[WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] Trouble in Ireland

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 7:16 AM, Sam Blacketer
<sam.blacketer at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 11/26/08, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> A reader typing in "Ireland" (or an editor linking [[Ireland]])
>> is almost certainly thinking about the country, not the geological
>> structure.
>>
>
> Most probably, most users who type in "Ireland" are looking for the article
> about the Republic of Ireland. However, we can't escape the fact that the
> term Ireland is ambiguous. Some users would be unaware that six of the 32
> Irish counties are not currently part of the Republic.

I would actually argue that a reader who doesn't know anything about
Ireland (picture a schoolchild in the US doing a project for St.
Patrick's day) would be expecting to get exactly the article that is
currently located at "Ireland". Both the current Republic of Ireland
and Northern Ireland articles are heavily focussed on the historical
and political situation, and not the kind of comprehensive overview
that is currently at "Ireland." What if I don't even know there are
two countries on the island, let alone which one is which? It's pretty
confusing to be sent to a disambiguation page when I'm just trying to
look up something that is a pretty basic geographical topic.

Would just moving Republic of Ireland to [[Ireland (state)]] and
leaving the rest alone be acceptable? The latter title would avoid any
unfortunate political connotations as it's a straight disambiguation
title, but would still leave the background article at the main title.

-- phoebe