist worldwide. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 07:07, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

In many cases those towns are equally well reported on as the British counties. In this case there is no primary topic. There's a big difference between Middlesex and Renfrew. - 14:35, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Primary topic judgments are sometimes got wrong across all Misplaced Pages topics - generally speaking it doesn't matter that much, even though blatant cases can be annoying (I still can't accept that Duke of Wellington doesn't go to..., well, the Duke of Wellington). The only problem wkith the placenames is that certain editors have tried to make it a religion that US places must have the state in the article title. By adopting this convention, they have built in inconsistency with the way articles are named elsewhere - and so it's no surprise that if Americans don't want to use the article title Plymouth, then the Brits will make use of it. (It doesn't really harm anyone to have a primary topic instead of a dab page when there are only two significant topics, since the hatnote will take readers to the other topic in the same number of clicks.)--Kotniski (talk) 07:45, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

This one annoys me a little bit: Hayfield is an undisambiguated village and civil parish in the Borough of High Peak, in the county of Derbyshire, England, with fewer than 3,000 residents. Take the hatnote to Hayfield (disambiguation) and you find a list with Hayfield, Minnesota, a city in Dodge County; Hayfield, Virginia, an unincorporated community in Frederick County; Hayfield Dundee, Louisville, a neighborhood in eastern Louisville, Kentucky; Hayfield Secondary School, the oldest secondary school in the Fairfax County Public Schools system of Virginia; Hayfield Township, Crawford County, Pennsylvania; and Hayfield Township, Dodge County, Minnesota. The Pennsylvania township has more than 3,000 residents. There is no article about hayfields, but see Field (agriculture).--Hjal (talk) 08:13, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Well argue the point at Talk:Hayfield, but why is it even necessary when US towns have a ready-made, disambiguation system already widely used by the US and others (even Brits talk about "Boston, Mass" - it just goes together like a "horse and carriage" - hey, there's a song in there somewhere...), but if you don't want to use it, you're now going to have to pick a primary topic from one of 5 US towns. --Bermicourt (talk) 12:40, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't see why it annoys you, Hayfield has enough notability to produce a B-Class Article and despite old census figures has a population roughly similar to Hayfield Township, Crawford County, Pennsylvania which has no apparent notability and has been left as a stub. Most of the other Hayfields have a population of 1/3 or less that of Hayfield, Derbyshire. The next most reasonable article is the one for the school (which is rated as a stub class article but with some more sources could be start-class), but in general readers are going to search for "Hayfield School" for that not just "Hayfield" Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 12:53, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Boston, Lincolnshire why isn't Boston, Lincolnshire the prime topic as we are on the English language encyclopedia and not the language of the city of Boston, even though the Boston that is the prime topic. I think that any place in England should always be the prime topic no matter how big the place abroad is and no matter how small the place in England is. There is also Christchurch, Dorset Groton, Suffolk, Melbourne, Derbyshire, if there are any more, please add them to this list. Homan's Copse (talk) 11:49, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I really hope the above person is a troll. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 13:29, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I suspect so. But I'll respond anyway. To Homan's Copse: The language argument fails on a couple of grounds. (a) English is also the primary language of Boston, Massachusetts, anyway. (b) People who speak English (i.e. the vast bulk of our readers) don't necessarily talk or think exclusively about English-speaking places. The goal here is to be helpful to as many readers as possible, not to establish some sort of absolute primacy of one place over another. Barnabypage (talk) 13:31, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Some numbers

Is this situation - bias for UK places as primary over US ones - really as common as it anecdotally seems?

Using a list of largest places in the US (all locations >100k people in 2002, about 250), we find the first one to be a disambiguation is #6 Phoenix, then #10 (San Jose), #15 (Columbus), and #25 (Washington, perhaps a special case). (I'm not counting here cases where the main name redirects to a pre-disambiguated name - Nashville, Tennessee - as that article effectively "has" the main name) The first to disambiguate with another city is Portland, where the two major US cities are given top billing. In the top hundred, there's 35 - about one in three - which go to primary disambiguation (and five of these are names which appear twice in the total list).

Five more go straight to a different topic - #41 (Mesa), then #59 (St. Paul), #68 (St. Petersburg), #71 (Birmingham), and #73 (Norfolk). It's worth noting that the first of these are a common noun and a person respectively; only three of the conflicts are with other places. In the rest of the list, there's #107 (Durham), #124 (Worcester), #130 (Ontario), #138 (Pomona), #149 (Vancouver), #170 (Alexandria), #174 (Mesquite), #175 (Corona), #178 (Flint), #205 (Independence), #218 (Manchester), #226 (Pueblo), #232 (Westminster), #241 (Portsmouth), #243 (Cambridge), and #246 (Livonia) - in other words, of the 246 largest cities in the US, a total of 21 - 8.5% - have a different topic at "their" primary title. Of those, 13 - 5.2% of the total - have a different geographical place as the primary topic.

Of those 13, I'd say St. Petersburg, Ontario, Vancouver, Alexandria, and Westminster are unarguably "correct" - cases where the US use is definitely secondary - and I don't see an immediate case to be made for some of the others. So we're down to at best eight out of 246, 3%, where there's scope for debate over the primary usage - and none that seem obviously wrong - is this really as large a systemic bias as some of the comments above imply?

As an aside, I pulled up a list of the hundred "world's largest cities" and ran a test to see which (if any) weren't at the primary title. There's only one - Santiago, Chile. One is "force-disambiguated" to Guadalajara, Jalisco. (Mexican articles seem to be a mixture between "City" and "City, State", even when they're the primary topic - there's no obvious consistency either way). Shimgray | talk | 09:46, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I would be quite happy if everything went to a disambiguation page. After all, if you looked it up in an atlas that's precisely what you'll get. I would argue that it would be of greater educational benefit too, as those living in Boston for example, might not be aware of how many Bostons there are around the world and might even like to find out about them.--Ykraps (talk) 13:46, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Run those numbers for Ontario, where 9/10 places are named after a British place. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 14:39, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

As before, I've restricted it to "significant places" to avoid endless frittering around with village names - in this case, the 51 places on List of cities in Canada#Ontario. 24 have primary title, 21 go to disambiguation, and six have another subject as the primary topic - #6 (London), #15 (Cambridge), #23 (Niagara Falls), #25 (Peterborough), #32 (Cornwall), and #37 (Woodstock). NF goes to the falls themselves, and Woodstock to the Festival.

Of those six, at least two are definitely "correct", and whilst you could argue for disambiguation for the other four, I'm not sure any look like cases where the Canadian city should be primary but isn't.

Of the redirects, two - Pickering and Welland - look at first glance to be possible should-be-primary cases, but I'm not familiar with most of the places in order to dig any deeper than that just now. Shimgray | talk | 15:43, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I believe that in instances where a British and Ontario county share a name (with exception to globally known counties such as Middlesex and Essex), there should be a disambiguation page. They are both county governments, and for the most part are unheard of outside of their respective countries. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 21:05, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Please bear in mind this should not solely be about population, there are many other factors that affect notability. Historical significance is one of these, and is generally (but not always) one that will favour British places over North American ones as they will have a longer history. The problematic articles are generally those with some "real" significance, which makes the primary topic tag contentious. This means a case-by-case review of each should be made - which probably should be on the relevant talk pages. As this will scatter discussion, a central noticeboard somewhere is appropriate.

