| Revision as of 14:25, 25 May 2010 editAussieLegend (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, File movers, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers173,395 editsm →Australian place name convention: sp← Previous edit | Revision as of 18:52, 26 May 2010 edit undoPmanderson (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers62,752 edits →Why the "comma convention"?: enough.Next edit → | ||
| Line 53: | Line 53: | ||
| It seems to me that having the city, state convention violates ], as most cities are referred to by their name. Why not use the state only when disambiguating? --](<sup>]</sup>/<sub>]</sub>) 23:20, 15 May 2010 (UTC) | It seems to me that having the city, state convention violates ], as most cities are referred to by their name. Why not use the state only when disambiguating? --](<sup>]</sup>/<sub>]</sub>) 23:20, 15 May 2010 (UTC) | ||
| :That does it. I am going to put the explanation, long-established, frequently discussed, and consensus, into the guideline. Anybody who objects can rotate. ] <small>]</small> 18:52, 26 May 2010 (UTC) | |||
| == Australian place name convention == | == Australian place name convention == | ||
Revision as of 18:52, 26 May 2010
Archive to 1 Dec 2006 • Archive to Nov 2008 • Naming conventions (settlements) • Naming conventions (places)
ShortcutWP:UKPLACE - place names in England
User:Jza84 changed the policy at WP:UKPLACE which has been in place for nearly a year, without prior discussion here, though his/her edit summary indicates good faith and a genuine belief that s/he was doing the right thing. The version as it was (and which I am about to reinstate) was reached after discussion at Talk:Shirley, Southampton#Move districts of Southampton where a consensus was reached to revise the policy to the version that has been in place until 11 April. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:19, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
- Ok, here is the discussion on this project page (rather than just an article page) which led to the text being changed to recognise districts of a town/city: Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archives/2009/April#Disambiguation for English city suburbs. That is conclusive so I'll make that a comment in the policy article so that the next person who wants to 'correct' it will find it. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:27, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
- So when is it "inappropriate"? If we mean "for districts within towns and cities...", can't we simply say that?--Kotniski (talk) 13:18, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
- That seems sensible. (Looking back at both discussions, "districts and suburbs" would be a more accurate reflection of the decision). How many editors do we need to approve that change in a policy? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:15, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
- Well, if that was the original intention, and if no-one objects, I think we can just do it.--Kotniski (talk) 19:57, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
Done with minor wording changes for clarity and consistency.--Kotniski (talk) 06:09, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
- Well, if that was the original intention, and if no-one objects, I think we can just do it.--Kotniski (talk) 19:57, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
- That seems sensible. (Looking back at both discussions, "districts and suburbs" would be a more accurate reflection of the decision). How many editors do we need to approve that change in a policy? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:15, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
- So when is it "inappropriate"? If we mean "for districts within towns and cities...", can't we simply say that?--Kotniski (talk) 13:18, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
Clarification on US neighborhoods
What exactly does "neighborhoods within cities do not " mean? Are neighborhoods not disambiguated unless necessary, or do they follow some other convention? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Torritorri (talk • contribs)
- The main reason that the naming convention for US cities is that so many of them have the same names. That'd seem even more of an issue with neighborhoods. Whether it should be "district, city", or "district, city, state" is debatable, but I think that "district" alone would be confusing to readers and editors. Will Beback talk 05:09, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
- What's confusing is that it's split, I believe fairly evenly, between "District", "District, City" and "District, City, State". Since there's no rules, there's no one way, but I personally believe it should be district + name of the city article (which may or may not contain state) Purplebackpack89 15:34, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Clarification of "City" vs "City, State" vs "City" (as geographical area)
Regarding recent CFD debate one and debate two regarding various Orlando-oriented categories (which is in itself a rehash of any number of previous discussions on the topic), just wanted to ask for advice on what the policy is regarding geographic areas associated with a major city, such as "Orlando". And using Orlando as the example for discussion here, where is the line drawn between what represents the physical city limits of Orlando vs what is the generally-accepted geographic area that represents Orlando? Disney World, for example, is considered as "in Orlando" geographically, but is outside the city limits.
