[WikiEN-l] need to work out clear policies on MANDATORY and OPTIONAL rules on WP

[Stan Shebs]

Tom Cadden wrote:

> 
> It is one of the clearest open and shut cases imaginable. Put in ordinary language, the ordinary English speaker on the planet uses Ivory Coast not Cote d'Ivoire. Those that use the latter are aware of the former. Those that use the former are rarely aware of the latter. Under MoS criteria the only place the article can be placed at is Ivory Coast. But as the vote shows, most users aren't using MoS criteria but deciding on personal whims such as 'I like it', 'that's what I hear',  'it is what will become popular', and the even more POV 'we should help encourage its usage'. None of that fits the criteria of the MoS and means that that one article is in a different location to 99% of other such articles on WP, which follow most common usage, not personal agendas. 
>
Stating your case more forcefully doesn't qualify as evidence. Since
you don't describe your sources of information, it's impossible to tell
whether you are talking about current usage or past usage - use of old
documents will by definition skew results to an old name, and we would
then be required to still use "Zaire", "Upper Volta", etc until the pile
of new documents outweighed the pile of old ones.

Stan