Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archives/2011/July

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Remove Russia-specific clause and apply general rules

I propose to delete one clause mentioned at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Russia:

  • When the name of the locality is unique, but conflicts with the name of a different concept, use the parenthesized locality type as disambiguator (e.g., Dikson (urban-type settlement)).

This special rule (rule = standard for activities) for Russia is not needed. The default rules for disambiguation can be applied to Russia too, they are:

  • Places are often disambiguated by the country in which they lie, if this is sufficient.
  • With the names of cities, towns, villages and other settlements, as well as administrative divisions, the tag is normally preceded by a comma, as in Hel, Poland, and Polk County, Tennessee.
  • Generic parenthetical disambiguating tags as used for most Wikipedia articles are used only occasionally for geographic names... where no regional tag would be sufficient ...
Effects of the proposal
  1. Reverting instruction creep within disambiguation guidelines per WP:CREEP.
  2. Reducing the number of formats used for localities in Russia by merging "X (class)" into the already used "X, <something>".
    1. Making linking more predictable, reducing likelihood of undetected red links.
      1. Differentiating between "city" and "town" as found in Zhukovsky (city), Engels (city), Ob (town) is not backed by official designations.
    2. Computer generated lists can help to check for article coverage, see User:Emijrp/Geonames/Cities1000/RU/1, the easiest standard that this user applied for disambiguation was "X, Russia". The data source, Geonames only provides a rough type, populated place, whether a place is an urban-type settlement/rural locality/selo/village is not known.
    3. Statistics:
      1. The summary about rural localities in Russia at Talk NCRUS looked at 231 articles. 70 are under a disambiguated title, 56 use "X, <something>", 14 use "X (class)". Of the latter, four or five, are ambiguous and will need to be moved to "X, <something>" even under the Russia specific rules. This means 28% of the articles using "X (rural locality/village)" are ambiguous. The result would be that 60 articles use "X, <something>" and 10 use "X (class)". The proposal recommends to use the general Wikipedia convention "X, <something>" for all 70 articles that are under a disambiguated title already.
      2. The summary for cities and towns at [1] shows that of 12 articles currently using "X (town)" 11 need a move to "X, something" and 1 can stay at "X (town)".
  3. Improving article name stability: See Aban, Russia and the five associated moves, almost one per year.
    1. Less work on disambiguation. Less work on moving articles.
  4. Changing the information conveyed by the article name.
    1. Dikson, Russia conveys to those that know the comma convention that the article is about a locality/settlement. If it would be something other than a locality it would either use the generic "Dikson (concept name)" or use "Dikson (Russia)" if it is strongly related to Russia. For those that understand "Russia" as the name of a country it also conveys it is about an object located in Russia. For those that understand the comma convention and understand "Russia" as a country name is conveys the article is about a locality in Russia.
      1. Even if some people take "Dikson, Russia" as possibly referring to Dikson Island or Dikson Airport, then this ambiguaty is nothing special. If there would be Dikson, Norway, then "Dikson, Russia" would be used even under the current naming. Therefore if this really would be a big problem it already exists now. Large amounts of articles already use "X, Russia" as recommended even by the current rules. Airports use "X Airport" see Category:Airports in Krasnoyarsk Krai and islands use "X Island" see Category:Islands of Krasnoyarsk Krai.
    2. Dikson (urban-type settlement) conveys the article might be about one specific /urban-type settlement/. For those that do not know what the designation means it will convey the article might be about one specific settlement. It is still ambiguous whether it actually talks about one specific settlement, since "Dikson" could also be some kind of concept of an urban-type settlement, or some term related to urban-type settlements.
  5. Bringing articles on localities in Russia in line with general Wikipedia naming conventions for articles on localities.
    1. Only few other deviations are known: 1) the mandatory state name for almost all US places, 2) the avoidance of the country level and use of some level below by Argentina (except province capitals that are named like the province), Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States, 3) replacing a higher level with a lower level entity for Italy articles, i.e. use the province instead of the region not additional.
  6. Effect on work load
    1. More work
      1. Delete one phrase in the guideline: easy, ca. 30 seconds.
      2. Move articles that exist: easy, not so many and moving is fast. It is straightforward to just replace " (class)" with ", Russia"
      3. Changing listings: change is straightforward, a bot could do that.
    2. Less work
      1. Less instruction reading for editors, very long lasting effect.
      2. Fewer moves in the future.
        1. No moves on localities that are unique within Russia
        2. Less work for other WikiProjects to fix occupation of article titles by locations in Russia
      3. Less disambiguation of ambiguous links.

Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 12:29, 5 July 2011 (UTC), Added "effects of the proposal" Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 11:48, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Arguments against

The default rules for disambiguation is not a rule, it is a guideline based on an observation. Before February 2009, it was worded as an observation and noted that some countries don't follow this rule, which is OK. When the naming conventions for settlements were merged into NCGN in February 2009, the clause was shortened to its present form, making it sound as an actual recommendation. No discussion ever accompanied the revision, hence no consensus had ever been established to treat this as a rule that needs to be enforced across all countries. Incidentally, the observation itself is correct (most articles about populated places do indeed tend to use a location disambiguator); the problem is with making an assumption that we should attempt to eradicate all cases of non-compliance whether there is a good reason or not.

