Danny wrote:
Okay, I have a problem with this. The problem is that this is an old debate that is being rehashed. A long time ago, before Nohat or RickK were active on Wikipedia, there was serious discussion and debate about this. I am sure that Mav, Ed Poor, and a few others remember. I wish I could find the debates, but right now I can't.
It seems to me that if any policy stops being supported by consensus then it ought to be revisited. Indeed, the current policy was never supported by consensus, as I explain below.
Now, it could be that the wrong choice won the vote (and there was a vote). On the other hand, we are opening up an old can of worms where consensus had been reached. This in itself is not a problem, so much as the implications are. In 2 years from now, when the current users are mostly gone, a new generation of users might well challenge the new naming convention we decide on now and come up with a new one--or perhaps the old one. It can happen again and again.
I would like to note that after reviewing the vote at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(city_names)/...
the only aspects of my proposed policy that overturn the results of this vote are the particular votes on cities in the US and Canada, which were decided by 4-2 votes. I don't think that anyone would agree that a 4-2 vote represents consensus. Not only is it a ridiculously small number of people, but it's only 66% support.
Also, I would like to add that the previous discussion is only concerned by the ambiguous names portion of the proposed policy, whereas the proposed policy concerns places that have multiple names and provides a mechanism for dealing with cases where which name should be used is disputed. Further, it is a broader policy in that it applies to all geographical place names, and not just cities.
When we decided on the naming convention, there may not have been even 50,000 articles on Wikipedia. It happened before Zoe added capitals for all the countries, because she had to redo many of them manually to meet the new standards of the naming convention. Wikipedia is much larger now. Bots aside, we have many times more articles, and we will continue to grow. Reopening this can of worms will only impede real progress. We have a system. Let's stick to it, and we can discuss particular instances of potential exceptions on a case by case basis.
The problem is that those discussions of particular exceptions invariably lead to discussions of how the policy should be changed, especially because the current policy doesn't provide a mechanism for dealing with disputes. What is needed is a firm policy on how the disputes about article names can be settled, which is something that my proposed policy provides. Also, I hope you're not suggesting that discussions of old policies should never be re-opened. That seems like an ultra-conservative perspective on policy that is probably not shared by most.
BTW, another example of a convention that was broken and which has exploded again is the East Prussia series of articles. We had worked out (twice) a naming standard (with teh help of JHK), which was ignored by new users who knew nothing about the bitter debates that led to an acceptable compromise.
Essentially, what I am saying is that what newer users might not realize is that certain conventions that they take for granted were decided after a long grueling process. Let's not keep redoing that again and again, any time someone who is not aware of that history joins Wikipedia.
While I am sympathetic to the desire not to reopen old discussions, the problem lies in the fact that the results of old discussions were incomplete and inconclusive. I was aware of the previous discussion and consulted it while drafting the policy I have proposed. The policies that were supported by a large number of people (no pre-emptive disambiguation, commas as disambiguator) are included in the proposed policy. Only those aspects of the policy which were decided by a tiny group have been reversed by the proposed policy. Furthermore, the only item that was supported by consensus (more than 70% of the vote) was the proposal to use [City, Nation] as the standard disambiguation format, and that was decided 6 to 2. All the others were decided by less than 70% majority, which is not really consensus.
The facts remain that a Hobbesian state of nature exists for certain disputes and the current policy doesn't really address how to handle them. I recommend that a solid policy be adopted. If you don't like the policy I've proposed, then vote against it, or preferably, let's discuss how to improve it. If lots of people don't like it and it doesn't get 70% support, then it won't get adopted and the current policies (or lack of policies) will continue to be in effect.
- David