On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 7:16 AM, Sam Blacketer sam.blacketer@googlemail.com wrote:
On 11/26/08, Steve Summit scs@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