  1. "Reducing instruction creep" is not a worthy goal when on the benefits side we have a set of two rules instead of three, and on the downside we add maintenance and make things harder to find in certain situations.
  2. The number of formats used for localities in Russia will be reduced at the expense of clarity and ease of organization. The benefit of this reduction is also unclear—to actually reduce the number of formats used one would have to do a great deal of maintenance, not just change an obscure guideline most people will never see. And maintenance for the sake of bureaucracy is never a good thing. We shouldn't be wasting time on maintenance tasks which don't improve the readers' experience.
    1. Linking will not be more predictable. People will continue to link straight to ambiguous titles when they are not sure, and finding the correct target will still require a visit to the disambig page. Picking the correct entry on the disambig page which lists different concepts is easier when the entry's disambiguator specifies the entry's type, not where it is. "Ob, Russia", for example, could be about a number of things in Russia. "Ob (town)" makes it immediately clear that the entry is about a town. - NOTE: Ob (town) had to be moved to Ob, Russia, because there are other populated places called Ob outside Russia.
    2. Using computer-generated lists has caveats no matter how the articles are titled. Creating similar lists for places in the US and for places in India would require different algorithms, and the quality of the result depends solely on the quality of the source (and geonames is hardly the best source). Our guidelines have very little effect on this.
    3. The statistics sample in the "arguments for" section is skewed. Most of places in Russia do not have articles yet, and the ones which do are mostly a part of a pilot project to test different approaches to organization. Hence all the inconsistencies and the bloated percentage of articles which per the current guideline are not located where they are supposed to.
  3. Aban, Russia is one unusual example of multiple moves, which is not indicative of the bigger picture. We have many more articles being moved due to name changes than due to locality type changes.
    1. There is more work on disambiguation and more work on moving articles, because changing the guideline means having to move articles to conform with the changes. See item #2 about maintenance.
  4. Changing the information conveyed by the article name.
    1. Dikson, Russia conveys that the article is about a locality only to those who are familiar with our article naming practices. Most Wikipedia readers have no clue, and will take "X, Russia" to mean "anything in Russia". In situations where we have multiple things of different type but all located in Russia, using "X, Russia" is much more confusing to readers than "X (type)".
    2. Dikson (urban-type settlement) conveys the article is about one specific /urban-type settlement/. The title makes it abundantly clear that the article is about a locality, not about an island or an airport or anything else we may not yet have an article about. "Dikson, Russia" can equally mean any of these things (including those for which we don't yet have an article).
  5. The proposal claims to "bring the articles on localities in Russia in line with general Wikipedia naming conventions for articles on localities", but it ignores that many other countries have guidelines which are specific only to those countries. The "general convention" itself is of dubious origin—its wording had never been discussed, and it never meant that our editors should actively pursue one universal convention covering all countries (see the top of this subsection for more on this), nor should it.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 7, 2011; 18:48 (UTC)
  • You are again making drama. "X (urban-type settlement)" is used by less than five articles. The vast majority of all articles on settlements in Russia already uses the comma. It's a tiny part that does not and this can be handled easily. Read WP:CREEP, just simplify the rules, and stay away from drama. Only short concise guidelines are actually followed. Again, read WP:CREEP. Repeat WP:CREEP. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 16:17, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Support - I don't fully understand why Russia should be an exception to the general rule. Also, Bogdan, perhaps this should be decided by starting a requested move for the pages in question. Mlm42 (talk) 17:04, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment: I think it is best to first change the convention. Otherwise people, especially Ezhiki may point to the guideline. While on the one hand he says it is only a guideline and that he made most of the stuff up by himself [2], on the other hand, he is forcing it on others [3]. So, I think it is best to follow proper process. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 18:19, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
    • Anything to put me in a great light, eh? :) The "made-up" stuff was already implemented by the time I started to work on those articles on a large scale in 2005, and in absence of anyone else interested in the subject, are you suggesting I should have waited five years till you came along and kindly enlightened me what the best way of doing things is? All I did was looking at how the existing articles had been organized and then documented the practices as a guideline. With everyone else not caring about Russia one bit, that was the only sensible thing to do. You'd do the same thing if you found yourself in such situation. And "enforcement"? If there is a guideline which describes the situation very accurately, why not move a few stragglers to conform with it?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 6, 2011; 15:23 (UTC)
      • I think you do a great job. I only think that with article naming you are a little bit off from the way it is done for localities in Wikipedia in general /and/ this is causing extra work. Hundreds of Wikipedians found the other way, join them! Even if it is your pet project you should follow the general WP conventions. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 11:57, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Support - Firstly because Russia shouldn't be an exception, and secondly for the sake of readers who have no knowledge or interest in Russia but are looking for the different concept that shares the name. The purpose of disambiguation strings is to indicate what the title is referring to. "X (urban-type settlement)" gives no hint about where the settlement might be; it is less helpful than "X, Russia" to someone looking for an entity called X. Sussexonian (talk) 17:57, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment: To support the reasoning by Sussexonian, the disambiguator ", Countryname" almost exclusively means that the article in question is about a locality/settlement. Especially since all other geographic place names use the type in the name, e.g. Moscow Oblast or Lake Khasan. So the only information not contained is that the place is "urban-type", which is not of much significance, since such statuses can change, e.g. Aban (urban-type settlement) is now a rural locality. Of course it can be significant if there are several places in a tiny region that can only be distinguished by the type. But the general rules addresses that, so again, no Russia specific rule needed. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 18:14, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • What does it matter where it is, as long as the only article we have is about one in in Russia? (And when it is not, then, of course, the article should be moved to disambiguate it with "Russia"). To reverse your question, how are the readers who are looking for just this concept being served by having to face a list of entries disambiguated parenthetically plus one non-descript entry: "X (volcano)", "X Lake", "X Airport", "X (cake)"... and "X, Russia"? Not very helpful (especially considering that the lake and the airport are also in Russia, that the cake might be from the Russian cuisine, and that entries styled "X, Russia" aren't even supposed to have a descriptive line following them, per MOSDAB). That's the only reason behind the rule. As Bogdan correctly noticed, the rule has few uses, yet when it applies, it hits the spot just right.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 5, 2011; 18:35 (UTC)