"Globally known" counties is an example of a vague concept that would need case-by-case discussion. If a dab is more appropriate, the new location for the British article is not always obvious either so should be discussed first too - Cornwall, England is a very bad article location.--Nilfanion (talk) 00:00, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I remember the great city naming war. The USAns came at us in wave after wave demanding that we follow standard US practice for naming cities rather than the Misplaced Pages standard article naming practices. In the end they wore s down and we agreed that for US placename articles only they should have city, state as the naming convention. I see now that this is spreading to placenames in Canada and Mexico but I'm too worn down and old to fight anymore so I'm staying out of this one. --filceolaire (talk) 23:01, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

It's actually part of WP:CANSTYLE if I remember correctly. Only for populated places. Rivers, railroads, highways and other types of places still use the regular disambiguation format. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 01:49, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually, looking around the world, the grammatically correct format is NOT using standard wikipedia disambiguation. Stating there are "only a few cases of this" and not doing anything is useless. Just like every other part of the world, Britain should be expected to properly disambiguate its non-global cities (ie Edinborough, London). In trying to do this myself, I am met at every page with raw hitcounts (which are meaningless in comparing an ambiguous title to a disambiguous title) and the assurance of several British editors that their location is the primary topic. Thats wonderful, but the plain title should still link to a disambiguation page, with the first bold link going to the "primary topic". - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 19:54, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

You don't appear to understand WP:Primary topic. When the consensus is that a certain topic is the primary topic, that topic gets the plain title, not top of the list on a disambiguation page. Another thing, how do you propose to decide what is or isn't a "globally known city"? One or two of your examples are nowhere near deserving of the main title being a disambiguation page, such as Cornwall, where apart from the fairly small town of Cornwall, Ontario, the other Cornwalls are miniscule villages or hamlets. Some common sense would be beneficial to the argument. Bretonbanquet (talk) 22:22, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

The consensus is formed by the editors of that particular article who watch its talk page, and who'd obviously take pride in their work. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 01:25, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

No changes are needed. Primary topics have prime positions. If there is a city with an equal size population and which gets about the same page views, then it should be a disam page. When the clear majority of views goes to one page and the place in question has a far larger population is more notable for a certain reason (like Birmingham is the UKs second biggest city), it should have the prime spot. BritishWatcher (talk) 10:19, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

A bunch of Wikipedians seem to think the sources claim there is contention about Birmingham's second-city status, so maybe that one isn't as clear-cut a Primacy case as it looks to you BW - Birmingham, Alabama is pretty much a comparable city to Birmingham, England in most other respects and they are of similar ages and sizes, etc. I think it's a closer case than people in Britain think. On the general topic, it seems these debates are just an artefact of the way Misplaced Pages is set up; if page titles had a more structured approach like USA:Birmingham or UK:Countries:England:Cambridge it would all be so much easier. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 11:06, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Agreed on the final point about the structure.. Having articles automatically located in the manner suggested would resolve these sorts of issues, but i cant see such a radical change coming now. On Birmingham, i think the primacy is still clear, although i accept its not as strong as in the case of Cornwall. 3k-4k a day for the Birmingham article compared to 1-2k a day for Birmingham Alabama and under 100 a day for the disambiguation page. Population sizes appear different to me..

• "It is the most populous British city outside London, with a population of 1,028,700 (2009 estimate)"
• United Kingdom's second most populous Urban Area with a population of 2,284,093
• "Birmingham's metropolitan area, which includes surrounding towns to which it is closely tied through commuting, is also the United Kingdom's second most populous with a population of 3,683,000"

compared to

• "According to an estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2007, Birmingham had a population of about 229,800."
• "The Birmingham Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2009, had a population of about 1,212,848."

Those differences seem enough to make it the primary topic. Also thanks to immigration and birthrates, without doubt Birmingham will remain the UKs second largest city in the future. BritishWatcher (talk) 11:29, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I have no idea how easy the information is to access, but Misplaced Pages's server logs should shed a lot of light on debatable cases. What proportion of visitors to Birmingham then click through to Birmingham, Alabama or Birmingham (disambiguation)? Barnabypage (talk) 11:55, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

The page views last month..

Birmingham, Alabama : 47862

Birmingham (disambiguation) : 1194

Birmingham : 118234

So even if every single person that visited the American city and the disam page (49 056 in total) first visited Birmingham by mistake (which is extremely unlikely) it would still mean (118234-49056=) 69 178 only went to the Birmingham page. That would still be an extra 20,000 views, making it the clear primary topic. BritishWatcher (talk) 12:57, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Reading through this discussion, there doesn't appear to be much evidence of a widespread problem. However, there are a few specific cases which merit further discussion (Birmingham, Plymouth, Newport and Worcester look the most likely to be problematic, although others have been mentioned). Since the numbers involved are relatively small and each case is substantially dfferent, wouldn't it be better to discuss them individually rather than in one big thread? Alzarian16 (talk) 12:03, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Plymouth Population sizes: UK: 252,800 / USA: 58,681

Page views last month: UK: 49896 / USA: 21330 / Disam: 2203

So even if every single person that visited the USA and Disam page, (21330+2203=) 23 533 first visited Plymouth by mistake (very unlikely) it would still mean (49896-23 533=) 26 363 only went to the main Plymouth page, which is 2000 more people than those other articles. I agree this is much closer than the above example, but we all know not every person that went to the USA page first went to Plymouth. BritishWatcher (talk) 13:12, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, the Newport one on page views is a problem, although based on population size 116,143 compared to 26,475 the UK one is bigger. On page views.. Newport: 26923, Newport, Rhode Island: 24063, Newport (disambiguation): 1550. Maybe that one would be better off as a disam page although yes it is a matter for editors at that article. BritishWatcher (talk) 13:22, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Worcester is certainly a problem on page views. Worcester : 18197, Worcester (disambiguation) : 733, Worcester, Massachusetts : 27413. So that should be changed, the USA one also has about double the population so the US one should have the prime spot, although considering there is a large number of locations with that name, a dab may be more appropriate. But i see no justification for changes to Birmingham or Plymouth. Although in all of these cases, it needs to be debated at the talk pages. BritishWatcher (talk) 13:35, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

As an aside, I'm wondering if there is any technical measure that could help here. In the UK, Plymouth clearly means the British city; in the US it probably refers to the Massachusetts city or the brand of cars. Newport in the UK clearly means the Welsh city, and just as obviously means the RI city in Rhode Island, and so on. MediaWiki can detect and provide localised information based on IP, such as notifications for wiki-meets. I wonder if something to be done so that if an American IP searches for Newport the search returns Newport, RI whilst a British IP goes to Newport, Wales?--Nilfanion (talk) 22:02, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Why don't we just have the main title be a disambiguation page? The introduction would contain more than one line for each of these considerably notable cities, which would then be followed by the general disambiguation page. Akin to the way Lincoln is currently set up, and the way every other non-populated place is set up when the primary topic isn't one of absolutely clear and obvious choice.

