Delirium wrote: Oh, I thought the original post was about something going on at de.wikipedia, my mistake. Perhaps we can form a general policy of how to do it, something made in the abstract that covers all the general cases, without reference to German or Polish, and then go from there... For example, when referring to a place at a time in the past, prefer the name of that time while parenthetically pointing out the current name if the clarification will be helpful to the reader. When referring to a place at a time in the present, prefer the present name while parenthetically pointing out the past name, blah blah blah. I can't help but suppose that there's a tedious wikipedia policy wiki page on this somewhere. :-) --Jimbo

I fully agree the fact we must not use external pictures in articles, but why don't allow them in meta/user/talk pages ? I had a pictures of my baby on my user page, I can't see it any more :o( More seriously, I'm afraid prohibit external link will make people copy more non encyclopedic pictures on the server and will make harder to select right pictures when we will make a static version. Aoineko

Karl Eichwalder wrote: Well, that's very strange to me. It's not really my place, exactly, to comment much on what the wiki-consensus should be in German language, but if I was German, I'd probably want to work on fixing that. But perhaps there are subtleties that I don't understand, so I'll just refrain from comment. --Jimbo

Peter Gervai &lt;grin(a)tolna.net&gt; writes: I guess the reason why is pretty simple. In the past, in the times of the German Democratic Republic all the antifascists used the "foreign" names to show how PC they are (me included). Some of the prolong this way of life in our current times. And then there are some German writers who are quite advanced in Middle and Eastern European languages: using foreign spellings they can show how clever they are ;-) No, I'm not going to subscribe to jet another list ;) Sure, that's the natural way to solve this "problem" -- maybe I'll start another try to get things right. Unfortunately, often there is more important work to do. -- | ,__o | _-\_<, http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/ | (*)/'(*)

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote: This makes sense for some of the names, but I don't think for all. For example, "Danzig" was until 1945 the generally accepted English name for that city, so I think speaking of someone like Arthur Schopenhauer (a German born in 1780) being "born in Gdansk" is a little bit anachronistic, and speaking of him being "born in Danzig (modern-day [[Gdansk]], [[Poland]])" is more accurate. I think we should generally use the name that would've been used by the person if it's clear, and otherwise prefer the modern name. So, Constantinople (not Istanbul) for the Byzantines; Danzig (not Gdansk) and Koenigsberg (not Kaliningrad) for 18th-century Germans, but Warsaw for everyone in all time periods, etc. The main impetus behind this suggestion is that it seems odd to say someone was born in a city that they wouldn't have called by that name--if Schopenhauer thought he was born in Danzig, and in fact mentioned Danzig in his writings, then that's what we should call his birthplace. However, I do think your argument has convinced me to use the modern names when discussing the general history, if former names are unclear, which I think is how it currently is: [[Gdansk]] refers to the city by that name throughout the history section, including the 16th/17th/18th/19th centuries. That seems fine to me. It's be wrong to refer to 16th-century [[Kaliningrad]] though. So perhaps unfortunately we need to do it on a case-by-case basis? -Mark

On Fri, Oct 31, 2003 at 07:48:30AM +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote: Hmm, I accept your national pride, but this might have been a bit strong for a friendly attitude. Call it as the local population of the given wikipedia would call today, and redirect the others. It's simple in the case of German and Polski 'pedia, isn't it? In english, I believe either you have one which is used in _English_speaking_ countries (eg. dictionaries, encyclopedias, other references), or if there are more, first come first serve, others can redirect at their own pleasure. I'd probably use "danzig" to describe the darned place and "history of gdansk" when talking about its heroic past. And I wouldn't forget to mention all possible names in every article's first sentence anyway. I'd look for "kaliningrad" if I would look for the city. I may look for Koenigsbers (or whatever) if I wanna check a historical reference, and maybe krolewiec" for other sources. I expect all of them working.... Well one possible reason could be to use newset names because it's unlikely that they going to change unless we happen to enjoy a new world war. Other possible reason could be to use the name which longest suited the place in the past, since the past not expected to change. I personally couldn't care less if "Budapest" would be called "Buda-Pest" or whatever they called it in the past as long as "Budapest" pops up the article... But it's a nice thing to debate, I agree. [[user:grin]] ps: let's find the city with the most owners and names. gdansk only have 2, it's boring. some on the austrian/slovakian/hungarian border have at least three! I FIGHT FOR THEM! ;->

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote: After having seen Gdansk, I cannot agree with this description. The old town's entire architecture and purpose as a trading port of the Teutonic Orden, with its monopoly on the amber trade, is what I would describe as "German". This includes the St. Mary church, inspired directly from the brick castle of Marienburg / Malbork. I cannot claim to be an expert on anything Polish or German, but my disagreement should be interpreted as an indication of an area where Wikipedia should provide more background in the form of verifiable facts rather than assertions that it "was never a German city". Such assertions only serve to disqualify those who utter them. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/