    • Anything (including the name) can change, thus necessitating moving the article, so that's not a good argument. And the meaning of the "Countryname" disambiguator (that the article in question is almost certainly about a locality) is known only to those who are familiar with our naming rules. Your average reader isn't going to have the slightest clue what "X, Russia" is about, especially when such a link is included on the disambig pages which use parenthetical disambiguators for other entries exclusively (see my example above).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 5, 2011; 18:35 (UTC)
  • Comment: That ", Russia" is not informative is a moot point. 1) The convention for Russia is enforcing Oktyabrsky, Republic of Bashkortostan along with Vesyoly, Shovgenovsky District, Republic of Adygea and Dimitrovgrad, Russia. - If "urban-type settlement" would be that important, then why not having it for these articles? 2) How come, Moscow can exist if the type is so important? 3) How can it be that everywhere outside Russia the rule is to have a regional dab tag instead of type for localities? Look at Austin (disambiguation), would it be strictly better to have the one from Australia called Austin (abandoned town)? Of course, I too would prefer some notes of the type, but that maybe has to be addressed via MOSDAB. I prefer much more a style like at Zadar (disambiguation), where it says that Zadar is a city. Maybe MOSDAB can be changed to allow for some text. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 19:34, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • I didn't say that the place type is the most important thing, or that it should be used when the title is itself unambiguous. Place type is only important when a populated place needs to be distinguished from other concepts of the same name, concepts which are either not location specific or which share the broader location (like "Russia") with the entity in question. On the other hand, when several places share a name, specifying their location becomes more helpful. On the dab pages, this is addressed by using sections—one section for people, another for places, yet another for whatever else, and so on. Within each section, entries are supposed to be of the same type, so the location becomes the next most helpful hint. And when a section contains just one entry, it makes more sense to make the section name the disambiguator, instead of continuing to stick with the location specifiers.
  • Note also that NCGN is country-specific for a reason. What works for one country does not necessarily work well (or at all) for another. There is no requirement that all countries have the same naming rules for populated places, or NCGN would have been a lot shorter! I thus don't understand why you are picking on Russia and not on, say, the United States, for which article naming process is very different from most other countries, or Mexico, which for whatever reason never recommends to use "Mexico" as a disambiguator.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 5, 2011; 20:02 (UTC)
  • For localities/populated places/settlements such as cities/towns/villages the United States and Mexico both use placename, state if disambiguation is required. Similar, albeit not with "state" do Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, South Africa, Italy, Ireland, United Kingdom. All the other, as far as can be seen from NCGN, use the default NCGN rule, namely placename, sovereign state. Russia is the ONLY one, REPEAT, the ONLY one, to have written in this guideline to use the "type" with parenthesis. Did you get the message? Repeat: Russia is the ONLY one. It is true that one system may work well for one country but not for another. But you failed to show something Russia specific that would warrant any extra treatment. Russia is the ONLY existing sovereign state to have written in this guideline to use the "type" with parenthesis as disambiguator in situations where "X, country" would be unambiguous. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 21:38, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
  • You are repeating yourself, again :)
  • How can you say that I failed to show that the approach is beneficial, when only yesterday I demonstrated just that in at least three discussion threads you are a participant of? With examples which show how using "X, Russia" is not as unambiguous as you believe. One example is on this very page. You've mentioned more than once that you don't believe that using parenthetical disambiguators is beneficial, yet when I showed several benefits, you haven't addressed any of them. If a special rule results in better organization, why stick to a generic rule? Why do you try putting Russia doing one minor thing differently from other countries in such a negative light? The approach works for Russia, and it might work for some other countries, too. The country-specific guidelines are country-specific just for that reason—so things could be done differently for different countries.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 6, 2011; 15:23 (UTC)
  • I'd say if you show us numerous other examples like this one, it may start resembling a cause for concern. As it stands, it's one unusual move log, with moves having been done for various reasons, some of which have nothing to do with the issue at hand.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 6, 2011; 16:34 (UTC)
  • Comment: See Talk:Aban, Russia or the article history - The article Aban, Russia has undergone five moves so far, almost one move per year. The " (class)" gives rise to speculations. And when someone discovers another Aban in Russia, outside Krasnoyarsk Krai it may go back to the second name Aban, Krasnoyarsk Krai. The redirects with " (class)" in the name may be ambigous, i.e. all links from articles pointing to them, need to be fixed. There are thousands of potential articles on localities in Russia. Disambiguation by country or lower level region saves the editors a lot of time in moving, fixing redirects, and disambiguation. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 11:47, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
  • If situations like Aban were common, I'd agree that the approach creates problems. As it stands, however, you'll be lucky to find a similar article with so many moves. Note also how the moves were made over the period of six years, and were mostly a result of searching for the best way to fit the article into the changing disambig/redir structure. All in all, fewer than 0.03% of all inhabited localities in Russia undergo status changes each year, and many of them are not under ambiguous titles to begin with, most others don't have any articles, and for quite a few the status change does not affect the disambiguator choice. Seems like a negligible problem to worry about. And I'm just not buying your argument—if someone "discovers" another place by the same name elsewhere, the article will need to be moved, yes, but the same would be true if the article were originally located at a non-disambiguated title, and we have many, many more of those. The only way to address you concern, it would seem, is to use as many disambiguators in all article titles—that'll surely drive the need to do any moves ever to a minimum! Pushkino, Pushkinsky District, Moscow Oblast, Russia, anyone? but what if the district and/or the oblast is abolished/merged/renamed/transformed??!! We are all doomed; the moves will take over!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 6, 2011; 15:23 (UTC)
  • I found that ca 50% of the articles having "X (urban-type settlement)" needed to be moved, so it is common. "urban-type settlement" or "rural locality" can refer to locations around the world, while ", Russia" reduces the possibilities a lot. Still it can be ambiguous. Maybe have a look at Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, South Africa or the United Kingdom, United States, which per WP:NCGN don't use ", <country>" but /disambiguate/ directly on a level below. India seems to do the same. All of them have lots of articles or possible articles, none is using "X (class)". You cooked a special system for WP:RUSSIA which creates lots of ambiguities. Suggesting "Pushkino, Pushkinsky District, Moscow Oblast, Russia" is running for drama.
  • To summarize for the reader that knows less about the topic: The suggestion is /not/ to create a new format for articles about localities in Russia. The suggestion is only to apply the format "X, Russia", which is already in use for about localities in Russia, also in situations where currently is "X (rural locality)" or "X (urban-type settlement)" is used. The suggestion is to remove one format that often leads to an ambiguous as can be seen from the five Aban moves, and to use a format that is a little bit more stable. This format is already defined in the general WP:NCGN rules ("comma convention" for localities) and is used by all other countries, as far as one can see on WP:NCGN, in cases where disambiguation is needed. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 15:55, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