The question came up again as the existing "Attractions in Orlando, Florida" category, which took into account the geographical area, was deemed by an editor as being strictly the city limits which they then took upon themselves to recategorize articles and apply for CFD, etc - yes, it sounds as messy as it was.
The consensus had been, from what we've seen for similar articles and categories, that "List of xxx in City, State" was acceptable for geographic region as opposed to the strict city limits -- in part as it was created this way to meet AP guidelines, as "Orlando" by itself didn't qualify as a standalone back in 2007. As we would like to ensure we're consistent with how the articles and categories are titled, please read the discussion histories that date back to 2007-2008, and offer whatever advice you may have. Thanks for your help. SpikeJones (talk) 02:38, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
- This is purely a symptom of the rediculousness surrounding the Orlando-related articles stretching back several years. See the results of this search. The terminology "Greater <blank>" where <blank> is the name of the city alone, is common throughout Misplaced Pages. Just pulling some examples, there's Category:Greater Jacksonville, Category:Greater Grand Forks, Category:Greater Houston. None of these use the state name. I see nothing wrong with the convention noted in the debates above; that "Stuff in Orlando, Florida" is for stuff within the city limits, while "Stuff in Greater Orlando" is for stuff that is outside the city limits, but within the overall region. --Jayron32 02:57, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
Locations in the United Kingdom
I believe that the system for locations in the United Kingdom should be changed. All UK locations should be ] alone where possible (or if the context is restricted to the UK) or ],]. It should NEVER be ],] - ],] - ],] or ],]. If the editor wishes to be more specific they could put ],]<nowiki>,<nowiki>]. With the exception of England which is not specific enough as 80% of the population lives there so within England the English Region should be used; ],],]. For Example; "Sheffield, Yorkshire and the Humber, United Kingdom".
The United Kingdom should always be mentioned as it is the sovereign nation. It is not acceptable to simply put something like; Bangor, Wales. This will sort out the range of systems used across the UK, and individual pages and will reduce confusion. 91.85.128.82 (talk) 10:13, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
- Er, why?--Kotniski (talk) 10:17, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
- We use the constituent nation for all placenemes in the UK on wiki as this gives some context to the place, UK should not be used. Regions are never used to identify a place and are vary rarely used at all in the UK. The current arrangement for dab purposes is to use the ceremonial county and if that is ambiguous use the district. Keith D (talk) 11:50, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
- Well we should't, it is not done like that for other Countrys. For American locations the USA is always mentioned. Why should the UK be any different? Simply putting the component country completely disregards the fact that it is a part of the UK, something that is immensity important. It gives the impression that the component country are sovereign nations, which is misleading. Further more of cause you should mention the UK, that's the country it's in! At no point did I say that that the component country should not be used, and yes it does give some impression as to where something is, so does the UK! I already said that it was fine to use the component country, but in the case of England it is pointless as most things in the UK are in England, 80% of the population and all. You'd be surprised how often the regions are used, for allot of administrationative purposes (EU constituency, policing regions, there was even a reforendom on a North East assembly), they are mentioned on lots of articles on this wiki, people often use them for the purpose of being more specific, they are used on the news. Ceremonial countys are fine just I prefer to use the regions as they are closer in population and size to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. 91.85.128.82 (talk) 15:23, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
- The USA is not always mentioned - in fact the "city, state" convention is pretty much institutional for our US articles. See eg Hyannis, Massachusetts or Compton, California. Re Bangor - you do realise there's two major Bangors in the UK? (I was born near the other one.) Also, English regions are fundamentally unstable - they're not like state boundaries in the US or Australia or Germany which are well-defined and constitutionally recognised, so we'd probably have to change them every time the government has a brain flip. Orderinchaos 02:15, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
- Well we should't, it is not done like that for other Countrys. For American locations the USA is always mentioned. Why should the UK be any different? Simply putting the component country completely disregards the fact that it is a part of the UK, something that is immensity important. It gives the impression that the component country are sovereign nations, which is misleading. Further more of cause you should mention the UK, that's the country it's in! At no point did I say that that the component country should not be used, and yes it does give some impression as to where something is, so does the UK! I already said that it was fine to use the component country, but in the case of England it is pointless as most things in the UK are in England, 80% of the population and all. You'd be surprised how often the regions are used, for allot of administrationative purposes (EU constituency, policing regions, there was even a reforendom on a North East assembly), they are mentioned on lots of articles on this wiki, people often use them for the purpose of being more specific, they are used on the news. Ceremonial countys are fine just I prefer to use the regions as they are closer in population and size to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. 91.85.128.82 (talk) 15:23, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
Why the "comma convention"?