I would like to hear from someone involved with manual of style issues that is more familiar with these sort of issues. Many places in both the United States and Canada occupy completely undisambiguated titles. Etobicoke comes to mind. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 01:25, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Lincoln is only set up that way because there is an equal distribution between those looking for a Geographical Place and those looking for an Individual. Washington is the same, neither of these dabs are based on the primacy of the British town of that name over any other town of that name. For an example in the other direction how about 24th U.S. President Grover Cleveland going to Cleveland returns not a dab, not the 24th president, not the original British town to hold that name but the name of the city in Ohio, this is the correct prime page IMHO. The problem seems to be that you don't accept that these towns are prime even when they have higher populations longer histories, etc. What criteria do you feel makes the choice for a prime page? Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 13:59, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

A dab page works of course, but my concern here is usability not a preference for one over the other (I'd have same opinion if Newport went to the RI one and not the Welsh one). My point is that a significant majority of US users will want the RI city and a significant majority of UK users will want the Welsh one. If we could return the article most-likely-to-be-relevant in response to a search we increase usability for both UK and US users, as they will find the article they are most likely to be interested in immediately without further clicks (dab pages are a nuisance), and can then use the dab if they do want something else. With current set up, moving the article on the Welsh city to a disambiguated location is of no benefit to readers looking for the RI city, a hindrance to those looking for the Welsh one (as they need an extra click) and a benefit for those looking for something else (as they save a click). The "main page" would then be the disambiguation, but this would save hassle for all concerned.

Etobicoke is correctly located of course - as its a unique place it shouldn't be disambiguated...--Nilfanion (talk) 11:23, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure you can generalise enough to say "that a significant majority of US users will want the RI city". I think you can generalise enough to say that a significant majority of users from Rhode Island will want the RI city, and that may extend to neighbouring states. But the further geographically you move across the U.S. then the less local relevance it has and the reasons become more specific "going on Holiday there", "interested in the history of there", "Interested in familial connections to there", etc, and that could then apply equally to either Newport. The same would be true as you move across Europe away from Wales. Outside of that immediate geographic relevance the reasons will be specific and the choice of which Newport is wanted will be specific but they won't specifically relate to the Newport that is closes to them. The biggest Technical reason of course is that editors who see newport as referring to their newport will use it in articles, but when readers looking specifically for a Newport outside of their country follow that link they end up in the wrong place. This is not an acceptable situation. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 14:01, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Responding to Nilfanion's well-meant suggestion above: God no, let's not use technology to fix this. Having a server use my IP address to determine what I might want can be as annoying as an overenthusiastic sales clerk giving me things before I have a chance to finish my sentences -- & both end up with me getting very frustrated & angry. There are times when I very much want the option that is completely unrelated to where I happen to be at the moment. And even the most confused system of naming is better than a dynamic one created on the fly because it is not likely to change every time looks for it again, which makes every new search an unwanted adventure of exploration. -- llywrch (talk) 23:28, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough really. I think the furthest we could go down that route without causing real problems is making the internal search engine be a bit more intelligent and prioritise the suggestions in an order that reflects popularity and IP location. One practical change that would be helpful there is the disambiguation is clearly marked as such in the search irrespective of whether its at foo or foo (disambiguation).--Nilfanion (talk) 00:39, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Editors taking part in this discussion may wish to visit the discussions that are suddenly taking place at at Talk:Peterborough, Talk:Dover, Talk:Plymouth, Talk:Sydenham, Talk:Cornwall, and Talk:Cambridge, some of which may possibly not have followed required procedure.--Kudpung (talk) 00:43, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

There isn't a procedure involved in starting discussions on the talk page of the articles involved. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 00:51, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Suddenly? Kud, it's perfectly acceptable to start a move discussion if one hadn't been

Comment: First of all, you guys have forgotten one major thing about this; in the case of Washington and Lincoln, Meta 1000 figures that are hit about 10,000 times a day. For Plymouth, the article Plymouth Colony, about the colonial American settlement is viewed more than the Devonian city. Second of all, the problem with many of the smaller British city move discussions are decided by votes and not evidence. There's been compelling evidence to change how Lincoln works, but it' hasn't happened due to it being stonewalled by votes not based in policy (I guess I do buy into the allegations of nefariousness hinted at above). Same with Cambridge and Plymouth right now...they are losing, even though PRIMARYTOPIC arguments indicate that they probably should be a disambiguation. In the case of most of the places DC mentioned; the next two articles outhit the #1 article, often substantially, indicating that there's probably not a primary topic (In the case of London; it outhits London, ON and the disamb by about 10:1). That's what I think. Less POV, more policy Purplebackpack89 02:09, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

The reason I suggested the move is because the term "Dover" is used for several other instances other than the British city. The first page of a Google search for Dover reveals few results pertaining to the British city. Therefore, Dover, England does not seem to be the most widespread used for "Dover", despite being the original use of the name. In addition, if Dover, Kent is too ambiguous as Dover, Delaware is also in a Kent County, then the British city can be moved to Dover, Kent, England or just Dover, England. The current title at Dover is too ambiguous due to the multiple meanings as the name of countless places as well as use of a surname. For the record, Dover, England, with a population of 28,156, is not the most populous place named Dover as Dover, Delaware has 35,811 people. In the U.S., when many think of Dover they think of the capital city of Delaware. Many readers looking for information on Dover, Delaware or another place, when typing in "Dover", must follow two clicks to get to their intended article. IMO, British cities need to be disambiguated unless they are a major city such as London; this is similar to what is done with the U.S. where large cities such as Philadelphia do not have the state name whereas smaller cities such as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania do. Dough4872 02:15, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

The Google search you mention is carried out on the US Google so it's unsurprising it yields fewer UK results. Try the same search on UK Google and it's a different story.  — Amakuru (talk) 06:24, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• The last post (Dough 4872) is an excellent example of why this is not a significant problem. Dover, Delaware is known (if at all) by just that name by the vast majority of Americans, but Dover, Kent grossly fails WP:COMMONNAME as nobody in the UK ever calls it that. If anything they will say "Dover in Kent", for example on news broadcasts. Dover, Kent, England is just an abomination. All but the best known US place names normally come with the state attached, & people searching for their articles, or linking to them, will find them just where they would expect to. Johnbod (talk) 03:19, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
• I bet you had no idea that both London and Versailles were actually in Kentucky. Beeblebrox (talk) 05:50, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I am not saying the US titles are wrong, I am just saying "Dover" would be better off as a dab page due to its multiple meanings and the fact Dover, England is not even the most populous place with that name. At the merge proposal at Talk:Dover, it is mentioned that Dover, Delaware has more page views than Dover, England. In addition, I do not see why British cities seem to be exempt from getting the county name tacked on. Most American cities and towns have the state name tacked on to them, with the exceptions being major cities that are recognizable enough to not need the state name. Many smaller Brtish communities such as Warminster (17,000) and Amesbury (8,907) are also exempt from the need of a county name at the end. Both Warminster, Pennsylvania (31,383) and Amesbury, Massachusetts (16,450) have more people than the towns in England that share the same name yet are not disambiguated. I really think all British cities need to have the county name attached to the end unless it is a major city such as London. Dough4872 15:44, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

The problem with that is, as has been said already, that British people don't use the county name when referring to the town. Nobody says "Dover, Kent", or will search for that - it's just never referred to in that way. Americans often refer to their towns with the state name attached - it's just different. Article naming policy does have to conform to common naming, so "Dover, Kent" is not an option. "Dover, Kent, England" is not even worth discussing. "Dover, England" is full of potential problems as well. Many would only accept "Dover, UK". We would also have the ridiculous possibility of "Lincoln, Lincolnshire" and "Cambridge, Cambridgeshire". Bretonbanquet (talk) 16:05, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

