On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 06:39:43AM -0800, wikien-l-request@Wikipedia.org wrote:
I would really like to see that article divided into two articles, one called Danzig, one Gdansk, with the Danzig article about the long German heritage, the article Gdansk about the present Polish city with historical emphasis on Polish matters. I know this is Wikinfo philosopy but why can't we try it out here in this one case?
Isn't that just going to wedge the door open for every disputed article to end up with multiple versions?
While I can see the benefits of the Wikinfo philosophy to article writers, I think it does readers a disservice.
For $deity's sake, the major dispute seems to be over what period the city, for the purposes of the article, should be called Gdansk, and when it should be called Danzig. There appear to be a couple of sensible compromises that User:Halibutt has proposed. Why can't people choose one of those, note in the article that naming is an emotional issue, for the purposes purposes of writing the article a particular convention has been adopted, and this convention is purely a notational convenience and should not be taken for anything else?
On Wed, 9 Jun 2004 09:18:26 +1000, Robert Graham Merkel robert.merkel@benambra.org wrote:
On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 06:39:43AM -0800, wikien-l-request@Wikipedia.org wrote:
I would really like to see that article divided into two articles, one called Danzig, one Gdansk, with the Danzig article about the long German heritage, the article Gdansk about the present Polish city with historical emphasis on Polish matters. I know this is Wikinfo philosopy but why can't we try it out here in this one case?
Isn't that just going to wedge the door open for every disputed article to end up with multiple versions?
As I said, I don't think that would be the case here. We'd just have one article on the city now, and one on it historically. The Wikinfo philosiphy, on the other hand, would allow two articles on the city (in general). This would be roughly equivalent to having an article on [[Istanbul]] and one on [[Constantinople]].
Camel gets his nose in the tent! I think here on Wikipedia this sort of treatment should not be routine, but used only in instances where there are two distinct viewpoints that have proven difficult to resolve. This dispute has gone on for a year or more.
Fred
From: Robert Graham Merkel robert.merkel@benambra.org Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 09:18:26 +1000 To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 11, Issue 31
On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 06:39:43AM -0800, wikien-l-request@Wikipedia.org wrote:
I would really like to see that article divided into two articles, one called Danzig, one Gdansk, with the Danzig article about the long German heritage, the article Gdansk about the present Polish city with historical emphasis on Polish matters. I know this is Wikinfo philosopy but why can't we try it out here in this one case?
Isn't that just going to wedge the door open for every disputed article to end up with multiple versions?
On 06/08/04 23:18, Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
For $deity's sake, the major dispute seems to be over what period the city, for the purposes of the article, should be called Gdansk, and when it should be called Danzig. There appear to be a couple of sensible compromises that User:Halibutt has proposed. Why can't people choose one of those, note in the article that naming is an emotional issue, for the purposes purposes of writing the article a particular convention has been adopted, and this convention is purely a notational convenience and should not be taken for anything else?
At present we have a Polish partisan who considers "formerly Danzig" in the intro to be DEEPLY OFFENSIVE because it was officially called Gdansk at some time even further before that. Read the talk, he's serious.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 06/08/04 23:18, Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
For $deity's sake, the major dispute seems to be over what period the city, for the purposes of the article, should be called Gdansk, and when it should be called Danzig. There appear to be a couple of sensible compromises that User:Halibutt has proposed. Why can't people choose one of those, note in the article that naming is an emotional issue, for the purposes purposes of writing the article a particular convention has been adopted, and this convention is purely a notational convenience and should not be taken for anything else?
At present we have a Polish partisan who considers "formerly Danzig" in the intro to be DEEPLY OFFENSIVE because it was officially called Gdansk at some time even further before that. Read the talk, he's serious.
Well, this has been discussed to death, and really he's just going to have to live with it. For centuries "Danzig" was the common English name for the city, and it still remains fairly common in history books, well-known amongst many English-speaking people (I'd wager there's a significant number of people who are familiar with "Danzig" but only vaguely recall having heard of "Gdansk"), and is especially used when dealing with the city's Prussian era. Offensive or not, it's a historical fact. Certainly we can argue over when to use the various names, but omitting the former common English name entirely is simply not a reasonable option.
The talk page archives have about 10 pages of this issue.
-Mark