Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (common names)/Archive 1

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Early discussions

"Examples of common names that should be used instead of formal names are: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Mozart, Bach, Goethe."

And yet Mozart and Bach are both disambiguation pages, and Goethe redirects to his full name. Is the above really correct, or have I just wasted my time relinking all the Mozarts to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? --Camembert

I guess previous remark was circa Nov 2002. Just like to note that Mozart now redirects to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Bach is still a disambiguation page. Goethe still redirects to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. And "Mozart, Bach, Goethe" are no longer given as examples on the main page. -- sabre23t 08:30, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You're right that the assertion made in the article is refuted by actual practice. --The Cunctator

So why are we not allowing Margrethe II to be at her proper name, but rather at some English variant of the name? It's pretty stupid to think you Americans have the right to change every name in the world to some American version. Lir 21:22 Nov 10, 2002 (UTC)

You are confusing English version with American versions. Stop ranting. --mav

Subpages

Much discussion has taken place about this very subject. Here are some threads:

After some discussion with mav I've added a paragraph on the metapage to state what has become and is enforced as the norm: no subpages. The current practice needed to be state more plainly on the metapage because the links to the threads on this issue are too arduous (for experienced contributors) to guide newcomers. Editors moving subpages should point newcomers to this metapage and its talk page. BoNoMoJo 15:56 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)

Atlas Shrugged is loaded with subpages (e.g., Atlas Shrugged/Characters). Perhaps someone that knows what to do should fix it. -- RTC 17:59 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)
Atlas Shrugged is a mess. Many of the subpages are redundant and some of them are near useless. The near useless ones should be compiled into a list-like article and the more meaty subpages should be given context and become actual articles. If and when a term is used that conflicts with other terms in the encyclopedia then (Atlas Shrugged) should be added to the new page title.
At one time, in fact, Wikipedia was criticized by many people because of the relative size of our Atlas Shrugged section vs the other parts of the encyclopedia. Of course now we are being criticized for the relative hugeness of our US place section. --mav

What is the best option given the polemic. But, in the middle of the article, ´(Luis Inacio Lula da Silva should we use the international (american?) common form (Mr. da Silva) or the way he is called in Brazil (not only by his supporters), "Lula"?

In this case, it´s curious that Lula himself has made clear that he WANTS to be called with the word "Lula" in the middle, like "Lula", "Lula da silva", "President Lula", etc. In his opinion and also from all brazilians, he shouldn´t be called "Mr. da Silva", but "Mr. Lula" or any variant of that.

As a brazilian, I would suggest to refer to him as Lula. What is the wikipedia rule for that? "Use the English form" (anglicize) is not like "Use the form he is called in countries of english language".

Yves 15:09 Jan 29, 2003 (UTC)

There has already been a great deal of talk on this subject. See Talk:Luís Inácio Lula da Silva --mav

Related to the recent mailing list discussion is the issue of unnecessary disambiguation. This has become very tedious for me to move bands and albums to the most simple location because people see Kansas (band), U.F.O. (band) and Styx (band) and want to put every band at similarly disambiguated titles, in spite of there being nothing encyclopedic to disambiguate against. Maybe a note should be included here or elsewhere about disambiguation-mania, just so I have something to point to? (though most of the offenders are the KROQ guy and other anonymous users who probably would never see me point). Tokerboy

That is already covered in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) and esp Wikipedia:Disambiguation. The prcision page could use a stronger statement in this regard... Go ahead and edit away so that you have something to point the clueless to. --mav

Don't Overdue it

I am confused by this header. I would have expected it to read Don't Overdo it, which makes more sense if only to me personally. Is the current one perhaps (a) a US usage which I don't know about, (b) a clever pun, or something, which I don't get, or (c) a mistake? If it's A then fine, if B then dubious because others may also miss the joke, if C then it needs changing. All enlightenment gratefully received. Nevilley

That was me not being careful. If the term is too Americentric then please replace it with something better - these pages can be edited at will so long as the meaning isn't changed. --mav
It's fine now even from my fuddy-duddy UK perspective! :) Nevilley 12:14 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

What about kings, queens, princes, princesses, etc? IE, Laurent, Prince of Belgium ? Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom or Elizabeth Windows ? Martin

That is all covered in the naming conventions pages on royal titles. STÓD/ÉÍRE 20:57 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)

In the UK and the Republic, people who are members of the Welsh (or London) Assemblies have AM after their names. Members of the Parliament at Westminster use MP after their names. Members of the Scottish Parliament put MSP after their name. Members of the NI Assembly put MLA after their names and Members of Dáil Éireann put TD after their names. Here's what i'm wondering, should a Wikipedian refer to a person who is a member of a body that uses a TLA with that TLA or without the TLA? Like this:

John Doe, TLA

or

John Doe

hoshie

The TLA certainly shouldn't be in the article title. I don't think we have a policy on whether to include them in articles themselves - personally, I'd leave them out as they rarely add very much and are potentially confusing if you don't happen to know what they mean, but it's a matter of taste I suppose - I wouldn't actually edit them out of an article. --Camembert

In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was fairly common practice on the Continent that a person was called by their last given name rather than the first one as is common today. So the French painter Alexandre-Georges-Henri Regnault was commonly referred to as Henri Regnault. His father Henri Victor Regnault was probably called Victor when he wasn't called Monsieur. In cases like this, it makes sense to list the person by the given name they were most frequently called by, rather than a full name or the name we could guess from our modern conceptions of name order. Agreements? Disagreements? Shimmin 03:27, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me, Shimmin. I am all for putting things where they cause the least surprise, and this seems to be an example of that. Of course, we should have redirects from other versions of trhe name as appropriatew. Tannin 03:42, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Jr/Sr

When used, which one are we to prefer:

The first four variants showed up quite often on Daniel Quinlan's redirect-project. -- User:Docu

John Doe, Sr. is the one that people seem to prefer. (See e.g. John F. Kennedy, Jr..) -- Oliver P. 04:46, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Unreasonably Offensive

At Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)#Don't Overdo it, i have converted "unreasonably offensive" to "commonly regarded as offensive" in the following two passages:

Also, some terms are in common usage but are unreasonably offensive to large groups of people (Eskimo, Black American and Mormon Church, for example). In those cases use widely known alternatives (Inuit, African-American, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for example).
when the commonly used term is unreasonably misleading or offensive to one or more groups of people.

I am making no argument against the usage of these preferred terms. Nevertheless, it is a PoV to say that the reason is unreasonable offensiveness. Another PoV (mine and perhaps others) is that these are matters of politeness, rejected in modernized societies not bcz they are offensive but for more pragmatic (but IMO equally good) reasons. Actually, to the extent they are offensive, it's bcz the alternatives are polite (or considered polite, arguably the same thing).

It'll take me a while to put across my explanation; three anecdotes help in that:

  • In about 1964 a cartoon, probably by Jules Feiffer and definitely in his style, appeared. It had 6 or 8 frames, each consisting of a head presumably modelled after Stokely Carmichael, and the words being spoken by the head's owner. The wording (actually all caps) was something to the effect of "The term Black" [new frame] "will now replace the term 'Afro-American'" / "which replaced the term 'colored'" / "which replaced the term 'nigra'" /"which replaced the term 'nigger'" / "which replaced the term 'black'."
  • In probably 1982 or '83, the New York Times ran a front page article describing the consensus that had emerged among African-American leaders that that term had become the proper one, perhaps in place of "Afro-American". (I'm not sure whether i erred in including "Afro-American" in reconstructing the cartoon, or whether "Afro-American" had made a comeback, or whether i am mistaken about what preceded "African-American".)
  • In reading the WP passage that i quote above, i did a "take", saying to myself, "how'd they get it backwards; 'Afro-American' was assimilative and everyone is saying 'Black' now." Again, i misread "African-American" as "Afro-American", and as already said, i may have garbled the order.

My point with all three of these is that what is "unreasonably offensive" grabs a reasonable person by the throat, without them stopping to deal with the nuances that this terminology has gone thru, and doesn't change in a year or two. What we have here is a social convention, or rather a series of them; i happen to regard each of them as a good social convention in its time (that's my PoV), but i think it is a fact (or much closer to an objective fact) that they are conventions, and that these conventions have served the role of helping African-Americans reorganize and propagate their collective goals and self-conceptions, and enlist different forms (or nuances) of support from sympathetic people of more privileged racial identity. It's IMO unreasonable to violate any of these conventions in its own time, but not unreasonably offensive. Unreasonable, and offensive, but offensive only because the convention is accepted as important (which i agree with); that's my PoV, and the idea of "unreasonably offensive" is another PoV. But whether they're "commonly regarded as offensive" is a fact. --Jerzy 21:51, 2004 Jan 19 (UTC)

Actually, the preferred reference to 'Mormon Church' would be: "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints": there was recently even a (marginally unsuccessful) page-move vote on including the "The" in the article text (marginally problematic, given wikipedia page-naming policy on leading "the"). No reason not to include it in references, though (and indeed, in links). Not that this rises to the level of 'offensive', but some people are very sensitive to referring to the church by its correct/official title. Alai 22:14, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Common forms vs. current standards

On Talk:Citric acid cycle, there has for a while been a disagreement going on about how to title the page. There is some evidence from Google searches that "Krebs cycle" is a more common name than "citric acid cycle", and no-one has, as far as I can see, argued that this is not true.

You missed this reply from Lexor dated 21:34, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC): for many people I think citric acid cycle is the most common term. I think the Google test doesn't clinch it one way or the other 168... 07:39, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

...Therefore, following the convention to use the most common name, unless it is misleading or offensive, the page should be at Krebs cycle.

However, there seems to be a lot of disapproval of this title on the talk page. They've even set up a silly poll to justify not applying the convention to that particular article. And, as usual, that has killed all rational debate. After all, why provide reasons for a point of view when you can force it through with sheer weight of numbers? No-one has taken up my suggestion to discuss a possible change in the policy here, so I'm bringing it up myself.

It seems that a lot of people want to title pages according to names used by professionals in the fields in question - for example, authors of textbooks. It seems that terms like "citric acid cycle" and so on are used by academics, while alternative terms are better known to the general public. My current point of view is that since this is a general encyclopaedia, meant for the general public, we should use the terms that the general public will be most likely to recognise. Comments...? (Hint: all humanly devised designations are arbitrary, and none can be considered objectively more "correct" than any other, so don't even think about trying that argument... :P ) -- Oliver P. 04:46, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks very much for the hint. Accepting it as true, I guess we can't say whether it would be more correct call it an "excellent" point or a "trivial" one.168... 05:50, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)
No, Wikipedia is not just a general encyclopedia; it is an encyclopedia of integrated specialized, general and concise encyclopedias. Many articles serve roles in more than one of those encyclopedias (or at least they should), so we have to often compromise by using news style, summarizing / spinning-off detail into daughter articles and heading every entry with a summary (suitable for use as an entry in a concise encyclopedia). The case of CAC and KC is not a clear one. KC has historically been more often used, esp in non-specialist areas. However, CAC is much more used by specialists and is also starting to gain greater use in the non-specialist arena. Given that, and the fact that the Google numbers are really fairly similar, I see no reason why the topic should be moved to KC. --mav 12:56, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Proposed policy on names of groups

Text of the proposed policy: Use the name the group calls itself

People should be called what they say their name is, and groups should be called what they call themselves. This should only not be the case if there is a conflict between groups over who has the rights to a name (such as Taiwan and the mainland PRC both claiming that they represented China). When there is a refusal to call a group what it asks to be called, and instead an outside dominant group claims the right to assign it a pejorative, or propaganda name that it be called, this seems to be the end of any kind of NPOV. Some examples of this would be the Vietnamese National Liberation Front being called "Viet Cong" (as if anyone in South Vietnam opposed to the government was a de facto communist), the Communist Party of Kampuchea being called "Khmer Rouge", the Communist Party of Peru being called "Shining Path" and so forth. These names would usually be created and propagated by a small elite group, from government leaders to the corporate media, in an attempt to make the use of the name widespread.


Discussion

I added a section called "call the group what it calls itself". Obviously, I would like a discussion of this so we can hammer this idea out. I have noticed that the US corporate media will not even call groups by the names they call themselves, and assign propaganda/pejorative names to groups. Examples, National Liberation Front -> Viet Cong; Communist Party of Peru -> Shining Path; Communist Party of Kampuchea -> Khmer Rouge. This is definitely a propaganda tool controlled by a small elite (<2% of the US population has any control of the corporate media, even less worldwide). Communist Parties get exotic, scary sounding names. Non-communist groups, or popular front groups which include communists have the label communist applied to them (and in the case of Viet Cong, it has an exotic, scary sounding name as well).

To me, this is the end of NPOV. When people say that the small elite who control the US corporate media have the right to determine everything's name, perhaps due to some divine Judeo-Christian right that biblical reference can be found to OK (Genesis 2:19-20 ?), even when the group asks that it be called by the groups name, then you can just forget about any NPOV after that. I see articles which are just straight propaganda after propaganda, and then I see that the group isn't even allowed it's own name, it has to be called whatever the US government and corporate media elite DECIDED it should be called. It would be as if a group called itself African-Americans, but wealthy white Americans decided they would rather that group be called niggers, have the corporate media propagate that, and there you go. Then you can have the article filled with scientific proof about how African-Americans, I mean, niggers, have lower IQ's then white people, are more crime-prone then white people, have never achieved anything near the pinnacle of white achievement, then there can be some links to the Bell Curve and the like at the bottom. If I had to decide where to start on all that, I would say, this group calls itself African-American, so let's call them African-American, we can allow them the right to determine what they are called, and go from there. And everyone knows what I am talking about, I mentioned real name disputes in the article. Those disputes are between two groups trying to get the same name - not one group with "two" names pinned on them, one by themselves and used by their friends, and one pejorative/propaganda ones pinned on them by their enemies. Richardchilton 09:23, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It's an interesting point; a similar argument was made concerning the placement of the article on Linda Boreman. My own feeling is that the policy doesn't give the media conglomerates the right to decide names; rather, it recognizes the idea that common names, however derived, are the best place to put the article in order to get hits from search engines. It is a sad fact (or opinion) that media conglomerates control the public discourse, but Wikipedia's role is to provide information to the reader in the article, not make political statements by locating the article under a particular title. -- Cyan 22:03, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

To some extent, this policy is already in place; for instance, even though some aircraft might be best known to English speakers by their NATO reporting names (Fishbed for instance), we've agreed to use the official designations. In any case, it's WP's role to report what is, rather than what we would think would make a better world. An organization that continually shifts its official name around for propaganda purposes would be more rationally categorized by a constant familiar name for instance; this is often the case for articles about companies. So I think familiarity should trump official names if there is a huge disparity (10-to-1 in Google, books, etc), but that official should be considered at, say, 2-to-1 or less, or if the "familiar" usage is nearly all in obsolete sources. Stan 22:20, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

So which is it, Stan? What class of submarine is the Projekt 941 boat Dmitry Donskoy? As you know, of course, what NATO calls "Akula," Moscow calls "Schuka B," and what Moscow calls "Akula," NATO calls "Typhoon"....  ;-> --the Epopt 23:24, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The quick Googling suggests Western class names. We can always change it if a bunch of Russians show up and complain, will be an opportunity to lecture them about the confusing mess they've created over the nomenclature of their own boats. 1/2 :-) Stan 00:20, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

One more thought: the official policy should remind people to find out the official name, and to determine if the familiar one is a pejorative applied by enemies - Viet Cong seems to be unclear for instance, somebody needs to do more research on the point, cite some authoritative sources. Stan 22:27, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Vietcong is one of the more interesting ones to bring up, because as the anti-war movement began growing, the name Vietcong began being attacked in the West itself, and a lot of the anti-war literature refers to the NLF. The US called anyone fighting against the government in South Vietnam "Viet Cong", e.g. you would have to be a communist (cong) to be against the South Vietnamese government and to fight against it. The reality is the communists were just one of the groups within the NLF fighting against the South Vietnamese government. It suited the US pro-war element to label every enemy in South Vietnam of the government a communist, when that was not the case. And the interesting thing is the name NLF (the anti-South Vietnamese government popular front) began being used somewhat widely in the West. Richardchilton 22:43, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The normal English form should be used for the article and any official name mentioned early in it. A look at the edit history of the proposer will also be instructive. Jamesday 22:36, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Richard's para is already policy and has been since time immemorial. There are many examples. In other words, Richard was simply spelling out the existing de facto policy in more explicit terms. On the other hand, I think his examples were poorly chosen, and the rhetoric needs to be toned down. However, in the interests of amity, I'll refrain from reverting the revert, at least for a little while. Tannin 22:58, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Why not work up the improved discussion/examples right here on the talk page? I fondly imagine that more detail and examples here will reduce the amount of edit warfare elsewhere - that G/D city comes to mind for example. :-) Stan 23:24, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
No it is not Tannin - the 'don't overdo it' para was written by me about a year ago. Before that the common name naming convention was more strict. Now it allows for unreasonable offensiveness to override it. Richard's para is neither policy nor would it be productive (it would, in fact, overturn the entire common name naming convention - not to mention the use English naming convention). These conventions are important because they are useful - they help create titles that are most likely to be searched for, and links that will most likely go where they are intended. --mav
Oh yes it is, Mav. Unless someone has moved inuit to eskimo since the last time I looked. How do you explain that otherwise? Tannin 21:28, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Because it violates the 'don't overdo it' clause. Eskimo is cited as a specific example in that paragraph. --mav
Agree with Mav. Besides the clear trolling issues with "Richard", his proposed policy completely flies in the face of the rest of the policy. His very examples show that it flatly contradicts established policy. What's more, it was not discussed before being "made" policy. Furthermore, the paragraph is so ideological as to be an embarrassment to the meta pages (e.g., "corporate media"). Reverting its deletion was not appropriate. -- VV 20:13, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
You are ranting again, VV. Try Valium. Tannin
You seem to have real civility problems. -- VV 12:15, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
That example is explicitly given at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(common_names)#Don't_Overdo_it and does not require richard's text. --Jiang 23:52, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It is a shame that this proposal is put forward with arguments that so invite suggestions like "[the] edit history of the proposer will also be instructive". I am honestly tempted to propose a consensus that the proposal be stripped down to its essentials, and discussed while every edit by Richard to this page is reverted to avoid him further inflaming the discussion with issues that could only interfere with the outcome he seeks, so we can discuss the issue and not him.
(With that in mind, i am holding my tongue about the details of the insults, against both of the two most relevant races, implicit in Richard's views of the role of that word in sustaining either slavery or the racisms of the various periods since.)

