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

[Stan Shebs]

Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>
>If "Ivory Coast" ever lose currency - as it no doubt will in years to
>come - then of course we'll reflect this.
>
I think it's already happened - as several people on the talk page
have mentioned, it's been a long time since they've heard "Ivory
Coast". Most organizations that deal with international names have
MoSes that require use of current official names; WP is somewhat
unusual in specifying "most common", which works well with names
familiar to the general public, but breaks down for the less-known.
The handful of people who even know about the country are also the
ones most likely to respect the country's official stance, and to
change their personal usage. "Ivory Coast" will live on in online
documents (and skew Google results) long after it has passed out
of current speech.

Along the same lines, just a couple weeks ago, I was talking to a
waiter who said "I'm from Bombay", to which I said "not Mumbai?",
and he snorted that that was just what the politicians called it.
But I see our article is under Mumbai anyway...

On some less-controversial article titles, I've taken the position
that if "most common" is at all unclear, to pick the official name.
The samples of usage from Google, print pubs, etc, have huge
margins of error.

Stan