This can also apply to the US in the case of larger cities. For example, people usually refer to Philadelphia without a state name, since it is widely assumed that they are talking about Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Even with smaller cities and towns, people in the area will also refer to towns without mentioning the state name. Another reason that Americans often refer to the state name after towns is because we are a larger country and names duplicate in several states and sometimes within states, just imagine how many places named Springfield exist in our country. Just because UK vernacular is different from US vernacular should not give the country priority in not having to disambiguate articles. Dough4872 22:01, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Comment May I suggest just leaving things as is. Many of the arguments here and on the individual pages have been based on individuals perspectives, North Americans arguing one side, British arguing the other. Looking at some examples Plymouth has good arguments on historical grounds for staying, but you would not want to use the historical justification for moving Calgary as it is obviously more significant today and Windsor is already a disambiguated page. The main argument for keeping things as they are is just the disruption it would cause. Moving something like East York is not a major issue but something like Cambridge would be a lot of work for the brave person that actual does the move. There are thousands of links to this page on other Misplaced Pages articles that would need to be updated. WP:POINT --Traveler100 (talk) 05:56, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

The number of inbound links is not an issue. Your example is not even close to the most inbound links for a page move. We have a dedicated team of editors that deal with these. In the process they would also correct the bad links to that page. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:50, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Comment - I don't think this should be a matter for general policy discussion. Each case is different, with different topics to disambiguate between, different importance levels etc. I agree with comments above that we should not append disambiguators to UK settlements as a general rule where there is a clear primary topic - that would be counter to WP:COMMONNAME, as such a convention is not generally used in the UK.  — Amakuru (talk) 06:34, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps then it's time to form such policy, instead of using it as a reason to maintain the status quo. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 06:45, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

That would not be needed if editors really understood primary use. Since that seems to be a problem, your proposal could be a logical solution. However it is not likely to gain traction. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:50, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Floydian: what is your proposal here anyway? There's so much talk above that is becomes unclear what's being discussed. Do you wish to use the Name, County nomenclature for every UK settlement, regardless of primary use? Or are you merely saying that we need to adopt a more neutral approach for the cases where the UK place currently resides at a primary location but there is disagreement about primacy?  — Amakuru (talk) 07:35, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

My understanding is Floydian's position is "some British articles are taking the prime spot when they shouldn't because there's other stuff equally or more important in North America". His proposal is effectively "lets fix that".

Existing guidelines on this matter are clear already - see UK naming conventions (semantic note: guidelines not policy - this is a guideline discussion).

However, I do think there may need to be a change there. They work fine when the English place is the primary topic, and when its a minor town/village. However when it is a major town/city and not primary topic, it causes a conflict with WP:COMMONNAME. For example Lincoln, Lincolnshire is a term no one in the UK would voluntarily use, and no one outside the UK would use it either (going for Lincoln, England by default).--Nilfanion (talk) 08:59, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I think the specific problem is where the UK town is the county town. This is the case with Lincoln, Cambridge, Oxford, and arguably also Lancaster, and makes the 'Town, county' format sound repetitive and clashing. No-one would object to Boston, Lincolnshire because that sounds helpful. On the more general point, I think users who think the present collision of policies comes off to the benefit of British users may have a point - but so what? Most of the other policies come off to the benefit of American users, eg the fuel used by most cars is at gasoline not petrol and most articles that could use either use American English spellings because they were written by Americans first. British users have just had to put up with it, and have put up with it. It seems unfair that in the small area where American users are disfavoured (or should I say disfavored) they should be able to force a change. Sam Blacketer (talk) 10:55, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

COMMENT We have two different discussions mixed up here. The first is about the primacy of a particular article, which is already well handled using WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. The second is about the naming of UK settlements, where the convention is different to US settlements, which is clearly set out in UK naming conventions. So we have a lot of discussion about two largely solved problems, and one editor trying to make a point (see, for example, Talk:Cornwall). We are re-running the same arguments that originally brought about these guidelines. Naming settlements is pretty straightforward. Deciding the primary topic is in many cases difficult. It always will be (apples and oranges). We argue each case on it merits, and follow the majority. Now, why don't we all go back to writing articles, and leave this teacup-storm to blow over? GyroMagician (talk) 10:43, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

GyroMagician, you're a mind reader! I was about to say pretty much the same thing, but you said it more betterer! Nortonius (talk) 10:47, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Oppose quite apart from the timewasting and disruptive nature of this proposal, judging the importance of towns by their current size is simply the wrong approach for an encyclopaedia, just think Tikal or Xanadu. If we were a trade listing only concerned with current business advertising then I could see a case for this, but we are an encyclopaedia, and so the length of history counts as we need to think of all the articles about historic events that will mention say Dover not just stuff from the modern era. A good example of this is Petra, yes as a kid I'd heard of a the celebrity long before I'd heard of the city - but it would be silly to move Petra (disambiguation) to the primary subject, even though no-one has lived in Petra for centuries. Most of these discussions are completely unnecessary as we have a working arrangement and the US naming convention of city, state rarely conflicts with British placenames. ϢereSpielChequers 12:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

The guideline that governs this whole discussion regarding disambiguations is at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Other arguments that fall outside of Misplaced Pages policies/guidelines should not have weight here. So perhaps arguments like the above about historical relevance by User:WereSpielChequers should be discussed at the talk page of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC in order to possibly change the guideline there, so these points can adhered to uniformly across the wiki and not just in this instance. Zangar (talk) 13:07, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I've no problem with the current wording of Primary topic. Its the people who seem to think that current town size trumps everything else who would need to change primary topic. Of course as things change and as the proportion of editors, readers and hopefully reliable sources from the global south increases we can expect some of our existing primary topics to change because a Kenyan or Bangladeshi subject starts getting more links and hits than the current primary topic in Britain or the USA. ϢereSpielChequers 13:55, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, fair enough, I agree. I thought you were countering one extraneous point with another; but I suppose that was your point, that neither is necessary. Cheers Zangar (talk) 14:33, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

It's a common mistake to confuse an easy measure with a useful one - everywhere, not just on WP. It's easy to find numbers for population size, page hits, etc. It's much harder to measure historic importance or cultural impact. So, yes, ϢereSpielChequers, I agree, and well said. GyroMagician (talk) 18:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Coming a little late, and reading this, I think it should be a matter of policy: and there is a very simple policy: every place name without exception should be qualified. We can't predict what any particular reader will need, and we want to serve all our readers. This is the Library of Congress principle: There is Birmingham (Ala.) and Birmingham (England). Even London is London (England). New York City is New York (N.Y.). Paris is Paris (France). Even Tokyo, where there is no other possible place, is Tokyo (Japan). As this is an international project, I'm open to New York (N.Y., USA) also, adding this for every US name. It's just the title, not the way it has to be given every time in the article. Someone said above that only Misplaced Pages experience is relevant. This is not so. Misplaced Pages exists in the world, and when we depart from universal convention we need a really good reason. Sometimes it's a technical reason, but I find it very very difficult to imagine other reason to have our own name conventions. (BTW, there's two LC exceptions. Jerusalem is Jerusalem , specifically in order to avoid giving a country designation And there's when a city has changed its name: for books limited to the medieval city, it's Constantinople, not Istanbul(Turkey). New Amsterdam for the Dutch precursor of New York (N.Y) is used also, but not consistently--one of the reasons is that there's a city by the same name in Guyana. I know this is not what Misplaced Pages does, but it ought to. Some ways of doing things idiosyncratically are not just idiosyncratic but wrong, and this is one of them. DGG ( talk ) 22:23, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

