On 2/1/07, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Here is another case of something I mentioned to this mailing list some time ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Timwi&diff=104821425...
In a nutshell, the [[Wikipedia:WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies]] wants to add the parenthesis "(UK Parliament constituency)" to all constituency articles, even those that don't have ambiguous names and would therefore -- under the general naming convention rules -- not have the parenthesis.
These people feel they're completely in the right because they have a discussion to link to -- a discussion that took place on the WikiProject page. Since such a discussion cannot override a general rule such as the Naming Convention, how do I properly respond to this without causing an edit war (or move war)?
Timwi
The best thing to do -- if you want to make an issue of it -- would be to bring the question up on the main NC page and invite the WikiProject to make their case their. Having said that, a few points:
- There is nothing inherently less meaningful about a discussion on a WikiProject page versus a discussion on some other page; both function as a consensus of participating editors, which isn't really affected by the page name. - It's perfectly normal for guidelines -- particularly one-size-fits-all guidelines -- to have exceptions (even broad ones); and quite reasonable for WikiProjects to come up with such exceptions. The deciding factor is whether what's being proposed makes sense, not who came up with it. - Looking over the linked discussion on the WikiProject page, I'm not convinced that they're actually incorrect in suggesting pre-emptive disambiguation here. It's pretty much a decided issue that all geographic locations will eventually have articles; and if constituencies are, indeed, named after locations, then delaying disambiguation until those articles get started -- even though we *know* that we'll need to disambiguate -- seems rather unnecessarily bureaucratic. (If nothing else, the project could easily fit within the letter of the law here by creating one-liner stubs for the locations; but I don't think that's something we ought to push.)
Kirill