The proposal is in fact a highly PoV one, rather than a reduction of PoV. It is not only PoV in intent, by assuming and validating the extreme PoVs that

  • most English-speakers are sheep at the mercy of corporate media, and
  • educated humans forget easily that a name is just a verbal tag and carries no information about the thing it names.

It also is PoV in effect, serving to impede recollection of what a reader already knows (or believes -- and don't forget that the difference is their business, not ours) about less visible groups. This favors the PoVs of fringe groups over mainstream ones, since smaller ones are much more likely to have their alienating past obscured by our use of an obscure name that has not passed the muster of the market place of ideas.
This is not, BTW, a matter applying just to groups the size of sects (whether religious or political). For instance, if any significant number of Americans could remember the obscure names of the highly significant PRK, The West Wing would never discuss the "Republic of North Korea". --Jerzy(t) 23:10, 2004 Mar 4 (UTC)


Naming conventions (common names)

On Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names), the following addition was suggested:

"Use the name the group calls itself People should be called what they say their name is, and groups should be called what they call themselves. This should only not be the case if there is a conflict between groups over who has the rights to a name (such as Taiwan and the mainland PRC both claiming that they represented China). When there is a refusal to call a group what it asks to be called, and instead an outside dominant group claims the right to assign it a pejorative, or propaganda name that it be called, this seems to be the end of any kind of NPOV. Some examples of this would be the Vietnamese National Liberation Front being called "Viet Cong" (as if anyone in South Vietnam opposed to the government was a de facto communist), the Communist Party of Kampuchea being called "Khmer Rouge", the Communist Party of Peru being called "Shining Path" and so forth. These names would usually be created and propagated by a small elite group, from government leaders to the corporate media, in an attempt to make the use of the name widespread."

Then reasoning for this was spelled out on the discussion page. More names spring to mind as I think about it "(American) Indian", "anti-globalization movement", and so on and so forth. -- Richardchilton 21:49, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I would agree to this (ie the actual requirement to 'use the name the group calls itself unless ambigous') as long as you tone down the rationale significantly. Policy pages aren't the place to denounce "small elite groups". Morwen 21:54, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
Does this proposal mean Wikipedia is going to call Americans "Americans"? - Tweak 22:03, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
As opposed to "Yankee Imperialists?" ;-) -- WormRunner 22:11, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I clarify this in the second sentence. Americans call themselves Americans, so that is outside the range of what I am talking about. I am not talking about two groups fighting for the same name, I am talking about two names being applied to the same group, one the name the group gives itself, one the pejorative/propaganda name given to the group by its enemies. Richardchilton 22:13, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Of course, I should have realized that you would not consent to calling Americans Americans. Wikipedia should continue to pretend it's avoiding "ambiguity" rather than making political points. :) -- Tweak 22:21, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
For a policy aimed at de-PoVing, that paragraph is extremely PoV. But more interestingly, it brings to a mind a discussion I barely dare dredge up - Burma versus Myanmar. Arguably, both the government and "the People" are they with respect to a country, but they are asking for the same thing to be called by different names. See, amongst others, Talk:Myanmar and Talk:History of Myanmar. - IMSoP 22:15, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I was not part of the Burma/Myanmar discussion, but I'm surprised it was such an issue. The UN has recognized Burma as Myanmar for a long time now. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 22:18, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)Ugh, never mind- I read through some of the thread. Being of partial burmese descent myself, I'm surprised that people are still so up-in-arms about it. Other countries that requested to be called their original name rather than their Anglicized name (Thailand, for example) are now commonly known as such - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 22:33, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
Importantly, we are deferring to the UN as a higher authority, rather than "what they call themselves" - higher than "the People" or a particular foreign government, such as the US. To clarify, I completely agree that this is the best thing to do, but it bears mentioning in this discussion. - IMSoP 22:36, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC) [Note:this post was a reply to DropDeadGorgias' first, now struck out, comment, so is now rather redundant]

A lot of these arguments remind me of the novel 1984, where the government puts out a new Newspeak dictionary every year, and everyone complies right away, rewriting all the old words so they comply with the new ones. Then they are all "common usage" and all of the arguments presented here, after all, the government called them that, the corporate media complied, and tried to propagate that. Thus words like freedom would become thoughtcrime in the common usage. I think one thing that is instructive is to note how there are only a small number of groups where the US government (and corporate media) refuses to call them by their names, whether anglicized or not (Partido Comunista del Peru = Communist Party of Peru). You can't find many instances where a political group is refused even to name itself. The ones where this is done are just total propaganda from what I've read. This just seems like the kind of totalitarian white collar American arrogance that exists - most white, white-collar Americans call a group a certain name, thus, that will be its name. Richardchilton 23:03, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Richard, you have at the core a very good point. Why are you making it with rhetoric which will alienate many people who would otherwise agree with it? Morwen 23:07, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
Richardchilton/Lancemurdoch was telling us on IRC yesterday that we should also call African-Americans "niggers" because that's what they call themselves. Do you think that's also a good point? For the full conversation, see User:Tim Starling/Richardchilton IRC log -- Tim Starling 23:42, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
Let's see, your log says that if the white Americans get to name everything should apply everywhere that "We should change the African-American entry to niggers since that name was commonly usage (by white Americans, the only group on the planet whose opinion matters) to refer to a certain group of people." It says in the log that whites called blacks this, yet here you say that it was said that blacks called themselves this. In other words, you are misrepresenting what was said, and are in fact, saying the exact opposite of what was said. -- Richardchilton 00:11, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Oops, sorry. -- Tim Starling 01:57, Mar 4, 2004 (UTC)

The issue of "two groups fighting for the same name" seems to me to apply to what we have to date calling the "Shining Path". They call themselves the "Partido Comunista de Peru", but, in fact, references to the "Partido Comunista de Peru" nearly always mean the party that used to be part of the Comintern. "Shining Path" is a literal translation of "Sendero Luminoso", a name that to the best of my knowledge is -- at least in part for just this reason -- used both in Peru and elsewhere, by friend and foe alike. (E.g. it is used by the RCP, who claim the Senderistas as an affiliated party.) It seems to me that it would be OK to list what a group calls itself as a very important factor in what to call an article, but not to make this an absolute and immutable rule. And in any case, I hope we can all agree that all of the relevant forwards and disambiguations should always be in place, and all commonly used names should be mentioned in the first paragraph, making this all more of an issue for partisans (of either side) than for end users of our site. -- Jmabel 00:43, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

But speakers of English are a "small elite group." And, without intending anything whatsoever, certain names for things have just come into being, mostly by common usage, since we have no Royal Academy directing usage here in the English-speaking minority. In Wikipedia, any local name can be set in parentheses once— italicized, since it's a foreign language&mdash and then the article can continue blithely on, in English. (Now what's that Egyptian name for "Egypt" again?)Wetman 15:52, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Nicely put! --mav 05:07, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Naming conventions for medicine

The policy on this page is often quoted when there are discussions about the appropriate naming of pages in medicine. There are various arguments why heart attack might be preferable over myocardial infarction (basically the same), but some lay terms for medical phenomena are exceedingly imprecise, loaded with bias or simply wrong ("heartburn" is neither cardiac nor oxidative).
I would like to start the discussion by pointing at talk:Heart attack and Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion#April 18. Undersigned has also conducted a similar discussion on Talk:Neutrophil granulocyte. Chemistry and biology pages are generally phrased in specialist/scientific terminology; in my view, a similar thing ought to happen to medical material on Wikipedia.
As for heart attack, there seems to be some concensus that "lay term pages" should contain brief introductions phrased in non-technical terms, while pointing at a more technical and detailed discussion on another page that employs more technical terminology. This might be the best solution, but fails whenever there is no real lay term available (e.g. diabetes mellitus).
Finally, even the lay person might learn something from being redirected. JFW | T@lk 01:08, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I would like to say "me, too". The medicine pages are needlessly linking to common, inaccurate terms. What's worse is that the first common term that gets the article becomes the main repository for the topic, regardless of the number of common terms that all apply to the same medical topic. It's a big planet, and a common term in one region may be totally unheard of elsewhere. At the least, we should use the terms used in the (medical) field, and link common terms to the most accurate (scientific/medical) term. Ksheka 18:05, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)
By the way, I think the lay term for diabetes mellitus is "diabetes", or "sugar", depending on the education level of the individual. Of course, moving the article to either of those places would really cause chaos. :-) Ksheka 10:05, Apr 27, 2004 (UTC)
Well, as it so happens, diabetes mellitus used to be a redirect to [[diabetes, just as myocardial infarction now is a redirect to heart attack. I went ahead and 'fixed' it (diabetes mellitus) some time ago and it stuck. I think heart attack should go along the same vein - leave a layperson's description in heart attack and leave prominent links to myocardial infarction. By the way, heart attack is also the name of a card game (and possibly other things too) so a disambiguation page there would be appropriate. Alex.tan 17:30, 3 May 2004 (UTC)
I agree that the articles need to be under the technical heading. I feel the technical names are where the appropriate articles go, with simple redirects for some common names to the technical article, or disambiguation type pages pointing to the technical articles, as appropriate. When there are redirects to the technical pages there should be an acknowledgement somewhere in the article (either intro or a common names section in the technical article) that explains the redirect. This gives the option of discussing the history of the trivial names. Of course, it gets interesting when the technical names are one like Priz-Metals angina or coronary artery spasm. Steve (Wikidoc) Kd4ttc 02:50, 1 May 2004 (UTC)
Medical topics should have precise titles that conform to modern medical terminology. Where possible, common names should be mentioned in the introduction, but a separate "Alternative names" section might be preferred when the topic has many synonyms. Separate "lay pages" should be avoided not just because some topics have no layperson equivalent, but because of the unnecessary decentralization of information. Instead, layperson-level information should be incorporated into the article proper. --Diberri | Talk 15:03, May 3, 2004 (UTC)
I think that we should make an exception when the common name doesn't have a wide range of meanings. For example, we would leave Hansen's disease where it is, rather than moving it to leprosy, because the term "leprosy" can mean many different things; however, for, say, "heart attack", I feel it should be moved to heart attack is way more common than mydocardial infaction, and because (this is the important part) "heart attack" is rarely if ever used to mean anything else. So in cases where it's pretty much indisputably clear what the "common name" refers to (unlike the leprosy example), I think we should go with the common name. (I apologize for the unfocused, rambling structure of this comment; it is 1:24 AM.) -Branddobbe 09:24, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

Name changes

There seems to be some confusion about how changes of name should be handled. The policy here says use the commonly used name, which implies ignoring the name change since the old name would be more familiar and used in old texts etc.I disagree with this since I think accuracy and being up-to-date are more important, especially since the old name will redirect to the new one and nobody will have any trouble finding the article.

In any case in practice this is applied inconsistenly. Examples that (justifiably I think) violate the current policy:

While I found a big argument about another similar case:

I'm sure there are many other examples. Somebody needs to clarify this point in the policy page.

Hans Zarkov 11:40, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

    • Searching for Mumbai and Kolkata on google returns more pages than Bombay or Calcutta. So, these may be considered "commonly used" and do not necessarily violate the policy. Andris 19:20, May 9, 2004 (UTC)

George Spencer Brown

From User talk:SamuelWantman / User talk:Tillwe, after I moved "G. Spencer Brown" back to "George Spencer Brown". Could someone help us?

Welcome too! I just reverted your move of the content of George Spencer Brown to G. Spencer-Brown. I did this for two reasons: firstly, Wikipedia name policy is to use the most common form of the full name. I'm not sure if this is "George Spencer Brown" or "George Spencer-Brown"; in German language texts by Luhmann I only have see the former. So I made George Spencer Brown again the main entry and turned George Spencer-Brown as well as G. Spencer-Brown into REDIRECTs. The second reason is, that for moving a page -- which is essentially what you tried to do -- you should use the "move" function. It copies not only content, but also history. If it doesn't work, this means there is an article with history already; in such cases maybe an admin can help by deleting that article. BTW: If you want to use abbreviated names in an article, you can do so like this [[George Spencer Brown|G. Spencer-Brown]]. -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 19:31, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Hi, I'm want to talk about this with you before reverting to G. again. Until I found Wikipedia's article, I had never seen G. Spencer-Brown's first name in print. His first name well may be George, but he published under the name G. I think this is equivalent to H. Rap Brown, J. Edgar Hoover, or F. Scott Fitzgerald. You'll notice that none of those abreviations redirect to the full name, nor should they, because this is the name they are known by. Likewise, G. Spencer-Brown is what George is known by. I'm willing to be convinced by argument that I am wrong, but if not convinced, I think it should revert, once again to G. Spencer-Brown. Also, you reverted to an old version, not the one posted at G. Spencer-Brown. --Samuel Wantman 23:18, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
I just did some research, and found: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). So you are incorrect, there is no policy to use full names. On the contrary the policy is to use the common name. So the only question is is the more common name G. or George. He published under the name G. and that is what he is known by, so that is his common name. Please put everything back the way it was. --Samuel Wantman 23:54, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
Hmm, sounds difficult. Maybe you are right that G. Spencer Brown is much more common than George Spencer Brown -- I know the name form German works (i.e. Luhmanns), and there it is always George Spencer Brown. So I assumed that this is what is commonly used (a similar probleme arised between Theodor Adorno and the more common form -- in Germany, but not in English literature -- of Theodor W. Adorno. If this isn't the case in the English-Speaking world, than of course it should be G. Spencer Brown. (BTW: Is Spencer a part of the surname or of the lastname?). Maybe we should ask some third person for an opinion? For that I copied this discussion to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (common names). -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 11:28, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Noted that the article is not at G. Spencer Brown with redirect from George Spencer Brown. -- sabre23t 08:21, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ebonics vs African American vernacular English

Any useful contributions to this discuaion will be appreciated, at talk:Ebonics.

Naming articles for hits or accuracy?

I'm fresh from stumbling into a naming convention dispute at Mahatma Gandhi. Shoulda known better, but it brought me here, where I was suprised to read the following:

We want to maximize the likelihood of being listed in other search engines, thereby attracting more people to Wikipedia. Also, the Jimmy Carter page has the string "Jimmy Carter" in the page title. This is important because other search engines will often give greater weight to the contents of the title than to the body of the page. Since "Jimmy Carter" is the most common form of the name, it will be searched on more often, and having that exact string in our page title will often mean our page shows up higher in other search engines.

I thought that's what redirect pages were for. I mean, I wouldn't expect any other reference work to list Jimmy Carter as "Jimmy Carter." I guess I'd be in the "James Earl Carter" camp myself, though I wouldn't make a huge deal about it on Wikipedia.

But that's beside the point.

I just can't help thinking that maximizing hits and properly naming entries may sometimes be mutually exclusive goals. I can understand how a redirect page named for the common usage of a less commonly known term might foul up search engine results. But isn't the whole point of Wikipedia -- or any encyclopedia -- to inform people about less commonly known facts?

That said, I also don't think that this is an insurmountable problem, though perhaps one that might require some technical elbow grease. How about if there were some way to include the first 100 or so words from the "redirected-to" page on the redirect page itself? Why not retool the #REDIRECT template to include that text in its META tag?

I admit I don't know the nuts and bolts of Wikipedia coding, but what if the code that #REDIRECT whatever produced also took a small chunk of text from the beginning of the whatever article and put it in the redirect page's META tag, so that search engines would display it while remaining invisible to Wikipedia users? That way contributors would have more flexibility in presenting information without compromising Wikipedia's "searchability."

