There is a city in northern Europe called Danzig by Germans and Gdansk by Poles. Both words have "Dan" as a common element.
The last time I waded into this dispute, it was about what the "rightful" name of the city is -- or was, in various points in history.
The solution I proposed, and which attracted enough consensus for the article to be unlocked, was for Wikipedia to:
1. Refuse to take sides on the issue of what the city OUGHT to be called; and
2. Describe the dispute in the text of the article.
We also noted that the placement of the article at www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danzig or at www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gdansk should NOT be taken as "official recognition" of one name or the other -- but be based purely on however English-speaking people primarily refer to the city.
I daresay the geographical standard, in the West anyway, is to pick the most common form. Except if there's a dispute we use the slash, as in "East Sea/Sea of Japan" which I saw in a recent article about Korea.
Ed Poor
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
There is a city in northern Europe called Danzig by Germans and Gdansk by Poles. Both words have "Dan" as a common element.
[...]
We also noted that the placement of the article at www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danzig or at www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gdansk should NOT be taken as "official recognition" of one name or the other -- but be based purely on however English-speaking people primarily refer to the city.
Eliminating domains ending in ".de", Google gives:
Gdansk: 414,000 Danzig: 420,000
Since the German version of the name is "Danzig" it seems unfair to include .de results when trying to analyze "English" practice.
So using this as a measure, Danzig wins. Nevertheless, the city is currently a Polish city. And the Polish version of the name is well known, at least on ~English speaking Web, as good a measure as any. I think this is a strong argument for using Gdansk as entry-point on the English wikipedia.
I am an American of German heritage.
Bill
Bill wrote:
So using this as a measure, Danzig wins. Nevertheless, the city is currently a Polish city. And the Polish version of the name is well known, at least on ~English speaking Web, as good a measure as any. I think this is a strong argument for using Gdansk as entry-point on the English wikipedia.
I think this is generally agreed on by most of the people who've been discussing the issue on the talk page, but there are some extreme Polish nationalists who still profess to be offended by the use of "Danzig" at all. The article that led to the current round of disagreements was located at [[Gdansk]], and started with:
'''Gdan'sk''' (in English formerly known as '''Danzig''') is a [[Baltic Sea]] city with a long and colorful history. Gdan'sk is the 6th largest city in [[Poland]], its principal [[seaport]], and the capital of the [[Pomeranian Voivodship]].
That seems like a reasonable compromise to me. However, it was claimed that "in English formerly known as Danzig" was an offensive statement catering to German colonial oppression, or something of that sort. At this point I consider these nationalists on both sides to not be worth arguing with, and would appreciate if they were banned summarily from editing relevant articles.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
At this point I consider these nationalists on both sides to not be worth arguing with, and would appreciate if they were banned summarily from editing relevant articles.
In a more pensive mood, I might rephrase this as:
"I would support banning users who repeatedly make controversial edits to a long-running controversial page without discussing on the article talk page, even after being warned on their user talk page."
If they're anonymous users I think it should be fine to ban them summarily for such behavior, especially since I suspect many are simply reincarnations of the same person.
-Mark
Repeatedly posting reverts without discussion is perhpas the worst concievable crime on a collaborative project. Throw the book at anyone who does this. Mark R.
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Delirium wrote:
At this point I consider these nationalists on
both sides to not be
worth arguing with, and would appreciate if they
were banned summarily
from editing relevant articles.
In a more pensive mood, I might rephrase this as:
"I would support banning users who repeatedly make controversial edits to a long-running controversial page without discussing on the article talk page, even after being warned on their user talk page."
If they're anonymous users I think it should be fine to ban them summarily for such behavior, especially since I suspect many are simply reincarnations of the same person.
-Mark
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