  • 50% of what? Five? :) First, that's not common, second, if you do the same kind of research for any articles which are currently under non-disambiguated titles, you are just as likely to discover quite a few that need to be disambiguated and moved. Hence my tongue-in-cheek comment about Pushkino. Here's a quick experiment. I clicked "random page" until I stumbled upon a non-ambiguous place name, Luggate in New Zealand (this took me ten clicks). A quick google search shows that a place and a river by the same name also exist in Scotland. Voilà. Now, how many clicks will it take you to get to an allegedly common urban-type settlement?
  • If that's the kind of research you enjoy doing, more power to you, but when editors choose a title for a particular article, they are not required to do a research to check whether other places/concepts by the same title exist. They are only required to check whether other articles about places/concepts by the same title exist in Wikipedia. If other articles are written later, then older articles may need to be moved. There is nothing you can do about this, nor is there anything that should be done about it. It's just a part of how Wikipedia functions.
  • To summarize: a comma convention is a generic guideline that's commonly used across Wikipedia. Other generic guidelines exist, too. But we also have country-specific guidelines, the whole purpose of which is to account for things that don't necessarily match the generic guidelines, but are nevertheless beneficial for those particular countries for certain reasons. I have shown how using parenthesized disambiguators in a handful of very specific situations is beneficial in the context of Russia, and I haven't heard any solid counter-arguments from you. Your only argument is that Russia shouldn't be different because it's bad to be different (easily refuted by presence of the country-specific sections of NCGN), and that "X, Russia" is sufficient in all cases (my examples above show otherwise). Is this an accurate account of where the discussion is so far?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 6, 2011; 16:34 (UTC)
  • Comment It seems to me that we disambiguate place names to the degree required. The current solution for "Aban, Russia" is appropriate and in line with other disambiguations related to "Aban." And it's certainly more informative to have "X, fill-in-country" as opposed to "X (self-governing municipality)" or other some-such text which informs you it's not the same as "X (cheese)", i.e., a different concept. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 18:03, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Aban, or any other places in Russia that happen share their name with places outside of Russia, aren't affected by this proposal at all. If you have one place in Russia and a place by the same name in some other country, the one in Russia automatically goes under "X, Russia". The issue being discussed is whether the article should go under "X, Russia" if there are no articles about populated places by this name at all, but there are articles about other concepts called "X". For example, if one is looking for something called "Afrikanda" in Russia, it's more helpful to see that one place is an airbase and another one is a rural locality, than to see that one is an airbase and the other is some unspecified whatever in Russia (and isn't the airbase also in Russia?). Using "Afrikanda, Russia" is certainly not more informative here; if anything, it's more confusing. The existing clause handles just this type of situations. I'm curious why none of the opposers have addressed this point.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 6, 2011; 19:47 (UTC)
    • @if one is looking for something called "Afrikanda" in Russia" - nice example. I guess it is more helpful to see the string "Russia" to find an Afrikanda in Russia, than to see "rural locality". Which one is more likely to be seen as something in Russia by looking at the title A) "Afrikanda, Russia" or B) "Afrikanda (rural locality)". The name of the air base article would say that it is an air base, look at Category:Military airbases, they don't use ", <country>" . Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 14:27, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose since we're discussing only names of Russian places (let's be frank, mostly cities) that are not names of cities anywhere else. In this case using X, Russia incorrectly implies there are other cities named X, whereas X (city) precisely conveys that this X is the only city in the world with the name '"X. See Cork (city) for an example. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:36, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
  • @since we're discussing only names of Russian places - are we? "X (village)" can also be a name for a locality outside Russia. If an article for such an entity is created the old title for the Russian place becomes ambiguous. Only when we use "X, Russia" we talk about places in Russia. See the move history of Aban, Russia.
  • @let's be frank, mostly cities - Let's be frank, mostly /not/ cities, but mostly rural localities.
  • Article name stability: The articles Ezhiki places under X (rural locality|urban-type settlment|village) are NOT cities. And several of them are not unique localities named X. This is invoking extra move and dab work. See Aban, Russia, Aksha, Russia and the move history. Aksha started under a unambiguous name, was moved to an ambiguous name and now moved again to one that is less ambiguous.
  • The city of Cork is an exception to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Ireland, since it is outside any county: Subdivisions of Ireland#County and city councils. Other localities in Ireland use "X, County Y".
  • X (city) precisely conveys that this X is the /only city in the world/ with the name - And "X, Russia" conveys it is the /only locality in Russia/. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 10:27, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
  • @Bogdan: Yes, we are discussing only Russian places. When "X (village)" is also a name for a place outside Russia, the clause we are discussing does not apply. When "X (village)" is about a place in Russia, and someone writes about another village called X outside Russia, the Russian one will need to be moved. And that is not a problem. If the article were under "X", it'd still had to be moved, and that situation involves exactly the same amount of work and is far more common than the situations this clause covers! If you are looking to improve stability, there are far more fertile areas in Wikipedia than the names of a handful of Russian places most people have never heard about and never will.
  • @B2C/Bogdan: Bogdan is right to point out that these are mostly not cities/towns, but it really doesn't matter what kind of localities they are as long as they are localities and not something else entirely. Cities/towns are disambiguated parenthetically under this clause, too, if that's what works best: Zhukovsky (city), Engels (city), Ob (town) are all titled so for exact same reasons as why Cork (city) is an exception (and an undocumented one, I should add)—because "Cork, Ireland" is ambiguous! Putting "Cork (city)" under "Cork, Ireland" would make things more confusing to our readers, and so would be putting "Ob (town)" under "Ob, Russia". If you see any difference between these two situations, do tell us what it is.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 7, 2011; 16:38 (UTC)
Ob is a good example. But the problem here lies mostly in the fact that another object not only exists, but exists in Russia and close to the first object. However, perhaps such name as Ob, Novosibirsk Oblast would be not so bad. GreyHood Talk 18:35, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
"Ob, Novosibirsk Oblast" strongly implies there is another Ob elsewhere in Russia, because that's how the articles about places in Russia are set up. Such a stopgap approach would just further muddle up the naming practices.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 8, 2011; 19:21 (UTC)
  • @When "X (village)" is about a place in Russia, and someone writes about another village called X outside Russia, the Russian one will need to be moved. And that is not a problem. - It is a problem, since a lot of disambiguation work may be involved.
  • @Ezhiki: "If the article were under "X", it'd still had to be moved, and that situation involves exactly the same amount of work and is far more common" - Since the number of places on the whole planet earth called X is always at least as big a the number of places in Russia called X, but is sometimes bigger, it is more common that an article called "X (town)" has to moved than one that is called "X, Russia". Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 15:29, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
