[WikiEN-l] need to work out clear policies onMANDATORYandOPTIONAL rules on WP

[charles matthews]

Ed Poor wrote

>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.

And the sky is falling ... No panic language, please.  Ed, you seem to be 
largely responsible for this farrago.

>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.

No.  The idea that policy here should allow a 'populist' over-ride of the 
actual name of a nation is just stupid, with respect to the good name of 
Wikipedia, actually.
>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.

There you go, Ed.  If you can't take francophones as part of 'us', that's 
your problem.  I could think only of two other examples, Saint-Pierre et/and 
Miquelon, which has gone with 'and', and Reunion, which has compromised as 
Réunion, where the French is 'La  Réunion'.  There is really no precedent to 
be drawn here.

Charles