Again, I don't know how feasible this is, but I hope that we can figure out some way to prevent Wikipedia's necessary pursuit of hits from compromising its pursuit of knowledge. --Dablaze 00:54, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

I agree that hits should not be the No. 1 priority. But "Jimmy Carter" is listed that way in my Concise Columbia Encyclopedia. Maurreen 05:06, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I agree completely with what you say here Dablaze. So long as a google search picks up the redirect title, the listing is still there, and secondly the user is instantly educated about the more correct/alternate title for the article (according to Wikipedia consensus). Donama 23:01, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

General Disagreement

I'll add my voice to those who prefer that articles be under full formal names where possible and common names as redirects...to do otherwise is to abdicate the role of place people go to look up more than they already know.I don't see the idea of calling people whatever they want to be called as logical either...it benefits the egotistical at the expense of the modest.(For this reason I have always disliked pinyin transliteration of Chinese,an invasion of the Roman alphabet created by those who do not use it without regard for its conventions).There is no reason that Chinese cities should have to be called by their native-language names while European ones are not.(Athens hosted the Olympics and didn't insist on being called Athinai,Peking insists on being "Beijing" and that probably gave Turin,the intervening Winter Olympic host,the idea of promoting "Torino").--L.E/le@put.com/12.144.5.2 18:38, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Surnames

One of the obvious differences between Wikipedia and almost every other reference work is that we list people by first name instead of by surname.

I understand the rationale for wanting to use the most common name for a person but it has some drawbacks. For example, any automated alphabetical listing of biographical entries will not be ordered by surname.

Is there any way to have a special tag for the formal name of the person for sorting, etc.? It should also automatically become a redirect.

It is a second rate solution, but WikiWax may be able to help you here: [4] Donama 23:04, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Strike this convention

I'd like to start a discussion on striking this convention. I'll keep my initial argument short (by my standards) and to the point by countering the three primary points made in the article. I'll name them the three points and please refer to them (or my response) by number if you need to.

1) "We want to maximize the likelihood of being listed in other search engines, thereby attracting more people to Wikipedia. Also, the Jimmy Carter page has the string "Jimmy Carter" in the page title. This is important because other search engines will often give greater weight to the contents of the title than to the body of the page. Since "Jimmy Carter" is the most common form of the name, it will be searched on more often, and having that exact string in our page title will often mean our page shows up higher in other search engines."

A good article should have the full name as well as the common name. A search engine indexing the page would find both. So this point boils down to that of the title of the article (and the thus the purpose of the naming convention).

I will call this a technical problem that is being patched by naming articles after common names. For example, if the article of Jimmy Carter was really named James Earl Carter, Jr. then the title of the page returned should be something of the order "James Earl Carter, Jr. -> Jimmy Carter" or "Jimmy Carter <- James Earl Carter, Jr." This change in the title of redirect pages would void this point since the common name would still appear in the title.

Naming people with their full name or other articles by official titles builds in an automatic disambiguation. Very possible to have another "Jimmy Carter" but much less to have a "James Earl Carter, Jr."

2) "We want to maximize the incidence of accidental links (and reduce duplication)."

By creating an article at it's full name or official title and redirecting reduces duplication (no one will make a page at Jimmy Carter). Fundamentally, naming the article after the common name and redirecting from the proper name is no different than naming the article after the proper name and redirecting from the common name: both names are covered and get you to the article.

3) "Using full formal names requires, if one wants to link directly to the article, both that people know the full formal name and that they type it out, both of which are a royal pain. If one links to a redirection page, there's a "redirected from" announcement at the top of the page."

This is under the presumption that linking to redirects is a Bad Thing (TM) and that "redirected from" announcements are also a Bad Thing (TM). Linking to a redirect is only bad when the redirect name becomes ambiguous (e.g., another "Jimmy Carter"; and believe it or not, IMDB shows 4 other "Jimmy Carter"s but none as notable). I would contend that linking to redirects is not a bad thing. How trivial is it to take a script/bot and have all uses of "Jimmy Carter" be changed to "James Earl Carter, Jr.|Jimmy Carter" when "Jimmy Carter" becomes ambiguous?

After something like "Jimmy Carter" becomes ambiguous then it will require more attention to what links are named regardless of which naming convention is used.


Summary of points:

  • Name people and things after their proper/official name/title
  • Linking to redirects is not a bad thing
  • Ensuring search engine listing is a technical issue to overcome


One final point to make. Due to the limitation of wikipedia (it has no namespaces for content, only (roughly) functionality) the further population of popular/common terms will require more disambiguations in the future. For example, since there's no way to seperate Cyrano de Bergerac the person from the play and films, it must be done by altering the article name (e.g., Cyrano de Bergerac (play), Cyrano de Bergerac (1950 film), & Cyrano de Bergerac (1990 film)) instead of being able to seperate the three articles into different namespaces or into a hierarchy (like the subcategorization of articles in Wolfram's World of Science, though the web pages are still all in a single directory). The best solution would be to have "people/Cyrano de Bergerac", "plays/Cyrano de Bergerac", "films/1950/Cyrano de Bergerac", & "films/1990/Cyrano de Bergerac" to which a disambiguation page at "Cyrano de Bergerac" & "films/Cyrano de Bergerac" could automatically be generated based on the articles in "subdirectories", which would also easily lend to an implicit category creation. But this is a huge tangent.

Cburnett 22:21, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

South Indian names

Several edits are taking place, (see for example the Kerala page) where the "Initials in names should each be followed by a period and a space" is applied for South Indian names. This is not correct, as the two or three first letters in a South Indian name are not the same as a Western initial. The general naming convention in India is to write the name without spaces between the letters indicating the father's name and home-town name, such as A.K. Gopalan, etc. --Soman 09:42, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The proper rule is that each initial is followed by a period, with a space between the initials and spelled out name. But two or more initials together should be closed up, with no space between them (the dots provide sufficient spacing). There's no reason for it not to apply to South India as elsewhere, even if you do produce some evidence of a general, universally followed locally rule. There are local variations like that elsewhere, too. It's like the British writing titles as Mr and Dr and the U.S. and Canada writing Mr. and Dr. (how does India do that?). There is also considerable variations as to whether or not a space is used when the dots are omitted, aren't there? Show some evidence, not just a bald claim. Furthermore, many of those initials which you claim to be patronymic and toponymic should probably be omitted entirely from the names of the articles, except when needed to distinguish otherwise similar named or when the person is generally known by those initials rather than one of the given names, though they'd be fine in the article itself. Gene Nygaard 10:57, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Another variation you can tell us about is "AK. Gopalan". Or "AK.Gopalan". Just more reasons for a consistent Wikipedia rule. Gene Nygaard 10:59, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Middle names and disambiguation

The current convention says that middle names are only to be used when the person is normally known by them. However, it seems to me that it is preferable, when it is necessary to disambiguate, to use a middle name, if available, rather than a parenthetical explanation, which seems awkward and unnecessary if we can avoid it. Any thoughts? john k 16:31, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The most sensible parenthetical designation after a "John Smith" would have been a death date (birth dates being often moot), even a circa death date. Is it too late? Redirects are always in order, even if they lead through a disambiguation page. Not everyone can find Chester A. Arthur by knowing the spelling of his middle name. --Wetman 22:51, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, of course there need to be redirects and disambiguations. But see the case of the British politician Herbert Morrison. He cannot be at Herbert Morrison, because this must disambiguate between him and another Herbert Morrison, who is famous for saying "oh the humanity" in the Hindenburg broadcast. Let us ignore for now the possibility of putting him under his peerage title at Herbert Morrison, Baron Morrison of Lambeth, simply noting that he was given this title after his retirement, and is rarely called by it. My preference, then, would be to put him at Herbert Stanley Morrison. Adam Carr disagrees, and wants Herbert Morrison (politician). I find the latter both unsightly and kind of unprofessional - with people, I'd prefer some kind of system. If possible, I'd suggest going with middle name/initials (depending on which is more commonly used), and then birth and death dates, when available. Since Morrison is distinguished from the other Herbert Morrison by his middle name, I say he sould be at Herbert Stanley Morrison. This is not to say that there should not be redirects at Herbert Morrison (politician) or Herbert Morrison (1888-1965). What do you mean, by the way, about birthdates being moot, and are you suggesting the two articles should be at Herbert Morrison (1965) and Herbert Morrison (1989). This seems odd - one would have to know that these were the deathdates. If no birthdate is available, though, something like John Smith (d. 1371) is better than John Smith (Archbishop of Canterbury) - people have many roles, and it seems inherently POV to just pick one of them out of the ether, and there's no consistency. All the various US politicians named John Brown are at places like John Brown (Maryland). But this John Brown's near contemporary and co-Marylander, Senator John Henry, is at John Henry (senator). This seems inherently unwieldy to me. There's no reason not to have sensible policies for how to disambiguate people with the same name. john k 23:43, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

(written before Johnk's message above--caught in an edit conflict) If a middle name is known, I prefer using either the middle initial or the full middle name in the title. Although in other contexts (like geographical features) I am a big fan of parenthetical disambiguation, I think it only makes sense for personal names when there are truly two persons with exactly the same name (i.e., they do not have middle names or are unknown, or the middle names are also the same). If the person has a strong association with something, like an occupation, I think that is better than using dates. Dates sometimes become necessary when there are multiple persons with the same name and similar occupations (like both U.S. politicians from Virginia). older≠wiser 23:50, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the main point. My feeling about dates is uncertain - if it's absolutely clear what someone's occupation is, maybe. But sometimes it can be awkward. I don't know. john k 02:07, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Definition of "common"

I am looking for a clear specification on what is meant by common. What kind of numbers should be used as an indicator that something is common? (Related to discussion on renaming article Calcutta to Kolkata!) -- Urnonav 06:38, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good question. In particular, is "common" supposed to be construed with or without regard to the Manual of Style, which explicitly takes into account national varieties of English? Alai 06:40, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Tsunami as more appropriate than tidal wave

I agree that tsunami is more appropriate than tidal wave for the article name, because this is the most commonly used expression. However, it is a bad example for "misleading naming" and violate the rule of using English names where they are available. My understanding is that tsunami translates to "harbor wave." We can ignore this because the foreign word masks its meaning for most English speakers, but "harbor wave" is no more accurate to describe the phenomenon than "tidal wave." -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 20:25, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Actually, "harbor wave" is a pretty good representation of how the Japanese thought about tsunami before more was known about them. The usually concave shape of a harbor would help to concentrate the effects of the tsunami so that they would usually be more destructive there, and because harbors are inhabited, the effects would also be more noticable. Fishermen at sea might not notice anything, but they would come back to port to find tremendous devastation. BlankVerse ∅ 22:10, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the elaboration. And similarly "tidal waves" appear like waves that are familiar from the tides, building up and then breaking on shore, but much bigger. Tsunami seems to be almost universally accepted now, but it would be better if there were a truly descriptive term. -- Cecropia | explains it all ® 22:52, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Tsunami is now the accepted term for scientists discussing them. Its also increasingly used as the word for it in mainstream media as well (at least in the UK), although "tidal wave" is still usually given as an explanation at the first usage. Although harbour wave isn't a perfect description, its less misleading than tidal wave as it has nothing to do with tides. Thryduulf 10:46, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, it's like using "military intelligence" as an example of an oxymoron. Let's try to think of a case which exemplifies what we're talking about.

And by the way, this:

A page with a slash (/) in its title is treated like any other page and there are no longer any special subpage features.

... is not true. There are special subpage features. See help:subpage. Uncle Ed 19:41, July 9, 2005 (UTC)

New initiative (articles on persons)

I'm one of those who think that the "Names and Titles" naming conventions guideline could be written in a format that makes it sound less as an exception to general wikipedia principles on article namingref.

The issue has been discussed recently on severeral talk pages, and there appears to be a group of wikipedians that neither wants to get really involved, neither is particularily fond of the present complications for naming a "lucky-by-birth stiff who had some pretentions to a hereditary right to rule others or had the remotest ancestral connections to such a person"ref

The problem is, these wikipedians have no alternative: either it's the complicated "exception" rule, either it's only the basic rules that lead to ambiguity in many cases of article naming on persons.

That's why I announce here my plan to start a {{proposed}} guideline for dealing with article naming of articles on people. I think the logical name for such guideline would be:

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)

Using a guideline name differing from the existing ones, as long as it's merely a proposal, also helps not to disturb existing rules (and their talk pages) too much: while in the end it might result in no more than a few ideas of this proposition being "absorbed" by other guidelines (or the other way around). But that's for the wikipedia community to decide then. First I try to cooperate in building a valid alternative, better in line with general Naming Conventions guidelines. --Francis Schonken 11:56, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Specific cases

I have two specific cases in which my preference clashes with this policy: Czech Republic vs. Czechia and East Timor vs. Timor-Leste.

In both cases, the first name is clearly the more common one, I admit that. However, the governments of those two countries explicitly stated that they want to be referred to by the second name — Timor-Leste wants to be called Timor-Leste in each and every language, just like Côte d'Ivoire; and Czechia wants to be called Czechia in English. There has been some discussion about this on those articles' talk pages, and the final argument regularily was that my view contradicted official Wikipedia policy, and that I should just let it be.

However, I still think that these two cases merit special attention. After all, it's not just a matter of what's more common, but also a matter of what's correct. The fact that it's undoubtably more common to say wegen dem Unfall in spoken German doesn't change the fact that wegen des Unfalls is still the only correct way of saying it. So – any comments? — ナイトスタリオン ㇳ–ㇰ — 16:26, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

On your latter point, the pragmatics of evolving language are often that people spend a century or so railing against "incorrect" usage, and eventually what "correct" is changes to catch up. Accidentally, as it were. On the substantiative question, I do have some sympathy. It was like pulling teeth to have Calcutta moved to Kolkata, despite the "official" term actually be pretty common in English-speaking media. I'd think a degree of preference for the official term, when it's almost as toss-up otherwise, would be a good plan. But here, neither "Czechia" or "Timor Leste" seem to be at all common in same. Plus in the case of Czechia, the name of the country still seems to officially be "Česká Republika"/"Czech Republic": "Cesko"/"Czechia" is just the "preferred reference". What's more, http://www.czech.cz announces itself as "Official Site for the Czech Republic". I'm less inclined to give such preferences much credence, than actual official titles -- especially when the Czech government seem to be less than rigorous than implementing them itself. There's actually a stronger case than that for moving Republic of Ireland to Ireland by the "official name" argument, but that'd cause more problems than it'd solve.
I think a good general principle for an encyclopaedia is "follow general usage, don't try to lead it" -- but not to the extent of being outright reactionary, or merely perpetuating common errors. I don't think your examples fall into either of those categories, however. Alai 21:43, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
Well, the "official" name of my home country is Republik Österreich, and official pages also state "Official Site for the Republic of Austria". Noone would doubt, however, that when referring to the country, you ought to call it "Austria", not "Republic of Austria". The same principle applies to Czechia. Furthermore, look at Greece - the "official" name is Hellenic Republic, IIRC...
Additionally, with Czechia, I can accept that it might be contentious whether we're leading general usage or trying to be correct here. In the case of Timor-Leste, however, it's a fact that "East Timor" is used in error, much like "Great Britain" is erroneously used for the United Kingdom by many people. — ナイトスタリオン ㇳ–ㇰ — 22:34, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
But my point is that "Czechia" fails not just the test of the current convention, but all reasonable and likely alternatives to boot. Unless we adopt "use the names for countries which their governments have stated they'd prefer in certain contexts", the adoption of which I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for.
The Timor-Leste example I at least have more sympathy for. It really is their official name, and they really do use it, and try to have it used consistently. If they were losing the googlefight at a ratio a bit better than 30:1, and hopefully in due course they will be, I'd make more of a noise in favour of this page-move. It's not comparable to the UK vs. GB thing though: that's not a renaming the world hasn't caught up on, the two terms really do describe different geographical entities, just as "England" is also erroneously used for one or both of those. Alai 23:43, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
Okay, my example with UK and GB wasn't really good. I'd be content for now if we could at least positively resolve the Timor-Leste case, maybe I'll have more luck with Czechia in one or two years' time. ;) So – whose attention or support do I have to get to get East Timor and Timor-Leste switched? — ナイトスタリオン ㇳ–ㇰ — 00:04, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
Two additional comments: Regarding Google, the ratio is 1:11.91 (Timor-Leste against East Timor). Normally, I'd use "Timor-Leste" -"East Timor" against "East Timor" -"Timor-Leste", but in this case, many pages use phrases like Timor-Leste (earlier, East Timor). So the actual ratio would be about 1:12. Is that good enough?
I've listed it on WP:RM, since it had the 'tag', but didn't seem to have a listing. You may want to gloss the nomination a tad more enthusiastically than I did: I suspect this policy needs to be tweaked first, but who knows, you might have some luck. I'd propose a modification along the lines of "prefer official names, when those are in fairly general/relatively common usage", instead of strictly "most common". Alai 02:41, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
And regarding Czechia, I just wrote a quick mail to the Czech foreign ministry, to lend some credibility to my cause at least. Either way, thanks for listening so far. ;) — ナイトスタリオン ㇳ–ㇰ — 00:17, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
  1. Both Czech(ia) and Timor are rather a wikipedia:naming conflict matter (than exclusively "common names" matter): the wikipedia:naming conflict guideline gives a method for balancing "common name" and other arguments for naming (i.e. taking account of "official name" and "self-identification"). --Francis Schonken 09:34, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
    1. Well, most common is East Timor and Czech Republic. Self-identifying is Timor-Leste and Czechia. As far as official goes... Well, Timor-Leste is certainly official for Timor-Leste, so that should be in my favour. With Czechia, both "Czech Republic" and "Czechia" are official in the same way that both "Hellenic Republic" and "Greece" are official for Greece... Now what do we do? — ナイトスタリオン ㇳ–ㇰ — 14:01, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
      1. What was unclear about "the wikipedia:naming conflict guideline gives a method for balancing "common name" and other arguments for naming (i.e. taking account of "official name" and "self-identification")."? --Francis Schonken 09:42, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
        1. Fair enough — following the guidelines and using the table proposed therein, the situation for Timor-Leste is clear. Official and self-identifying are Timor-Leste, most common is East Timor, but only at a ratio of 1:12, so the article should be moved to Timor-Leste. Now, how do I get an admin to take a look at Wikipedia:Requested moves? It seems it's been about a week since the last time one was there... ナイトスタリオン ✉ 10:00, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
          1. Well, there's a little "but", resulting from further in that guideline, still in the same section explaining how to use the table:

            Where a choice exists between native and common English versions of names (e.g. Deutsch/German), always use the common English version of the name.