  • @Ezhiki: Your Ob (town) example had to be moved, since there are other places called Ob outside Russia. You seem to have a Russia-centric view sometimes. Disambiguators do not only exist to distinguish between objects within Russia. Same will happen to your other two examples, Engels and Zhukovskiy / Zhukovsky. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 15:29, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Hard to make a choice, but need to support this proposal. Both Ezhiki and Bogdan Nagachop make some strong arguments and I'm sympathetic to both positions to some degree. Both variants seem to have certain benifits and drawbacks when it comes to convenience in search, consistency in disambiguation and simplicity in maintainance. But there are also other aspects in this matter.
    • My personal general stance is to use parenthetical disambiguators as rare as possible, because, in comparison to comma disambiguators, they create stronger impression that the subject is secondary in importance to some other subject (I always dislike this impression even when there is no distinctive primary subject named without any disambiguators). Also, paranthesis is harder to type, not common to use in search form, and aesthetically worse than comma disambiguation.
    • When it comes to disambiguation of place names, I think that country or region where the object is located is more important attribute than the type of the object. Names of a country or region are more likely to be used in search, both on-wiki and in general web search off-wiki, than the types. GreyHood Talk 18:35, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
    • When it comes to disambiguation of place names in Russia, there is a problem with the terms "rural locality", "inhabited locality" and in particular "urban-type settlement" which feature in the majority of cases affected by the discussed proposal. The named Russia- and USSR-specific terms are less known to English readers and too long compared to such disambiguators as "city", "town" and "village", so they are also less handy in usage and highly unlikely to be used in search form compared to other possible disambiguators. GreyHood Talk 18:35, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
      • We use parenthetical disambiguators pretty much for everything, except for the place names, and the reason for that exception is not even explained in the guideline. I don't see how extending an already common convention to a handful of specific cases with place names is going to be a problem of any sort.
      • As for the disambiguation of place names in particular, and on the country/region where the object is located being a more important attribute than the object's type, it is very true for all places which are ambiguous between countries/regions, but it's not at all true for places which are ambiguous to completely unrelated concepts; see items #4.1 and 4.2 in the "arguments for" section above.
      • I can see how a specialized term like "urban-type settlement" may sound too foreign and unfamiliar. "Inhabited locality", "rural locality", and "urban locality", on the other hand, are perfectly good English terms, often used both in general and Russia-specific contexts. When "Settlements in Foo" categories were put up for renaming because the term "settlements" was too ambiguous, "populated places" and "inhabited localities" were the principal two terms considered as a replacement. "Populated places" won, but not by much. At any rate, this particular argument only demonstrates your objection to the choice of the parenthetical disambiguator, not to the idea of using some parenthetical disambiguator. Using "inhabited locality" in all cases (instead of the assortment of specific subtypes), for example, addresses this concern of yours, and still retains all of the benefits outlined in the "arguments for" section.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 8, 2011; 19:21 (UTC)
        • I believe that in majority of cases we could deal without paranthesis, and most often it happens so. We could use Russian patronymics instead of paranthesis, we could use constructions such as "X railway station" or "FC X". Using comma disambiguation in place names also is a good way to avoid brackets. As for the reasons why I don't like paranthesis, I've already stated them. If I were a citizen of a country named alike Georgia (country), I'd likely become emigrant for that reason only %) Also, I remember your dialogue with Dmitri Smirnov whom you called Dmitri Smirnov (composer), while he preferred to be called Dmitri N. Smirnov... poor guy, I wouldn't want to be in his place ;)
        • While the example with Ob (town) is indeed a strong argument for your position in my view, the example with Dikson (urban-type settlement) makes exactly the opposite impression on me. Something in me revolts against such names.
        • Well, you know, I think that our goal should be making the titles of Wikipedia articles, as well as Wikipedia in the whole, more user friendly. In every aspect, including the disambiguation consistency and aesthetics and other things. And I think that "X, Russia" is more user friendly and easy, even if there are minor advantages with dabs and more possibilities for consistency (the advantages are minor because dabs do contain additional descriptions in most cases anyway). GreyHood Talk 20:01, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
          • Ah, as for the terms such as "Inhabited locality", "rural locality", and "urban locality"... yes they might be quite good English terms of course, but the term Russia is even better and more recognizable English term. That's why I think we could do better using "X, Russia" where it is enough for disambiguation. GreyHood Talk 20:11, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
            • With Smirnov, I think you are mistaking me for someone else :) It was not my first choice, and it is still not my preference to use parenthetical disambiguators for people. I've always used patronymics for that purpose until I ran into so much resistance that doing otherwise stopped being productive. Make no mistake, the day someone proposes to officially use patronymics to disambiguate people with Russian names, I'll be the first to support it :) At any rate, the clause being discussed here has nothing to do with people, and using parenthetical disambiguators for most purposes in Wikipedia is an established, and in some cases inevitable practice (how else would you title both Georgia articles, for example?).
            • Now, while I understand how you personally dislike seeing the parentheses in article titles, I still don't understand why you consider it user-unfriendly. Why do you believe that having Ob under "(town)" is OK to distinguish it from other types of entities by the same name, but having "Dikson" under "(whatever)" is not? "Dikson, Russia" may refer to three things we already have articles about, and who knows how many we have no articles on yet. I just don't see any difference, but I do see how "X, Russia" in these particular cases makes things more confusing (something you also seem to agree with). Can you explain your chain of thought perhaps? Personal preferences are one thing, but we should still think about our readers first, no? And if you want to see all parens eradicated from Wikipedia titles, this particular guideline just doesn't seem like the most fruitful place to start.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 8, 2011; 20:56 (UTC)
              • Ah, sorry, you just had to explain Mr. Smirnov the sad truth about the Wikipedia naming conventions. Georgia is even more sad case, where they can do nothing until they modify the country name itself..
              • "Town" looks much nicer compared to "urban-type settlement". In Russian wiki they even use "(посёлок)" as disambiguator and not "(посёлок городского типа)". When it comes to Ob (town), I actually start to think that there is not that much problem in Ob, Russia, given that specific country-sorted subdisambiguations seem to be not in usage, that non-populated places almost never use country name as disambiguator and that we could try to reserve "X, Russia" format exclusively to inhabited localities (I find just one example "Alger Island, Russia" in Wikipedia:WikiProject Russia/Physical geography of Russia task force/Popular pages which better be disambiguated with the name of archipelago or, alas, with "(Russia)"). When typing ""Ob, Russia"" into Google search I get the first 10 links related to the city, not to the river (a very notable river!), which is an indication that "X, country" format is quite common thing off-wiki as well. So, I think it might be worth tolerating a bit of possible confusion in exchange for more aesthetics and simplicity. GreyHood Talk 21:41, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
