From: Tom Cadden [mailto:thomcadden@yahoo.ie]
As has been pointed out repeatedly, the MoS does not
say 'do
what Brittanica does' Brittanica is a business-orientated
hardcopy encyclopædia which follows governmental usage to
avoid offending native populations because it needs them to
buy their product. It is called sometimes 'Strategic Naming'.
They follow their own MoS. We follow ours. Ours is not
business based but based exclusively on the most common name
principle. Objective evidence shows that the most common name
of that state, as evidenced by surveys of communication
vehicles worldwide, is 'Ivory Coast' by a ratio of 85:15 over
Cote d'Ivoire.
They have to follow their MoS which follows 'Strategic
Naming'. We have to follow ours, which follows 'Most Common
Name'. Under our MoS the name we are obliged to place the
name at is Ivory Coast. Their MoS, following their criteria,
produces a result that is irrelevant to us.
I don't actually care about this particular "country name", as much as I
care about the larger issue. If we allow people to go against policy, and then require a
majority vote (or supermajority vote) to choose to FOLLOW policy, then Wikipedia will
quickly be over-run by abusers.
The article should be put at the policy-determined place (which happens to be "Ivory
Coast") and then - IF a consensus developes that this particular country article
should be an exception to policy, THEN move it to the French name.
The idea that article names should be dictated to us, by whoever the article happens to be
about is NOT GOOD POLICY. It will only lead to balkanization of the 'pedia. We picked
"most common usage English" specifically to head off this sort of thing.
Ed Poor