Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)/comma for all cities

message: Please discuss the proposal here. This is a first attempt at seeking consensus towards this style of naming convention as the default for most of the world. It is partially a response to the continued bickering over naming articles for cities in the USA. Note that at the moment, this is a discussion, not a vote. --Scott Davis Talk 10:19, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Comment: the comma convention is an English usage for American or Canadian or Australian place names. It's not the only one that exists. People in all three countries will typically drop the state or province name whenever possible; it's only used when for whatever reason it has to be for disambiguation purposes. I'm obviously not suggesting that Rome, New York has even the vaguest glimmer of a "primary topic" claim to "Rome", for example, but people in Utica or Syracuse certainly don't call it anything more than just "Rome"  most of the time. There's a point at which the semantic context of the conversation no longer inherently conveys whether they mean Rome, New York or Rome, Italy, and that's the point at which they need to start using the state name — but the comma convention is standard usage for American, Canadian and Australian place names when they require disambiguation from other places; it isn't invariable usage. So it doesn't make a convincing rationale for an invariable standard. Bearcat 12:35, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Care to explain why I am so inaccurate and misguided?  Skeezix1000 18:45, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The bickering in the US is because we like to bicker.  It would be worse if the convention didn't apply.  Even under tariq's proposal, we would have indefinite arguments as to whether a city should be predisambiguated, and we'd probably have a number moved back and forth with apparent concensus each time.  You are just inaccurate.  Serge is misguided. — Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 08:42, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not all discussion is the same.  Bickering over conventions is different from discussion at a talk page as to where an article should be.  There's no particular problem with the latter - it happens all the time.  Where's the endless argument over Toronto and Montreal? john k 12:02, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Arthur, the debate over the U.S. naming convention has been nothing short of torturous, and regardless of whether or not the City, State convention is kept or not, all indications are that the debate will continue to be a quagmire.  Whether or not you "like" the debate is beside the point -- the rest of us do not want to be dragged into it.  I'm not sure what is "inaccurate" about that. Skeezix1000 14:17, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Arthur, care to explain what I wrote that makes you believe I am misguided? When Canada shared our naming guidelines that force predisambiguation, they had a lot of bickering.  Then they changed their guidelines to no longer require predisambiguation, and the bickering stopped.  In practically all categories where there are naming conflicts, the cause is a category-specific guideline that requires predisambiguation.  Am I misguided to believe it is the guidelines that require predisambiguation that is the cause of the bickering?  How?  Why? How does your theory that the cause of the bickering is our "like to bicker" explain the strong positive correlation between category-specific guidelines that require predisambiguation and the level of bickering about naming in those categories?  I know that correlation does not necessarily identify cause, but, in this case, what other explanation for the correlation is there other than the predisambiguation requirement being the cause?  — Serge 17:15, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

text: *I suggest that the alleged "strong identity" that "US States have with their cities" is exaggerated as a justification for predisambiguation (by state) of U.S. cities, and is largely a false perception.  Cities are cities and states are states.  For example, in many ways, San Diego is more closely identified with Mexico, and Eureka with Oregon, then they are with each other just because they both happen to be located in the same state.  At best, it's a contrived and artificial association.  --Serge 20:52, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry to say this, but this seems like nonsense.  Eureka and San Diego are both incorporated as cities under California state law, and both operate under the conditions of California state law more broadly.  They both have Arnold Schwarzenegger as their governor, and they both elect state legislators who go to Sacramento to make laws that affect both cities.  They both elect Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer to the United States Senate, and they both vote on a wide array of ridiculous ballot propositions every other year.  They both choose between the same slates of electors for President of the United States every four years.  Their mayors are both elected in the same kind of non-partisan California municipal elections system, and are probably both members of a mayoral association for cities in California.  "happening to be located in the same state" is fairly serious business.  I just don't see why the state needs to be listed in the article title.  The fact that California is in the United States is equally serious business, but we don't have California, United States. john k 12:48, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not deny that Eureka and San Diego have certain political realities in common, and that they are "fairly serious business".  I'm just saying those aspects are not very important in determining the identity of each city, compared to everything else that contributes to their respective identities.  In particular, if Eureka were annexed by Oregon, how much would its identity change?  I'm not saying nothing would change, I'm just saying it wouldn't change the identity of the city very much, because the history and the people who live there determine the identity of a city much more than the political hierarchy.  --Serge 17:15, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Scott, Genus and Species is the full scientific name of a plant species.  the species name alone is simply a modifier to the genus name, which is the principal name.  It is not simply non-standard, but actually incorrect to refer to the species of humans as "sapiens," for instance. The question of where we should locate an article when there is only one species in a genus is perhaps more aposite (and I'm not sure which of those two versions you were suggesting as the analogy), but even that doesn't work as most articles are located at the common name, rather than the scientific name.  Also, the possibility of the discovery of a new species in a genus is always there.  The possibility of the coming into existence of a new city of Paris that grabs primary topic status from the city in France is vanishingly small.  In terms of personal names, it's more or less the same - the first and last name together are the full name, and the normal way that people are referred to.  The full name of Chicago is the "City of Chicago."  Illinois isn't part of the name.  That doesn't necessarily speak against a "qualified name" for US cities, but we should keep in mind the inexact nature of the analogies in question. john k 12:35, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting, given that the population of Australia is about 20.6 million, while the population of the U.S. is about 300 million, the factor is 14.5.  So if 6 is about right for the number of cities to not need disambiguation in a nation of 20.6 million, then about 87 would be the number in a nation of 300 million.  You claim that there would be no major issue if someone tried to move those 6 key cities, but I suggest you try it.  Remember, Canada had the issues mostly without about that number of cities too...  I'll bet if we fixed the U.S. key 80 or so cities, as per the current ("Tariq's") proposal, we wouldn't have hardly any issues either. --Serge 02:05, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, to be honest, I don't really recall that we Canadians had that much bickering over the question of city vs. city, province itself — we had issues over how widely to extend the city convention; we had slapfights with British Wikipedians over how to define "primary topic" (i.e. should the Halifax in Nova Scotia be "primary topic" because it's by far the largest and most economically and politically significant place with that name, or should the Halifax in England be "primary topic" because it had the name a few hundred years earlier?); we had wankfests over whether to prioritize the common name or the official one in cases like Halifax Regional Municipality or Greater Sudbury or Quinte West where the actual legal name of the municipality isn't what people actually call it in practice. But if we actually had any fights about whether the city I live in should be at Toronto, Ontario or Toronto, I don't personally remember them. Bearcat 11:54, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

text: It's sort of lapsed, but is a useful discussion that helps to identify what might be the issues if a guideline like this were proposed again. It was created specifically to respond to a challenge to put our money where our mouth is. I'm curious though: Do you see it as Americanocentric vice other English-speaking countries, other continents, other local languages, or what? --Scott Davis Talk 07:59, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion