We seem to have a lot of nationalist edit wars over placenames. I'm sure not many people will have forgotten the Gdansk/Danzig fiasco. A similar row is currently going on at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Macedonian_Slavs (Greeks and ex-Yugoslavs fighting over names, yet again; they're actively trolling for votes on Wikipedia and offline as well). I'm sure we'll have similar arguments about other disputed names in future.
I believe that what we need is a consistent approach to dealing with such issues. I've put together a proposal at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ChrisO/Naming_disputes which sets out some criteria for resolving naming disputes. These boil down to:
* The most common use in English of a name takes precedence; * If the common name conflicts with the official name, use the common name ''except'' for conflicting scientific and dialect names; * If neither the common name nor the official name is prevalent, use the name (or a translation thereof) that the subject uses to describe itself or themselves.
Objective criteria that should be considered are:
* Is the name in common usage in English? * Is it the official current name of the subject (official in terms of being used in a legal context, e.g. a constitution?) * Is it the name used by the subject to describe itself or themselves? * If an historic name is mentioned in the article, is it in an accurate context?
Subjective criteria that should not be used are:
* Does the subject have a moral right to use the name? * Does the subject have a legal right to use the name? * Does the name infringe on someone else's legal or moral rights? * Is the use of the name politically unacceptable?
Of course, there's more to it than that - notably that really intractable disputes should be resolved by a neutral committee of administrators (not the ArbCom, which shouldn't waste its time on low-level disputes of this sort). The alternative is to put such questions to votes that will just end up being pissing contests between rival POV-pushers, which is what we're doing at the moment.
Comments welcomed...
- ChrisO
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Chris Owen (ronthewarhero@yahoo.co.uk) [050622 09:14]:
We seem to have a lot of nationalist edit wars over placenames. I'm sure not many people will have forgotten the Gdansk/Danzig fiasco. A similar row is currently going on at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Macedonian_Slavs (Greeks and ex-Yugoslavs fighting over names, yet again; they're actively trolling for votes on Wikipedia and offline as well).
That's wonderful. If we have smoking-gun evidence of this, it should be added to the page to note the utter invalidity of the poll.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ChrisO/Naming_disputes
- The most common use in English of a name takes
precedence;
- If the common name conflicts with the official name,
use the common name ''except'' for conflicting scientific and dialect names;
- If neither the common name nor the official name is
prevalent, use the name (or a translation thereof) that the subject uses to describe itself or themselves. Objective criteria that should be considered are:
- Is the name in common usage in English?
- Is it the official current name of the subject
(official in terms of being used in a legal context, e.g. a constitution?)
- Is it the name used by the subject to describe
itself or themselves?
- If an historic name is mentioned in the article, is
it in an accurate context? Subjective criteria that should not be used are:
- Does the subject have a moral right to use the name?
- Does the subject have a legal right to use the name?
- Does the name infringe on someone else's legal or
moral rights?
- Is the use of the name politically unacceptable?
OH YES PLEASE. I think the above cut through the problem obviously and elegantly.
Of course, there's more to it than that - notably that really intractable disputes should be resolved by a neutral committee of administrators (not the ArbCom, which shouldn't waste its time on low-level disputes of this sort). The alternative is to put such questions to votes that will just end up being pissing contests between rival POV-pushers, which is what we're doing at the moment.
What they need is just someone with even a faint sense of proportion looking at them, and that's what the AC is chosen for (even if sometimes it's like the sausage factory on the inside). I don't think deciding per these criteria would unduly load us at present. It certainly beats cases warring over the proper number angels to set dancing on the head of a pin as per policy.
- d.