It seems to me that having the city, state convention violates WP:NCCN, as most cities are referred to by their name. Why not use the state only when disambiguating? --TorriTorri(/contribs) 23:20, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
- That does it. I am going to put the explanation, long-established, frequently discussed, and consensus, into the guideline. Anybody who objects can rotate. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:52, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Australian place name convention
 |
|
Should Australian city/town/suburb articles be listed at Town, State no matter what their status of ambiguity or should Australian city/town/suburb articles with unique names or that are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name be allowed to use an undisambiguated title? -- Mattinbgn\ 05:36, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
I wish to see a modification in the section of this guideline relating to Australia to remove the concept of compulsory disambiguation. The current wording reads as follows:
Australian town/city/suburb articles are at Town, State no matter what their status of ambiguity is. Capital Cities will be excepted from this rule and preferentially made City. The unqualified Town should be either a redirect or disambig page. Local government areas are at their official name
I propose this section be reworded to read:
Australian town/city/suburb articles that are uniquely named or unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name can have undisambiguated titles. Where disambiguation is required, this will take the form of Town, State in the first instance. If further disambiguation is required—such as at Springfield, Victoria—this should be shown in parentheses as follows: Town, State (disambiguation). Local government areas are at their official name.
The practice of compulsory disambiguation goes against the principles of Misplaced Pages:Article titles which state that article titles should be recognisable, easy to find, precise, concise and consistent. To demonstrate how the current guideline breaches these principles, I will use the New South Wales town of Deniliquin, New South Wales as my example.
- Recognisable: The town is not called "Deniliquin, New South Wales" by anyone. Locals, visitors, government documents, newspapers etc. etc. all call the town simply Deniliquin. No general reader (as opposed to Misplaced Pages editor) would look for the article under any other name but Deniliquin
- Easy to find: The most natural name to look for and to link to is simply "Deniliquin", not "Deniliquin, New South Wales"
- Precise: Names should only be as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously. "Deniliquin" does that sufficiently. "Deniliquin, New South Wales" is no more precise, for its additional length.
- Concise: "Deniliquin" is more concise than "Deniliquin, New South Wales"
- Consistent: While having all Australian place names at Town, State allows for consistency within Australia, it is inconsistent with the approach taken for place names everywhere else other than the US. The current practice with Australian articles is inconsistent with other Anglophone nations such as the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada—all of which manage to adequately maintain their place name articles without compulsory disambiguation.
