[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS, NCs for language reasons.

[Ray Saintonge]

Tom Cadden wrote:

>An interesting row is going on at [[Talk:Côte
>d'Ivoire]]. The country is usually known in English as
>Ivory Coast but is controversially at its
>little-used-in-English French name. A proposal by me
>supported by Ed Poor to move it to the more widely
>used English name, to follow the standard naming
>rules, produced the mother of all rows, with users
>queuing to claim that 'everyone' calls it Cote
>d'Ivoire. 
>
I remember looking at this over three years ago, at which time my first 
inclination was to change the name.  Unlike many other French-speaking 
countries the official name for English purposes is the French one.  See 
the member list for the United Nations at 
http://www.un.org/Overview/unmember.html  This does not mean that other 
French speaking countries follow the same practice.  The Central African 
Republic does not appear as République Centraficaine. 

>That argument was clearly disproved. Checks on
>websites with the BBC, New York Times, ABC, South
>African television, Australian newspapers, the Times
>of London, the Guardian, NBC, Bloomberg, the British
>Foreign Office, etc shows that worldwide Ivory Coast
>is more used in some cases by a factor of 10. Only the
>US State Department uses the French name, and even
>then just occasionally, a far cry from the 'always'
>claimed. 
>
Maybe the US State Department is just following the UN lead on this.  
The proportion of newspapers and websites using the English name is 
irrelevant.  The position of official Ivoirian sites is more influential.

>Even then the majority was queuing up to insist the
>French name be kept, no matter what. But a closer look
>showed that a large number of those voting to keep the
>French name were French speakers! 
>
This is a racist slur for which you owe everyone an apology.

>French and English
>are famous rivals to be the dominant world language,
>but is it a first for a English Wikipedia article to
>be kept at a little used French name rather than the
>widely used English version contrary to WP NCs and the
>MoS, by a block vote of French speakers defending the
>French language? 
>
>What is WP policy when language is used to a block
>vote to force the MoS and NC to be ignored in an
>article's name? 
>
Please avoid the use of abbreviations.  They only make your comments 
more difficult to read.

>PS: The vote is still going on. Please come and vote. 
>  
>
Determining the official name of a country is not a matter for voting.  
It is a sure way of having facts overwhelmed by ignorance.

Ec