              • I don't want to see all parens eradicated from Wikipedia titles, but I would like to see them eradicated where possible. GreyHood Talk 21:41, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. There are many placenames where the suffix ", Russia" will be ambiguous, such as towns named after nearby mountains or regions. And there are many cases where using the suffix "(town)" will be ambiguous. It is best to have standards ops for both situations. Rennell435 (talk) 23:17, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
  • You mean cases like Ob, Russia?Ob had to be moved because there are other localities named "Ob". This is a good example how bad the current situation is Any other examples? The strange thing is that in case there would be another Ob town in another country, the rules would recommend Ob, Russia and no one would care about the Ob River having the same base name. And that is so, because in WP ", Russia" is only meant to refer to localities, never to mountains or rivers. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 13:24, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. The parentheticals are misleading, ambiguous, or subject to change, in almost cases. Perhaps some other Russia-specific disambiguation guideline would be appropriate, but the current one is not good. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:49, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
    Could you please provide a couple examples, preferably in the context of Russia, where the parentheticals are misleading or ambiguous and where changing the title to "X, Russia" fixes that problem? As for their being subject to change, I don't see why that even matters, as it can apply to pretty much any article title in Wikipedia. With place names in particular, a change of place names (which in Russia happen more often than changes of place types) will necessitate the article move regardless of which disambiguation convention the title of that article follows.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 15, 2011; 13:57 (UTC)
Of course in the context of Russia, since this problem is Russia specific, due to the Russia specific rule. Several articles had to be moved, this could have been avoided by creating the articles directly at "X, Russia"
Others will need to be moved, this could have been avoided by creating the directly at "X, Russia"
These are only some examples. Lots of articles have not yet been created. See also Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Russia)#Cities_and_towns, listing 12 "X (town)" of which 11 need a move, and some of them a move to "X, Russia". Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 14:28, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
  • This list doesn't answer the question I asked. The entries you have listed do not conform even to the current wording of the guideline and should be moved anyway. They are all either mistakes, or from the cleanup backlog, or weren't ambiguous to other places when originally created but are now (which is something that can happen to many other articles unaffected by this guideline).
  • What I asked for is examples of parenthetically disambiguated articles which are so disambiguated per the current wording of the guideline yet are, per Arthur, "misleading" or "ambiguous", and which stop being misleading or ambiguous when moved to "X, Russia". That's the kind of problem the proposed amendment intends to fix, right? Can either you or Arthur oblige?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 15, 2011; 14:51 (UTC)
No, that is not the problem the proposal wants to fix. :-) And hey, I am not talking about "articles unaffected by this guideline" :-). "X, Russia" prevents certain problems to occur. If it would have been used before, several moves would not have been necessary. The Russia specific clause is instruction creep coupled with more move and dab work. Remove the special Russia clause and done. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 16:36, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
If that's not what it is supposed to fix, then what is it supposed to fix? If you are trying to bring the number of possible future moves down, this proposal just doesn't seem to be the best place to start. Your approach seems to me like building a house by starting from the electric wiring and plumbing instead of the foundation.
I understand how the proposal might prevent certain problems from occurring, but it in turn creates some new problems, which I highlighted in the "arguments against" section. The problems which it prevents (i.e., "making several moves not necessary") hardly affect our readers, while the problems it creates (extra ambiguity where it can easily be avoided) affect them quite a bit. Not the balance I'd care to support.
I also understand your argument that if an article about a place in Russia is parenthetically disambiguated and an article about a place of the same name outside Russia is created, then moving the parenthetically disambiguated article to "X, Russia" would still leave ambiguity between various entities in Russia unresolved. That is true and can only be fixed by moving the affected article to "X (type), Russia" instead of "X, Russia", which can become unwieldy and unfriendly real quick. What I don't understand is why you think it's a good argument in support of your proposal. To me, it seems to be a problem we just don't know how to fix, yet instead of thinking of how to fix it, you propose to merge the subset of cases for which the problem is resolved the same way as the (much larger) set of cases for which the problem is not (and cannot) be resolved. How exactly is that an improvement? If we can't fix it all, then let's break it all so it's all consistent—is this what you are proposing?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 15, 2011; 17:00 (UTC)
This is not exactly related to the guideline, only to the way it's presently used. According to the statistics above, a good number of the "X (class)" articles were still ambiguous or wrong (if the entity changes class); in some cases, even if the title were changed to "X (class), Russia". "X, Russia", or "X, administrative area, Russia" seem more stable disambiguators, and more consistent with other settlements listed on Wikipedia, even if User:Born2cycle wants to eliminate the comma convention entirely. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:43, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure how B2C's views relate to this, nor do I see a title which would remain ambiguous even if moved to "X (class), Russia" in the examples above. Most of what Bogdan found needs to be moved regardless of how the guideline is worded; those findings are merely an indication that we are behind on doing maintenance. As for the rest, many of the articles affected by the proposal will remain ambiguous if moved to "X, Russia", and some originally unambiguous titles will become ambiguous if moved. The net result thus varies from no improvement to making things slightly worse. The "stability" concern affects only us, the editors, but not the readers. The increased ambiguity affects primarily the readers, so the proposal puts the needs of the editors over the needs of the readers (never a good thing). Combined with the necessity to do additional maintenance if the proposal passes, I just don't see a single good reason to support it.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 15, 2011; 18:49 (UTC)
There is less maintenance work, and what helps editors also helps readers, since editors get more productive. If Russian articles occupy ambiguous article titles they may prevent certain editors from creating content. If you have "X (type), Russia" you can also use "X (type in Russia)". Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 19:01, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
How exactly is there less maintenance work when every article affected by this proposal will need to be moved and its backlinks corrected?
I don't understand your second point. Are there many articles in Wikipedia that use "X (smth in Foo)" convention?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 15, 2011; 19:56 (UTC)
Link correction can be done by a bot, no work on that one. And the bot can also change links for articles that have not yet been created. Thus preventing lots of cases like were discovered the last days that needed a move to "X, Russia". "X (smth in Foo)" - never seen, but would be a move towards dropping ", " and avoiding comma /and/ parens at the same time. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 23:53, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Ladin names in Trentino