• Comment When it comes to historical importance being a world superpower does give one's cities better opportunity to become more notable by having it more likely that important things for the world will be happening somewhere in YOUR country as opposed to somewhere else, and things that are important in your history automatically become important for world history (Battle of Saratoga, turning point of the American Revolution is more important than a turning point in one of the 1848 revolutions of Europe, why? Because the US's position today, unfair? Maybe). Britain had that distinction from around the early 1700s to arguably 1918 or definitely 1945 and the US from arguably 1918 to definitely 1945 and that sole position from 1991 to today (and until China truly emerges into its own, we are in that limbo the world was in from 1923 to 1941 when hegemony could have swung to any number of up-and-comers the US, Germany, Italy, Japan, USSR). The Albany in South Africa or Australia just didnt have the opportunity to be as notable as Albany, New York. There are several places in the UK that are more notable than their counter-parts in the US based on the history and importance of the UK in spreading its history and culture around the world. I am surprised we are even debating if the Birmingham in Alabama is as notable as the one in England, there is no debate, the UK one is more famous and important to world history unless you count lynchings or number of hillbillies. Do we weight how long Britain was a world power longer or do we weigh more that the US is the current world superpower, and while we dont explicitly weight it in our considerations history does in that superpowers become a superpower because of the notable things invented, first, best, tallest, biggest whatever built in its cities which give its cities a leg up on being more notable than a similar named city in another country.Camelbinky (talk) 02:06, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

• Commment. I'm sorry but I don't see how superpower status is relevant. The notability of a town or city should stand on its own merits. There are thousands of unimportant little towns and villages in the US that no-one has ever heard of outside the local county, just as there are in any other country. --Bermicourt (talk) 05:14, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

While this is in some respects an attractive idea, I think preemptive disambiguation should remain discouraged. And think of all the new opportunities this brings for fun and games: Dublin (Ireland) or Dublin (Republic of Ireland)?; Belfast (Northern Ireland), Belfast (United Kingdom), or even Belfast (Ireland)?; London (England) or London (United Kingdom)?; Gibraltar?; Famagusta?; Jerusalem? I hope that, on reflection, you will see that this is undesirable. Angus McLellan (Talk) 23:45, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Maybe we need to come up with a new Misplaced Pages convention for how to name places in every country of the world, as the current one seems to have flaws. Dough4872 00:36, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that UK place names generally follow the wider policy, and that there is a separate policy for U.S. place names.

See Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (geographic names)#United States. The policy is that the great majority of U.S. place names be disambiguated. The reasoning given is that many names are duplicated, such as there being a "Springfield" in several states.

This was discussed about six months ago (Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archives/2010/March#City Names), although that was not the original discussion.

To me, if anything is going to change, it would make sense to change the policy for U.S. communities, so that they would only be disambiguated when need be. Maurreen (talk) 18:20, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Looking at WP:UKPLACE, this calls for British cities to be titled ], which can cause ambiguity. The policy also calls for ] for places that require disambiguation. I think the latter convention should be used for all cities in England with the exception of larger cities such as London, Birmingham, and Manchester. This would roughly parallel the U.S. convention, where ] is called for most places except larger cities that do not require a state name per the AP Stylebook, which use ]. Dough4872 18:46, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

It pains me to say that there may be a good point here. Although some of the ideas have been (in my opinion) over the top to prove a point. (Cornwall, seriously?) Looking at some towns and smaller cities in the UK, and comparing them in terms of hits and population to their US (normally) counterparts, there is a good argument for not having any primacy. What for example makes my place of residence, Taunton, that much more important than Taunton, Massachusetts. Obviously, for me; the fact I live here and didn't (until I just checked) even realise there was another Taunton in the world! For the bloke in Massachusetts however.. Well, why does he have to navigate through my Somersetian town to get to his lovely town (or city, whatever!) So, grudgingly, I admit there may be a point to this. Grudgingly. Harrias 23:47, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

What for example makes my place of residence, Taunton, that much more important than Taunton, Massachusetts?

A thousand years of history and the fact that Taunton, Massachusetts was named after Taunton, perhaps? --Bermicourt (talk) 05:20, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

That made it more the primary topic in 1636, not necessarily now. Harrias 06:47, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I think there's a case to be made (though I have no idea if it's the case in this particular example), that one place (or more generally, thing) being named for/after another place(/thing) should count towards the latter's primary-topic-hood (as one among several factors). --Cybercobra (talk) 07:15, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, I kinda wonder why age has anything to with notability. I'm older than, say, Natalie Portman, but everyone would agree she's more notable than I. Sure 1000 years is a lot, but if absolutely nothing happened to distinguish the place in that time, why is it notable? (Disclaimer: I haven't looked to see if anything has happened, it's just this one was brought up) ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 09:46, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Age does not give notability by itself, but makes notability more probable. In a lot of these discussions, I think some of us have proposed age as a consideration, using it as shorthand to mean that lots of significant events have happened over that time, without explicitly saying so. I guess we need to be more explicit. For example, many English settlements have some Roman history (some more significant than others). US settlements don't, simply because the Romans weren't there. There is a natural bias in human history towards places that have been around for longer, which I don't think we should ignore. GyroMagician (talk) 11:37, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

This problem (and a whole lot of others) would go away if Misplaced Pages adopted subtitles e.g.

Taunton
Somerset

Taunton
Massachusetts

... although we may have to lose the concept of primary topics. But I don't know how we go about making the change. --Bermicourt (talk) 11:39, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

No, subtitles wouldn't change any of this. When you look for Taunton, or Lincoln, or Cornwall, or Paris, you would still either go to a primary topic, which may be the wrong one for you, or to a disambiguation, which is the "wrong one" for everyone. Having a subtitle doesn't change this one bit. Fram (talk) 11:46, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Another cultural UXB. No-one in England would ever say, or think Taunton, England, but Taunton, Somerset is commonplace.--Robert EA Harvey (talk) 09:42, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the suggestion to automatically disambiguate all UK localities, except a minority of the very largest settlements, effectively applying the US Locality, State convention, is going to be very well received by UK editors. MRSC (talk) 12:46, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

If it is genuinely thought helpful, then one should not be put off making a suggestion merely because it will be badly received. But the problem with this is that it will create a great deal of needless disruption to the encyclopaedia, put many articles under pointlessly lengthened titles when the shorter version is not ambiguous, and completely go against the established guideline on WP:COMMONNAME. It will do all that in order to achieve the fairly small and pointless objective of providing an excuse for not privileging a small set of British towns with simple article names which some users don't like. A classic case of sledgehammer-nut syndrome. Sam Blacketer (talk) 14:04, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

In mailing addresses, the UK appears to use ] with ] an optional format . Either one of these formats could be acceptable for naming UK articles. Dough4872 15:33, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree that importing the US naming convention (which is supported by the AP Stylebook), would offend WP:COMMONNAME. So I think that we are stuck with these WP:PRIMARYTOPIC debates. The current debates have shown that

• search engine results are unreliable, because of their geographic bias
• historic and cultural significance is relevant: in the terms of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC they are factors which determine which topic some users are looking for when they search on the ambiguous term.

