[WikiEN-l] City names argument resurrected

[Tim Starling]

Jimbo said:

>We've discussed this in the past, but I don't remember the result.

I remember, because I looked at the mailing list archives yesterday. Nothing 
was decided, everyone just got bored and moved on to more interesting 
things, like the great ''' vs <b> debate.

>This has been discussed before, at length, and the most passionate and 
>devoted contributor on the topic has been maveric. I will go along with any 
>naming convention he devises (i.e., he has my "proxy vote").

Mav has already commented on the issue on [[User talk:Karen Johnson]]. He 
said:

>There was a push to have Australian cities preemptively disambiguated a 
>while ago (just as American and Canadian cities are), but that movement 
>seemed to loose steam. I'm not sure what the Aussies want now.

Well, I can tell you what three of the Aussies want: Tannin and I are in 
favour of simple names and Karen's happy to go along (although she argued 
for preemptive disambiguation originally). As far I as can see Robert Merkel 
has not expressed an opinion. That only leaves the less regular contributors 
such as Arno and Peter Eckersley (Pde).

Ed Poor also said:

>The point of the naming convention has always been to
>make the article title:
>
>* unambiguous, and
>* as short as possible

Names such as Canberra are entirely unambiguous. There is only one. Brisbane 
can be block disambiguated in line with existing policy, because of the 
dominance of Brisbane, Australia over other uses. The real question is 
consistency: versus length, surprise factor and need for pipes. I'm in 
favour of lack of consistency, because I would like to see less pipes and 
easier contribution for newbies unaware of disambiguation standards. This 
argument is about *preemptive* disambiguation, not ordinary disambiguation.

-- Tim Starling.

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