Whatever rationale that may have previously existed to maintain compulsory disambiguation (and several have been provided in the past), none of these surely apply any more. Australian geographical features such as rivers and mountains are not compulsory disambiguated, I see no valid reason to continue disambiguating articles on towns where it is unnecessary. -- Mattinbgn\ 05:38, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, I agree with all the above arguments and support the proposal.--Kotniski (talk) 06:26, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
- I agree with the proposal because it seems to take into account problem places like Newcastle, where there are several places in NSW named Newcastle; Newcastle as defined by the ABS, the UC/L, the actual city and the suburb. --AussieLegend (talk) 07:50, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree with the proposal in principal, but will remain curious as to what happens to exceptions or oddities that might occur SatuSuro 09:37, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
- Other than Newcastle, Albury or Liverpool, do you have any specifics in mind? --AussieLegend (talk) 10:16, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
Going to have to be a pest here and disagree for the following reasons:
- I don't see that there's any compelling problem with the status quo that would require the renaming of perhaps thousands of pages, along with all the maintenance work that that would create.
- The current naming scheme also neatly prevents disagreement as to whether Manly, New South Wales is important enough to not require a disambig compared to Manly, Queensland
- An advantage of the current naming scheme is that it also conveniently disambiguates from non-Australian locations. For instance, there is no overlap between the two "Manly"s above and Manly, Iowa. If you start eliminating the state names, you don't need to just worry about other locations within Australia, you need to worry about the rest of the world as well.
With that said, in cases like Deniliquin where the title is completely unambiguous, it makes sense to have a redirect to the longer article name. I remain open to argument, but I'm not convinced that this change is particularly necessary. Lankiveil 10:24, 16 May 2010 (UTC).
- I did try and anticipate your "Manly" concern by using the statement "unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name" in my new wording. "Unquestionably" being the key concept. With the "Manly" example, there is obviously room for reasonable disagreement about the relative signifance of the places named "Manly" and therefore the status quo would remain. Yes, there will be some disagreement at times, but the Canadian and UK projects seem to be able to deal with decisions like this in a mostly amicable way; I think we can too and I don't think we as a project should seek to use a workaround merely to avoid making what may be difficult decisions. Is there a compelling problem? I think, yes. The current guideline makes it harder for users (as opposed to editors) to find what they are looking for as quickly and easily as they should be able to. It may make editors' jobs easier (although I would dispute that too) but it comes at the expense of our readers. -- Mattinbgn\ 10:42, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
- There's now a requirement that all new BLPs require references. However, as I understand it, this only applies to BLPs created after March 18, 2010. There's no requirement to retroactively apply {{prod-blp}} to all BLPs that aren't referenced, so do we really have to rename our articles to comply with a new convention? Surely we could word the convention appropriately:
Australian town/city/suburb articles that are uniquely named or unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name can have undisambiguated titles. Where disambiguation is required, this will take the form of Town, State in the first instance. If further disambiguation is required—such as at Springfield, Victoria—this should be shown in parentheses as follows: Town, State (disambiguation). Local government areas are at their official name. This convention applies only to articles created after 8 January 2025. Articles created prior to then may be at their disambiguated titles. These articles should only be renamed to their undisambiguated title where a reasonable need is seen.
- We probably don't even need to go that far, as "can have" doesn't mean "shall have". --AussieLegend (talk) 11:34, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
- Seems a bit silly to set a cut-off date. Once we've decided that we no longer want to follow the old convention, it's surely desirable that all articles be brought into line with the new one, as soon as people can be bothered to spend the time doing it. Insisting on retaining a mixture of two systems really would be pointless inconsistency.--Kotniski (talk) 16:38, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
- They've done it with BLPs so why not here, as an issue of practicality. We're not talking about a few articles here, we're talking about 5-10 thousand articles by my count. In any case, as I indicated, "can have" doesn't mean "shall have" so it wouldn't be case of mixing conventions since disambiguated articles fit right into the proposed convention. If we say we can't go to a new convention because we'd have to rename too many articles, we're stuck with the same convention forever. --AussieLegend (talk) 07:17, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
- I don't mean that we should insist on renaming thousands of articles overnight; I'm just saying that if and as people can be bothered to do the renaming (particularly in the cases of unique names, since potential primary topics will generally need discussion), then there shouldn't be a "rule" that hinders them in doing so.--Kotniski (talk) 07:31, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
- They've done it with BLPs so why not here, as an issue of practicality. We're not talking about a few articles here, we're talking about 5-10 thousand articles by my count. In any case, as I indicated, "can have" doesn't mean "shall have" so it wouldn't be case of mixing conventions since disambiguated articles fit right into the proposed convention. If we say we can't go to a new convention because we'd have to rename too many articles, we're stuck with the same convention forever. --AussieLegend (talk) 07:17, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
- Seems a bit silly to set a cut-off date. Once we've decided that we no longer want to follow the old convention, it's surely desirable that all articles be brought into line with the new one, as soon as people can be bothered to spend the time doing it. Insisting on retaining a mixture of two systems really would be pointless inconsistency.--Kotniski (talk) 16:38, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
- We probably don't even need to go that far, as "can have" doesn't mean "shall have". --AussieLegend (talk) 11:34, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
I'd support that. It seems very unnecessary to have Deniliquin as a redirect to Deniliquin, New South Wales if that's the only placename on Misplaced Pages with that name. How many Australians say "Alice Springs, Northern Territory", or any derivitave of "City, State", for that matter? The media doesn't, and I sure don't. I'm sure there'd be thousands of places with unique names —especially since probably more than half of Australian placenames are etymologically Aboriginal. Surely nobody is going to enforce a deadline for the renaming of these pages, but if the policy (or guideline) is there, people will follow it for new articles and the WikiProject Australian places can put the rest on their to-do list. Great idea, Kotniski. I actually wasn't aware of the current policy. Geelong, Victoria? Oodnadatta, South Australia? Cairns, Queensland? Townsville, Queensland? Wow! Night w (talk) 13:28, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
- I support Kotniski's proposal. It seems to me that forcing dismbiguation to a class of article names goes against the principle of using the most concise name for the article. IMO, disambiguated names should only be used if there is a chance of confusion by using the bare name. For a great many Australian place names there would be little chance of confusion, and even for the Manly example, I would use "Manly" for the Manly in Sydney, and "Manly, Queensland" for that town. Most people in Australia would assume in this case that "Manly" was the one that was named that way in the very early days of European colonisation. - Nick Thorne 22:25, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
- And as for Manly, New Zealand and the other people and things called Manly? Orderinchaos 01:04, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
- I fully support the proposal, and would be happy to see it go further: dump the "unquestionably" stuff, and simply follow our SOPs on disambiguation and primary topics. Hesperian 23:53, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
- My view is the same as Lankiveil's - I see no compelling reason for the change, and a few hazards ahead if we were to implement such a change. One consequence would be to make suburbs in cities (which, checking on AWB, form slightly over half the affected articles) hard to find - the consistency provided by the present rules means there is no question as to where a suburb article may be found. Also when searching for our articles in wider cleanup lists it's easy to identify them and deal with them (it's something I've had to do a fair bit over the years). I've dealt occasionally with Auckland suburbs which follow something like the convention being proposed here and it is an exercise in hit and miss trying to find the damn things (which, when trying to do some quick research e.g. for a term paper, is a roadblock). Writing suburb articles when you have to look up, individually, every one of the articles needing to be linked (as one has to link between 5 and 12 of them usually) is a pain and, especially if one's motivation is weak, is a disincentive to wading into them in the first place. It became so much of an issue in South Africa that they ended up adopting our convention for suburbs of cities. I'm more open minded when it comes to larger towns or cities - Geelong being a good example. We already have an exception for capital cities and we could actually make that a bit wider without too many problems. Orderinchaos 01:03, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
- Question - "the consistency provided by the present rules means there is no question as to where a suburb article may be found" - Where would I put an article about the suburb of Newcastle? Certainly not at Newcastle, New South Wales. --AussieLegend (talk) 03:36, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
- CBDs/"downtown areas"/city centres have always been a hazard, no matter where in the world they are - and I don't see any consensus or agreement forming any time soon. Orderinchaos 07:10, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
- The proposal would solve that, Newcastle, New South Wales for the city and Newcastle, New South Wales (suburb) for the suburb. --AussieLegend (talk) 15:57, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
We implemented this for a perfectly good reason, and that hasn't changed years later. We had an absolute mess of a situation; articles disambiguated with no less than about seven different suffixes, making it absolutely impossible to find if Misplaced Pages did actually have an article on the subject. With this convention, anyone knows exactly where to find an article on an Australian town. Orderinchaos puts this better than I. Let's not go over this again. Rebecca (talk) 01:20, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
- We can address OIC concerns with more susscinct categories for the burbs so I agree in principle but before people start running around with awb we need to have a clear disambiguation format, and in cases where disambiguation is necessary rather we disambiguate in all cases rather than argue which is the primary topic. Look at Perth while ignoring Perth, Tasmania how does it get dab'd Perth, Australia Perth, Western Australia and then theres the burb Perth does that become Perth, Perth stay at Perth, Western Australia (suburb) or become Perth, Australia(suburb). Gnangarra 01:41, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
- How do you mean "more succinct categories"? That doesn't help a reader in finding the article they want. I agree re capital city centres - that entire area has been a mess everywhere, I think, as I've seen disagreements about Melbourne and Adelaide, and uncertainty re Perth. Orderinchaos 02:11, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
- This is a little difficult IMO, Wagga Wagga, New South Wales should be at Wagga Wagga but how should the suburbs be (currently they use Suburb, State)? Should it be Suburb, City or left in the current form? Bidgee (talk) 04:02, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
- I think this should be made a pretty much universal rule (not specific to Australia or anywhere else) - suburbs should be disambiguated as if any disambiguation is needed. There may be some reason why some countries might need to use a slightly different scheme (for example, what happens if the city itself is ambiguous), but I see no reason not to adopt this as a default general rule. (Generally speaking, we should be working to eliminate any random differences in conventions between countries.)--Kotniski (talk) 07:59, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
- Australia falls right into the ambiguous area here. Not all suburbs are in cities and while no suburbs (in New South Wales at least) cross city boundaries, the WP:AUSTRALIA definition of a city would result in many suburbs being in cities when they actually aren't. --AussieLegend (talk) 09:34, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
- Which is why perhaps trying to fit into conventions used from other countries as suggested by Kotniski is by no means a good idea: also there seems to be an issue where helping a reader find what they want is seen as a guideline to be desired. When the title with a state name is used by people from North America to clarify which state the place they are talking about, that usage is seen as helpful to clarify (NY, NY is the city in the state) - I fail to see the differentiation being made here to remove a state name as an exercise for ease of use by enquirers maybe the usage of contra logic - the reverse might be truer in application? I fail to see the usage of Perth, Australia in commons for example as having any validity - it is either Perth, Western Australia (and if anyone is unaware - the usage of Perth alone has been interesting when reviewing 4 year old history of periodic arguments with geographically challenged scots) or Perth, Tasmania - and from that example and my personal general thinking believe removing state names is a bad move SatuSuro 12:01, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
- Agreed with AussieLegend - there's perennial arguments about which suburbs are in or out of which city, and some aren't actually in any - it's easier to just have the state. Also broadly agree with SatuSuro. (And yes, Wagga Wagga is a textbook case of when we shouldn't disambiguate - it's definitely more well known than what state it's in.) Orderinchaos 07:08, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
- Australia falls right into the ambiguous area here. Not all suburbs are in cities and while no suburbs (in New South Wales at least) cross city boundaries, the WP:AUSTRALIA definition of a city would result in many suburbs being in cities when they actually aren't. --AussieLegend (talk) 09:34, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
- I think this should be made a pretty much universal rule (not specific to Australia or anywhere else) - suburbs should be disambiguated as if any disambiguation is needed. There may be some reason why some countries might need to use a slightly different scheme (for example, what happens if the city itself is ambiguous), but I see no reason not to adopt this as a default general rule. (Generally speaking, we should be working to eliminate any random differences in conventions between countries.)--Kotniski (talk) 07:59, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
- I support Mattinbgn's proposal. We should have consistency with WP:AT, and compulsory disambiguation is not consistent. --TorriTorri(/contribs) 19:01, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Has anyone considered something similar to the Canadian style? Those conventions there seem like they would satisfy much of what is being proposed here. For example:
Cities can be moved if they (a) have a unique place name, or (b) are the most important use of their name. A city's relative international fame, or lack thereof, may have some bearing on criterion (b), but it is irrelevant if the city qualifies under criterion (a) — if there's no other Flin Flon anywhere in the world, then it's not valid to cite Flin Flon's lack of international fame as a reason to keep the article at "Flin Flon, Manitoba".
