Talk:Penzance, United Kingdom

Er, this would really be best under Penzance, Cornwall, as would all Cornish articles. There are a substantial number of people who take great exception to Cornwall being in the United Kingdom (myself included). user:sjc

Also, there are a number of complex legal questions about the political status of Cornwall which are very complicated, and it may ultimately transpire that Cornwall isn't in the UK. user:sjc

Well, I was just following Wikipedia:naming conventions on cities. As far as I recall, Cornwall isn't a country. If you can tell me in which country it is, I'll be glad to move the articles there. Jeronimo 00:51 Jul 28, 2002 (PDT)

Technically, on one level you're right. However, legally it's a duchy. Much like e.g. Luxembourg without the legal and political apparatus or the autonomy (yet!). I would say that it would be politically more expedient and altogether better to have e.g. Penzance, United Kingdom redirect to Penzance, Cornwall. If you do an article about, e.g. Groningen in the Netherlands, you are going to get flak from the people who say Vryslan vrij and who are going to want the article to be about Groningen, Friesland. It accepts the contested status of the area whilst the actual redirection acknowledges the political status quo. Another example might be e.g. Jerusalem: Is this in Israel (well yes, as things stand at the moment) but you would be opening the floodgates for an unparalleled international flamewar if you were to redirect to Jerusalem, Israel. user:sjc

Even if Cornwall were to gain any status as a country in the near future, it hasn't got any yet, and as such we should not "prepare for it".

If Groningen were at all to be in Friesland, and if there were any Frisian separatists (never heard of those), then still Groningen would be in the Netherlands right. Just as San Sebastian (Donostia) is in Spain, and not in Basque.

Jerusalem's an interesting point, since the city officially (I say, officially) governed by both Israel and Palestine, or something like that. Jeronimo 01:05 Jul 28, 2002 (PDT)

If and when cities begin to be governed by a different nation then we can move those cities to their new homes. We are reporting political realities here only. --mav

So redirect Jerusalem to Jerusalem, Israel then.... I dare you. user:sjc

Call me stupid, but are there actually any other well-known Penzances out there that we need to disambiguate against, or is putting comma-anything here just an exercise in wasting everyone's time? ("Penzance, Pirates of" does not count.) --Brion VIBBER

AFAIK, only one worth going to.... user:sjc

Er, I thought this was settled by the Wikipedia:naming conventions, regarding cities. I do NOT agree with that convention, but I do feel that conventions should be kept. Jeronimo

I agree with you up to a point. Conventions, however, do not cover every eventuality; they should be carefully used. I will accept that cornish town, united kingdom is an altogether happier solution than the wholly unacceptable cornish town, england. But it is still a bit like a turkey voting for Christmas. user:sjc

Yes that is how they are designed -- to be flexible. They, as you say, should be used carefully and make note of exceptions. Also, the only specific naming convention that has been written so far is for the United States which -- which is in the [City, State] format due to massive internal naming conflicts. All other nations are covered by the general naming convention that the [City, Nation] format should be used (and has been noted England is not a nation and this city is not in England anyway). I say we should be cautious and move relatively slowly when moving city articles for now -- that is to just fix things as we see them and not systematically seek out cities to move just yet (if this were a clear cut set of conventions I would have already moved most of the cities to the new format -- all it would take is a couple or three four hour stretches for me). At the very least more expections like the United States may crop up. --mav

I guess I missed the memo, Jeronimo; the list time I looked, there was widespread feeling that this isn't an appropriate general convention, though it was fine for US states and Canadian provinces, where that format is commonly used. I've no objection to using it for other countries for disambiguation, but it's just silly where no disambiguation is required. I don't see anyone retitling Paul McCartney to Paul McCartney (musician) just because the names of some musicians need to be disambiguated. Do you? --Brion VIBBER

You are talking about disambigation, we are talking about consistant and predictable naming. This has already been discussed on the list. --mav 01:56 Jul 28, 2002 (PDT)

Mav, please point me to a specific point in the list archives where this has been declared decided, and I'll shut up about the matter. If there is such a clear decision, as I said I missed the memo. --Brion VIBBER

The only way things are "decided" on the list is to have enough discussion until a point is reached that somebody take the initiative to do something (I haven't seen any formal process -- maybe there should be one). After the exchange of many posts and the objections of several participants were answered and no additional objections raised I drafted the convention. See [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] see also: wikipedia talk:naming conventions (city names) Consistancy and predictability was the consensus. --mav

Though not an active participant (not even always reading) Wikipedia-L, I thought the appearing of this convention on the naming conventions page for me indicated some decision had been taken. I could not really find any such point checking however, and maybe there's never been. I followed the discussion for some time, but it amounted in the restating of already said points, so I stopped following it. I've seen a lot of people "angry" with this convention recently (which I have been trying to "convert"), and I myself am not happy with it either, as you may already know.

For such a controversial point a vote may have been appropriate - that seems the way to do it lately, anyway. Maybe I'll set one up, but not now. Jeronimo 03:03 Jul 28, 2002 (PDT)

I agree -- I don't like the talk, talk, talk format of the mailing list in which the only way things get done is for somebody to finally do it. There should be some type of 'rules of order' or something that is followed. This is especially important now that there are so many list contributors. Much of the time something reasonable is proposed but is dropped because other list members simply didn't respond to the post because they felt they had nothing to add either way -- even when they may have supported the idea (however mildly). Brion is the first person I know of that actually called for a vote on something -- maybe that route should be taken more often. --mav

How difficult do you think it would be to implement some voting software? user:sjc

That sounds like a great idea -- there is already a send email feature request. I have been contemplating adding to that feature request the ability to integrate the wikipedia mailing list into such a system. If that were done, then it should be a simple matter to also add a voting feature too. Please add your thoughts on this to the sourceforge tracker. --mav

Requires a VA Sourceforge login - I have issues with VA and unsubscribed a long time ago. We should also maybe consider moving our Sourceforge work, btw to Savannah, since VA have imposed a whole bunch of not-entirely-open considerations into their terms and conditions. user:sjc

You can post as Anon -- that's what I have to do because my browser for some reason doesn't like their cookie. I just sign my post within the text box. I'm not sure what Savannah is but that sounds like something the developers should now about. You can contact the current main developer here. --mav All this really does need to be moved to wikipedia:Chat or to one of our talk pages (go ahead and add it to mine if you wish).