Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)/U.S. convention change (August 2006)

message: The canonical form for cities in the United States is City, State (the "comma convention"). Places which either have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant place sharing their name, such as Atlanta or Los Angeles, can have undisambiguated titles. Those cities that need additional disambiguation include their county or parish.
An article for a city in the United States, however, should never be titled simply "city, United States" (e.g "Phoenix, United States".)''
# Support this fully. -- tariqabjotu 13:42, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The effect is to make a "standard exception" that can be pointed at rather than long protracted discussions on the talk page of each city. --Scott Davis Talk 15:03, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Adopt The Canadian Convention

message: All U.S. cities that have the name of the city without the state name redirecting to the name of the city with the state name will be moved to the location without the state name.
#Support -- If the unqualified name already redirects, then there is already wide agreement that the city name by itself refers to the city. --Polaron | Talk 18:43, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Move US Cities Across Redirects

message: * Evanston, Illinois, as mentioned in an example above, actually will not be moved under this proposal. The same goes with Highland Park, Illinois. -- tariqabjotu 13:42, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: Move all U.S. cities to City, State, United States (e.g. Chicago, Illinois, United States).
# Oppose. That would be going from bad to worse!  --Serge 21:51, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: City, State, Country

message: *Most English readers would recognise the names of the States of the USA (and of Australia, provinces of Canada and counties of the UK) even if they can't list many of them. Therefore the third level in the titles is not required for comprehension. --Scott Davis Talk 14:43, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: Move all Cities to City, State, Country and redirect all 'shorter' namespaces (City, State) and (City) there.
Comments
* The clumsiness of a highly-informative longer title would be eliminated by redirects from shorter namespaces. With this solution the pipe trick would not be needed at all save for cases of disambiguation. Also, anyone looking for any item of the three combinations will fall upon the correct article. This will also help searches - searching for a state will turn up not only the state, but the cities in that state. Et cetera. ThePromenader 15:38, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: <nowiki>[[</nowiki>City, State, Country<nowiki>]]</nowiki> with redirects from <nowiki>[[</nowiki>City<nowiki>]]</nowiki> and <nowiki>[[</nowiki>City, State<nowiki>]]</nowiki>

message: Change the U.S. convention so that there are no exceptions for any place, including New York and Chicago.
#Support, because I think it's better to have no exceptions.  Given the history on this issue, nothing will close the door on these debates.  But if we're going to have a "do-over" it may as well be a complete do-over with all of the old options re-presented.  We might do better with a cut-and-paste of the old arguments into this discussion.  It would save time.  --ishu 13:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Change the U.S. Convention to Eliminate Exceptions

message: The broader policies described at Wikipedia:Naming conventions cover cities perfectly well, and additional guidelines are unnecessary.
#Support - cities fit easily within the standard naming guidelines. --Yath 19:52, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Discard the U.S. naming convention

message: Does anybody have a recent copy of the AP Stylebook? I only have a copy of the 1998 edition, but I find it interesting in the "Datelines" entry that it has a list of cities that should be standalone (i.e. you should only use City instead of City, State, Country or City, State) because of the "population of the city, the population of the metropolitian region, the frequency of the city in the news, the uniqueness of the name, and the experience that has shown the name to almost synonymous with the state or nation where it is located."
In either case, I think we should also consider how other reliable published style guides treat the issue. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 23:43, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Using a relatively respectable source like the AP (and other similar sources, if possible) would seem like a potentially good solution for determining which cities to move. john k 17:18, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  AP Stylebook and other style guides