            Now then: Timor Leste is Portuguese, if you translate that to English, you get East Timor, the "common English version of the name", which, according to that guideline should get precedence. See also "Dealing with self-identifying terms" lower on that same page, giving more detail about the argumentation for translating to English.
          2. Since in this case "Self-identification" + "Official version" are heavily supporting "Timor Leste", and the letter of the guideline would say "East Timor" (common English translation of the Portuguese name), I think it good that yesterday it was filed on WP:RM, so that there can be a vote (which I assume the first time after long and not really conclusive talks on talk:East Timor). Such vote takes at least a week. So don't be impatient. Personally I'm inclined to be against the name change, but I don't know yet whether I'm involved enough, or even sure enough, to go cast a vote.
            1. I'm generally not in favour of deciding things by votes – a majority doesn't always have to be right – but okay, I'll wait. ナイトスタリオン ✉ 13:24, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
          3. Backlog on WP:RM - again: don't be impatient. If the name-change is all that important, and/or the vote not really conclusive, an admin might keep it on WP:RM longer than 7 days, even without "backlog". --Francis Schonken 12:24, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
            1. Okay. I'll just try to help with the cases that don't need admin help, then. ナイトスタリオン ✉ 13:24, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
    2. Ah, yes. How about this? Does that make my request more sensible? — ナイトスタリオン ㇳ–ㇰ — 14:10, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
      1. What was unclear about "the wikipedia:naming conflict guideline gives a method for balancing "common name" and other arguments for naming (i.e. taking account of "official name" and "self-identification")."? --Francis Schonken 09:42, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
        1. Mh... okay, point taken. Since both Czech Republic and Czechia are official and self-identifying, I'll have to give in — Czech Republic wins the third point ("most common"). Sorry for my persistence. ナイトスタリオン ✉ 10:00, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  2. I gave a few tweaks to Alai's improved version of the "subsidiary articles" section of the "common names" guideline. Thanks for pointing to Wikipedia:Summary style! --Francis Schonken 09:34, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Common name/technical name

I agree that the common name should be used as the article title, but that doesn't mean it should be treated as the technical or formal name. This isn't a problem for people's names, like Jimmy Carter, because these are self-explanatory. However, for some things, it isn't. If the article begins as "[common name], also known as [technical name], is . . ." then it sounds like the technical name is just a less-used, alternative name. For example, in the article for nitrous oxide, it starts with "Nitrous oxide, also known as dinitrogen oxide or dinitrogen monoxide, is a . . ." What this doesn't say is that, following standard naming procedures, the second two names are correct, while the first is outdated. No one actually talks about "dinitrogen oxide," so the article's name is correct. What I am proposing is that the policy be changed, so that in any articles where this applies (not just compounds) it begins with "[common name], formally known as [technical name], is . . ." If anyone has any objections, please say so; if there are none, I'll change the policy. (For another example of what this would fix, nitric oxide, which would be called nitrogen monoxide by the standard naming system, doesn't even mention that name.) Twilight Realm 21:02, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Why do you need a policy or even a guideline for that. Just fix the article. If someone disagrees with you, they'll let you know.
The point I'm trying to make is that there are a whole continuum of possibilities, and determining how best to accurately describe the alternatives so that they are presented fairly is best left to a case-by-case determination. Gene Nygaard 22:34, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Not really. For example, sodium hydroxide says "also known as lye or caustic soda..." which could be improved by saying "commonly known as..." This isn't the best example, because it's sort of obvious what's a chemical name and what's a common name. I'm not able to come up with any good examples that aren't obvious right now, other than compounds with similarly outdated names (the suffixes "-ous" (nitrous, ferrous)and "-ic" (nitric, ferric) are outdated, but are still in common use in some compounds). I'm not that good at coming up with examples, though; if anyone else can think of some examples of anything (chemical, organism, object), please share it. Twilight Realm 00:25, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Here's an example. Sorta. The cannabis article should mention something about marijuana, in the introduction. If it did, it would be a good example. (By the way, I got to that article through the grass article. I didn't think of it by myself.) Twilight Realm 00:25, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Like the previous section on this talk page, I think this is rather topic of wikipedia:naming conflict than of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) (in other words "common names" is not the only principle involved!) --Francis Schonken 07:59, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Stage names

Hi there, I think that it would be great if this guideline explicitly stated that stage names are more appropriate than real names of famous people (of course, if they are better known by their stage names), and included examples of, for instance, Sting (musician) and Madonna (entertainer). --Dijxtra 12:49, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

This is handled at wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Nick names, pen names, stage names, cognomens --Francis Schonken 12:52, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
PS, note that also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Qualifier between brackets or parentheses has the example Prince (artist) --Francis Schonken 12:55, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, I managed not to see the obvious... --Dijxtra 13:54, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Names of US politicians

Francis wrote: Haukurth, if your abuse of this guideline wouldn't be so blatant, esp. the George Bush example (see Talk:Níðhöggr/Archive 1#A brief history of the article) I'd accept the change

I think there must be some misunderstanding here. I was never proposing that George W. Bush be moved - I'm very happy about where he is. My "Georg VV. Bush" mention was just an attempt at humour - I was mangling the name the way an Icelandic child might do. And the post you link to doesn't reference this guideline at all.
My only point here is that it is not necessary to use many example to drive home the point that articles about US politicians are not under their full names. It would be more helpful to pick examples from a wider variety of articles and I'm trying to find some. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 11:36, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
My point is that you abuse the "common names" guideline by steering towards the idea that non-common characters like Þ could be part of a common name on English wikipedia.
In that sense the example involving George Bush you tried to construct in Talk:Níðhöggr/Archive 1#A brief history of the article was inappropriate.
And yes, that is probably the reason why you try to hinge your outlandish proposals to the "use English" guideline, obfuscating the backwards relation your policy & guideline proposals have to the "common names" principle.
Anyway, as you admit that your efforts for winning the Nidhogg vote included making fun of those having a less outlandish view on the issue, I must say I completely agree with DreamGuy's comment here.
--Francis Schonken 12:16, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I have never advocated the idea that 'Þ' can be a part of a "common name" on English Wikipedia. I'm sorry if my lighthearted parody offended you. That was not my intention. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 12:24, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Indeed, as I said, you only "advocated" the "use English" principle, so that you could divert attention that this equally important guideline on using common names was dodged. That's what I'm reproaching you. --Francis Schonken 14:08, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Ah, I see. That's probably fair criticism. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 14:16, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
As for the comment you linked to I do not consider it fair criticism, I will not dignify it with a reply and — if I may reproach you in turn — I am disappointed that you say you completely agree with it. I had expected more of you. - Haukur 23:44, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Still not thinking it would be a good idea to remove George W. Bush as an example. Every now and then WP:RM's are launched on that article: keeping it in the guideline makes it clearer why the guy's article is at the place where it is now (and less prone to ever-renewing discussion).
Further, @Haukurth: please (but this is only a suggestion, really do as you like) first show you know how to implement this guideline, before pushing changes (including, but not limited to examples) that didn't get prior consensus on this talk page. --Francis Schonken 17:01, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
I think I understand this guideline pretty well. It suggests, for example, that we should use Steinn Steinarr rather than Aðalsteinn Kristmundsson as I mentioned earlier today on Talk:List of Icelandic language poets. When I get around to writing that article it will be at Steinn Steinarr.
That said the guideline badly needs updating and clarifications, including examples that are not names of people from the United States of America. - Haukur 17:22, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Would it be possible to implement the "common names" principle in the "Norse mythology" NC guideline? I'm prepared to help!
As for additional examples, maybe propose them here on the talk page. For me it works fine as it is. But you're free to propose, and we'll see whether it is possible to agree on them here.
Note that there is also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) that covers stagenames. That guideline has plenty of examples too (and more "international" than the ones on this page) - but the same: if you want to propose additional and/or other examples, maybe best to do that on the talk page there too. --Francis Schonken 17:38, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Referencing this guideline there would not be a bad idea. The reason I based it so heavily on "Use English" is that that guideline is the one that has come up most frequently in discussions I've participated in the past. I just wasn't as familiar with this one. I'll add a few lines now.
And I do remember that your first contribution to the discussion of that guideline was this edit [5]. I felt that was a heavy-handed change and that you should at the very least have used a more informative edit summary for it. - Haukur 16:15, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
What an ill-faith remark is that? I was just doing maintenance on the "current surveys" page (as I had done before). Some contributors listed a new poll on top, others at the bottom. I didn't even know which ones I was replacing, just looking for the dates to put them in the same order. Which was no "contribution to the discussion of that guideline", not even in the remotest sense. --Francis Schonken 16:23, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

You replaced this clause:

Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Norse mythology). Proposal under vote is a guideline to applying Use English to the field. 11:07, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

With this clause:

Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Norse mythology). Proposal under vote is a guideline to applying bypass Use English for a not clearly defined number of cases pertaining to Norse mythology. 11:07, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Your edit summary makes no mention of this change, it says only:

Polls - Chronological order (most recent on top)

I felt this was heavy-handed. - Haukur 16:29, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Oops, yes, there you got me, you're completely right, I interfered with the discussion. But bypass it was, and you were successful. So I bow in humility and withdraw my previous remark in the same way. --Francis Schonken 16:34, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Thank you. That was very gracious of you. We definitely got off on the wrong foot - this was the first edit from you which I saw and it probably prejudiced me against you. I hope we manage to put this behind us and collaborate productively in the present and the future - as I feel we have already done here. - Haukur 16:38, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Kennedy

I'm trying to make the example section less focused on US politicians. I think Bill Clinton is a good and very illustrative example and I'd think that would be enough. Francis says that George W. Bush is also a very useful example. Very well, I won't wage a revert war over that. But I do think Ted Kennedy is a particularly bad example. A search on books.google.com yields the following:

  • 10500 pages on "Edward M. Kennedy"
  • 5710 pages on "Edward Kennedy"
  • 3850 pages on "Ted Kennedy"

His own homepage lists him as "Edward M. Kennedy" and so do Britannica and Encarta. I think that this guideline would suggest that his article be moved to Edward M. Kennedy. I will not, however, request such a move since I've never edited the article and I feel move requests from "outsiders" are a bit invasive. That talk page has enough conflict already.

But the Kennedy example should be removed from this guideline. - Haukur 14:14, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the Kennedy example is bad and just wanted to note that it was added only six days ago [6]. We could give Tony Blair not [[Anthony Charles Lynton Blair]] as an example of a non-U.S. politician. Also, why are we using the nowiki tags. We other names given should in my opinion always be redirects and I think we could do well to emphasise that. Stefán Ingi 14:26, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Please make those changes. - Haukur 14:29, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
The Tony Blair example seems like a good idea to me too. Search me, why the nowiki-tags are used, I suppose they must've been there for ages, and was continued to keep the same format. --Francis Schonken 14:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Done, I also removed the colons, they seemed unneccesary and their usage was not consistent. Stefán Ingi 14:41, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, I must have crossed your edit, hope I didn't embarass you --Francis Schonken 14:46, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Examples, continued

"Melos" is not more technical than Milo.

Agreed. And not more scientific either. - Haukur

Milo is the French name of the Greek island, Melos isn't even the current version of the Greek island in English (which seems to have moved to Milos, after "Aphrodite of Melos" was sometimes used to refer to the statue in the Louvre).

Note that that example effectively marks an exception to the "use English" guideline, that's why I'm particularily fond of keeping it in the list: while most of the art production by French artists are at an English title in wikipedia, this one, totally irrational, is at a French name (and based on the Latin equivalent of the Greek godess that is supposed to be portrayed by it). The example is good while in English it is indeed "common" to name the statue thus (try websearch...: virtually unanimous with a very high score, apart from a few dozen "Aphrodite de Melos") --Francis Schonken 14:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Indeed. Though it may be worth noting that the Use English guideline does say that we should use non-English names where they are more common in English usage than the English names. - Haukur 14:36, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Burping

Okay - tell us what is wrong with the burping example, then. - Haukur 14:47, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

We already have non-person examples of where the "scientific" and "common" are quite far from each other, the "common" being quite obvious (nobody would think it to be at erunc... whatever it is, I never heard the word) - I'd only make the list longer if we have an example of non-persons which is illustrative for mentioning something only slightly more common, but nonetheless generally accepted as "more common".
Maybe sea cucumber vs Holothuroidea (but we already have have an animal vs. latin name, and I don't know whether Holothuroidea is really common or not)? Still looking for a better example, but don't spank me if I can't turn up with something in three seconds. Maybe try to give some suggestions too. --Francis Schonken 14:59, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
If you are concerned about the number of examples I think "burping" adds much more than "George W. Bush" - especially since there's a more specific convention for people and we already have the name of another US politician. More non-people examples are needed. - Haukur 15:07, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

and/or

This is not a word. Could the lead be changed to:

Examples of common names that Wikipedia uses instead other versions which may be fuller, more formal, scientific, specific, or elaborate:

This is long but at least the sentence doesn't branch into four distinct sentences. Stefán Ingi 14:53, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't know about the "fuller", but I'm no native English speaker. FYI, abbreviations in people's names is a subsection of wikipedia:naming conventions (people), so the "common names" NC is not meant to be the "nec plus ultra" about that topic. --Francis Schonken 15:02, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
OK, never mind the fuller. It currently stands at Examples of common names that Wikipedia uses instead of a more elaborate, more formal or more scientifically precise version include: I'm certainly happy with that. The other comment suggests to me that we need to decrease the ratio of Shortened names/Other examples from 4/3 to somethink like 1/3. I'd be happy to do that by throwing out Bush, Blair and Caesar and leave only Clinton but I'm pretty sure that would get reverted. The other plan is to find 9 more examples in the Other examples category, I'm not sure why removing Burping is a good first step. Stefán Ingi 15:08, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Break

I'm concerned Stefán and I might come across as too agressive here. We tend to agree on things and it might look like we're ganging up on you, Francis. I'm going to withdraw from this discussion for a bit. I'll be back before long. - Haukur 15:15, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Anyway, the "Occam's Razor" was there long before I started editing in wikipedia, so I'm going to put that one back.
Further, no, I had no feeling of "ganging". Only Haukurth is quit enervating in this one, changing a guideline where, I repeat, he is not yet on the level of understanding half of it, but yet pressing on changes before hearing others. Like just again, the Razor. --Francis Schonken 15:25, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I actually misread that article's talk page - the debate was December 2002 not this December as I'd thought. But, okay, if you don't feel mugged then there's no need for me to withdraw :) I'll try to tread a bit more lightly but personally I feel that the quickest way to get things done when improving a project page or article is to do minor improvements without bringing them up on the talk page first. If someone disagrees they will edit right back and eventually a compromise is hacked out through a mix of edits, edit summaries and talk page discussions. And please stop saying that I don't understand a simple piece of English prose. - Haukur 15:34, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Well then, don't - you're POV-pushing, and that is enervating. I only said I don't experience you (thus far!) as ganging together with Ingi. But then I just read for Ingi it's the political agenda too (preferring "Clinton" over "Bush" and the like). Well that really has nothing to do with a NC guideline. The examples should be "well chosen" but not from the perspective of presenting a political POV. I'm having fun you guys don't even know what my political preferences are. So both "Clinton" and "Bush" as examples makes a good balance in that respect. It's not when you understand the words that you know how it works. I've offered to make the Norse mythology guideline compatible with this guideline, I'm guessing you don't even know what I'm talking about. Anyway, you didn't reply to that offer yet. --Francis Schonken 15:53, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't care about equal representation of Republicans and Democrats or whatever. Nor do I have any interest in your political preferences. Clinton is a better example than Bush because the difference William Jefferson vs. Bill is more illustrative, in my opinion, than George Walker vs. George W.. I'll reply to your note on the mythology guideline, since you insist. - Haukur 15:58, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
But Clinton isn't nearly as prone to WP:RM as Bush junior. Thats the argument I used above. And as a non-native English speaker I wouldn't push towards removing examples from US/UK. --Francis Schonken 16:06, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Now, I was going to withdraw for today before I read this comment. I guess I never imagined that someone could think I was pushing a party-politcal agenda by selectively including Clinton or Bush. <humour>I could just as well accuse Francis of pushing a political agenda of supporting the rotten two party political system in the US by ignoring small parties by not including the example Ross Perot over Henry Ross Perot</humour> Also, a minor note, Ingi is my middle name, I like the small piece of anonymity involved in not giving my patronym. I'd prefer it if you refered to me by my first name which you are of course free to give as Stefan. Stefán Ingi 16:15, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, if I mis-assessed any political implication by what you said, Stefan. But I'm glad you join again. --Francis Schonken 16:28, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Contentious examples?