A threshold question is whether anywhere else in the world is commonly referred to by that term (without qualifier) outside the immediate area of that locality. You really need someone in the US (outside Massachusetts) to say if that applies to Taunton, Massachusetts. But no-one would I think say that it is not also referred to (or searched for) as Taunton, Massachusetts. That leads us to the "page view problem". If someone views Taunton, Massachusetts, did they get there by looking for Taunton, or Taunton, MA? There has been much discussion whether any weight should be given to the fact that a particular place was the original holder of the name. My view is that some weight should be attached to that, as GyroMagician has said. Inhabitants of Taunton, Massachusetts may be aware that their town was named after a place in England (the Taunton?), but it is clearly not conclusive, as the example of Boston tells us. We need more and better guidance on primary topic.--Mhockey (talk) 14:40, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and a greater ability to chill out, if we don't always get our own way! --Bermicourt (talk) 15:12, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Another thought that nobody has put forward is creating a global policy regarding the primary topic and disambiguation of geographical places. These will always be contentious debates, as locals see it as a kick in the pants, and outsiders view it as article ownership or regional bias. I think, given that this doesn't effect one or two article, but in fact over a dozen (and possibly more, lesser viewed locations as well), that some sort of policy be formed as to what is required, at a bare minimum, for one town to be considered primary over another. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 16:01, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

With all the recent debate, it may be a better idea to disambiguate all places, regardless of population, as DGG suggested above. With this reasoning, there will be no bias toward any one place with a particular name. Dough4872 18:18, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

And so Tokyo would be a disambiguation page? Paris? Powers 17:55, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

So would England and the United States.--Mhockey (talk) 18:19, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Correct. I would suggest that if something was floated in this direction, that some small universe of names be given preference for the main name space. Be that the capitals or the largest or by some criteria. The US did that by using the AP style book which still left some cities at ambiguous names. Or take the other direction and not have any exceptions. One point that I keep seeing is that many readers seem to prefer this type of disambiguation as educational since they have no idea where many of these places are. By adding a country, they better understand what is being discussed. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:27, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think we need to go this far. There are indeed many cities that are genuine primary topics. Places that you could mention by those first names and have the place be instantly recognized. Miami is a good example of this, as is Paris. What we need are more objective criteria for determining the primary topic for geographical places, so that less subjective bickering can occur. For example, a system based on points to compare two similarly named places:

1. Alpha global cities are always PT
2. Beta global cities are PT unless they share a name with an alpha city
3. Vital geography articles are PT unless they share a name with another vital article in the same level
4. Places with over ten times the population of a similarly named place are PT

etc. Perhaps even adding point values to certain criteria, adding them up, and if there is enough of a difference in the tallied total, the place is the primary topic. This would make these debates less of a "We have the older city" "Well we have the more populated city" back-and-forth bicker. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 18:56, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

While exceptions are good, use care. It is nice to know that if you enter Someplace, England you will always get the correct place. Right now many editors think that by using Someplace you will get to the one they are thinking of. When you go into criteria like global cities, how many editors know what these are? Not saying your suggest is wrong, but whatever exceptions are decided on will require a well reasoned discussion. But clearly when you have a placename shared by 10 settlements, selecting a primary topic can be difficult. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:23, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, and like most other subject areas across wikipedia, people will just have to accept that in many cases there is NO primary topic. Not all editors need to know what alpha and global cities are, but like many other discussion areas here, instructions can be given with links to our articles which list these cities. Even for people FROM London, Ontario, the city is "London, Ontario" because "London" refers to the English city. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  _¢ 19:53, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Incubation

We could use a CSD for stale incubated articles: Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#CSD_G13:_Stale_incubated_article Gigs (talk) 01:52, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Need some discussion on foreign language redirects

A recent AFD showed some difference of opinion on WP:ENGLISH. Please see Misplaced Pages talk:Naming_conventions (use English)#Redirects from non-Latin article names for discussion of possible changes in the guideline. Mangoe (talk) 19:09, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Expectations and norms

There is no page that clearly summarizes (as a newcomer would expect it) the community norms for editorial involvement, the spirit of community norms, or the key expectations the community has for editors.

We routinely tell people to follow the "spirit of policies" and that policies and guidelines merely "document" communal norms, so a suitably helpful overview and explanation of the community's expectations should be one of the easiest pieces of information for users to find but doesn't seem to exist.

Anyone looking for "the norms of the community" (on behavior as opposed to content) will either get very general statements like WP:5P, summaries of content policies such as WP:BRIEF, or large numbers of complex policy pages.

I've tried to draft a summary of the most widely accepted norms and expectations of the community and their rationale on one page. I'm looking for input, views, and help improving it, and appropriate tagging as guideline/policy if consensus endorses it as a good statement of community principles on behavior.

FT2  03:43, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Propose leniency for disruptive editors who admit they've been wrong

A very frustrating part of the AN/I process is the number of editors who assume bad faith that admitting any kind of wrongdoing will be used against them. This almost always makes the situation worse.

• Other editors become enraged that the wrongdoer don't even understand what they're doing wrong.
• The discussion wastes much more time trying to figure out if there was any actual wrongdoing, in cases where it should be clear cut.
• If the wrongdoer gets away with it, they feel like they can get away with even more next time.

The problem is that there's no incentive to admit you've screwed up, other than a good faith assumption that people won't use that as a cry for blood. I think that if we had it in policy that "any editor who admits their mistakes will get the benefit of the doubt. Any wrongdoer who offers to clean up their mess should receive an editing restriction to allow them to redeem themselves, rather than a full out block or ban."

Right now there is no incentive, so people play WP:OSTRICH until things get much worse. Shooterwalker (talk) 20:24, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

This is already part of the blocking policy. Blocks are preventative, not punitive. Can you think of an occasion where a user has owned up to their errors and not recieved lenience?--Cube lurker (talk) 20:37, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I can't. I'm bringing it up because I've seen far too many editors say "there's no way I'm admitting I did anything wrong just so you can use it as an excuse to block me". Can you point to a policy or guideline that already says this? It would be helpful in future discussions. Shooterwalker (talk) 20:55, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:Block. "Blocks are intended to reduce the likelihood of future problems, by either removing, or encouraging change in, a source of disruption. They are not intended for use in retaliation, as punishment, or where there is no current conduct issue which is of concern." Taemyr (talk) 21:54, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Personally I don't think any account should be taken of whether an editor is sorry or not. We're talking about car parking fines, not crimes. And even for crimes I've always hated the way that innocent people are stuck in longer and people who can't care less what they say come out sooner because of this idea. Whether a person admits a or does not admit to anything should be irrelevant and taking any notice is just complicating things unnecessarily. If people have a thing about denying even to themselves what they do that's fine by me and I see no reason to penalise them for it any more than the straightforward penalty. Dmcq (talk) 21:48, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

...except, of course, that the person who says, "Oh, I see, when you said 'do not ever copy material off of some copyrighted website', you meant exactly what you said. I did that, and I won't do that again", then you have some good reason to believe that the person will never do that again.

