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

[Matt Brown]

On 11/19/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:
> If you want to create a credible encyclopædia and not a semi-literate, semi-credible,
> semi-accurate joke. YES.

This is rather disproportionate, don't you think?  I am rather
surprised that a little debate of which of two names for a small
African country should be used, either of which would be quite IMO
acceptable as an article title, is creating this much heat.  Wikipedia
will not seem more or less literate, credible or accurate because we
use [[Cote d'Ivoire]] instead of [[Ivory Coast]], or the other way
round.

As many people have pointed out, 'Use common names' is a general
GUIDELINE for Wikipedia, which we do not, in fact, follow completely. 
Many subject areas, supplementary naming conventions, or WikiProjects
define naming conventions that do not follow Use Common Names.

-Matt Brown