The issue of Occam's razor vs. Ockham's razor was hotly debated and some people argued that the latter was more common (and/or more suitable for other reasons). There was no consensus there. Does the fact that "Occam" prevailed in the end make it a good example for this guideline? Should the example section be a "trophy room" of past disputes? Or should it feature examples for which there is a reasonably good consensus? I'm asking your opinions honestly, we can do either as long as we're consistent. I would personally prefer the first option but I'm willing to work with the trophy room model if there's a consensus for that. - Haukur 15:44, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Does the fact that "Occam" prevailed in the end make it a good example for this guideline? yes, because it was the same people that put it in here. Are you just trying to create havoc for the fun of it? --Francis Schonken 15:55, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm not creating any havoc or trying to create any havoc. Please stop making borderline personal attacks. My point is that including disputed examples in the guideline will mean less support for the guideline. That's not necessarily bad, of course, but it's a tradeoff we should consider carefully. - Haukur 16:02, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
??? Less support for the guideline - what's that suppose to mean? The fact that you don't support it very much, as for example by making a non-compatible "Norse mythology" guideline, is not remedied by you pushing this guideline your way, which would be a cure worse than the problem. I propose you take it as it is, and rework the "Norse mythology" guideline accordingly. --Francis Schonken 16:11, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
A guideline which includes disputed examples will have less support than a guideline which includes examples everyone agrees on. This has nothing to do with my personal preferences. I'm more or less supportive of this guideline though I think it needs clarifications and updating to better reflect the general opinions of editors and the facts on the ground. One way to do that is to add examples. I feel your dog example was a good one and I don't see any reason why it should be supplanted by your newest example. Would you be willing to put it back in? See, I'm asking you nicely instead of just doing it myself :-)
Examples that are "stable" for over two year are not disputed. What are you making things more complex than they need to be? I'm not sure about the sea cucumber example. I'll try to find a native English speaker, and see what comes out of that. Really we're three non-native English speakers, rushing with examples. I can only speak for the examples about which I'm sure they've proven their use. As I'm not sure whether the "dog" or "holothuroidea" would work best, but for myself, failing further information, have a slight preference for the sea animal, I'm not inclined to change, and wait reactions from others. --Francis Schonken 17:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I've now added some relevant quotes from this guideline into the Norse mythology guideline. The part which I thought was most relevant, and I think you'll agree, is the Exceptions paragraph. Haukur 16:57, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
You can see there how I reacted on it. --Francis Schonken 17:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

See also section

Francis, it feels like you're being a tad possessive about this guideline. As far as I can see you added the entire "See also" section yourself in one edit without any prior discussion [7]

And when I make a minor rewording edit to this section [8] you do a blanket revert and accuse me of "messing with" the guideline and not understanding it. - Haukur 13:21, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I made the revert for reasons explained on your talk page, and I made a live link to that talk page from the edit summary. Anyway, I copy here, and revert, as there's obviously no "consensus" regarding your changes, and your retorts are not even half-convincing me. --Francis Schonken 13:42, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Haukurth, again, stop messing in guidelines...

...you barely understand - use the talk page instead.

It is by now clear you want to push your POV that the "common names" principle should be bent another way. I don't agree to it. Period. So if you're looking for agreement rather than edit-warring, use the talk page. --Francis Schonken 13:00, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Please stop referring to my updating the guidelines as "messing" with them. Please stop saying that I don't understand a simple piece of English prose. I have asked you both those things before.
I removed a misleadingly captioned duplicate link and you apparently agree with me since you have not reverted that change. I have made no substantive change to the guideline and I will not do so without prior discussion on the talk page. But minor clarifications and rewordings do not need prior discussion - if you disagree with my changes you can make changes on your own as you have not hesitated to do. - Haukur 13:06, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
"Messing" it is. The poll was not "April 2004", it continued till May. "(2004)" is correct, "(April 2004)" isn't. "(April/May 2004)" is IMHO unnecessary detail. --Francis Schonken 13:16, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Almost all of the discussion was in April and that's precise enough. The detail is helpful since a year is a long time on Wikipedia and early 2004 is quite different from late 2004. On the other hand this link isn't helpful at all and should just be removed. It was recently added too and, which is perfectly fine, without any prior discussion. - Haukur 13:18, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
"should just be removed"??? - like I said, you're just pushing POV.
And why should "early 2004" (in fact: "mid 2004") be quite different from "late 2004": POV pushing, like always, POV-pushing.
Things happen very fast on Wikipedia. A year is a long time and a poll that happened in April 2004 is, frankly, a bit obsolete. But the most serious problem about that poll is that it was badly organized and the options people were voting on were eminently unclear as several of the people commenting noted. - Haukur 13:35, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Recently added? I could check, as far as I know it's been there for ages. --Francis Schonken 13:32, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, please check and tell me the result. - Haukur 13:35, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
I, checked: it's there for a period more than hundred times as long as your recent edits. --Francis Schonken 13:55, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
It's been there since last month, whatever spin you want to put on that. - Haukur 14:52, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
The "use judiciously" is POV, and double with might in some cases assist, the "use judiciuosly" is explained in that guideline. I don't agree with trying to minimise the practical help one can sometimes get from the Google test guideline. It helped, for instance, to discern between Mobutu Sese Seko and Mobutu Sésé Seko. --Francis Schonken 13:27, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
You're using "is POV" and "POV pushing" very gratuitously as a tar brush. Is it "POV" in some negative sense that Google tests should be used judiciously? Especially when it is explained in the guideline itself? And what does it even mean to talk about "POV" in the context of a Wikipedia guideline? Is the guideline itself NPOV? I just don't think those terms are very useful here.
No-one is saying Google tests can't be used but it's worth reminding people that they must be used with caution. - Haukur 13:35, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

"Wikipedia is a fast medium" - one of the lamest excuses for edit-warring I ever heard. --Francis Schonken 13:42, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Francis, It seems to me that there is some difficulty in us two cooperating productively here even in minor issues. Bringing in more contributors would probably be helpful. I'll ask some people if they're interested in helping. - Haukur 14:52, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Another possible example

As said above, if I'd come up with something that sounds like a good example I'd mention it here: what about:

The example is interesting as the Guinea pig has no relation to Guinea (as an example that a misnomer is sometimes used when it's the common name).

As far as I'm concerned this example could replace the more outlandisch sea cucumber example. --Francis Schonken 23:07, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

It's a very good example, Francis. It has nothing to do with Guinea and it has nothing to do with pigs but it's the common name for the thing. I'm adding it right away. I don't see any reason to remove the previous examples so I'll keep the cucumber and add the dog again. We all liked the dog. If you must remove one then I suppose the cucumber is least valuable.
I think we should start working on a proper list of counterexamples where Wikipedians have decided that other considerations than common usage are more important. - Haukur 23:16, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Re. "dog" example, I didn't see Stefan comment on it, nor anyone else, except you and me. "We all liked the dog." is POV speculation. Above I already said I preferred the Sea cucumber above the dog. Then I said I prefer the new example over the Sea cucumber. This definitely puts aside the dog in my preferences: the list shouldn't be too long, and the dog is the least instructive example, while nobody would use the latin three-word name for that animal, when there's already the Guinea pig/Cavia example. So, from all the animals I'd only retain the most instructive one, as said in this paragraph: the Guinea pig.
Re. "Contentious examples", don't turn the thing upside down: if after a long, and maybe even "close" discussion the wikipedia community decides for one version or another (which is the consensus then), there's no problem to use that example (apart from length of the list of course): the example expresses the consensus of the community, as much as examples that are not questioned. In that sense it is better to use examples that are illustrative w.r.t. where the boundaries of this guideline are: which one is just in, which one is just out.
Another thing (and that's why your Björk example was adapted by Gene Nygaard) is to insert an example here, that has a relation to a currently unresolved issue elsewhere.
That's why Gene wrote: "examples are bad if there are extraneous issues; find something better" in the edit summary when he rewrote your example (note that he didn't remove it).
So, when (for example) I introduced the Kabila example in the "Exceptions" section, this was after a Village pump discussion involving this person (along with the Belgian Léopold/Leopold I, II & III, and Mobutu Sese/Sésé Seko) had been concluded. The community consensus was clear on each of them, so no problem to use them as examples.
--Francis Schonken 16:49, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
I still think Björk is quite a good example of this guideline being applied. It was (as far as I can see) created at Björk in 2001. It was later moved to Björk Guðmundsdóttir and moved back to Björk because of this convention and I don't seen anyone disagreeing with that now. I don't see any unresolved issues there - or at least no more than in some of the other examples. It is, I think, less controversial than the razor example.
If you consider the presence of the 'ö' in Björk to be "an unresolved issue" then the 'é' in your Laurent-Désiré Kabila example is certainly an unresolved issue too. We need to be more explicit here that the common names convention does not cover the case of diacritics and give a link to use English for more information on the subject. - Haukur 17:19, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
In reply to Francis, I have to say that I like the dog better than the sea cucumber for the simple reason that I have often heard conversations in English about dogs and can confirm that that is indeed the common name for the animal. I don't really doubt that the name sea cucumber is the common name for that creature but if I wanted to be sure I would have to go and do some research. I think that examples which are readily apparent to everybody are more useful. I think e.g. that Julius Caesar (not Imperator Gaius Iulius Caesar Divus) is a better example than Domitian (not Titus Flavius Domitianus). As for the question about Contentious examples, I don't see anything wrong per se with including examples which have been argued heavily over but the problem with including them is that the guideline loses support with each one that is included. So if we include many examples which different people disagree with for different reasons I think we have to start questioning how much support the guideline as a whole has. I'm certainly a lot more happy supporting the guideline without the Ted Kennedy example than with it eventhough I probably wouldn't vote in a page move request for it. Stefán Ingi 17:35, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Re. "Exception" status of "names & titles" NC guideline / Re. "Counterexamples"

@ Philip: note that I never removed the example, instead I started & elaborated the "Exceptions" section, noting that several NC guidelines implicitly or explicitly contain exceptions, but that the one surpassing all others in this respect was the names & titles NC.

Then, later, for the brief period I thought that three weeks of "current surveys" listing + notification of the same for the same period on several talk pages (including the names & titles NC talk page) without receiving a single negative comment was enough to move that guideline to wikipedia:naming conventions (Western nobility) I had exchanged the link to the names & titles NC guideline for a straight link to what I thought was agreed to be the new one.

Now, we know how all that ended, I don't think I have to explain. Anyway, the "Western nobility" NC page is a redirect to the "names & titles" NC guideline page, and still indicated as the "major exception" in the "Exceptions" section of the common names NC guideline. I have no problem the link is made without the redirect via "Western nobility" (I must say, I kind of forgot about it after the "Western nobility" vote).

But my proposal is to keep the treatment of "exceptions" in the "Exceptions" section, and not scatter it all over the guideline.

@ HaukurÞ: The same goes for Þ's new proposal to add more examples of exceptions (or "counterexamples") all over the place: I don't think this a good idea. Keep exceptions in the "Exceptions" section. The "Don't overdo it" section is only meant to illustrate that using "common sense" is always what should be done, and is not the same as "exception", or to put it more technically, that there's no real tension between the "common names" guideline and the current version of the "Precision" NC guideline, if both are well understood. In fact both guidelines are two halves of the same idea: "maximum recognisability for English speaking people", which is about the only thing that is core issue of the "official policy" regarding naming conventions, see wikipedia:Naming conventions, third paragraph of the intro.

I do agree that Tsunami/Tidal wave is not a good example. "Tidal waves" exist (actually, they're called Tidal bore), but they're not interchangeable with Tsunami. Also Tidal wave is a disambig page now, separate from the Tsunami page. So that example should be dropped IMHO. --Francis Schonken 16:49, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Should currencies be an exception to the rule?

There's a poll at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Numismatics#Currency_Rename_POLL to rename a bunch of articles on currencies to the [adjective denomination] format. The controversy is that the format being proposed for the sake of "consistency" clearly runs counter to the "use common names" rule. I really don't see the need to violate this rule for the sake of imposing a consistency that does not exist. Those wishing to comment on this should take a look at the page as this affects a good number of articles.--Jiang 01:27, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Clinton, Carter

I have to speak up about the horrible usage of these president's "familiar" names, "Bill" Clinton and "Jimmy" Carter, rather than their regular names. Although these are probably the best known names for the particular presidents, they are not, in fact, their names.

James Earl Carter's Nobel Peace Prize would not, in fact, reflect, Jimmy Carter. The use in article titles of these men's "familiar" names rather than their regular names demeans the individuals as well as their office. What is the Clinton or Carter's name on the books that they write? Doesn't that preclude the use of Bill or Jimmy in their article title?

Oddly enough, in later years this seems to be only an issue with living presidents of one Party versus another. I don't see Gerry Ford as an article, and yet wasn't that the man's common name.

I was under the impression that Wikipedia is above all else, an encyclopedia. People have real names, regardless of their familiar names. Bastique 19:25, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

No, perhaps James Earl Carter's Nobel would not reflect Jimmy Carter. But that's because the president's full name is James Earl Carter, Jr. That's the problem with taking such a formal stance on naming conventions. You moved Bill to William J. Why not William Jefferson? Why not move every single biographical article to First Middle Last? Because that's not what people use. People named William and James get their names shortened. People named George typically do not. People named Ronald sometimes do, but when they also have sons named Ronald, calling the elder Ronald and the younger Ron is perhaps the best way to disambiguate. That's just how the names work. Your anger at this "deameaning" convention and framing this as some sort of anti-Democrat conspiracy lead me to think you need to take a more dispassionate look at this.
In fact, the idea that calling the president by familiar names is somehow demeaning reflects a particular POV, as does the idea that the US president should be held up on some pedastal and be called only by the most reverent moniker possible. android79 19:52, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
As a side note, the politician with the worst possible "familiar" name, Dick, is a Republican. android79 19:56, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm dropping the debate. The intent was to raise the standard by which we write articles on public figures. Frankly, I don't give a damn about what Bill Clinton's article is titled. I was, however, bothered by Jimmy Carter's designation, until I went to AMAZON.COM to find out how President Carter appears on his novels. As far as I'm concerned nom de plume takes precedence over everything else. Bastique 20:33, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

P.S. As far as Dick is concerned, thay only give him that name because it makes him seem less insidious... ☺ B

I'm not sure I understand. First it's the Clinton and Carter articles and naming conventions in general; now it's only about Carter. Case closed, I guess. android79 22:06, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, you most definetely misunderstood. I was actually trying to bow out gracefully so as not to become imbroiled in a debate, find a commonality, a bit of humor and leave it at that. Your response, however, is regrettably, condescending, and has goaded me in to responding. Maybe you should think a bit before you write from now on.
I believe using familiar names over proper names for important figures is offensive and entirely unencyclopaedic. No official biographic article would use a diminuative or familiar name as the title. Furthermore, I believe that it's used for one group of people more than another. I, do, however, value Carter's present contribution to society somewhat higher than I do Clinton's. However, the debate remains about Clinton as well, or for that matter, Ted Kennedy...I believe that an encyclopedia biography should show enough respect to its subject as to use their official or legal name rather than their familiar name, and to be consistent about is as well. No, Tony Blair most assuredly does not belong at "Tony Blair", but not being a British subject, I consider that I have less to say about the matter. ℬastique▼parℓer♥voir♑ 01:47, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
You know, I could craft a witty retort to all this, but I won't bother, as nothing could possibly top "Maybe you should think a bit before you write from now on". Very classy. Perhaps I've been a bit uncivil in our discussions today, but that last was genuine puzzlement on my part. Condescending? I certainly didn't intend it that way. I just call it like I see it. Someone changing their position on something that they obviously felt very passionately about just hours before just didn't make sense to me.
As for the matter at hand, well, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I'm sure this has been debated to death already. Given the reaction to your page move earlier, I don't think there'll be much support for the change you want to make to the naming conventions. In any case, I have nothing more to say. android79 03:56, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Thank heavens because every time you say something, something insulting gets said. Better to remain silent. ℬastique▼parℓer♥voir♑ 05:10, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm personally fine with using nicknames (like "Bill Clinton") instead of fuller names (like "William J. Clinton") provided that both of the following conditions are met:

  1. The nickname is indisputably the more common way of referring to the person.
  2. The nickname is used by the person herself or himself in contexts such as covers of books they've written.