User:Gryffindor edited the convention to say that Ladin names should be used in Trentino articles. In doing so, he cited Talk:South_Tyrol/Archive_5#Naming_conventions_.28use_of_Ladin.29 as evidence of consensus. If you read through it, however, that discussion is almost entirely about South Tyrol. The only people who address using Ladin in Trentino are Gryffindor and User:Patavium (and yours truly, who asked that a discussion about Trentino be taken to the Trentino talk page). Gryffindor was in favor of extending the convention to Trentino, and Patavium was opposed - no one else lodged an opinion.

Given the sometimes contentious nature of issues relating to that part of Italy, I'm going to revert the edits again, and ask that any change to the guideline be debated first - either here, or at Talk:Trentino. Thanks. Dohn joe (talk) 20:47, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Gryffindor - please address the above before you re-insert your edits. You have not shown that anyone but you thinks that Ladin names should be used in Trentino, and I have shown that at least one person thinks they should not be used. Dohn joe (talk) 17:49, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
The autonomous statute for South Tyrol (which puts the german language on a par to the italian language) does not hold for the neighbouring province Trentino. Nevertheless there are efforts to guard the ladin and german minorities in Trentino too. But I think it's too early to adopt a similar rule on WP as for South Tyrol (i.e. use the name of the mayority language of the inhabitants) as even the road signs show only the italian names. Only last year they introduced some signs with ladin names in the Fassa valley. Maybe we could discuss which names to adopt in a few years, when the adoption of those ladin names becomes more widespread.--Sajoch (talk) 08:16, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Sajoch. The status of the Ladin and German language in South Tyrol and Trentino is hardly comparable. --Mai-Sachme (talk) 09:36, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
Well, I'll restore the guideline to be South Tyrol-only, then. Thanks for the input. Dohn joe (talk) 18:49, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