By contrast, if the person says, "Well, you told me 'do not ever copy material off of some copyrighted website', but I deny that I 'copied' 'material' from any 'website', so I don't see what you're so upset about", then you have basically zero confidence that the problem is solved.

We're not looking for some face-losing shame game. We're looking for "Oh, you meant THAT. Well, then, I'll stop doing that, now that I know what you were talking about." WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:34, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

We're not talking about parking fines or crimss. We're trying to build a community. So it really isn't about punishment. It's about encouraging people to collaborate and cooperate. If people are afraid to admit mistakes for fear of being punished, we only encourage people to double down on their mistakes until they get worse. I think everyone here agrees the goal isn't to punish but to fix mistakes... I'm not sure everyone else understands that. I'd like to document that. Maybe after the part that was brought to my attention by Taemyr. Shooterwalker (talk) 22:53, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

In response to the question above, I've heard users say "there's no way I'm admitting I did anything wrong just so you can use it as an excuse to block me". However from what I've seen it has no basis in reality. Maybe it's paranoia, maybe it's stubbornness, but it's not a policy flaw IMHO.--Cube lurker (talk) 23:05, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

It's a failure in understanding. I think it could be communicated better with the proper wording. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:26, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose. If the problem is one of communication or understanding admitting what you didn't think was a problem would create more communication/understanding problems and if the situation was you don't admit it because either you didn't do it or didn't believe you did it, then admitting it is really crazy logic. This is same logic in prisons in some backward western countries where criminals are released early for admitting there crimes, when others, who later are found not guilty, serve out the full term of there prison sentence because they don't admit a crime they never did. Regards, SunCreator 23:10, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Not to get all legalistic... but there's a good reason they encourage criminals to admit their guilt, and to encourage civil parties to admit their liability. A court case takes years to litigate, and sometimes hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. And the system is so overloaded that there's huge delays. That's why most practical legal systems try to encourage parties to cop a plea or settle things without all the drama. In criminal law they do this by offering lighter penalties if you plead guilty. In civil cases they do this by making frivolous litigants pay the other side's legal fees if they turned down legitimate offers to settle it ahead of time. This is an important lesson for Misplaced Pages, where administrator numbers are dwindling, but activity at WP:AN/I is only increasing. There's a crisis happening and it needs some attention. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:26, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Not to get sidetracked into real world, as WP:NOTFORUM. If your proposal was about Admin resource then I believe there are better ways to tackle that issue. Regards, SunCreator 23:40, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Anything with a chance of gaining consensus? Shooterwalker (talk) 23:41, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Properly, yes. I don't see Admin resource as an issue yet, and lots of possibilities for improvements. For example, I don't think the idea of reducing admin workload has ever seriously been looked at. Regards, SunCreator 23:59, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

We already in practice do this, especially for "first offenders". If someone says "Alright, yes, I edit warred, I screwed up, and I'll be more careful in the future", I'll generally cut some slack the first time around. On the other hand, the second time someone's having that conversation with them, they won't be believed as easily—they were supposed to be more careful after the first incident. In practice, this is already done on a case by case basis. But come a certain number of times of saying "Oh, I won't do that again", we can come to the conclusion that it's obviously not true, and the person is either gaming the system, is unable to understand what the problematic behavior is, or just does not remain willing to stop despite their pledge to do so. At that point, a preventative block is more than warranted. Seraphimblade 00:09, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone have a way to summarize this practice at WP:BLOCK? I'm very open minded on the wording. Just wanted to add a sentence or two for clarification. Shooterwalker (talk) 00:17, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

How about "Blocks are intended to reduce the likelihood of future problems, by either removing, or encouraging change in, a source of disruption. They are not intended for use in retaliation, as punishment, or where there is no current conduct issue which is of concern."--Cube lurker (talk) 03:44, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

This is already wide practice, and is already how blocks are usually done. When a user admits wrongdoing, they are always given leniency. This is explicit in the blocking policy, and matches existing practices. If users believe otherwise, even when told the correct practice, there's not much else we can do to convince them. I know of no situation where someone was blocked because of a mea culpa. In fact, users are usually blocked for refusing to acknowledge their own problems. Indeed, in all cases I have seen in the many years at Misplaced Pages, admitting wrongdoing and making a coherant plan to change behavior is the best way to avoid being blocked, except in cases of extreme recidivism, i.e. user pledges to fix problems and goes back to same issues. --Jayron32 03:55, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, adding this explicitly to the the block page would just be instruction creep. We're not trying to force people to beg or recant, just to make sure they understand the reason for the block and ensure it won't happen again. — The Hand That Feeds You: 18:50, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Asking in the right place

I recently came across a series of articles, with a number of issues. There are 17 articles of which perhaps 3 seem to have enough notability to be worth keeping, the others look like Adverts or have been put in by an acting agency to promote their clients. There is a core of 11 editors (some IP, Some User Name) working on these articles - at least 2 have clear COI on some of the articles and are clearly closely connected with others. About 7 of these users are IP's and some of these IP's look quite similar in posting style to the users with COI raising questions of Sockpuppeting.

So 3 issues Notability, COI, sock puppeting - where should I be raising questions about these articles?

So far I've asked a neutral editor who did some tidying on one of the articles to take a look with no response. I've also asked the notability noticeboard to take a look with no response. I want to leave either AFD or ANI as last resorts once I have opinions from other editors that this needs to be escalated to those levels.

I'm raising it here because there doesn't seem to be any central policy about where something like this should be discussed or handled and I'm wondering if there is somewhere I've missed or if there isn't should we have somewhere like this? Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 13:46, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that this needs to be dealt with through different procedures. The three problems are not inherently related to each other (i.e. you can easily have one without the others), so no location for the combination of them exists. For the notability, the easiest way is to start with one or two AfDs, to check if they are truly not notable (if they are speedy delete candidates, A7, so much the better). Once it has been established that they are creating articles on non notable subjects, they can be warned to be more careful: if they really persist, we have a behavioural problem and further action can be needed.

For the COI, you can contact the WP:COIN noticeboard. This is in the end probably the least of the three problems, although it means thta the articles need extra checking for WP:NPOV problems.

Finally, if you have strong indications that there are socks active, a WP:SPI is the best way of getting this resolved. But this is also the place where youwill need the most evidence for your case.

Once it becomes clear that some of these three problems are truly problematic (recurring, confirmed by other users, ...), further action can be taken, and then generally all those problems are tackled together. But then we are moving into RfC, AN, and finally perhaps arbcom territory, which is of course all way premature now. Fram (talk) 13:58, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I am aware that, The problem I have is that those processes are significantly bureaucratic and require a considerable investment of time and work. I'm not sure if I have that time to spare, so I feel there should be somewhere I can reasonably raise my concerns either to draw feedback from other editors to encourage me that that investment of time and work would be worthwhile - or to pass the concern onto another editor (or group of editors) who are skilled bureaucrats or simply have more time and effort to invest in dealing with the issue. I believed that the notability noticeboard was the most likely place to achieve this but as the concern ended up being archived without any editor response clearly it was not. Something like Rfc feels appropriate, but these processes (Rfc, AN, ArbCom) are set up to deal with disagreements between editors rather than to discuss the concerns an editor may have with an article or articles.

