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

[Tom Cadden]

--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> 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 is irrelevant. The official name of the Republic
of Ireland is Poblacht na hÉireann. We do not use it.
Nor do we use the official name in French of the
French Republic. We do have have the article on
Germany at the Federal Republic of Germany, let alone
the German language version of the name. 

WP does not use official names are article titles.
With countries it uses common names, and puts the
official name at the top of the article's infobox. 
> 
> 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.

The position of Ivoirian sites is irrelevant. This is
not an Ivoirian encyclopædia but an English language
one that does not write its articles to suit
governments and official sites. 
> 
> >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.

Absolutely not. It is a fact that an article is being
kept in a location against the explicit rules in the
MoS but a vote of users of one particular language,
many of whom seem intent on putting their defence of
that language above Wikipedia's own rules. 

> >
> >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.

People on WP regularly use MoS for Manual of Style and
NC for Naming Conventions.  

> Determining the official name of a country is not a
> matter for voting.  
> It is a sure way of having facts overwhelmed by
> ignorance.
I'm surprised you don't know that WP policy IS to
decide the location of an article by voting. It is
done through requesting moves and voting on them. It
is a standard procedure used throughout WP. 
 



		
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