--- geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 11/13/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Maybe the US State Department is just following
the UN lead on this.
The proportion of newspapers and websites using
the English name is
irrelevant. The position of official Ivoirian
sites is more influential.
not is isn't. Read what the MOS has to say.
This is a racist slur for which you owe everyone
an apology.
The french speaking people of the world are now a race? Uh okeey.
Please avoid the use of abbreviations. They only
make your comments
more difficult to read.
Manual of style Nameing conventions
Determining the official name of a country is not
a matter for voting.
It is a sure way of having facts overwhelmed by
ignorance.
We are not decideing it's offcial name. We are deciding how many people on wikipedia are incaple of following naming policy. Current total is 21. The nameing conventions say "article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature."
-- geni
Correct. Indeed what is going on that debate is symtomatic of just how many people don't know the MoS and the naming conventions, and take offence if someone points them out.
Some of the zanier arguments defending the less widely used French name being used in place of the far more widely used English are how:How
everyone uses it (demonstably untrue).
everyone SHOULD use it. (which breaks NPOV. It isn't our job to say what they SHOULD do, just what they DO do.)
I use it, therefore obviously the rest of the planet does to.
I've only heard it being called that (if you are a French speaker and you deal with French speakers from that country, of course you would only have heard it called that. But this is english wikipedia!)
It would be stupid not to.
All articles SHOULD be written this way (ie, it doesn't matter that they aren't. Lets make up a new rule for this page!)
We have to do what the government says (no we don't. We don't name any other country based on what their government demands, but on english speakers' usage!)
The fact that Wikipedia has a set of strict rules for naming pages doesn't seem to matter to most of the 'keep the French name' voters. It does seem suspicious that a group of French speakers can vote to ensure that a less well known French name is given priority over a far more widely name, internationally used, English version, on English Wikipedia, no matter what the factual evidence is, what the name conventions state or what the manual of style requires.
Thom
It is notable
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