In that case we will have to remove the convention of Ladin names for South Tyrolean places. Both are in the same region. Gryffindor (talk) 13:17, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

We have a convention of Ladin names for South Tyrolean places? News to me, I just know the guideline (based on a broad consensus) that we use in South Tyrol the names of the local majority (in absence of an established English name). And it is still valid what Sajoch and I wrote above: The general situation, common usage and legal status of non-Italian names in Trentino and South Tyrol are hardly comparable. --Mai-Sachme (talk) 18:03, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Yes, we have a convention to use the majority language names, that includes Ladin. Both provinces are part of the same region and we need to have a consistent naming scheme. We either use Ladin or we drop it all together and will have to go with someting else. That is what we have discussed in the earlier forum, so this should not come as a surprise. Gryffindor (talk) 11:12, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
The region is de facto not existing. There is simply no consensus to apply this South Tyrol-specific guideline to Trentino. --Mai-Sachme (talk) 13:38, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Places in India

At Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(settlements)/Archive_18#India it was proposed:'

Articles on settlements in India follow the dab-layout rules used by all other settlements around the world, i.e. use comma not brackets. When disambiguation is needed, articles go under [[Cityname, Specifier]] where Specifier can be "India", a state name or a district name.

It was also proposed:

Articles on places in India go under [[placename]]. When disambiguation is needed, articles go under [[Cityname, State]] (e.g., Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh). ...

After analyzing the current situation, I found that most places use brackets as was proposed, but mostly they use the state name or the district name, not "India". So I propose to add to the convention:

Articles on places in India go under [[placename]]. When disambiguation is needed, articles use the comma convention and go under [[Cityname, Specifier]] where Specifier can be a state name, e.g. Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh or a district name, e.g. Puthur, Thrissur. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 03:00, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

I think India is big enough to use the same convention of disambiguation with levels below country and not with country as do Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 15:56, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

For context, is it a frequent issue that there are communities in X state of India that share a name with community in Y state of India? Given that some articles are apparently DAB'ed "Foo, India", I presume they're being DAB'ed from non-Indian places/people/things also called "Foo"? Not that this necessarily invalidates the argument, just wondering if in, say, the US the state DABs are important because you have "Jefferson, Missouri" and "Jefferson, Kentucky", whereas state DABs would't be so vital if the US had overlaps more external to the US such as "Los Molinos, United States" and "Los Molinos, Mexico".
To summarise: is your argument more that in principle India should be treated like the abovementioned (primarily Anglo) countries as the current "India" specificer is somewhat simplistic/orientalist, or is it more that on a technical basis "India" is insufficient as a specifier since, say, Bihar and Gujarat may have many communities drawing from the same pool of names? MatthewVanitas (talk) 17:24, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
40% of the above 10 countries, namely Brazil, China, Italy, Mexico are not Anglo. Maybe the Anglo countries have more contributors in the English WP and are more advanced in how they organize the content. India is the 2nd most populated country with 1,210,193,422 inhabitants- 17,46% of the world population according to List of countries by population. User:Emijrp/Geonames/Cities1000 has sub-pages for each country listing localities with more that 1000 inhabitants, India has 7 sub-pages:
  • China (1,339,724,852 - 19.33%) - 3 pages
  • India (1,210,193,422 - 17.46%) - 7 pages - only one in this list to allow "X, countryname"
  • United States (308,745,538 - 4.5%) - 30 pages
  • Brazil (190,732,694 - 2.75%) - 4 pages
  • Mexico (112,322,757 - 1.62%) - 4 pages
  • United Kingdom (62,435,709 - 0.9%) - 6 pages
  • Italy (60,626,442 - 0.87%) - 13 pages
  • South Africa (49,991,300 - 0.72%) - 1 page
  • Canada (34,517,000 - 0.5%) - 2 pages
  • Australia (22,663,388 - 0.33%) - 2 pages
  • Ireland (Republic: 4,581,269) - Republic: 1 page
Looking at User:Emijrp/Geonames/Cities1000/IN/1 I find under "A" the following ambiguous names within India: Ahmadpur, Akbarpur, Amarpur, Amethi, Ashta, Aurangābād. For the first one I looked at http://www.geonames.org/search.html?q=Ahmadpur giving 4 further places in India, i.e. six in sum. Akbarpur [4]: 16, Amarpur [5]: 9, Ashta [6]: 4, Aurangabad [7]: 10. Now add to that all the places not listed at Emijrp pages, due to having less than 1000 inhabitants. I think India deserve the same treatment as other large countries and have the right to get more specific disambiguators directly from the start of disambiguation. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 03:39, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
See Category:Set indices on populated places in India for some examples of conflicting names in India. Hosur, India shows more than a dozen ambiguous names. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 19:13, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

It has been agreed on WT:Naming conventions (India) to use levels below the country level in cases where disambiguation is needed. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 15:55, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

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