In cases where either or both of these conditions are not met (as for Senator Kennedy) I think we should use a fuller name.

In borderline cases where it is not clear whether a nickname is the most common way of referring to a person or where it is not clear if the person fully approves of the nickname I think people will expect an encyclopedia to err on the side of formality. - Haukur 10:48, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

This guideline is not intended to extrapolate other guidelines

e.g., up till now other guidelines only advise to seek a "third less common solution" in the case of a British/American English dichotomy. Not in the case of (for example) two synonyms exist in English, that can not be assigned to either British or American variants. This guideline should not suggest "exceptions" that are no way covered by other guidelines. For the "exceptions" the idea is to point to these other guidelines, not reformulate them, while in the end these other guidelines might be reformulated too at some point in time.

Just pointers towards the guidelines where presently such exceptions are elaborated.

Anyway,

When adherents of two different spellings cannot reach an agreement sometimes a third alternative is chosen to end the conflict. That alternative may be less commonly used than either spelling of the common name. For example there is currently an article at the somewhat technical term fixed-wing aircraft to avoid a conflict between aeroplane and airplane.

is a presently unsupported extrapolation of WP:MoS, which *only* advises the less common for British/American English problems. Not as a general principle to be applied in all kind of circumstances. --Francis Schonken 10:53, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

This is just a description of facts it's not supposed to imply that there is a guideline for it. I'll comment it out while we discuss it. - Haukur 11:08, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I am discussing this. What do you mean? That you're going to put back a no-consensus version? That would be WP:POINT --Francis Schonken 11:14, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Please stop thinking of your contributions to the guideline as consensus-edits and my contributions as WP:POINT-edits :) I'm not trying to disrupt Wikipedia - I'm just trying to clarify the guideline a bit. I haven't made any major changes to it - just added a couple of non-prescriptive observations and linked to other guidelines. I've already commented out the specific parts you've objected to. Let's keep discussing this and hope other people comment. - Haukur 11:41, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
No-consensus version of "Exceptions" section

While the basic principle of this guideline enjoys wide support there are some cases where its application is disputed or overridden by other concerns. A few such cases are listed here.

  • Sometimes a technical limitation prevents the use of the most common name. For example "C Plus Plus" is used while "C++" is technically not possible as a page name.
  • In the past, conflicts have often arisen between those who prefer British spellings and those who prefer American spellings. A ceasefire is in effect which states that both spellings are acceptable for article titles. This is irrespective of which spellings are more common. For example, a request to move aluminium to aluminum on the grounds that the second yields more Google hits will not succeed.


  • When the native name of an entity contains characters with diacritics some Wikipedians prefer to use those diacritics in the relevant article title, even in cases where they are more often omitted in English texts. Others prefer to apply the most common principle throughout. For more details on this dispute see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English).

More generally, several guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation, and solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are "the most obvious" rather than strictly speaking "the most used". Some of these exceptions are contained in the Manual of Style.

Several guidelines try to systematise certain types of article titles, for example article titles using abbreviations:

Many guidelines systematise titles of articles grouped by topic, for example M/S Herald of Free Enterprise and not Herald of Free Enterprise, according to Wikipedia:naming conventions (ships). For articles on people some minor practical exceptions are contained in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people).

For reasons I explained above, I don't agree with it. Reckless extrapolation. --Francis Schonken 11:21, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I've already commented out the part which you called extrapolation. Let's discuss this a bit and hope someone else chimes in. Do you object to William the Conqueror being mentioned? Do you object to a mention of diacritics? - Haukur 11:32, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

This guideline and other guidelines

This guideline should put itself in the context of our naming conventions as a whole. That means explaining where the boundaries between it and other guidelines lie and then linking to those guidelines for more detail. That's exactly what the guideline has been doing and I didn't add much. I think a brief mention of diacritics and "use English" is useful here because those two guidelines often come up in those kind of debates.

If you think anything I added is a not a true description please let's discuss that. - Haukur 10:57, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

But not expand other guidelines beyond the borders of these guidelines: the borders of these guidelines are sometimes resulting from meticulous negotiations, etc... The "common names" guideline should not try to shift those balances, which would be WP:POINT --Francis Schonken 11:12, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

New example coming up

Once the vote is over on that article's talk page (and I don't expect it to change much any more) I'd propose following example:

The example is interesting while in French there's no diacritical on the a. Neither in Latin, and the name is supposed to be in Latin (the guy never lived in France, only in German and Dutch countries) - needless to say that neither in German nor in Dutch an accent is used. Just for some funny, inexplicable reason, in English it is most common with an accent. --Francis Schonken 11:03, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

See Talk:Thomas à Kempis for more on this. I wouldn't mind some diacritics example here (Björk!) but I think Gene (and others) might - so maybe it's best just to mention the debate briefly and linking to "use English" for more info. - Haukur 11:15, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
If Gene objects, he can speak for himself.
Using it as an example of "use English" would be akward - the English version ("Thomas of Kempen") exists, but is not so frequently used by native English speakers. I'm not a linguist, but my best guess would be that a linguist would describe the version with accent as a rare example of written Dog Latin, and not English or any of the other languages mentioned above (even calling it Franglais would not be very accurate, I believe). Certainly not a standard-setting example as far as the use of diacritics in English is concerned. But as "common names" example it would be fine IMHO (that is: if the vote confirms). --Francis Schonken 15:25, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Reverted to what I hope is neutral ground

I've reverted to Philip's last version while we discuss our differences. This discards all changes made by Francis, Stefán and me for the last couple of days (even though I think most of them were quite helpful). I hope more people will comment so we can get a broader feel for what people think is useful to have in this guideline. - Haukur 11:51, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

My proposed additions

I propose starting the Exceptions section of this guideline with something like the following:

While the basic principle of this guideline enjoys wide support there are some cases where its application is disputed or overridden by other concerns. A few such cases are listed here.

  • Sometimes a technical limitation prevents the use of the most common name. For example "C Plus Plus" is used while "C++" is technically not possible as a page name.
  • In the past, conflicts have often arisen between those who prefer British spellings and those who prefer American spellings. An armistice is in effect which states that both spellings are acceptable for article titles. This is irrespective of which spellings are more common. For example, a request to move aluminium to aluminum on the grounds that the second yields more Google hits will not succeed.
  • When the native name of an entity contains characters with diacritics some Wikipedians prefer to use those diacritics in the relevant article title, even in cases where they are more often omitted in English texts. Others prefer to apply the most common principle throughout. For more details on this dispute see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English).

I think it's useful to mention that the most common principle does not apply to British vs. American spellings. That's often what people new to the debate start doing - counting Google hits for "aluminum" or calculating the number of Indian English speakers who spell it "colour" etc. Stating here that this won't get you anywhere may help prevent those little fights.

I also think it's useful to briefly mention the diacritics debate and link to more on that in the "use English" guideline. Then we can avoid giving any examples with diacritics over here.

Finally I think the King William example is useful and makes it clearer at a glance what this mysterious "names and title" convention says :)

Thoughts? - Haukur 12:31, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Looks good to me. ナイトスタリオン ✉ 13:39, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Other version of "Exceptions" section

Well, here's how I see the "exceptions" section:

Many wikipedia naming conventions guidelines contain implicit or explicit exceptions to the "common names" principle. Some of these exceptions are due to technical limitations, for example "C Plus Plus" while "C++" is technically not possible as a page name.

Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used", for example Laurent-Désiré Kabila and not Laurent-Desire Kabila (which is more used on the internet).

Some of these exceptions are contained in the Manual of Style, for example the National varieties of English section in that guideline leads to fixed-wing aircraft being used instead of aeroplane or airplane, in order not to give precedence to either British or American spelling.

Several guidelines try to systematise certain types of article titles, for example article titles using abbreviations:

Many guidelines systematise titles of articles grouped by topic, for example M/S Herald of Free Enterprise and not Herald of Free Enterprise, according to Wikipedia:naming conventions (ships).

For articles on people some minor practical exceptions are contained in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people). The principal exception is in the case of naming royalty and people with titles. For details of the naming conventions in those cases, see the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) page.

note that this version includes moving the "names and titles" exception from the intro section to the "exceptions" section, and similarly with the "fixed-wing aircraft" example, moved from the "don't overdo it" section to this "exceptions" section.

Advantages (as I see them):

  • No longer than needed (note that Haukurth's version above is only what he'd insert additionally in the "Exceptions" section, so his version is unnecessarily long, with several repeats - I suppose we could end up with what happened to the WP:CITE guideline, every wikipedian insisting his/her "pet" sentence was as high up as possible in the guideline, resulting in a guideline in the end repeating every sentence about trice, and wrecking clarity - clarity is an important feature of a wikipedia guideline);
  • Doesn't get fancy on trying to bend other guidelines another way via a back door, by inserting extrapolations, not corroborated by other guidelines, in the "common names" guideline (which I consider a bad, a very bad idea, obnoxious even).

--Francis Schonken 14:13, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

For reference here's a draft of what I'm proposing: [9]

And here's the version Francis prefers: [10]

I personally think that discarding the Laurent-Désiré Kabila example which Francis added is the right thing to do at this point. There's hardly room in this guideline to treat the diacritics question properly and we're better off linking to the guideline which does deal with that than including an off-hand example which might imply that there is a consensus to include diacritics in all cases like that.

The fixed-wing aircraft/aeroplane/airplane example can be included or not, it's not a big deal.

If we're concerned about the length of the guideline we might consider putting the section on subpages into a separate guideline - it doesn't really fit in well here and kind of breaks up the flow between the "Don't overdo it" section and the "Exceptions" section. - Haukur 15:01, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Maybe the cleanest way forward is to start something called Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)/Examples or Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)/Counterexamples or Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)/Examples and counterexamples or Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names)/Exceptions or whatever name you'd prefer - with a {{proposed}} tag on top. Advertising about your new proposal can be done via the usual channels (see intro of category:wikipedia proposals). I don't think I would support the proposal, but it gives you room to work, and maybe in the end I might get convinced. The major advantage I see is that the disturbance to the operational "common names" guideline would stop. If the subpage gets accepted we can still review the present guideline (if needed) and/or link the new page with the {{Details}} template under a section header (please see wikipedia:Summary style for techniques of creating non-POV subpages and/or the wikipedia:content forking guideline - these recommendations are no less to be taken at heart when working with guidelines) --Francis Schonken 16:00, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Neah, it's just not that big a deal. We don't need to go through all that hazzle just to get in a couple of paragraphs :) You yourself wrote a large part of the current text a few months ago without going through anything like that [11]. - Haukur 16:06, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, I reject several of your proposed changes in this guideline. My changes were announced on this talk page, and as can be seen from the edit history of the guideline page, several other wikipedians contributed, and must have agreed with my changes as I did with theirs (or differences were settled quickly on this talk page).
So, make up your mind, either it is "big deal" and then there are some of your changes for which definitely community approval would be necessary (since "consensus" in the normal understanding is lacking).
Either the changes you propose are "no big deal", in that case I'd like to come back to one of the first suggestions I did to you above on this page: wouldn't it be wiser to accept what other people tried to express in this guideline, and try to implement it before trying to change it?
Further, I do no longer accept your repeated reproach to me: "You yourself wrote a large part of the current text a few months ago without going through anything like that". --Francis Schonken 18:06, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
You are misrepresenting your own contributions here (which include pushing your personal version of the names and titles naming convention which was decisively rejected) and the level of approval they have. "Other people must have agreed" is the attitude you take with your own additions while you label changes you don't agree with as "vandalism". You posted this on my talk page today:
This message is regarding the page Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). Please stop. If you continue to vandalize pages, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia.
This followed a long line of accusations where you accuse me of POV-pushing, disrupting Wikipedia, "messing with" guidelines etc. etc. (see User_talk:Haukurth) And after all this you feel you have the moral authority to say "I do no longer accept your repeated reproach to me".
Would you be willing to accept mediation? - Haukur 18:31, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
No problem. --Francis Schonken 19:02, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Excellent. Let's pursue this further on our personal talk pages. - Haukur 19:12, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Standard vs. nonstandard charcters

Just an innocent dropping by, but why are Þ, þ, Ð, ð, Ö, ö etc. not standard? They are all (along with many others) solidly entrenced in the languages of a large number of solidly Western, Christian, Pro-American and democratic nations. Is it so difficult to set up a redirect page, if necessary? (Personally I'm solidly Western and democratic.) Admittedly this is an English Wikipedia, but even here we see a split between English and American. And don't forget those thousands of people who have toiled to bring their history and heritage within reach of American readers. I believe the readers benefit from it, whether consciously or not. There is a world out there, and it can't all be spelt with 128 characters. That's a fact. If you want to broaden your education, let native spellings prevail, and you might even be tempted to look up languages. For our American readers it may come as a surprise, that English is one of the the most atypical languagues of the world. And, again, if an accent offends you, make a redirect, don't go to war. Cheers Io 19:22, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

You ask about individual letters - this guideline is about "names" as a whole (that's why its called "common names" and not "common letters").
The issue you talk about is discussed in several places. I could name at least five, but then I'd be forgetting dozens of others.
Anyway, officially, at wikipedia:naming conventions (use English) the thing is inconclusive ("no consensus") for the time being.
Although in my view there's no need to start up a separate discussion on the issue on this talk page - the discussion is fragmented enough as it is - you can always do so.
In that case, however, I'd recommend you to start from examples of article titles containing these letters, and then preferably with some evidence whether or not the article title containing any of these letters would be the most common for English speakers.
--Francis Schonken 04:02, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
Try Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir. Whichever way I try to spin Google it seems to me that this spelling of her name comes out on top. And that name most commonly used in English (in the Google sense, not that I put much stock in that) is the title we use for her article here as well. Just about everyone who has any interest in the Icelandic minister of education will be familiar with Icelandic orthography or in the process of learning it so I don't see a problem with using the funny characters :) I would, however, not object to the inclusion of a basic-English-alphabet version in the article. We could also use the "foreignchar" template (or something similar) to help with the thorn and we can do Gene's hack to make the indexing come out right. - Haukur 08:53, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
You're right, Francis, but the question is inextricably linked to original spelling vs. English transliteration. Cheers Io 14:50, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Just a question

From a somewhat naïve newcomer to this debate: Why is it a problem to have Jimmy Carter as a primary lookup? Cheers Io 19:59, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

American usage vs the world recommendation

I have trouble with many articles which use a name that's obviously common in American usage instead of the one that's in common usage elsewhere or at least in Australia. Sometimes I put in a redirect from the term I know to the existing article, sometimes I request a name change, sometimes two separate but largely synonymous article develop. Can we have a recommendation on how to deal with these problems. There are a few things to consider here:

  1. The (English part of the) Internet is dominated by North American users, so North American terms and usages of terms are bound to dominate on any Google fight, but that may not necessarily indicate the overwhelming popularity of term A over term B. (eg. EMR vs EHR -- "electronic health record" is the agreed international term for digitised clinical records, but the (American?) "electronic medical record" acronym gets more hits).
  2. The google optimisation spoken of at the top of the recommendation is not always good grounds for choosing a particular article name. Just because more Google searches for American term A occur than British term B is not necessarily a good reason for using A as the title -- as the digital divide narrows, more people can be expected to search using the non-American term.
  3. People who speak English as second, third, whatever language also read the English Wikipedia so it should be using the most sensible and understandable terms in titles as possible. For example, this might mean sharecropping should actually be sharefarming.