Why can't we do the same with Australian places. What's the logic behind having unique names as redirects to a title with the state on the end? Night w (talk) 22:02, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
- Main problem is still finding them. Orderinchaos 07:08, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
- Disambiguation for the three C's Clarity, Consistency, avoid Confusion when articles were being created it also addressed concerns over which was the primary name aka Newcastle, Manly, Guildford, Ashfield, Sorento, Brighton, Scarborough.......Gnangarra 07:36, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
- I don't see any Australia-specific problem that warrants the current significant deviation from the standard guideline. Melburnian (talk) 13:11, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
I have to say I still haven't seen any compelling reason why we need to make such a massive change. Yes, for capitals and other large cities I suppose it makes sense to have an article without the comma for the urban area (Brisbane for the metro, Brisbane, Queensland, for its core suburb). But I think that the consistency that we already have is a bigger advantage than any perceived benefit to making the whole system inconsistent and arbitrary. Lankiveil 23:48, 21 May 2010 (UTC).
- I don't see how the change would have to be massive, based on the proposed wording. --AussieLegend (talk) 16:00, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
- Some people's interpretation of this change is to move 6000+ articles and change possibly 80,000 links within days of it being passed (assuming that it is). It's a level of chaos we won't be able to undo. It's, in my view, also a bigger problem for the suburbs than it is for the towns/regional centres - like I said, I tried to work with Auckland stuff doing research for an assignment and the random disambig status over there made it an exercise in patience and frustration. Orderinchaos 23:14, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
I wrote the proposed change in a manner that would allow for minimalistic change in the policy for naming Australian places. My major concern was to remove the farcical rule that requires the compulsory disambiguation of articles such as Deniliquin, Cunnamulla, Manangatang, Orroroo, (See Talk:Orroroo, South Australia for some idea of the confusion this causes non-Australian editors), Dwellingup and Zeehan; i.e. the clear cut cases. I am personally not so fussed about Manly, Perth, etc. Just as easy to disambiguate if there is any argument or doubt. If disambiguation is required, then I strongly support the use of state names for this purpose in all cases. It is simple, clear and is consistent with the manner in which Australians generally think of place names (i.e. Postal addresses are formatted "Name, State" regardless of status as town/suburb/locality etc.). It should avoid OICs problem with finding suburbs etc.
I would not like to see the problem of CBD articles—how many CBD articles do we actually have, anyway?—hold up the common sense and minimal change proposed. If that requires further work to find a consensus, surely that should be a further discussion—it is not as if the current wording of the guideline provides any guidance on that matter as it is.
As for how any change would take place, well I see a gradual move over to the common sense names as editors identify articles that should be moved. I don't see the need to agree on a list beforehand and then using AWB to work through the list. I would be more comfortable with a manual process, but if editors want to use AWB and can be careful not to step on toes, then I wouldn't have too many concerns. I am not sure that the change can be described as "chaos"; the proposal is a minimal one. Still, someone will need to determine if the reasonable level of support so far translates to consensus for the specific change suggested. -- Mattinbgn\ 12:08, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
Category: