[Wikipedia-l] Re: On city naming conventions (part 1 -- cross-convention REDIRECTs)

[Daniel Mayer]

On Monday 24 June 2002 12:01 pm, Jeroen wrote:
> So, at this point, I'd say: what is the problem? The only thing to take
> care of is that for each article named according to convention A, there's a
> redirect with convention name B.

I don't see anything wrong with creating cross-convention redirects for the 
proposed [[city, nation]] convention for most (at least) non-US nations and 
the [[city, state]] convention for US ones. However, this shouldn't be any 
kind of requirement or policy -- just encouraged. 

One of the main reasons we have naming conventions is so that when a person 
makes a naming convention compliment article, that person can be reasonably 
sure that other contributors making similarly convention compliment free 
links to that term will link to it without having to depend on redirects. But 
then, there is no reason not to have known shortcuts for even easier linking 
to often linked articles (such as the [[United States]] redirect for example 
-- see my other post, "part 2 -- REDIRECT priority").  

I don't think that making [[San Francisco, United States of America]] a 
redirect to [[San Francisco, California]] would be particularly useful 
though... But then there is no pressing reason <i>not</i> to have one that I 
can think of. 

Potential minor issues: 
There are at least three Melbourne's in the United States -- so the person 
making [[Melbourne, United States of America]] into a redirect would have to 
be careful to direct it to the most famous Melbourne in the States 
(Melbourne, Florida) -- giving the most famous city redirect priority (see my 
other post, "part 2 -- REDIRECT priority"). Also, no one Auburn in the US can 
be said to be the unambiguous "Auburn in the US", but the creation of a 
disambiguation page titled [[Auburn, United States of America]] might be 
redundant overkill because most entries at a disambiguation page named 
[[Auburn]] would be US cities anyway.  

--maveric149