Donama 22:41, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

There is a recommendation, Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English.
In fact, yesterday I had put that link in the "common names" guideline.
Someone removed the link, but I'll put it back (in the "Exceptions" section, as I had proposed) if that's no problem to you.
--Francis Schonken 03:46, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
Re.:

Sometimes, the technically-correct title for the article may be more useful if it is the only authoritative term, but more than one synonymous common or colloquial terms exist.

which you inserted in the guideline yesterday: in fact the issue re. "technically-correct" terms as article titles is a little more complex than you present it. It's extensively treated at wikipedia:naming conflict. That guideline is linked from the "common names" guideline (like so many others). I don't think the "common names" guideline should attempt at summarizing all guidelines that relate to this guideline. As is indicated in the "Exceptions" section, there's barely a single Naming Conventions guideline (and there are some dozens of such guidelines) that doesn't make an exception at one level or another to the "common names" principle.
So, if it's OK to you I'd like to stick to the link to the "naming conflict" guideline in the "Exceptions" section, and remove the paragraph quoted above. --Francis Schonken 05:30, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
Okay. At some point these policies ought to be highlighted on the move request page, which would make users aware of their existence. Perhaps they are already linked but they're not highlighted there. Donama 11:48, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
  1. Re. your suggestion to have a link to wikipedia:naming conflict (and maybe some other related guidelines) somewhere in the header of the WP:RM page: I'd think that a good idea and would support it.
  2. Re. changes to the "common names" guideline: well, we're discussing several changes right now: temporarily I'm refraining from editing the guideline page, in order not to increase tension, but I take note of what we discussed in this section. --Francis Schonken 07:56, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

From User talk:Haukurth

  1. I'd not "compromise" on wikipedia's quality. So the "content" discussion on proposals is IMHO what will get us through this.
  2. I spent some time yesterday reading Talk:Aluminium/Spelling. The only thing that page illustrates IMHO is that in some discussions wikipedians have great difficulty to stay "on topic". So I don't think it a great idea to use the aluminium/aluminum example in the guideline page, as it seems to imply: "if you can't determine what the common name is, solve the issue by an elaborate off-topic rant". No thanks, there are enough off-topic rants in wikipedia already. Also this would be rather a counter-example for wikipedia:naming conflict than for the "common names" guideline, but then counter-example in the sense of worst case scenario for solving a naming conflict.
  3. I'm not so very attached to the Kabila example, I just chose it randomly as it had been discussed and solved without much turmoil at wikipedia:village pump (policy) - but since that discussion is hard to recover (and not at the talk page of the article) it would probably be better not to use the Kabila example.
  4. Might I suggest another example (example for: "if common name can't be determined, use common sense"): Victor D'Hondt - in several scientific publications the last name of this guy is spelled "d'Hondt". Google test not possible (technically that is, while d=D in google). There's a "clean" WP:RM vote (that is: without turmoil of any kind) at talk:Victor D'Hondt.
  5. I oppose to "An armistice is in effect which states that both spellings are acceptable for article titles." first the use of the term "armistice" is a bit over the hill IMHO, but the fundamental problem is that it is an incorrect rephrasing of WP:MoS: I called it an extrapolation of existing guidelines. I still think the same: it's not a good idea to try expand other guidelines, via the common names guideline.
  6. So the whole of the paragraph "In the past, conflicts have often arisen between those who prefer British spellings and those who prefer American spellings. An armistice is in effect which states that both spellings are acceptable for article titles. This is irrespective of which spellings are more common. For example, a request to move aluminium to aluminum on the grounds that the second yields more Google hits will not succeed." is unacceptable to me for the "common names" guideline, for the explained reasons.
  7. Re. "I think it's useful to mention that the most common principle does not apply to British vs. American spellings.": of course, the same for me, but you can only do that by pointing to the guideline that is in effect, not by musing about what you would have liked it to be. My version contains a link to Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English. I've been following that section of that guideline from early on when I got involved in wikipedia (without taking part in the discussions myself): I can assure you that is a delicate equilibrium of how it was phrased after long and passionate discussions. That is the wikipedia consensus on the British/American/other varieties of English. Do not try to find a new equilibrium of how that should be stated in the common names guideline. If you think it should be stated otherwise, do so in the MoS (...).
  8. I never opposed the "fixed wing aircraft" as an example. I do oppose you calling it a "trivial case" (in your first version, now on the article page, you had it preceded by "There are also more trivial cases where Wikipedians have decided that other considerations than common usage are more important."). I think it a very good example for illustrating the Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English though. The talk page section started by Donama ("American usage vs the world recommendation") shows it would be welcome to use it including the link to the MoS section about the National varieties of English, the way I proposed. I also like Talk:Fixed-wing aircraft#spelling while it is short an illustrative.
  9. I wouldn't put "When the native name of an entity contains characters with diacritics some Wikipedians prefer to use those diacritics in the relevant article title, even in cases where they are more often omitted in English texts. Others prefer to apply the most common principle throughout. For more details on this dispute see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)." - I have two reasons why I wouldn't do it (1) the "dispute" might get solved in a few weeks or months, and then the paragraph is incorrect (and might get forgotten, and then used to resuscitate the dispute, etc); (2) It adds unnecessary volume to this guideline, essentially saying "on this topic we have nothing to report" - in that case, IMHO, leave it out. I'd rather elaborate a separate paragraph with a link to wikipedia:Naming conflict which weighs the "common names" principle against self-identification etc, than linger on the diacritics in the "common names" guideline, about which, as said, there's nothing to report presently. I think that answers your "I also think it's useful to briefly mention the diacritics debate and link to more on that in the "use English" guideline.".
  10. About "King William" example. I don't know. Not big issue to me. However I would keep links to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) in the same paragraph - these are the two central guidelines on people. "Names and titles" about monarchs & nobility; "people" about most other persons (note that there are still several other "people"-related guidelines, all of them containing "exceptions" to the "common names" principle - one can't link to them all). If I had to choose, the paragraph mentioning the two principal NC guidelines on persons would read

    For articles on people some minor practical exceptions are contained in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people) - these are however hardly sufficient to cover the complexities for naming royals and other nobility: hence Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles), and several other nobility-related Naming Conventions guidelines, contain many detailed exceptions.

    But I can live with the second half of this paragraph using the formulation introduced in the common names guideline several years ago (that is: before many, many other NC guidelines started to use exceptions), and re-introduced by Philip a few days ago (but then I'd prefer it in the "exceptions" section and not in the lead section of the guideline).

--Francis Schonken 10:20, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay, we've now had a cooling period of one week so maybe we now have a better chance of updating the guideline in peace and harmony.

The point about naming disputes like Gasoline/Petrol, Orange (colour)/Orange (color) and Aluminium/Aluminum is that they are pointless and stupid. One option is as good as the other and we should explicitly state that the "most common" principle does not apply. If you don't feel that this is already a rule then let's make it a rule :) Francis objected to my use of the word "armistice" and that's fine. I'm not wedded to the wording as long as the point is there.

As for diacritics currently the guideline contains this clause written by Francis:

"...article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used", for example Laurent-Désiré Kabila and not Laurent-Desire Kabila (which is more used on the internet)."

This sounds like it settles the dispute between forms with and without diacritics in one fell swoop in favor of diacritics. That's misleading. But removing the example and replacing it with nothing would misleadingly suggest that the most common principle is consistently applied to names with diacritics. That would also be misleading since many Wikipedians do feel that diacritics should be used in proper names even when they are more often omitted in English. In order for this guideline to be helpful it should simply mention that this issue is disputed and give a link to more information (at WP:UE). That's why I think this clause is more appropriate than the current Laurent-Désiré Kabila clause:

When the native name of an entity contains characters with diacritics some Wikipedians prefer to use those diacritics in the relevant article title, even in cases where they are more often omitted in English texts. Others prefer to apply the most common principle throughout. For more details on this dispute see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English).

I'm sure the wording can be improved but do you see my point, Francis? - Haukur 17:53, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I think Haukur's version of the diacritics wording is a better sumation of the situation, as to me the most obvious is "Laurent-Desire Kabila" not "Laurent-Désiré Kabila" --Philip Baird Shearer 18:28, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree that Haukur's version summarises the situation. Also, concerning Kabila, as far as I can recall he was always referred to as "Laurent Kabila" when he was in the news so I think that is his common name. A somewhat random google search supports this. Stefán Ingi 19:19, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Francis asked me to wait 24 hours between proposing changes and implementing them. Since this time has passed and since Stefán and Philip (as well as Nightstallion earlier) have expressed approval of my proposal I'm taking the baby step of replacing the Laurent-Désiré Kabila note with the proposed diacritics clause. I'm not making any other change now. - Haukur 22:23, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Re.

"The point about naming disputes like Gasoline/Petrol, Orange (colour)/Orange (color) and Aluminium/Aluminum is that they are pointless and stupid. One option is as good as the other and we should explicitly state that the "most common" principle does not apply. If you don't feel that this is already a rule then let's make it a rule :)"

"Gasoline/Petrol", "Orange (colour)/Orange (color)", "Aluminium/Aluminum", "Airplane/Aeroplane" and "Mobile phone/Cellular" are all examples of what is described in the guideline Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English - no thanks for making a new rule about that. The guideline already exists. Extending the principle beyond "National varieties of English" is unrequested. So, the "common names" guideline can point towards the existing guideline (like it can point to many other guidelines that make exception to the "common names" principle), but not muse about something that has been unable to find community approval in other guidelines.

Do you see my point Haukur, Philip, Stefan, etc?

Re. Kabila example, I said I thought it would be best to get rid of that, while the discussion where this was decided would be difficult to retrieve - I said the example was random, and unimportant. It was not a "diacritics wording", which I never intended.

As long as there is no other example we all agree upon, I keep my preference to the wording of the second paragraph of the "Exceptions" section as it is now, only omitting the example:

Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used".

I hadn't linked "precision" in that sentence to wikipedia:naming conventions (precision), while that would've been the third link to that other guideline in the "common names" guideline, and I didn't want to overlink. Anyhow, as people tend to overlook that also with "precision" the link to another guideline was intended, I'd be glad to change that paragraph to:

Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used".

Anyway, the message should be clear: no "exception" to the "common names" principle, except for what has been agreed upon in other guidelines.

All attempts to abuse the "common names" guideline in order force things for which in other guidelines it has been established that no consensus could be reached, should IMHO be stopped.

I don't agree with Haukur's "reformulation", while it is either void of meaning ("nothing to report" on use of diacritics), either trying to influence the "no consensus" status re. diacritics, as currently expressed in the "use English" guideline.

I don't agree with:

[...] removing the example and replacing it with nothing would misleadingly suggest that the most common principle is consistently applied to names with diacritics. That would also be misleading since many Wikipedians do feel that diacritics should be used in proper names even when they are more often omitted in English.

C'mon now - I tend to look at Haukur's honest intentions, but this is nonsense, there's nothing "misleading" about it. And again, he tries to read something in something that isn't there... only in order to push things his way (which is: unchecked use of diacritics, and next: extend that to uncommon characters).
I also can't agree with:

When the native name of an entity contains characters with diacritics some Wikipedians prefer to use those diacritics in the relevant article title, even in cases where they are more often omitted in English texts. Others prefer to apply the most common principle throughout.

while I don't fit in either category:

So I don't fit in either of the groups Haukur mentions. I think Haukur's formulation only intended to set wikipedians up against each other, while the poor guy/girl who formost intends to use his/her common sense belongs in neither of the mutually exclusive categories Haukur mentions. It's a formulation that only tries to push people in one corner or another, favouring that above equilibrated discussion. --Francis Schonken 22:32, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

You say you're fine with Leoš Janáček against the most common principle. So am I. But if we don't mention diacritics in this guideline we're saying that they are not a case needing special consideration and strongly implying that Leoš Janáček should not be used. That's misleading.
As for Lech Wałęsa it is true that in the weeks that request was open it garnered seven oppose votes and not a single support vote. But I don't feel that accurately reflects the opinion of Wikipedians. I am sure that many people agree with you that the page should be moved to Lech Walesa.
You added the fixed-wing aircraft example again, that's fine. But you also removed all mention of diacritics from the guideline. I'm putting a mention back in as per the comments above. A short note and a link to WP:UE can't possibly do any harm and it makes me much happier with supporting this guideline. - Haukur 22:46, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
I remove it again. Sorry, no consensus. --Francis Schonken 22:51, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
As opposed to the consensus you have for removing it? :) Please at least explain what harm you think this little clause does. - Haukur 23:02, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
??? Sorry, you hardly read my comments above. I can't even see you try to give a reply. There's no consensus presently to put it in. I don't see how you manage to deform the sentence "there's no consensus to put it in" into "there's consensus to put in". --Francis Schonken 23:08, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
I haven't replied to many of your comments because I don't understand them, take this sentence:
All attempts to abuse the "common names" guideline in order force things for which in other guidelines it has been established that no consensus could be reached, should IMHO be stopped.
Please explain this to me like I was a six year old - what do you mean? :)
As for consensus I would like this clause to be in the guideline, three other people have spoken up to support it and only you have objected to it. That's probably as much consensus as the rest of the guideline has. - Haukur 23:17, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm really trying to understand this disagreement and I have read much of the discussion but I feel that I am still confused. Francis wants

Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used".

(never mind whether we link to precision or not). This already mentions several other guidelines so Francis doesn't mind that. Haukur and Philip want to mention the question about diacritics in this context. Now, certainly Francis is correct that there isn't any guideline about that, because there is disagreement. I don't see the need to restrict ourselves to mention things that have consensus, we should mention all relevant issues that have been discussed in the community. In cases where there is consensus we should link to the guideline, in cases where there isn't consensus, especially cases that have been hotly debated, we should mention that there is disagreement so people are aware of the situation.
Now, I'm certainly not married to Haukur's version of the text. I'm sort of hoping that Francis sees that many people want to have the diacritics question mentioned here so consider this my attempt to persuade him to write a short text which does that and which can be included in this guideline. I understand that he might probably perfer not to include it but still I ask him to do this. Respectfully, Stefán Ingi 02:13, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
Following my suggestion, Francis wrote

The diacritics question is discussed -> here <-

This was definitely a step in the right direction but Philip apparently didn't think this was clear enough. I agree that anybody who reads this who does not know anything about the argument might get confused by the wording The diacritics question. Therefore I am expanding it to

The question of the use of diacritics in article titles is discussed -> here <-

I hope this will be more successful. Stefán Ingi 13:50, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
I prefer my original wording but I can live with this so I won't revert back. - Haukur 11:30, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Thomas of Kempen

I don't feel Thomas à Kempis v Thomas of Kempen is a very instructive example or very relevant to the vote that took place. The choice in the vote was between Thomas à Kempis and Thomas a Kempis - no-one was arguing for Thomas of Kempen and it didn't even exist as a redirect until Francis created it — helpfully and correctly — today. I think the dog example, on the other hand, is very good and shouldn't be removed.- Haukur 10:32, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Move to delete 99% of all Lists and Categories of Jews

Please read the sixteen point introduction at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Lists by religion-ethnicity and profession#Move to delete 99% of all Lists and Categories of Jews: Sixteen reasons why this should become a fixed Wikipedia policy and related discussions at Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Lists by religion-ethnicity and profession#Proposed amendment: remove all Jewish-related lists. Thank you. IZAK 11:26, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Most obvious?

The second part of the following sentence annoys me:

Some of these exceptions follow from guidelines that give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used".

My feeling is that the "most used" name is also the "most obvious" and therefore the sentence does not make much sence. E.g. do people feel that that Roger Meddows-Taylor is more obvious than just Roger Taylor? I'm removing this for now. Stefán Ingi 10:49, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I suppose you're right. Different people will find different things obvious.
  • Haukur's obvious forms: Leoš Janáček, Lech Wałęsa

(removed incorrect quotation, see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)#A Czech/Bohemian-English example and Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)#A Polish-English example: "most obvious" was no part of my argumentation. --Francis Schonken 12:22, 5 January 2006 (UTC))

  • Philip's obvious forms: Leos Janacek, Lech Walesa
- Haukur 11:11, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
"most obvious" does not always equate "most used". see e.g. Talk:657 Gunlöd#Suggested moves to add diacritics - "most used" in many ASCII database systems (and hence, deforming web search results) are versions without diacritics.
Reverting Stefan's edit of the guideline page. Also, warning Stefan not to change guideline text under active discussion (or, where a recent discussion closed without objections to a proposed guideline text): the passage he changed is part of the discussion above.
Note that in that talk page section I had proposed Victor D'Hondt as an example of a "use common sense" case (point 4). I would not object to use that as a "most obvious" example (however, technically it can't be contrasted with "most used" when "most used" is limited to web searches). --Francis Schonken 12:22, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Thinking about another example, that can be opposed to "most used": SCO is definitely most used to refer to the SCO Group - however for cleaner disambiguation (SCO has many other meanings, so SCO is a disambig page), and for enhanced precision (SCO also refers to a company formerly promoting linux, while the present SCO = SCO Group attacks the same), the "official" name of the company is used. --Francis Schonken 12:37, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes, and George W. Bush is probably most often referred to simply as Bush but it's obvious that we can't have his article at Bush. This is fair enough but the context of the sentence which Stefán removed suggests that the statement refers to something else. - Haukur 12:55, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Re: SCO vs. SCO group paragraph, I agree completely, and in my opinion SCO would be the obvious choice for the name. The paragraph with the part I want to take out suggests that SCO group should be the obvious one. Stefán Ingi 13:02, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Sorry? I don't follow? I argue "SCO" is most used, while "SCO group" is most obvious for a wikipedia article name. The paragraph Stefan wants to take out suggests the same.
Yet, "SCO vs. SCO group paragraph, I agree completely" and "in my opinion SCO would be the obvious choice for the name" are a contradiction. Sorry, please make clear what you mean. --Francis Schonken 13:10, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your clarifications, they are interesting. The paragraph I agree with does not mention "obvious" at all. It mentions cleaner disambiguation and enhanced precision which I agree are useful and I want to keep in. So no contradiction on my part. Returning to my original example, do you think that Roger Meddows-Taylor is a more obvious name for the Queen drummer than just Roger Taylor. I, for one, was surprised to see that title when I clicked on the relevant link on the Queen page. Stefán Ingi 13:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, you said "The paragraph with the part I want to take out suggests that SCO group should be the obvious one." (you didn't say without the part I want to take out)
If you would say (what you obviously intended), then that would be "The paragraph without the part I want to take out suggests that SCO group should be the obvious one." - then you use the word "obvious" *exactly* in the sense it is used when saying

Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used".

...so, there's no problem with the formulation. --Francis Schonken 13:34, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I wrote what I meant. Let me try and explain more clearly. There is this evil company which we want to have an article on. The common name for the company is SCO which to me is the obvious candiate for the article name. Unfortunately, there are several problems with using this name, there are other things called SCO and at a previous stage the company was non-evildifferent and also called SCO. So for cleaner disambiguation (other things called SCO) and enhanced precision (the non-evil part of theolder company) we make an exception from the common names principle and place the article at SCO Group. We want to mention that these sort of exceptions are fine so we insert a sentence about then in the common names guideline. I propose that this sentence is Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts. We don't need to say anything about the new title (SCO Group) other than what is already there, that it is an acceptable deviation form the common names principle. If we want to say something about the new title then we should say something which is generally true, e.g. we could say which might lead to article names that are more suitable than strictly the most used. I don't see the need to say anything like this but I wouldn't oppose it. I am however opposing that we say something about the new title which isn't true in majority of cases, and I think that describing the new title as obvious fits into the category of things which aren't true in majority of cases, e.g. I don't see how it is possible to say that Roger Meddows-Taylor is more obvious as a title than Roger Taylor. Now, you might say that the word might in the phrase which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used" solves this problem but in fact, to me, it only suggests that we might deviate from the common names principle and it does therefore not qualify the most obvious phrase. Stefán Ingi 14:07, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, to fit into the flow of the section the sentence I am suggesting is:

Some of these exceptions follow from guidelines that give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and solution of naming conflicts.

Stefán Ingi 14:23, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, don't agree for a letter. Once you started talking about "evil companies" and the like that closed the door for me. There's no consensus to do any of the things you propose, and you couldn't convince me otherwise. --Francis Schonken 15:44, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, this evil/non-evil was meant as a joke, I don't really see how it can be understood otherwise. Anyway, that is stricken. When you say you don't agree to the letter does that mean you disagree with everything I write. In particluar do you disagree with all of the following points:
  1. For cleaner disambiguation (other things called SCO) and enhanced precision (the older company) we place the article at SCO Group.
  2. This represents an exception from the common names principle.
  3. We don't need to say anything about the new title (SCO Group) other than what is already there, that it is an acceptable deviation form the common names principle.
  4. If we want to say something about the new title then we should say something which is generally true.
  5. We could say which might lead to article names that are more suitable than strictly the most used.
  6. There is no need to say anything like this.
  7. Describing the new title as obvious will not be true in majority of cases.
  8. Roger Taylor is a more obvious title than Roger Meddows-Taylor for the Queen drummer.
A simple, agree with items ... and not with items ... would be fine as a reply. Stefán Ingi 16:03, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Of course it represents an "exception" to the common names principle (otherwise no use to put it in the "exceptions" section is it?)

The point is that neither of the three mentioned guidelines (that are general guidelines, as opposed to specific royalty NC guidelines, or American/British English MoS, etc...) warrants deviating into something non-obvious. E.g. wikipedia:naming conflict: Do not invent names as a means of compromising between opposing POVs. Wikipedia describes current usage but cannot prescribe a particular usage or invent new names.

If you want a non-obvious name, it has to be covered by a specific guideline, e.g. wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) leads in some instances to non-obvious names, that why it's called an over-all exception to the common names principle.

wikipedia:naming conventions (precision), wikipedia:disambiguation and Wikipedia:Naming conflict (without applying one of the specific guidelines) might lead to article names that are strictly spoken not the "most common", but in that case the naming should still remain obvious, in fact "the most obvious" in the exceptional case that "the most common" can't be used.

(I'm cutting into Francis's reply because the rest of the discussion is going in a different direction.) The most relevant point Francis raises here is with my point 7, Describing the new title as obvious will not be true in majority of cases. I should have put this statement as Describing the new title as the most obvious will not be true in majority of cases. I agree with Francis that even after applying exceptions from these guidelines the naming should remain obvious, in the sense that there can be many obvious names for a single entity. E.g. SCO, SCO Group, and SCOX could be seen as obvious names for that company. However, the text I want to remove and Francis go further and say that SCO Group is the most obvious name for it. I completely disagree with that, if you want to play favourites with something as subjective as the word obvious, I would say that SCO is the most obvious name for the company. That also explains why I don't want to see the SCO example in the paragraph as it currently stands, it implies that SCO Group is the most obvious name. If the most obvious phrase is removed then I think that SCO is an excellent example of how precision and disambiguation considerations apply. Stefán Ingi 15:20, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

It has been tried multiple times to stretch the "common names" guideline beyond what is obvious (mis-quoting it like Haukurth did re. the Norse mythology NC, or Deeptrivia on talk:Arabic numerals, etc...) - so no, abuse is too frequent to leave that remark about "most obvious" out. --Francis Schonken 09:12, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Deeptrivia's interpretation of this guideline to mean that Hindu-Arabic numerals should be preferred to Arabic numerals is completely valid. Quote:
In cases where the common name of a subject is misleading then it is sometimes reasonable to fall back on a well-accepted alternative
This is the part he emphasized and I agree with him. Arabic numerals is a misleading common name and Hindu-Arabic numerals is a well-accepted alternative, used in other encyclopedias. That's the title we should be using and what a significant majority in the poll voted to use.
You're still just trying to say that every exception which you like to this guideline is "minor", "practical" and "obvious" while exceptions which other people like are "misquotes", "abuse" and I know not what.
I am convinced by Stefán's argument that the word "obvious" is useless in this guideline. You two don't agree whether "SCO" or "SCO Group" is a more obvious title and to me neither is more obvious than the other. The word is not well enough defined to be useful in this context and I am removing it. I'm also removing your editorializing comment on your own naming convention where you label the exceptions in it "minor" and "practical". - Haukur 10:42, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

The Arabic numerals WP:RM vote is concluded on that name. The misleading didn't stick. All other arguments by Haukurth can easily be summarized to "creating tensions about non-issues" - it is a non-issue that an article name, unless a specific NC guideline decides otherwise, should always be obvious. That has always been so, and will not be changed against consensus. And "consensus" means more than three or four people being against it. --Francis Schonken 11:07, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

The above statement is not correct. The admin User:RN finally changed the decision of the vote to the name Hindu-Arabic numerals taking everything into account. The name was changed again by another editor who is completely new to the discussion, and his reason has nothing to do with the common names convention. My last interaction with him suggests that he'd also prefer Hindu-Arabic numerals (glyphs) over Arabic numerals. I didn't follow all of the discussion above, but clearly, having too parsimonious a framework of guidelines is not excusable, and the use of these principles vary according to circumstances. The guideline as it stands now clearly prefers, for example Indigenous peoples of the Americas over Indian, Water Buffalo over Buffalo, Hindu-Arabic numerals over Arabic numerals, Mobile phone over cellphone, sexual intercourse over sex, Netherlands over Holland, etc. Sometimes colloquial terms are harmless, and can be used, but sometimes they can be inaccurate or even misleading, like in the last example. Academic standards should not be sacrificed unless there's a very good excuse. deeptrivia (talk) 13:46, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

@Stefan: You say:

Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which, e.g., suggests that SCO group should be the obvious one.

I say:

Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used", for which SCO group is an example.

So where's the difference? That you use "should be the obvious one", and I say "rather the most obvious"? Sorry, your argument is void.

I looked into Roger Meddows-Taylor today. I can only say that at talk:Roger Meddows-Taylor it was decided in less than 10 lines of text that Roger Meddows-Taylor would be "the most obvious" page name for this drummer. If you don't agree with that, use talk:Roger Meddows-Taylor. Of course in the case of this drummer only the most obvious page name can be used - that is after sorting out the many precision, disambiguation and naming conflict issues that are involved regarding this example. And really, if you think the people didn't sort that out properly at talk:Roger Meddows-Taylor, use that talk page, that's what talk pages are for. But the page name should be the most obvious one if it isn't today.

To correct: My plan is to say

Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and solution of naming conflicts. An example of this is SCO Group, which is used instead of SCO.

I don't know how often I have said that I don't think that SCO Group is the most obvious name for the company but it is a very good name for it. (To further emphasise how unobvious it is both you and I have given it incorrectly, as SCO group.) And it seems you are completely missing my point about Roger Taylor. Roger Meddows-Taylor is a very good choice of name for the article on the Queen drummer. It's a wonderful idea to quote the talk page. Nobody there suggests it's an obvious choice, in fact it required the input of at least three people before the suggestion came up. That does not qualify as obvious in my books. Stefán Ingi 00:59, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

@Deeptrivia: Is your intervention part of this discussion? I don't see where it links. So I don't think we need to take account of it here.

@Haukurth: I think that was already answered. --Francis Schonken 00:25, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

One of Stefán's points is that he doesn't agree that "SCO Group" is the most obvious title. Neither do I. I agree in principle that most article titles should be obvious — though that is of course a vague word which will mean different things to different people — but I don't agree that the word is useful in the sentence which you wrote it into. - Haukur 00:42, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I quoted Stefan litterally: "Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts (that is the part he wants to keep in, and about which he said:) suggests that SCO group should be the obvious one." - which makes his argument void. If you say "One of Stefán's points is that he doesn't agree that "SCO Group" is the most obvious title.", then his argument is also contradictory. This resumes to "argumentation that doesn't convince me". Now you can start to beat me, but my brain would still not follow that argumentation. Unreasonable arguments is not something that could be described in terms like "working towards consensus". As for you, again, I don't see you "working towards consensus" either, just beating around the bush with the same arguments, that are even less convincing than Stefan's. --Francis Schonken 01:15, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
By the principle of good faith I will assume that Francis did not see my reply above, posted 00:59, 7 January 2006, before he wrote this. Stefán Ingi 01:28, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I saw it only after this post. But now, indeed, you go also for straight contradiction with your earlier posts. Not convincing. --Francis Schonken 08:06, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Instead of giving arguments against what I have actually said, Francis changes the words in my text and argues with the modified text instead. Two examples of this.
  1. He has dismissed my arguements because he has demonstrated that they are fake, first in the edit summary at [12]. This comes from his comment here. For those of you who won't bother to check the link, the "demonstration" involves taking part of what I had written, changing with to without in one place and then pointing out that after this change the text agrees with his preferred formulation. By the principle of good faith, I simply iterated that I had indeed meant with in that paragraph and gave a further explaination. Now, it seems clear to me that Francis cannot continue to maintain that his demonstration works when he knows perfectly well that he was not arguing with what I wrote, but still, he has repeated the claim that his demonstration works in edit summaries today.
  2. At 01:15, 7 January 2006, he says he is quoting me literally with the following quote: "Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts (that is the part he wants to keep in, and about which he said:) suggests that SCO group should be the obvious one." Now, where does this come from? The part from the beginning until the phrase "naming conflicts", is indeed something I have said. It is how I want to have that paragraph in the guideline. Then there is the parenthesis which is from Francis and finally there is the phrase "suggests that SCO group should be the obvious one". Now, I have indeed used that phrase also, but that was in the context The paragraph with the part I want to take out suggests that SCO group should be the obvious one. So, this is, again, an example of Francis changing part of what I have written to give it completely opposite meaning.
Instead of repeating myself once more, I suggest that Francis replies to my post from 00:59, 7 January 2006.
Also, seeing the replies of Haukur and Dieter, I note that there is consensus to remove the phrase "most obvious" from this paragraph. I'll do it now, in the way that I prefer. Obviously, anybody is free to suggest different wording, but it must not contain the phrase "most obvious". Stefán Ingi 17:34, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
So, there appears to have been a misunderstanding, for which I apologise. First I try to rephrase what you actually meant (for clarity, in order to work away the misunderstanding): What you intended to say is that Some of these exceptions follow from guidelines that give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and/or solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are rather "the most obvious" than strictly spoken "the most used" suggests that SCO gGroup should be the obvious one.
I hope I got it right this time.
For clarity: I intended it to suggest that SCO gGroup should be the obvious one.
And I don't see the problem you have with that, even after reading your further reasonings. The more I read these reasonings, the more contradictory they seem. First you contend that "most common" and "most obvious" are synonyms. Then you contend that "most obvious" can't be used while too subjective. Why, sure, "most obvious" is more subjective than "most common". In the case the more objective criteria ("most common") can't be used for reasons of precision, disambiguation and/or naming conflict, then there's still "most obvious", which is, of course, more subjective, but it is the goal (in the sense of: "don't go fancy"). Why d'you think we have WP:RM votes? If it could all be fixed by objective rules, none of that would be necessary, would it? Instead, in a WP:RM vote I expect every voter to indicate the choice that seems most obvious to him/her (note that "most common" would be as different from one person to another as "most obvious"). In that case the end of the vote is the most obvious in general sense, i.e. "most obvious" in the sense I used it in the expression you'd like to see removed. Now, not every article name that might be problematic in the precision, disambiguation and/or naming conflict sense is subjected to a WP:RM vote, neither should it be: if the one who starts such article tries to use the name that is "most obvious" in a general sense, and hits it right, then a WP:RM won't be necessary. That's why I want that part to be kept in: to encourage people not to go fancy when choosing an article name, in the case there is a practical problem re. "most common", and no "specific rule" applies.
Further, I want to remark that dab suggests a possible rephrasing, not a removal of the disputed sentence. Of course, I don't see why I should attempt a rephrasing, while I think the present wording is OK. If I remember well, neither dab is a native English speaker, but if he thinks the English of that phrase isn't OK, he, like anybody else, can propose a rephrasing, and I'll look at it and give my idea whether I think it better or not. But there's no pre-emptive removal of the sentence, because its present wording is probably perfectly OK. --Francis Schonken 08:44, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm glad to hear that this was just a misunderstanding and yes, this is a correct desciption of what I intended to say. As for my reasonings being contradictory, let me say the following. The first thing I wrote on this subject was that my feeling is that the most common is also the most obvious. This is still my feeling. You might therefore say that I contend that "most common" and "most obvious" are synonyms. I did not suggest anything about subjectivity at the time. Then, during the discussion, it became clear that (at least in the SCO vs. SCO Group example) you had a different understanding of the phrase "most obvious" whereas we agree on what the "most common" is. That when I said that "most common" was a subjective phrase. To be clear, the meaning I am putting into "subjective" is "meaning different things to different people".
Perhaps we can play a game of compromise. Everybody takes turns in suggesting a new phrasing for this paragraph and the next person to play can only suggest a new phrasing or agree with the last phrasing put forward. If people are willing to play this, I can go first with something I have put forward before but hasn't received a lot of discussion.

Other guidelines try to give recommendations for enhanced precision, cleaner disambiguation and solution of naming conflicts, which might lead to article names that are more suitable than strictly the most used.

Stefán Ingi 10:58, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Nah, "suitable" sounds too much like a weasel word in this context: "obvious" and "far-fetched" are more or less mutually exclusive; for "suitable", someone might start to argue that something "far-fetched" is "suitable" and that would not be a contradiction. So, no, in order to keep in line with what these guidelines have been thus far, "most obvious" is much better (while better in avoiding the "far-fetched" for article names). --Francis Schonken 07:23, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
What about my little game of compromise. I would really like you to play with me. It would mean that you (or anybody else) should suggest a new version for this paragraph now. Stefán Ingi 11:28, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but I think your "little game of compromise" is (again) a completely wrong choice of words: above (#From_User_talk:Haukurth, first point) I said I don't compromise over wikipedia's quality.
Determining guideline content is not a "game" nor "playing with you", as far as I'm concerned. Either you convince me another formulation is better, either you don't. Wrong choice of words is not likely to convince me.
Above I wrote: "Of course, I don't see why I should attempt a rephrasing, while I think the present wording is OK" - nothing has changed since. --Francis Schonken 07:55, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
I can easily accept that Francis finds the arguments brought forward "unconvincing", or even "unreasonable". I just wanted to remark that I, otoh, find them perfectly sound. But since, apparently, the phrase "the most obvious" is open to much debate, I do think maybe a differing wording to the intended effect should be found. dab (ᛏ) 07:49, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
My comment was an answer to "The Arabic numerals WP:RM vote is concluded on that name. The misleading didn't stick." deeptrivia (talk) 01:07, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Naming Conventions and POV

What is the policy regarding POV titles... If there is an article with a name used by one of the participants in the conflict, isn't that considered POV? If there are alternate titles, which are used in other encyclopedias and are NPOV, but perhaps not the 'common name', wouldn't it make sense to use that one instead? - Spaceriqui 21:14, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Can you give an example? --Philip Baird Shearer 14:52, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Indeed, an example would be good. I'm personally in favor of reading "most common" to mean "most common in reference works" a lot of the time :) - Haukur 15:04, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Spaceriqui do you mean a name of conflicts like the Bangladesh Liberation War which is one I am discussing on the Talk page at the moment, or do you mean disputed names of the sort which appear on WP:RM all the time? --Philip Baird Shearer 19:21, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
See also wikipedia talk:naming conventions#Page Titles and POV. --Francis Schonken 07:49, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
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