As for leaving them a note, some of these articles were created 3-4 years ago and not all of the accounts are still active (with other accounts and IP's taking over hence the concern of sockpuppetry.)

BTW since posting above I've just discovered two new articles, two new accounts editing solely within these articles and several new IP's - this is a growing concern. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 23:05, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Paid editing

From Misplaced Pages:Paid editing I see that we have two drafts for a guideline and a policy but no actual specific policy with respect to paid editing, relying on the existing policies. Is there any movement anywhere with respect to this that I am not seeing or has this completely stalled? And what if anything do we (or the foundation) do about organizations that are actively promoting services for Misplaced Pages article creation? --Tikiwont (talk) 15:20, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

As you note, there is currently no consensus against paid editing per se. But you may certainly watch the activity of these paid editors to make sure they are only creating articles that meet notability standards and that their edits are NPOV, verifiable in reliable sources, and not copyright violations (intentional or unintentional). And you may of course bring any issues you see to the appropriate noticeboards.

Or you could try bringing it to Jimbo and seeing if he does what he once said. Anomie⚔ 16:35, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Not that bringing something to Jimbo is going to achieve consensus or even be greeted very well by Wikipedians. He no longer is "god-king" and other than sheer prestige his opinions are little more than that of an ordinary contributor to this project. I'd certainly listen to what he has to say about a topic, but IMHO even invoking Jimbo is a sign of bad faith and showing considerable weakness to an argument. Also, in nearly every case where Jimbo has invoked any sort of executive privilege to decide an issue beyond permitting consensus to form, it usually results in negative or nearly disastrous impacts upon the community as a whole.

Particularly on this issue, a decision reached in a unilateral way is going to significantly backfire in terms of the support of the community as a whole, regardless of whatever decision he would make.

In general, the status quo is such that paid editing seems to be permitted but as pointed out carefully watched and some strong attention to potential conflicts of interest and POV pushing. Some people hate paid editing, but the argument also goes in terms of how you spot it other than a voluntary self-declaration, which isn't a way to make policy. --Robert Horning (talk) 17:16, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for confirming my impression of the status quo. I also agree that spotting it is a crucial issue once we go beyond the blatant stuff. Examples like the one I came across today indicate to me that there are writing agencies with regular wikipedia editors among their staff, which are either contacted directly or via marketing agencies . --Tikiwont (talk) 20:09, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Old people

There's quite a debate at this AfD about the notability of people for simply being 100 years old. This is quite a conversation, and it could have implications beyond this one article. Personally, it is my belief that these people are not notable, no redirect should be created, and that their name on some list (List of centenarians in France) should suffice, if that list article should exist at all. The most recent comment, Being the oldest person in a country does not guarantee notability. This is one of many trivial entries here that relate to human longevity that ought to get the axe. It is pure trivia and the obsession of a group of hobbyists, but there is nothing encyclopedic about it, makes me realize that this really may be a list of trivia, and maybe there's no justification for this information at all.

Anyway, I'm here simply to point out that AfD; I think it's worth getting more eyes on it, since it may have ramifications to general policy about this type of article. — Timneu22 · talk 22:44, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Is an unsourced catagarisation of a person as belonging to a particular ethnic group violation of WP:BLP policy?

I'm not entirely sure I'm asking this in the correct place, but if it is, can anyone throw any light on this? Though this is of immediate interest only in relation to a particular topic, I'd be interested to learn whether this has been discussed, and how it was resolved. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:31, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't know the history of prior discussion, but I would opine that it's a BLP issue if the ethnic group identification is disputed, or reasonably could be. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:44, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

There must have been plenty of earlier discussions on this specific question, and of course it violates WP:BLP. It makes a specific claim about the person. Some people argue that a category is not a claim but just a "navigation aid", but the edit-warring about Category:Pseudoscience and similar categories (even an arbitration case was to a large part about that) proves that this is wrong. The right place for such questions is WP:BLP/N, by the way. Hans Adler 00:04, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I consider myself a "BLP hawk," but I don't know if I'd go as far as that, in cases where the ethnic identification is entirely undisputed. It may be that we are semantically unclear as to what is meant here by "ethnic group." If someone places David Cameron in the category "British politicians," do we need a source for the fact that Cameron is British? If someone places Clarence Thomas in the category "African-American judges," do we need a source that Thomas is black? And so forth. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:10, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

The question was "ethnicity", not "nationality". In my experience this almost universally refers to categories such as "Jewish", "Armenian", "Hutu", "Tutsi", etc. The US has a very relaxed approach to ethnicity which is not shared by most European countries, where people are much more likely to think of ethnicity-based persecution rather than searching for one's roots. I consider classifying someone ethnically in any way offensive unless they explicitly self-identify that way.

Two earlier discussions: WP:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive61#Winona Ryder - "Russian-American" category?, WP:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive95#Consistent addition of unsourced material. Hans Adler 00:21, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

This reminds me of the various disputes we've had over WikiProject-tagging of BLPs' pages as something that may not be verifiable, such as {{WikiProject LGBT studies}}. –MuZemike 00:08, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

An unsourced statement of any kind, concerning any subject, is against every policy Misplaced Pages has:

• has blue eyes? against policy
• like pineapples? against policy
• belongs to a category for which there is no justification in the article? against policy.

There's a simple rule of thumb: any statement, implication or hint in an article about a living person, that is not actively supported by highly reliable sources for active factual veracity, must be removed from the article. --TS 00:12, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

That formulation overlooks the distinction between an author's knowing that sources exist, and actually citing them. If you are referring to the former, fine. If you are referring to the latter, and making the claim that every statement in a BLP requires a cited source, no matter how uncontroversial the statement, it's an absurd claim. If you wish to sustain it, please begin by finding me one BLP article in the entire encyclopedia, of more than nominal length, in which each and every "statement, implication or hint" is supported by a cited source. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:20, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

The real problem is that some people like to add specific claims to an article that are important to themselves but not, apparently, to anybody else. If there was an article about myself I would be really annoyed if it contained the names of the schools to which I went, my eye colour, my hair colour, my height, my shoe size, my "race", my ethnicity, my nationality, or any of the other irrelevant things that some stamp collectors love to push into articles to make them more "complete". In the end you can't find the actual encyclopedic information any more. We have actually had editors who systematically added chest measurements to actress BLPs.

I think strict sourcing requirements for BLP claims are an important tool for situations in which there is a reasonable dispute. But like most of our policies, WP:V and WP:BLP are optimised for the contentious cases, because these are the cases when they are intended to be applied. When fundamentalists are trying to apply them to everything they are really abusing them. Hans Adler 00:38, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

And honestly, Brad, if you've ever considered yourself a "hawk" on this issue, you don't know what you're talking about. I've had it with you Muslim Azerbaijani Hawaian French Venezuelan arbitrators, you're all alike. --TS 00:15, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Ermmm, thanks guys? As I suspected, the answer is probably a definite maybe. I think my best course for now is to sneak off back to the corner where over-enthusiastic newbies hide after being chased with a banhammer, rather than taking this further myself. I'll point the person whose edits led me to ask this question in the direction of this reply, and let him/her/it decided the best course. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:39, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

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